THE secret to life on Earth might just lie beneath the Scottish Borders.

Scientists will this week start digging up farmland near Berwick-upon-Tweed in a bid to find the “missing link” in the evolutionary process between fish and human beings.

A 500-metre borehole will be drilled in the countryside that the scientists, including those from the Edinburgh-based British Geological Survey (BGS) and the National Museums of Scotland, claim could explain why sea creatures evolved to become land animals, the ancestors of modern animals and human beings.

AN EXPERT delving deep into the history of Nessie spotters is to reveal his findings on the 80th anniversary of the first modern-day sighting.

Dr Charles Paxton, a statistical ecologist from St Andrews University, is working on the first catalogue of all known sightings of the Loch Ness monster in modern times.

The researcher will present his findings at a conference this weekend, organised as part of the Edinburgh International Science Festival.

MANILA, Philippines - For centuries, eyewitness accounts and myths have fueled rumours that the legendary Bigfoot have roamed the forests in North America and other continents. In brand new episodes of FINDING BIGFOOT 2, Bigfoot Field Research Organization (BFRO) president Matt Moneymaker, research members James “Bobo” Fay and Cliff Barackman, and skeptical biologist, Ranae Holland continue their tenacious search in the United States, and this time, travel halfway across to world to Vietnam to track down the mysterious Yeren.

Not since Roger Patterson’s 1967 encounter has there been so much hype over the possible discovery of Sasquatch, better known as Bigfoot.

In the deep woods of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in the Pacific Northwest there could be a very real Bigfoot lurking in the night, belting out its blood-curdling serenades to all those who wish to lend a listening ear. And one local resident has garnered audio-proof that something unknown is calling out from the brushy swamp area east of Pendleton, Oregon.

It may have been hailed as the Holy Grail of physics - but nicknaming the Higgs boson the “God Particle” has proved equally controversial.

The latest outburst against the term was by Professor Peter Higgs himself – the British physicist who suggested the particle's existence.

Higgs's comments come as scientists close in on final proof of the particle's existence at the Large Hadron Collider - ending a 40-year, £8.6 billion quest.

Dear Chris,

I'm one of the many who in recent years discovered new and noteworthy ideas thanks to TED. You've grown TED into an important platform for the introduction of innovative thought to a popular audience; it's a wonderful vision and your achievement of it is widely appreciated. TED's prominence has made it, perhaps inadvertently, into an forum that validates worthy intellectual progress. If a good idea gets momentum, it will most likely end up, one way or another, presented by TED or one of the TEDx offshoots.

That's why the censure of the TEDx talks by Graham Hancock and Rupert Sheldrake is so dismaying. As you must know, to many of us the reasons behind their removal from the TED YouTube site are just not clear. On behalf of the Evolver community, I'd like to extend an invitation to you to help us understand the reasoning that led to TED's actions, because we suspect that behind your decision is an uninformed prejudice against groundbreaking research in a critical area of study, the possibility that consciousness extends beyond the brain.

TED Talks – with their mantra - ‘ideas worth sharing’ - have been accused of censorship after two British speakers had their talks removed from TED’s official website.

The row involves two British speakers, the journalist and author Graham Hancock and Cambridge and Harvard University lecturer Rupert Sheldrake. Both speakers have been deemed as ‘provocative’ amid accusations of ‘pseudoscience’ at lectures they gave at a TEDx talk – a franchised spin-off of the main TED Talk brand.

Hancock describes a ‘war on consciousness’ that prevents the world from gaining a higher state of awareness through shamanic principles and psychoactives like the South American potion, ayahuasca.

Sounds made by a little-known monkey living in Ethiopia’s mountain grasslands may hint at the origins of human speech. Unlike most other primates, which communicate in strings of short, relatively flat-toned syllables, geladas possess uncannily human-like vocal tempos and undulations.

“When we first started working with geladas in 2006, we noticed sounds like people were talking around you,” said evolutionary biologist Thore Bergman of the University of Michigan. “Most primates only make a few sounds, but geladas produce a complex stream with a rhythm similar to language.”.

A University of Leeds-led study, published in the journal Ecology Letters, overturns the common assumption that evolution only occurs gradually over hundreds or thousands of years.

Instead, researchers found significant genetically transmitted changes in laboratory populations of soil mites in just 15 generations, leading to a doubling of the age at which the mites reached adulthood and large changes in population size. The results have important implications in areas such as disease and pest control, conservation and fisheries management because they demonstrate that evolution can be a game-changer even in the short-term.

Here’s some bleak news for the coal industry: As much as 65 percent of the U.S. coal fleet could find itself under threat in the years ahead, thanks to cheap natural gas and stricter air-pollution regulations.

That’s according to a new peer-reviewed study by three researchers at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment, who take a detailed look at the costs of operating both coal-fired power plants and natural-gas plants around the United States.

A potential energy source for life appears to be common on Jupiter's icy moon Europa, a new study suggests.

An analysis of infrared observations of Europa revealed that hydrogen peroxide is abundant on the ice-covered Jovian moon. If the hydrogen peroxide finds a way beneath Europa's surface and mixes with the moon's liquid water ocean, it could be a vital energy source for any life that might exist there, scientists said.