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Water found in a deep, isolated reservoir in Timmins, Ont., has been trapped there for 1.5 billion to 2.64 billion years — since around the time the first multicellular life arose on the planet — Canadian and British scientists say.

The water pouring out of boreholes 2.4 kilometres below the surface in the northern Ontario copper and zinc mine is older than any other free-flowing water ever discovered. It is rich in dissolved gases such as hydrogen and methane that could theoretically provide support for microbial life.

"What we can be sure of is that we have identified a way in which planets can create and preserve an environment friendly to microbial life for billions of years," said a statement from Greg Holland, the Lancaster University geochemist who is the lead author of the study.

His Canadian co-authors included Barbara Sherwood Lollar and Georges Lacrampe-Couloume at the University of Toronto; Greg Slater at McMaster University in Hamilton; and Long Li, who is currently an assistant professor at the University of Alberta, but worked on the project while at the University of Toronto.

Some Canadian members of the team are currently testing the water to see if it contains microbial life — if they exist, those microbes may have been isolated from the sun and the Earth's surface for billions of years and may reveal how microbes evolve in isolation.

Microbes that have been isolated for tens of millions of years have been found in water with similar chemistry at even slightly deeper depths below the surface in a South African gold mine, using hydrogen gas as an energy source, the researchers noted.

The researchers estimated how old the water was based on an analysis of the xenon gas dissolved in it. Like many other elements, xenon comes in forms with different masses, known as isotopes. The water in the Timmins mine contained an unusually high level of lighter isotopes of xenon that are thought to have come from the Earth's atmosphere at the time it became trapped.

A lot can change in 28 years, and Google has put together a very graphic demonstration of just how much can happen geographically with a new effort that combines global, annual Landsat satellite image composites with its Google Earth Engine software.

Meditation increasingly is being worked into hospital rehabilitation programs as studies show it can lower blood pressure and help patients with chronic illness cope with pain and depression.

Researchers at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute have discovered a hormone that holds promise for a dramatically more effective treatment of type 2 diabetes, a metabolic illness afflicting an estimated 26 million Americans. It could eventually mean that instead of taking insulin injections three times a day, you might take an injection of this hormone once a week or once a month, or in the best case maybe even once a year,” said Doug Melton (right). Melton and postdoctoral fellow Peng Yi discovered the hormone betatrophin, which has the potential to improve diabetes treatment.

Researchers at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) have discovered a hormone that holds promise for a dramatically more effective treatment of type 2 diabetes, a metabolic illness afflicting an estimated 26 million Americans. The researchers believe that the hormone might also have a role in treating type 1, or juvenile, diabetes.

The hormone, called betatrophin, causes mice to produce insulin-secreting pancreatic beta cells at up to 30 times the normal rate. The new beta cells only produce insulin when called for by the body, offering the potential for the natural regulation of insulin and a great reduction in the complications associated with diabetes, the leading medical cause of amputations and non-genetic loss of vision.

The researchers who discovered betatrophin, HSCI co-director Doug Meltonand postdoctoral fellow Peng Yi, caution that much work remains to be done before it could be used as a treatment in humans. But the results of their work, which was supported in large part by a federal research grant, already have attracted the attention of drug manufacturers.

UK-based solar energy developer Lightsource Renewable Energy has completed and commissioned about 133MWp of solar photovoltaic (PV) projects, during the first quarter of 2013.

The waves are slowly seeping over the islands of the Pacific nation, which is at the frontline of the climate change-induced rise in sea levels striking low-lying nations all over the world

Homes and buildings chilled without air conditioners. Car interiors that don't heat up in the summer sun. Tapping the frigid expanses of outer space to cool the planet. Science fiction, you say? Well, maybe not any more.
A team of researchers at Stanford has designed an entirely new form of cooling structure that cools even when the sun is shining. Such a structure could vastly improve the daylight cooling of buildings, cars and other structures by reflecting sunlight back into the chilly vacuum of space.

Have you ever wanted to go back in time to see what the planet looked like in yesteryear? Today, Google working with TIME magazine, NASA and the U.S.

By Paul Brown, Climate News Network

The world’s largest concentrated solar power plant opened in March in the middle of Abu Dhabi’s western region, amid the country’s giant oil fields.

The $600 million plant’s hundreds of mirrors direct sunlight towards towers full of water. These are heated to drive steam turbines that provide enough electricity for thousands of homes.

In a country whose vast wealth is generated by oil, adopting a new technology that produces only 100 megawatts of power — about a tenth the amount of a large coal-fired plant — may seem a mere token, but it is part of a much larger industrial strategy for the region.

Serious money and political clout in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa is aimed at building hundreds of similar plants. The potential is so great that all the electricity requirements of these desert countries — and a good slice of Europe’s — could be met by 2050.

While soft-drink sales may have lost fizz, soda isn’t going away any time soon. A decade ago, 80% of Americans consumed at least one such beverage every two weeks. Today, 72% continue to do so.