"Water supports life in lakes, in mountains ? mountains are large reservoirs or water," Asher Shomrone, founder and executive of the New York Museum of Water, said at a New York City event on March 22, World Water Day. "Our civilization is water. Life is water. We are water."

An opening date for the museum is less than, well, solid right now, as another $500,000 to $1 million will be needed to find a space in Manhattan, hire more than a skeleton staff and see to the basic needs of an institution, Shomrone says.

***

So far, Shomrone has funded the preparations for the museum through private donations and money from friends and family. The museum itself is a program of the 1-BluePlanet Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing potable water to 250 million of the world's neediest people by 2015.

"We're right on watershed, as it were, about whether we're going to create a real viable future," said Johnanne Winchester, vice president of international alliances for the communications-coordination committee for the U.N.

We are on a mission to create entertainment centers that act as an ambassador for water, its protection, and our childrens future access to clean and ample water. Our purpose is to create the world's clearinghouse for all water related themes and to do it in an entertaining and accessible fashion that engages as wide an audience as possible and brings joy and wonder to peoples lives.

"The cloak would act like you've opened up a hole in space," Duke University's David Smith, one of Pendry's co-authors, explained in a news release. "All light or other electromagnetic waves are swept around the area, guided by the metamaterial to emerge on the other side as if they had passed through an empty volume of space."

Pendry told MSNBC.com that the cloak wouldn't reflect any light, and wouldn't cast a shadow either. "It would be like Peter Pan had lost his shadow," he said, referring to the fictional character who had to have his shadow stitched back on.

Dreams come true, with a few catches
Theoretically at least, the metamaterial could work like the helmet of invisibility celebrated in Greek myth, or the cloaking device that hid Romulan and Klingon vessels in the "Star Trek" series, or the invisibility cloak that came in so handy for Harry Potter in J.K. Rowlings' novels.

"Fiction has predicted the course of science for some time. ... Maybe these Harry Potter novels were ahead of their time," Pendry said, half-jokingly.

Deserts in the American Southwest and around the globe are creeping toward heavily populated areas as the jet streams shift, scientists reported Thursday.

The result: Areas already stressed by drought may get even drier.

Satellite measurements made from 1979 to 2005 show that the atmosphere in the subtropical regions both north and south of the equator is heating up. As the atmosphere warms, it bulges out at the altitudes where the northern and southern jet streams slip past like swift and massive rivers of air. That bulging has pushed both jet streams about 70 miles closer to the Earth's poles.

Since the jet streams mark the edge of the tropics, in essence framing the hot zone that hugs the equator, their outward movement has allowed the tropics to grow wider by about 140 miles. That means the relatively drier subtropics move as well, pushing closer to places like Salt Lake City, where Thomas Reichler, co-author of the new study, teaches meteorology.

If the trend continues through the end of the century, it would drive rain-bearing storms toward higher latitudes, deprive heavily populated southern Europe of much-needed winter rain and snow, and expand the world's subtropical deserts, atmospheric scientists say.

"It's a big deal," notes Thomas Reichler, a University of Utah atmospheric scientist and a member of the research team, which reported its results in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

Some aspects of the results are consistent with global-warming projections, team members note. If the cause does prove to be global warming, these results would represent the first direct satellite evidence of its impact on worldwide atmospheric circulation, says team leader Qiang Fu, a researcher at the University of Washington.

Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs is an exhibition from National Geographic. Organized by Arts and Exhibitions International and AEG Exhibitions in association with The Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt and The Field Museum. Tour Sponsor is Northern Trust. Chicago Sponsor is Exelon, Proud Parent of ComEd.

Howard Carter had spent five years searching the Valley of the Kings for the tomb of Tutankhamun. His funding was coming to an end, but he persuaded his patron, Lord Carnarvon, to support his work for one more season. A few days after digging began again, a young water-carrier put his hand on a stone step.

"It was a spectacular discovery -- a tomb untouched since antiquity, its inner sanctum never looted by tomb robbers," says James L. Phillips, Acting Curator of the Near East and North Africa at The Field Museum and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois, Chicago. The only tomb of its era found intact, it was also, Phillips notes, the first major discovery in the age of easy worldwide communication. That, along with rumors of a mysterious curse, helped make Tut the most popular of the pharaohs.

But there is no denying the allure of the treasure itself. More than 5,000 beautifully preserved artifacts were found in Tut's tomb, and the 50 selected for this exhibition -- along with more than 70 from other royal tombs -- are among the most breathtaking objects of ancient Egypt. Only a few of these artifacts were in the original exhibition, and many have never before traveled outside Egypt.

A tattooed mummy has been found in Peru which archaeologists say is one of the best-ever relics of a civilisation that ended more than 1,300 years ago.

The mummy, herself 1,500 years old, is of a woman in her 20s, believed to be an elite member of the Moche tribe.

The skeleton of an adolescent girl offered in sacrifice was found with a rope still around its neck.

The archaeologists from Peru and the US found the mummy at a site called El Brujo on the north coast near Trujillo.

"My opinion is that this is a type of pyramid, probably a primitive pyramid," said Dr. Aly Abd Alla Barakata, a geologist from the Egyptian Mineral Resource Authority.

Barakata is the first expert from Egypt to visit the Visocica hill and offer an opinion on whether huge stone slabs excavated on the site could form the sloping sides of a massive step pyramid.

Semir Osmanagic, an amateur Bosnian archaeologist who has been investigating Latin American pyramids for 15 years, claimed last year that the Visocica hill, about 20 miles northwest of Sarajevo, is a pyramid. If correct, it would be the first ancient pyramid ever found in Europe.

Osmanagic's team, made up mainly of volunteers, began excavations last month on the 2,120-foot hill. The team found that Visocica has 45-degree slopes pointing toward the cardinal points and a flat top. Under layers of dirt, workers discovered a paved entrance plateau, entrances to tunnels and large stone blocks.

Kate Arnold and Klaus Zuberb?hler, of the University of St Andrews, have now observed the monkeys using these sounds in a new way. A particular sequence of pyows and hacks appears to mean something entirely different.

The monkeys live in groups consisting of a single adult male accompanied by several adult females and their young. When the male utters this ?sentence?, consisting of up to three pyows followed by up to four hacks, it seems to be a command telling others to move,generally to find safer, less exposed terrain.

They use the signal not only when predators are around, but also during ordinary activities such as foraging. It seems to mean "let's get out of here".

The research is published today in the journal Nature. Dr Arnold said: "These calls were not produced randomly and a number of distinct patterns emerged. One of these patterns was what we have termed a pyow-hack sequence. This was either produced alone or inserted at certain positions in the call series."

Territorial officials seized the creature after noticing its white fur was scattered with brown patches and that it had the long claws and humped back of a grizzly. Now a DNA test has confirmed that it is indeed a hybrid - possibly the first documented in the wild.

"We've known it's possible, but actually most of us never thought it would happen," said Ian Stirling, a polar bear biologist with the Canadian Wildlife Service in Edmonton.

Polar bears and grizzlies have been successfully paired in zoos before - Stirling could not speculate why - and their offspring are fertile.

The House passed the measure nearly a year ago with support from 50 Republicans. Supporters contend government funding of the budding science could someday cure diseases suffered by millions of people. Opponents argue that harvesting such stem cells amounts to abortion because an embryo is destroyed in the process.

President Bush in 2001 ordered sharp restrictions on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, allowing it only for stem cells created before Aug. 9 of that year.

His veto threat stands, according to White House spokesman Ken Lisaius. Neither chamber of Congress has demonstrated the two-thirds support required to overcome a veto.

Mrs. Reagan's letter and a firming up of plans to tackle the issue this summer before the November elections mark a major step forward for the bill in the Senate. All 435 House seats and a third of the 100-member Senate are up for re-election at a time when Bush's approval ratings are at an all-time low.

The embryonic stem cell debate is one issue where parting with the president is unlikely to hurt senators. An overwhelming majority of the public supports the bill, including such pro-life constituencies represented by Hatch and Frist, a heart transplant surgeon.

The archaeologists made the discovery in the state of Amapa, in the far north of Brazil.

A total of 127 large blocks of stone were found driven into the ground on top of a hill.

Well preserved and each weighing several tons, the stones were arranged upright and evenly spaced.

It is not yet known when the structure was built, but fragments of indigenous pottery found at the site are thought to be 2,000 years old.

The expedition has provided a new understanding of the diversity of gelatinous zooplankton, which the researchers describe as "the gooiest, stickiest, and most transparently fragile animals of the sea." They are rarely captured without being destroyed.

Researchers want to know what's down there and what the various species are like. This will help them better understand the food chain and also gauge ocean health with similar surveys in the future. Hundreds of the captured critters were analyzed onboard the research ship using DNA barcode technology, which reveals differences in species.

The cruise was part of a larger project to make a global inventory of zooplankton by 2010. It's called the Census of Marine Zooplankton (CMarZ).

"We are just starting to realize how little we know about species variety," said Ann Bucklin, a University of Connecticut marine scientist who leads CMarZ. "We used to think we knew many species well, but the advent of DNA barcoding has radically altered that perception. Genetically distinctive species of zooplankton are being found with increasing frequency."

He said: "We captured wild dolphins using nets when they came near the shore.

"Then in the shallow water we recorded their whistles before synthesising them on a computer so that we had a computer voice of a dolphin.

"Then we played it back to the dolphins and we found they responded. This showed us that the dolphins know each other's signature whistle instead of just the voice.

"I think it is a very exciting discovery because it means that these animals have evolved the same abilities as humans.

"Now we know they have labels for each other like we do."

"As infants, bottlenose dolphins develop their own signature whistles to use throughout their lifetimes. Group members repeat these whistles back during vocal interactions, and we believe that the whistles form a system similar to that of human names."

The researchers played synthetic whistles to dolphins through an underwater speaker. In 9 out of 14 cases, the dolphin would turn more often toward the speaker if it heard a whistle resembling that of a close relative, demonstrating that the synthetic signature whistle contains information that is used by the listeners to identify the caller.

Since dolphins reacted less to synthetic whistles of unrelated dolphins, the research suggests that dolphins use unique signature whistles to keep track of friends and family and maintain group cohesion.

Seven feet of seawater swamps Key Biscayne and 45 miles of coastline from Miami Beach to Deerfield Beach. Saltwater surges through some houses in Hollywood, Coconut Grove and elsewhere. Waist-deep freshwater blankets vast regions of suburban Broward and Miami-Dade counties.

Ferocious winds crush tens of thousands of roofs and gut numerous office buildings. Residents who defy orders to evacuate skyscrapers in Miami Beach, on Hollywood's beach and along Miami's downtown corridors could be blown out of their apartments. Power outages persist for months rather than weeks.

According to simulations conducted for The Miami Herald by scientists at the National Hurricane Center and interviews with a wide range of experts, those are not merely theoretical worst-case scenarios.

SK: What did you find inside Nasa?

GM: One of these people was a Nasa photographic expert, and she said that in building eight of Johnson Space Centre they regularly airbrushed out images of UFOs from the high-resolution satellite imaging. What she said was there was there: there were folders called "filtered" and "unfiltered", "processed" and "raw", something like that.

I got one picture out of the folder, and bearing in mind this is a 56k dial-up, so a very slow internet connection, in dial-up days, using the remote control programme I turned the colour down to 4bit colour and the screen resolution really, really low, and even then the picture was still juddering as it came onto the screen.

But what came on to the screen was amazing. It was a culmination of all my efforts. It was a picture of something that definitely wasn't man-made.

It was above the Earth's hemisphere. It kind of looked like a satellite. It was cigar-shaped and had geodesic domes above, below, to the left, the right and both ends of it, and although it was a low-resolution picture it was very close up.

Mount St. Helens, located in the Cascades of Washington, has been quietly erupting since a flurry of tiny earthquakes began in late September 2004. Scientists initially mistook the quakes as rainwater seeping into the hot interior of the older lava dome.

But it soon became clear that magma was on the move, confirmed by the emergence of fire-red lava between the old lava dome and the south crater rim a few weeks after the seismic activity began.

The volcano has continued pumping out lava ever since. Eventually, scientists expect the volcano will rebuild its conical peak that was obliterated in the May 18, 1980 eruption that left 57 people dead.

The current growth of the new lava dome has been accompanied by low seismicity rates, low emissions of steam and volcanic gases and minor production of ash, the USGS said.

According to the Swiss-based conservation group, known by its acronym IUCN, the number of species classified as being in serious danger of extinction rose from about 15,500 in its previous "Red List" report, published in 2004.

The list includes one in three amphibians, a quarter of the world's mammals and coniferous trees, and one in eight birds, according to a preview of the 2006 Red List. The full report is published later this week.

"Biodiversity loss is increasing, not slowing down," said Achim Steiner, the conservation group's director general. "The implications of this trend for the productivity and resilience of ecosystems and the lives and livelihoods of billions of people who depend on them are far-reaching."

The Red List classifies about 40,000 species according to their risk of extinction and provides a searchable online database of the results. The total number of species on the planet is unknown, with 15 million being the most widely accepted estimate. Up to 1.8 million are known today.

Starlings learned to differentiate between a regular birdsong "sentence" and one containing a clause or another sentence of warbling, according to a study in Thursday's journal Nature. It took University of California at San Diego psychology researcher Tim Gentner a month and about 15,000 training attempts, with food as a reward, to get the birds to recognize the most basic of grammar in their own bird language.

Gentner trained the birds using three buttons hanging from the wall. When the bird pecked the button it would play different versions of bird songs that Gentner generated, some with inserted clauses and some without. If the song followed a certain pattern, birds were supposed to hit the button again with their beaks; if it followed a different pattern they were supposed to do nothing. If the birds recognized the correct pattern, they were rewarded with food.

Gentner said he was so unprepared for the starlings' successful learning that he hadn't bothered to record the songs the starlings sang in response.

"They might have been singing them back," Gentner said.

Archaeologists and other experts began digging into the sides of the mysterious hill near the central Bosnian town of Visoko last week. On Wednesday, the digging revealed large stone blocks on one side that the leader of the team believes are the outer layer of the pyramid.

"These are the first uncovered walls of the pyramid," said Semir Osmanagic, a Bosnian archaeologist who studied the pyramids of Latin America for 15 years.

Osmanagic said Wednesday's discovery significantly bolsters his theory that the 2,120-foot hill rising above the small town of Visoko is actually a step pyramid -- the first found in Europe.

"We can see the surface is perfectly flat. This is the crucial material proof that we are talking pyramids," he said.

Osmanagic believes the structure itself is a colossal 722 feet high, or a third taller than Egypt's Great Pyramid of Giza. The huge stone blocks discovered Wednesday appear to be cut in cubes and polished.

Photos released by the media and made available on Osmanagic's website show a series of stone plates buried just beneath the top layer of soil and vegetation. Despite the tests and pictures, some archaeologists aren't convinced by his claims.

"Clearly there are voids or something similar in the rock, but that is a long way from saying these are man-made," said Anthony Harding, president of the European Association of Archaeologists.

Last year a monstrous scam was uncovered.

It involved creating the world's largest single plantation - the size of four million football fields - right in the middle of a rainforest that has survived many millions of years.

Much of the land chosen turned out to be unsuitable for plantations. It was too steep and too elevated. But that was never the point of the exercise.

The real plan was to chop down as much valuable hardwood as possible and sell it to China.

After all, why put plantations on Borneo's vast swathes of empty land when you can carve up the forests and make a fortune before you have even started? And, in the process, destroy one of the world's last great biological treasure houses.

During the last decades the once species-rich rainforest of Samboja Lestari was cleared and burnt down relentlessly. Nutrient-consuming elephant grass took over completely. What remained was an ecological waste land. Nowadays it is already visible that this doesn't have to stay - since 2001 BOS is creating new rainforest. An innovative concept of reforestation and protection is changing this area of over 16 mio sqm into a natural habitat again. In tropical Borneo plants grow much faster than in Europe. Already within a few years the first orang-utans can be released to share their freedom with other animals A nature reserve is being created for the permanent use of humans, animals and plants in Samboja Lestari ("eternal Samboja").