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Site in Sweden predates Vikings

Archaeologists in Sweden have unearthed the remains of unusually large wooden monuments near a pre-Viking Age burial ground.

As archaeologists dug in preparation for a new railway line, they found traces of two rows of wooden pillars in Old Uppsala, an ancient pagan religious center. One stretched about 1,000 yards and the other was half as long.

Archaeologist Lena Beronius-Jorpeland said the colonnades were likely from the fifth century, but their purpose is unclear. She called it Sweden's largest Iron Age construction and said the geometrical structure is unique.

Penn State, VCU join on research

Penn State and Virginia Commonwealth University are partnering to develop closer scientific cooperation.


The agreement is built around the National Institutes of Health's Clinical and Translational Science Award. The schools are among 61 academic research centers in the nation to receive the awards, intended to spur collaboration around scientific health discoveries.

Gold growing on trees in Australia

A team of Australian scientists has found small amounts of gold in the leaves, twigs and bark of eucalyptus trees growing above gold deposits buried deep beneath the ground.

Unfortunately, you won't get rich off these golden trees. The amount of gold detected was very tiny - just 80 parts per billion in the leaves, 44 parts per billion in the twigs and 4 parts per billion in the bark.

Still, as the scientists write in the journal Nature Communications, their study represents the first time that naturally occurring gold particles were imaged in the cells of biological tissue.

Vitamin D won't aid osteoporosis


The analysis, published in The Lancet, included 23 randomized trials that measured the effect of vitamin D on bone density at four sites - spine, neck, hip and forearm - and included more than 4,000 generally healthy participants whose average age was 59.

Neither the pooled data nor any single study showed a significant increase in bone density across all four sites, and the overall number of positive results was no better than would be expected by chance.