What sort of things have you lost to a swimming pool drain? For ancient Romans enjoying a day at the bathhouse, the list of items includes jewelry (which many women today can probably relate to), as well as less obvious items such as teeth and scalpels. A new study of objects dropped down old drains reveals the bathhouses as a bustling center for social gatherings, LiveScience reports, not just a place to get clean.

The famous story of Cleopatra’s suicide gets points for drama and crowd appeal: Her lover, Mark Antony, had been defeated in battle by Octavian and, hearing that Cleopatra had been killed, had stabbed himself in the stomach. Very much alive, after witnessing his death, the beautiful last Pharaoh of Ancient Egypt pressed a deadly asp to her breast, taking her own life as well.

But what if Cleopatra didn’t commit suicide at all?

Babylon was one of the glories of the ancient world, its walls and mythic hanging gardens listed among the Seven Wonders.

Founded about 4,000 years ago, the ancient city was the capital of 10 dynasties in Mesopotamia, considered one of the earliest cradles of civilization and the birthplace of writing and literature.

But following years of plunder, neglect and conflict, the Babylon of today scarcely conjures that illustrious history.

Glacial ice in the Peruvian Andes that took at least 1,600 years to form has melted in just 25 years, scientists reported Thursday, the latest indication that the recent spike in global temperatures has thrown the natural world out of balance.

The evidence comes from a remarkable find at the margins of the Quelccaya ice cap in Peru, the world’s largest tropical ice sheet. Rapid melting there in the modern era is uncovering plants that were locked in a deep freeze when the glacier advanced many thousands of years ago.

How close are we to the end? How close are we to being among the last humans to ever live? Depending on who you are — your religion, politics, relative degree of pessimism or optimism — that question is bound to bring up images of some particular kind of cataclysm. It could be an all-out nuclear exchange or a climate change-driven mass extinction. But what if there was a way of answering the doomsday question in the most generic way possible.

What if there was a mathematical way of addressing doomsday that had nothing to do with politics or policies or perspective? More importantly: What if that approach already existed and it told us we were already close to the end?

Consider this your introduction to the Doomsday Argument.

About 120 tons of contaminated water has leaked from an underground storage tank at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant and may have mixed with underground water, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said April 6.

TEPCO estimated that the water contained about 710 billion becquerels of radioactivity and leaked through the joints of protective sheets of the storage tank.

The cooling system for a storage pool for fuel at one of the reactors at the tsunami-damaged Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan failed today for the second time in a month, although there was no immediate danger from the breakdown.

Nuclear Regulation Authority spokesman Takahiro Sakuma said an alarm went off in the afternoon about the problem at reactor No. 3. The cause was still under investigation.

The deep blue sea is home to many a strange creature - giant squids, fish that look like blobs, and jellyfish that look like UFOs - but now we can add transparent-blooded fish to that list of strange-but-true animals.

Experts at Tokyo Sea Life have researched into the Ocellated Ice Fish, which lives in the freezing waters of the Antarctic Ocean, and have found that it manages to live in exactly the same way that other fish do, but with clear blood.

As wars become increasingly automated, we must ask ourselves how far we want to delegate responsibility to machines. Where do we want to draw the line?

Weapons systems have been evolving for millennia and there have always been attempts to resist them. But does that mean that we should just sit back and accept our fate and hand over the ultimate responsibility for killing to machines?

Members of Parliament's Commons Environmental Audit Committee have called for a suspension in the use of chemicals linked to the disappearance of bee colonies.

Wild bee species help to pollinate around one third of the world's crop production, but their numbers are falling fast -- MPs say that two thirds of these species have declined in population in the UK.

Computers made from living cells, anyone? Two groups of researchers have independently built the first biological analogue of the transistor – an integral element of modern electronics.

It should make it easier to create gadgets out of living cells, such as biosensors that detect polluted water.

In March 2012, Joseph Polchinski began to contemplate suicide — at least in mathematical form. A string theorist at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, California, Polchinski was pondering what would happen to an astronaut who dived into a black hole. Obviously, he would die. But how?

Experts in nuclear physics at the University of Surrey have helped develop research towards a 'nuclear battery', which could revolutionize the concept of portable power by packing in up to a million times more energy compared to a conventional battery.

By capturing charged particles in a special storage ring the experts have solved a long-standing problem of how to understand the fundamental structure of an unstable isotope of bismuth, Bi-212, with potential far-reaching consequences.