Israel is embarking on a major archaeological expedition to find yet undiscovered Dead Sea Scrolls, an Israeli antiquities official said. A government research team will spend the next three years surveying caves in the Judean Desert near the Dead Sea, the arid region where the Dead Sea Scrolls, the world's oldest biblical manuscripts, were preserved for thousands of years and discovered in 1947. The expedition will be the first large-scale archaeological survey of the area since Operation Scroll, an effort in 1993 to find any remaining Dead Sea Scrolls hidden in an area of the West Bank before Israel transferred partial control of the area to the Palestinian Authority. No scrolls were found in that undertaking.

Robot solves Rubik's cube in record time

A robot solved a Rubik's cube in just 637 milliseconds at an electronics trade fair in Munich. To humans fleet of mind and finger, it is possible to solve a Rubik's cube in a matter of seconds. The officially recognized Rubik's cube world record belongs to Lucas Etter, who, at 14, in solved a cube in 4.904 seconds. The company behind the robot, Infineon, wanted to show off its microchips and a new microcontroller meant for self-driving vehicles. Although there exists an optimal solution for a Rubik's cube — no matter how scrambled the cube, it can be solved in no more than 20 moves — engineer Albert Beer designed the robot, Sub1 Reloaded, for pure speed rather than the fewest rotations.

British red squirrels may carry leprosy

Some British red squirrels — cute and pointy-eared, like Beatrix Potter's Squirrel Nutkin — carry a medieval form of human leprosy, scientists have learned. Red squirrels are disappearing from the British Isles, and researchers performed DNA tests on more than 100 animals as part of study to try to find out why. All 25 roadkill specimens collected on Brownsea Island, off England's south coast, were infected with Mycobacterium lepraeem. Leprosy has not been found in humans in Britain since the 1500s. But the M. leprae strain carried by the squirrels is a close genetic relative to one found in a skeleton buried in nearby Winchester 730 years ago, said the researchers, whose work appeared in the journal Science. Because red squirrels are shy and rarely let people touch them, the transmission risk is low, said Stewart Cole, an author of the study.

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