Researchers from Duke University in Durham, NC, may have discovered a new way of killing off cancer cells. The team was jointly led by Dr. Matthias Gromeier, a professor in the Department of Neurosurgery, and Prof. Smita Nair, who is an immunologist in the Department of Surgery.

Scientists found the fungus Aspergillus tubingensis breaking down plastic in a rubbish dump in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered a most unusual exoplanet that absorbs 94% of the visible light given off by its host star, making it seem as if it is pitch-black in color, according to research published last week in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. This unusual world, officially known as WASP-12b, is a “hot Jupiter” – a giant gas planet which orbits very closely to its sun and which is heated to extreme temperatures – NASA explained in a statement. In this case, its day side reaches temperatures of up to 4,600 degrees Fahrenheit.

Authorities in Flanders called it the "best preserved" find from the era. The bodies of all 23 crew members were found aboard the vessel, in a watery grave on the floor of the North Sea. Belgian authorities announced on Tuesday that they had discovered the remarkably well-preserved wreck of a World War I German submarine, commonly called a U-boat, off the coast of West Flanders.

The story sprang up all over the internet after the research was published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. So were Vikings more progressive than first thought? Let's break it down.

The incredibly well-preserved Viking sword was found by a reindeer hunter on a remote mountain in Southern Norway. The Glacier Archaeology Program at Oppland County Council was recently notified about the sword, which was found in late August in the high mountains of the Lesja area. “It is a common type of Viking sword - what makes it special is the context and the preservation: It was found at 1640 m [5381 feet] above sea level,” explained Lars Pilø, an archaeologist at Oppland County Council, in an email to Fox News. “To my knowledge, a Viking sword has never been found at such a high altitude before.”

We are producing ever greater amounts of plastic – much of which ends up as garbage. What’s more, because plastic does not break down in the same way as other organic materials, it can persist in the environment over hundreds of years. Scientists from the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) and the Kunming Institute of Botany in China have recently identified a fungus which could help deal with our waste problem by using enzymes to rapidly break down plastic materials.

A new kind of black hole has been found at the centre of the Milky Way – a find that may help explain the evolution of the phenomena. In research conducted by Japanese astronomers using the ALMA Observatory in northern Chile, a black hole 100,000 times the size of our sun was found within a molecular gas cloud. Its relatively small size means that it is the first to be identified as an intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH).

Since it was launched in 2009, NASA’s Kepler mission has continued to make important exoplanet discoveries. Even after the failure of two reaction wheels, the space observatory has found new life in the form of its K2 mission. All told, this space observatory has detected 5,017 candidates and confirmed the existence of 2,494 exoplanets using the Transit Method during its past eight years in service.

New DNA evidence uncovered by researchers at Uppsala University and Stockholm University shows that there were in fact female Viking warriors. The remains of an iconic Swedish Viking Age grave now reveal that war was not an activity exclusive to males – women could be found in the higher ranks at the battlefield.

A 3,700-year-old clay tablet has proven that the Babylonians developed trigonometry 1,500 years before the Greeks and were using a sophisticated method of mathematics which could change how we calculate today. The tablet, known as Plimpton 332, was discovered in the early 1900s in Southern Iraq by the American archaeologist and diplomat Edgar Banks, who was the inspiration for Indiana Jones.

Newly discovered human-like footprints from Crete may put the established narrative of early human evolution to the test. The footprints are approximately 5.7 million years old and were made at a time when previous research puts our ancestors in Africa – with ape-like feet.

Roman ruins stretching over 20 hectares have been discovered off the coast of northeastern Tunisia, confirming "with certainty" a theory that the city of Neapolis was partly submerged by a tsunami in the 4th century AD. "It's a major discovery," Mounir Fantar, the head of a Tunisian-Italian archaeological mission which made the find off the coast of Nabeul, told AFP news agency on Thursday.

Italian mountain rescue crews said they have recovered the remains of two or three hikers on a glacier on Mont Blanc's southern face likely dating from the 1980s or 1990s. Alpine rescue commander Delfino Viglione said Friday the bodies were discovered this week by a hiker who was searching the area for artifacts from decades-old plane crashes, including one in the 1960s that killed more than 100 people.

The fossil of a marine reptile ''re-discovered'' in a museum is the largest of its kind on record, say scientists. The ''sea dragon'' belongs to a group that swam the world's oceans 200 million years ago, while dinosaurs walked the land. The specimen is the largest Ichthyosaurus to be described, at more than three metres long.

The lost crew of an 18th century Dutch merchant ship has been found by marine archaeologists who were racing against time to preserve the wreck before it is destroyed forever by an invasive sea worm. The Rooswijk sank in bad weather off the coast of Ramsgate in Kent in January 1740, on her second voyage, and was first discovered by a diver in 2005. But after preliminary excavations it was covered up.

Seventy-two years after two torpedoes fired from a Japanese submarine sunk cruiser USS Indianapolis (CA-35), the ship’s wreckage was found resting on the seafloor on Saturday – more than 18,000 feet below the Pacific Ocean’s surface. Paul Allen, Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist, led a search team, assisted by historians from the Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC) in Washington, D.C., to accomplish what past searches had failed to do – find Indianapolis...

he detection of weak radio signals is a ubiquitous problem in the modern world. Everything from NMR imaging and radio astronomy to navigation and communication depends on picking up faint radio signals that would have been undetectable just a few decades ago. That’s why many groups are racing to find better ways to spot these signals and to process them using state-of-the-art techniques.

Scientists have discovered a new and unusual species of frog in the Western Ghats mountain range in India. The frog has shiny, purple skin, a light blue ring around its eyes, and a pointy pig-nose. The scientists have called the new species Bhupathy's purple frog (Nasikabatrachus bhupathi), in honor of their colleague, Dr. Subramaniam Bhupathy, a respected herpetologist who lost his life in the Western Ghats in 2014.

Three potentially habitable Earth-sized planets in another solar system are likely to contain substantial amounts of water, say astronomers. The discovery by the Hubble Space Telescope increases the chances of life evolving on planets orbiting Trappist-1, a dwarf star 40 light years from the sun. Each of the worlds orbits in the star's "habitable zone", the narrow corridor where temperatures are mild enough to permit bodies of surface water such as lakes and oceans.

A largely unstudied area of the South Pacific Ocean is home to a newly discovered garbage patch that researchers estimate to be 1.5 times the size of Texas, according to a recent study. This new patch found in the ocean's gyre is estimated to be as large as 965,000 square miles, reports ResearchGate. Gyres are areas of the ocean that are surrounded by circulating currents. They help circulate ocean waters around the world, but they also suck in pollution.

Bacteria that eat methane, a greenhouse gas, have been discovered in an Antarctic lake that has been isolated from the atmosphere for thousands of years. Their presence could significantly reduce the potential risk of warming posed by reservoirs of gas locked up in the ice, scientists say.

A new study from ANU on a 400 million year old fish fossil has found a jaw structure that is part of the evolutionary lineage linked to humans. The fossil comes from ancient limestones around Lake Burrinjuck, 50 kilometres northwest of Canberra. The area is rich in fossil shells and corals, but also home to the rare skulls of extinct armoured fish called placoderms.

The World War Two heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis has been found in the Pacific Ocean, 72 years after its sinking by a Japanese submarine. The warship was discovered 18,000 feet (5.5km) beneath the surface. The Indianapolis was destroyed returning from its secret mission to deliver parts for the atomic bomb which was later used on Hiroshima.

In July of 2015, Russian billionaire Yuri Milner announced the creation of Breakthrough Listen, a decade-long project that would conduct the largest survey to date for signs of extra-terrestrial communications (ETI). As part of his non-profit organization, Breakthrough Initiatives, this survey would rely on the latest in instrumentation and software to observe the 1,000,000 closest stars and 100 closest galaxies.

Scientists have discovered mystery signals coming from a star 11 light-years away. The “very peculiar” pulses appear to be unique to the red dwarf, scientists say, with observations of similar nearby stars showing no similar behavior. Researchers at the Arecibo Observatory, in Puerto Rico, were observing a group of red dwarf stars in a bid to identify planets and other objects orbiting them. In April and May, the team recorded information coming from Gliese 436, Ross 128, Wolf 359, HD 95735, BD +202465, V* RY Sex and K2-18.

An unlikely hero has emerged in the quest to fight HIV: the cow. In a first for any animal, including humans, four cows injected with a type of HIV protein rapidly produced powerful antibodies against the virus, researchers report. Learning how to induce similar antibodies in humans may be key to a successful HIV vaccine.

An international team of archaeologists believes it is on the cusp of pinpointing the location of a secret room hidden within the Great Pyramid of Giza as it uses cutting-edge laser technology to map the 4,500-year-old ancient Egyptian wonder. Medhi Tayoubi, president of the Heritage Innovation Preservation Institute heading the ScanPyramids project alongside the Faculty of Enginering at Cairo University, said the team, which uses infrared thermography to map subatomic particles, had confirmed there was a cavity inside the structure. Now the archaeologists need to find its exact location.

Jhonathan Miranda never expected to be into birds. But when the Venezuelan biologist got a job at a bird lab as a university student, he set his mind to learning as much as he could about the class Aves. As he organized trips around the country, one particular species lodged in his mind: the Táchira Antpitta, a round, leggy brown bird a little longer than a pencil.

History researcher says that it's a mostly plagiarized guide to women's health. Since its discovery in 1969, the 15th century Voynich Manuscript has been a mystery and a cult phenomenon. Full of handwriting in an unknown language or code, the book is heavily illustrated with weird pictures of alien plants, naked women, strange objects, and zodiac symbols. Now, history researcher and television writer Nicholas Gibbs appears to have cracked the code, discovering that the book is actually a guide to women's health that's mostly plagiarized from other guides of the era.

Luxor, Egypt (CNN)Egyptian authorities unveiled a previously undiscovered ancient tomb belonging to a goldsmith and his wife near Luxor in southern Egypt on Saturday. The tomb, at the Draa Abul Nagaa necropolis, contains "mummies, sarcophagi, statuettes, pots and other artifacts," according to Egypt's Ministry of Antiquities.

Pharaonic tomb belongs to royal goldsmith who lived more than 3,500 years ago during the reign of the 18th dynasty.

A new haul of ancient human remains has been described from an important cave site in South Africa. The finds, including a well-preserved skull, bolster the idea that the Homo naledi people deliberately deposited their dead in the cave. Evidence of such complex behaviour is surprising for a human species with a brain that's a third the size of ours.

SCIENTISTS believe they may have discovered evidence of a parallel universe that crashed into our own in a galactic impact mirroring a car crash. Since 2004, when it was first spotted by NASA, scientists have been baffled by the discovery an unusually cold region of space which is 1.8 billion light years across and colder than its surroundings. It was thought the region might have been a trick of light or it was colder because it had 10,000 less galaxies than other areas of the same size.