Science Briefing

Despite a nasty Martian dust storm, Spirit lives.

NASA had not heard from the Martian rover for four days. Just when engineers feared all was lost, the aptly named robot radioed back to Earth on Thursday that it had survived.

"She's talking!" engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge shouted. They had feared that a dust storm had prevented Spirit's solar batteries from recharging sufficiently, triggering it to shut down. Its batteries are low, but working.

Ancient earring sheds new light

A luxurious gold, pearl and emerald earring provides a new visual clue about the life of the elite in Jerusalem about 2,000 years ago, researchers said Monday.

The piece was found beneath a parking lot next to the walls of Jerusalem's Old City. It dates to the Roman period just after the time of Jesus.

The earring was uncovered in a destroyed Byzantine structure built centuries after the piece was made, showing it was probably passed down through generations.

The Israel Antiquities Authority said the earring appeared to have been made using a technique similar to that depicted in portraits from Roman-era Egypt. Experts were able to date the earring by comparing it to similar, but less well-preserved, finds in Europe.

Inches may mean more than BMI

A large European study has confirmed that simple measurements of the waist and hips may offer a better way of predicting obesity-related death than a standard, but more complicated, system of relating weight to height.

The standard body mass index, or BMI, method does not work very well for some people, such as the elderly or bodybuilders, and researchers have begun building a case that it is better to look at waist circumference or the ratio of waist size to hip size.

Among people with comparable BMIs, having an extra 2 inches around the waist increased the annual risk of death 17% for men and 13% for women, German researchers reported Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Headphones bad for heart devices

Don't place headphones for portable MP3 music players in your front shirt pocket or drape them over your shoulder if you've got a pacemaker or defibrillators, says a Harvard scientist. The results can be shocking.