Washington, August 29: A student from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), US, has developed a computer model, which shows that hundreds of lives could be saved through smarter hurricane evacuations.

Developed by Michael Metzger, the software could allow emergency managers to better decide early on whether and when to order evacuations — and, crucially, to do so more efficiently by clearing out people in stages.

The tool could also help planners optimize the location of relief supplies before a hurricane hits.

Washington, August 29: A scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute says that human eyes have evolved for X-Ray vision, the ability to see through things.

Mark Changizi, assistant professor of cognitive science, says that eyes facing the same direction maximise the ability of humans and some other animals to see in leafy environments like forests.

He corroborates his proposition with the fact that a person can see through a pen to the world behind it with both eyes open, though not with one eye closed.

Washington, August 29: A research paper has suggested that ancient settlements in the Amazon, now almost entirely obscured by tropical forest, were once large and complex enough to have hosted large, urban civilizations.

The paper has been co-authored by anthropologists from the University of Florida (UF) and Brazil, and a member of the Kuikuro, an indigenous Amazonian people who are the descendants of the settlements’ original inhabitants.

The researchers argue that the size and scale of the settlements in the southern Amazon in North Central Brazil means that what many scientists have considered virgin tropical forests are in fact heavily influenced by historic human activity.

Washington, August 29: The age-old mystery of how the elusive fly just eludes the swish of the swatter may have finally been solved, with a researcher claiming that aiming a little ahead of where the fly sits prior to the hit will enable you to kill it in one shot.

"It is best not to swat at the fly's starting position, but rather to aim a bit forward of that to anticipate where the fly is going to jump when it first sees your swatter," says Michael Dickinson, bioengineer at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

Washington - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's allegation that the United States provoked the conflict in Georgia is "ludicrous," the US State Department said Thursday.

"Those types of charges that the United States was involved in instigating it, you know, just are without foundation and just ... ludicrous - plain and simple," State Department deputy spokesman Robert Wood said.

Washington, August 28 : A new study has revealed that a Jamaican lizard called the Anolis engages in impressive displays of reptilian strength — push ups, head bobs, and threatening extension of a colourful neck flap called a dewlap — to defend its territory at dawn and dusk.

"Anoles are highly visual species, so in that sense it''s not surprising that they would use visual displays to mark territory. Still, the finding is surprising because these are the first animals known to use non-acoustic signalling at dawn and dusk," says Terry J. Ord, a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University''s Museum of Comparative Zoology and at the University of California, Davis.