|  Ancient Estate and Garden Fountain Unearthed in Israel  | The remains of a wealthy estate, with a mosaic fountain in its garden, dating to between the late 10th and early 11th centuries have been unearthed in Ramla in central Israel. "It seems that a private building belonging to a wealthy family was located there and that the fountain was used for ornamentation," Hagit Torgë, excavation director on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, said in a statement. Fountains from the Fatimid period were mostly found around the center of the Old City of Ramla called White Mosque, Torgë added.
| Read More » Scientists test ideas in bird botulism outbreaks  | TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — For more than a decade, people walking along Great Lakes beaches have come upon a heartrending sight: dozens, or even hundreds, of dead loons, gulls and other waterfowl — victims of food poisoning that paralyzed their muscles and eventually caused them to drown.
| Read More » Is Dark Matter Made of Tiny Black Holes?  | A planet-hunting NASA spacecraft has detected no sign of moon-size black holes yet in the Milky Way galaxy, limiting the chances that such objects could make up most of the "dark matter" that has mystified scientists for decades. It remains so mysterious that scientists are still uncertain as to whether dark matter is made of microscopic particles or far larger objects. The consensus right now is that dark matter consists of a new type of particle, one that interacts very weakly at best with all the known forces of the universe except gravity. As such, dark matter is invisible and mostly intangible, with its presence only detectable via the gravitational pull it exerts.
| Read More » 3 Words That Sell: Made in America Researchers say that finding suggests that quality and safety may be the true motivating factors behind these purchase decisions. According to the BCG research, U.S. millennials are receptive to this type of marketing and are more likely than nonmillennials to purchase items associated with a particular cause, such as "Made in America." Read More » Top-Secret US Spy Satellite Launches into Orbit (Photos)  | A classified U.S. spy payload rocketed into orbit from California on an Atlas 5 launcher Thursday (Dec. 5), joining the nation's eyes and ears in the sky to supply intelligence to the government's national security agencies. The satellite is owned by the National Reconnaissance Office, but government officials do not disclose the identities of the NRO's spacecraft, only saying the payload will serve national security purposes. But independent satellite-watchers believe the spacecraft will join the NRO's fleet of spacecraft with radars to penetrate cloaks of clouds and darkness and reveal what adversaries are doing regardless of weather or time of day. The United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base at 11:14:30 p.m. PST Thursday (0714:30 GMT;
| Read More » Lemon Sharks Return to Their Birthplace to Have Babies  | "We found that newborn sharks captured in the mid-1990s left the safety of the islands when they were between five and eight years old," biologist Kevin Feldheim, of The Field Museum in Chicago, explained in a statement. In 1995, the researchers captured, tagged and released more than 2,000 baby sharks in the lagoon in Bimini, a set of islands located 53 miles (81 kilometers) east of Miami. Samuel Gruber, president and director of the Bimini Biological Field Station Foundation, who started the project, explained that lagoon is "almost like a lake." Their slow growth rate is one of the reasons why overfishing can seriously damage shark populations.
| Read More » Nobel winner: scientists get it wrong most of time STOCKHOLM (AP) — One of this year's Nobel Prize laureates says learning how to handle failure is key to becoming a successful scientist. Read More » Scientists to Congress: We Have the Technology to Find Alien Life  | To find extraterrestrial life, be it microbes or intelligent life, scientists need telescopes capable of detecting Earth-like planets in Earth's neighborhood and ways to detect biological signatures of life or signs of alien technology. "This is the first time in human history we have the technological reach to find life on other planets," Sara Seager, a planetary scientist at MIT, said at a House Committee on Science, Space and Technology hearing today. "Astrobiology has become a crosscutting theme of all NASA space science endeavors," and continued funding is important, said Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson (D., Texas). The Kepler mission has identified more than 3,500 potential planets outside Earth's solar system, including 10 that are Earth-size and lie within their star's habitable zone.
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