A new environmental disaster was spotted in southern Texas when a widening sinkhole as long as two football fields ended up swallowing an 18-wheeler truck and some oil equipment. Officials from Liberty County mentioned that there were no casualties so far and that the formation posed no threat to civilian areas. You can find out more about this by reading our full article after the jump.

If you thought that once upon a time, happy dinosaurs were killed off by a giant, blazing rock with "death from above" written all over it, you may only be half right. According to the latest research, the impact probably killed the larger land creatures, but the smaller species could have succumbed to a more watery fate. Curious? read the full article for the skinny on it.

This is not the first time that people have reported seeing a UFO, nor will it likely be the last time. Recent sightings of a mysterious flying object in the sky over Stephenville, Texas last January 8 elicited a variety of responses from townsfolk and federal officials alike. If you want to know what they thought about it, a more detailed article awaits after the jump.

A strain of the common cold virus has mutated into something less common, but more deadly. The virus has claimed 10 lives in the US within the last 18 months. This mutant strain has led to 140 illnesses across four states, with one of the largest outbreaks claiming a 19-year old in Texas. It's still not known what caused the mutation or what caused the outbreaks. More in the full article.

It's around 200 light years from the nearest McDonald's restaurant, but it might be our best bet to find an alien civilization out there in the cosmos. Called HIP 56948, this distant star is most similar to our own sun in size, mass, temperature, and chemical makeup as reported by astronomers at the McDonald Observatory in Texas.

Despite the fact that other stars have been observed being similar to our sun, the major difference with this one is the identical levels of lithium between the two stars. This is important because less lithium means less activity from the stars which may cause solar flares that can bathe planets in deadly radiation.

Margaret Turnbull of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland has help draw up an existing list of about 17,000 possible targets for the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) project called the HabCat. While it may not be a sure thing, the study of stars similar to our sun might still be the best bet to search for alien life. Peter Backus has included the new star in the HabCat list and explains the upcoming search they will be heading using the new Allen Telescope Array:

It's on the list, but I don't think it will be given any special treatment. It's still a matter of speculation on just what range of stars could host habitable planets. We will eventually get around to observing all of the stars [on the list].

What makes the scientists hopeful is the fact that HP 56948 is around one billion years older than our own sun. This gives possible alien life time to mature and produce advanced civilization compared to our own. Observations will begin in November and concentrate more on a wider scale than individually focusing on each star in the HabCat list.

The Loch Ness Monster. Bigfoot. The Tooth Fairy. Legendary beings of untold origin. For as long as stories of them have existed, people have done their absolute best in trying to capture a specimen of these mysterious creatures. Unfortunately for us, none of these attempts have ever succeeded, the prizes proving to be much too elusive even to the most technologically-advanced approaches.

But even the cutting edge of technology can't replicate luck, as a healthy amount of it may have helped in one of these enigmas to turn up in Phylis Canion's ranch in Texas, namely the goat-killing, blood-sucking Chupacabra. At least, that's what the local ranch owner - and a veterinarian of the Main Street Animal Hospital in Victoria - thinks, with the head of the mythical creature locked away safely in a freezer, hidden from public view.

One of the three 40-pound bodies found outside Phylis' ranch, the former hunter from Africa saved it for the sole purpose of finding out just what the animal's ancestry was through DNA testing. After which, she'll have it mounted for posterity, sharing a spot with the rest of her trophies of exotic animals.

So what does the 'Chupacabra' look like? It's certainly no cuddly poodle, that's for sure. Big-eared, large fanged teeth, grayish-blue skin with practically no fur - it's not particularly a friendly sight. "It is one ugly creature," Canion says.

Could it be something else?

To find out, click on Full Article!

This sounds like a scene straight out of the movie Eight-Legged Freaks. But for officials in the Texas' Lake Tawakoni State Park, it's anything but, well, a walk in the park. A massive web is covering a big area of their park, and by massive, we're talking Aragog-massive.

Harry Potter allusions aside, entomologists, scientists, and arachno-philes are currently debating about the cobweb that's covering a 200-yard (that's around 182 meters) patch of land and forestry in the park.

Some spider experts have deduced that the great blanket of web was spun by social cobweb spiders who work together. It's either that or a whole bulk load of spiders have dispersed over the area and spun their own webs individually, but have managed - because of sheer eight-legged populations - to make it look like one big web.

A Texas Forest Service entomologist has assumed that this is a most unusual occurrence in nature - maybe even a once-in-a-lifetime event. Up to now, experts are still baffled as to how this all came to be, and until samples are sent into the experts, they can't tell as of yet what sort of spider can be laid as culprit.

Now with a cobweb of this size, you can only imagine the amount of mosquitoes and other insects that it would trap. Park superintendent Donna Garde recounts: "At first, it was so white it looked like fairyland. Now it's filled with so many mosquitoes that it's turned a little brown. There are times you can literally hear the screech of millions of mosquitoes caught in those webs." Man, how's that for some pre-Halloween loving?

A fellowship of nine has been formed recently in the hopes of finding what could be the web-bound body of a poor unfortunate hobbit. Hah, we kid.

You may think that the certain states that have the best economies in the U.S. are also the worst polluters in the country, but what the Associated Press found out is that that particular notion isn't exactly accurate.

As a matter of fact, the level of pollution is actually more relative to the measures that each state takes to curb the threat of global warming by minimizing the exhaust of carbon dioxide through legislation and technology. You probably won't believe that Wyoming, Pennsylvania, and Alaska are among the most notorious.

The Associate Press found out through an investigation spanning almost four years which started in 2003 that coal-fired power plants that used to generate cheap electricity is actually the major source of air pollution. Second are emissions from vehicles that include cars and aircraft. When tallied, it reflects that Texas is, by far, leading the charge towards catastrophic climate change.

As a matter of fact, the amount of carbon dioxide that Texas gives off is more than that of second and third placers California and New York. It's also interesting to point out that California and Pennsylvania have twice that of Texas' population.

Frank O'Donnell of Washington's environmental group says, "Some states are benefiting from both cheap electricity while polluting the planet and make all the rest of us suffer the consequences of global warming." He added, "I don't think that's fair at all."

Under the U.S. federal system, individual states have the right to decide what mode of power sourcing they want. Environmentalists and critics of the Bush administration have pointed to the White House as the holder of the key to the deadlock by coming up with measures that will set up a blanket policy to cover all the states. A possible adoption of the Kyoto Protocol that seeks to cut emissions was rejected by President Bush in 2001, favoring technological measures to cut air pollution. Implementation and results have yet to be shown.

Although it's not supposed to give anyone ideas for human testing, a report by Reuters had announced that scientists had found a way to switch off certain genes related to Alzheimer's disease. They found out that by turning off a certain gene, called Cdk5, they were also able to make experimental mice smarter.

These researchers were in the process of finding a cure for memory problems, when they stumbled upon genetic engineering techniques that would allow them to switch certain genes on and off.

Cdk5, a gene that determines the production of an enzyme that is reputably linked to Alzheimer's, was one of those that they could turn off.

And what's more, the mice that did have Cdk5 turned off became better at tasks based on associated learning. Dr. James Bibb of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center said, "It's the most important kind of learning in the animal kingdom. It's how we know where our car is and that is our wife or our husband and that's our kids. It's how we connect things."

When placed inside a maze together with ordinary mice, the altered mice performed much better in contrast. "The increase in sensitivity to their surroundings seems to have made them smarter. It was very clear right off the bat that the loss of Cdk5 made them have a much stronger associative memory," said Bibb.

The belief regarding how modern mammals came about has always been linked with the extinction of the dinosaurs. After the giant lizards were allegedly killed by a meteor crash, theorists claim that mammals smashed into the scene and took over the Earth.

A new study, however, seeks to challenge the established theory by attacking the spatial and chronological integrity of the theory. Scientists at the Texas A&M University and the Pennsylvania State University say that there may actually have been three installments on how everything came about after the monumental reptilian wipeout.

Contrary to popular belief, mammals did not diversify in species as a result of enjoying spatial and food opportunities after the dinosaurs vacated the lot. The researchers say that the fossils found closest in date to dinosaurs were unlikely to be the ancestors of modern furry critters. The mammals of that time were dead-ends in terms of evolution and died out in time like dinosaurs.

What actually happened was that a huge number of mammalian species burst into the scene about 85 million years ago, then some more 55 million years ago, then the most likely ancestors 35 million years ago.

The old theory still holds some water, but rather than one huge burst originally claimed, more and more scientists are realizing that the appearance of species took a serious amount of time. The updated family tree has been raised to 4,510 and paleontologists are working on securing more fossils to verify the new study.

You can read more about this exciting new study by clicking the read URL.