Discoveries

One of the most widely used animal models for Type 1 diabetes has been found to carry a virus that was previously shown to produce diabetes in other rodents, a finding that offers the possibility of new treatments for the widespread disorder. The BioBreeding, or BB, rat naturally develops diabetes at about 2 months of age, and researchers have attributed the disease to genetics.

Paintings of Buddha dating back at least to the 12th century have been discovered in a cave in Nepal's remote north-central region by a team of international researchers after being tipped by a local shepherd. A mural with 55 panels depicting Buddha's life was uncovered in March in the cave in Nepal's Mustang area, about 160 miles northwest of Katmandu. The main mural was about 25 feet wide, and each panel about 14 inches by 17 inches, the team announced Friday.

Archeologists have uncovered the 1,300-year-old skeleton of a ruler or priest of the ancient Tiwanaku civilization together with precious jewels inside a much-looted pyramid in western Bolivia. The bones are "in very good condition," Roger Angel Cossio, the Bolivian archeologist who made the discovery, said Wednesday.

Archeologists from Hebrew University say they have found the tomb of Herod the Great, the Roman client-king of Judea, after a 35-year search at the desert site where his palace once stood. Herod, who expanded the Judean empire from Palestine to parts of Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, is known in the New Testament as the ruler who ordered the Massacre of the Innocents, the slaughter of boys in Jerusalem that caused Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus to flee to Egypt.

Shining like a hay fire across a wide prairie, the brightest supernova ever recorded has been found in a galaxy 240 million light-years from Earth. Astronomers said Monday that the supernova might represent a new way for giant stars to die. "Of all the exploding stars ever observed, this was the king," said UC Berkeley astronomer Alex Filippenko. "We were astonished to see how bright it got, and how long it lasted."

For more than three decades, Israeli archeologist Ehud Netzer scraped at the ancient man-made hillock. He searched the top. He dug at the bottom. Finally Netzer carved into the midsection and there, he says, found his prize: the grave of Herod the Great. The evidence, in the form of shards of decorative stonework that may have been a coffin and pieces of a structure thought to have been the mausoleum, is still far from ironclad proof. Archeologists have not found a body.

Like many other visitors to the La Brea tar pits, sisters Samantha and Katie Salazar watched a basketball-sized bubble emerge from dark, slimy gunk Sunday and wondered, why are the tar pits bubbly? For years, educators at the Hancock Park site could only guess that methane gas was being released as the byproduct of oil creation 1,000 feet below the surface.

Carnivorous sponges, 585 new species of crustaceans and hundreds of new worms have been discovered in the dark waters around Antarctica, suggesting the depths may have been the source of much marine life, European researchers reported. Many of the organisms belong to species found around the world; others appear to be unique to the deepest Antarctic waters.

Aristotle took note of this celestial happening a couple of millenniums back. Ben Franklin bagged a sighting or two, as did Mark Twain. The venerable John Muir, chronicler of Sierra mountaintop and meadow, waxed enthusiastic about the nighttime phenomenon. The hunt for the elusive "moonbow" has long been a nocturnal lure for dreamy hikers, insomniac seamen and intrepid photo buffs.

Female sharks can fertilize their own eggs and give birth without sperm from males, according to a study published Wednesday in the British journal Biology Letters. The joint Northern Ireland-U.S. research analyzed the DNA of a shark born in 2001 at the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha. Analysis of the baby shark's DNA found no trace of any chromosomal contribution from a male. Shark experts said this was the first confirmed case in a shark of parthenogenesis, or "virgin birth."