Science & TechnologyS


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Deciphering the Indus script: challenges and some headway


The Hindu
Thu, 15 Apr 2010 18:45 UTC
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© SHAJU JOHN ASKO PARPOLA: ‘The Indus script encodes a Dravidian language.'
Interview with Professor Asko Parpola.

Dr. Asko Parpola, the Indologist from Finland, is Professor Emeritus of Indology, Institute of World Cultures, University of Helsinki, and one of the leading authorities on the Indus Civilisation and its script. On the basis of sustained work on the Indus script, he has concluded that the script - which is yet to be deciphered - encodes a Dravidian language. As a Sanskritist, his fields of specialisation include the Sama Veda and Vedic rituals. Excerpts from replies that Professor Parpola gave over e-mail to a set of questions sent to him by T.S. Subramanian in the context of his being chosen for the Kalaignar M. Karunanidhi Classical Tamil Award, 2009. The award, comprising Rs. 10 lakh and a citation, will be presented during the World Classical Tamil Conference to be held in Coimbatore from June 23 to 27, 2010. The award announcement said Professor Parpola was chosen for his work on the Dravidian hypothesis in interpreting the Indus script because the Dravidian, as described by him, was close to old Tamil. The award, administered by the Central Institute of Classical Tamil, Chennai, was instituted out of a donation of Rs. 1 crore made by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi:
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Behind the Anger Over Obama's New NASA Plans

Dolores M. Bernal
News Junkie Post
Wed, 14 Apr 2010 13:58 UTC
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© NASAAstronaut Neil Armstrong
President Barack Obama's cancellation of a key space program at NASA has angered not only space-enthusiasts and legendary astronauts, but leading the pack is also Lockheed Martin.

Obama has increased NASA's budget by $6 billion so that more funding can go to research and to improve operations of the International Space Station for the next 3 years. But the President ordered the cancellation of the Constellation Program - a human space-flight program revived by President George W. Bush with the goals of replacing the Space Shuttle and send astronauts to Mars. The program's price tag is $97 billion for operations until 2020.

The announcement that the Constellation Program will cease operations early next year angered astronauts like Neil Armstrong, James Lovell and Eugene Cernan. These legendary space figures sent a letter to the White House urging Obama to not cancel the human space-flight program.
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Syringe

Genetic breakthrough could produce 'babies with three parents'

Daniel Tencer
Raw Story
Wed, 14 Apr 2010 22:04 UTC
zygote
Researchers in the UK have developed a method of curing a class of genetic disorders by transplanting parts of embryonic cells from one mother to another, creating the possibility of babies with three biological parents.

Researchers at Newcastle University have transferred material from a healthy fertilized human egg into an unhealthy one, repairing the egg's genetic flaws, Nature magazine reported Wednesday.

The procedure is meant to fix problems with faulty mitochondria -- the "cellular batteries" that power human cells. By transferring the mitochondria from a female donor to another embryo, the researchers were able to turn a flawed egg into a healthy embryo.

"As mitochondria contain DNA, a child conceived this way would inherit genetic material from three parents," reports the Times of London. "The mother and father would supply 99.8 per cent of its DNA, but a small amount would come from a second woman, the mitochondrial donor."

That possibility has "profound medical and ethical implications," reports Brandon Kleim at Wired.com. "One issue involves the nature of parenthood: Would a mitochondrial donor be a parent?"
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Info

Mummified Baboons in British Museum May Reveal Location of the Land of Punt


Hertiage Key
Wed, 14 Apr 2010 18:18 UTC
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Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia and Yemen are all possible locations of the Land of Punt.
Throughout their history the ancient Egyptians recorded making voyages to a place called the 'Land of Punt'. To the Egyptians it was a far-off source of exotic animals and valuable goods.

From there they brought back perfumes, panther skins, electrum, and, yes, live baboons to keep as pets. The voyages started as early as the Old Kingdom, ca. 4,500 years ago, and continued until just after the collapse of the New Kingdom 3,000 years ago.
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Classic Maya history is embedded in commoners' homes

Diana Yates
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Wed, 14 Apr 2010 18:09 UTC
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© Lisa J. LuceroThe researchers excavated two modest homes in a small Maya center called Saturday Creek, in central Belize. Numerous artifacts, including vessels, stones and human remains, were found in the floors of each dwelling.
They were illiterate farmers, builders and servants, but Maya commoners found a way to record their own history - by burying it within their homes. A new study of the objects embedded in the floors of homes occupied more than 1,000 years ago in central Belize begins to decode their story.

The study, from University of Illinois anthropology professor Lisa J. Lucero, appears in the Journal of Social Archaeology.

Maya in the Classic period (A.D. 250-900) regularly "terminated" their homes, razing the walls, burning the floors and placing artifacts and (sometimes) human remains on top before burning them again.

Evidence suggests these rituals occurred every 40 or 50 years and likely marked important dates in the Maya calendar. After termination, the family built a new home on the old foundation, using broken and whole vessels, colorful fragments, animal bones and rocks to mark important areas and to provide ballast for a new plaster floor.
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Saturn

Cassini Captures First Movie of Lightning on Saturn

Nancy Atkinson
Universe Today
Wed, 14 Apr 2010 17:29 UTC
NASA's Cassini spacecraft has captured images of lightning on Saturn, allowing the scientists to create the first movie showing lightning flashing on another planet. "Ever since the beginning of the Cassini mission, a major goal of the Imaging Team has been the detection of Saturnian lightning," said team leader Carolyn Porco in an email. Porco said the ability to capture the lightning was a direct result of the dimming of the ringshine on the night side of the planet during last year's Saturn equinox. "And these flashes have been shown to be coincident in time with the emission of powerful electrostatic discharges intercepted by the Cassini Radio and Plasma Wave experiment," Porco added.
Embedded video from
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology
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Blackbox

Do Dartmoor's ancient stones have link to Stonehenge?

Linda Geddes
New Scientist
Wed, 14 Apr 2010 16:35 UTC
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© Tom GreevesThe Cut Hill stones were placed around the same time as Stonehenge
Littered across the hills of Dartmoor in Devon, southern England, around 80 rows and circles of stones stand sentinel in the wild landscape. Now, striking similarities between one of these monuments and Stonehenge, 180 kilometres to the east, suggest they may be the work of the same people.

The row of nine stones on Cut Hill was discovered in 2004 on one of the highest, most remote hills of Dartmoor national park. "It is on easily the most spectacular hill on north Dartmoor," says Andrew Fleming, president of the Devon Archaeological Society. "If you were looking for a distant shrine in the centre of the north moor, that's where you would put it."

Ralph Fyfe of the University of Plymouth and independent archaeologist Tom Greeves have now carbon-dated the peat surrounding the stones. This suggests that at least one of the stones had fallen - or been placed flat on the ground - by between 3600 and 3440 BC, and another by 3350 to 3100 BC (Antiquity, vol 84, p 55).

That comes as a surprise to archaeologists, who, on the strength of artefacts found nearby, had assumed that Dartmoor monuments like Cut Hill and Stall Moor (pictured) dated from the Bronze Age, around 2100 to 1600 BC. Instead, Fyfe suggests that Cut Hill is from the Neolithic period, the same period that Stonehenge was built.
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UFO 2

US professor says UFO studies should be legitimate university subject

Andrew Hough
UK Telegraph
Wed, 14 Apr 2010 15:20 UTC
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The studing of UFOs and other unexplained phenomena from space should be a legitimate university subject, an American professor, Philip Haseley, has claimed.

The New York anthropology professor said the subject should be part of the mainstream as a serious "area of study".

The Niagara County Community College, a state university in New York, lecturer said due to the high amount of sightings every year, it should follow that students should be able to investigate phenomenon.

"(A sighting) happens to millions of people (around the world)," he said.

"It's about time we looked into this as a worthy area of study.

"It's important that the whole subject be brought out in the open and investigated."

Prof Haseley, who is also head of the Western New York Mutual UFO Network, an organisation that is focused on UFO research, said there were up to 50 UFO sightings are reported every month across region.
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Cloud Lightning

Giant Natural Particle Accelerator Above Thunderclouds


Science Daily
Wed, 14 Apr 2010 15:02 UTC
Accelerators
© Serge Soula / Oscar van der VeldeA lightning researcher at the University of Bath has discovered that during thunderstorms, giant natural particle accelerators can form 40 km above the surface of the Earth. On Wednesday 14th April Dr. Martin Fullekrug will present his new work at the RAS National Astronomy Meeting (NAM 2010) in Glasgow. The image shows a transient airglow or 'sprite' above a thunderstorm in France in September 2009.
A lightning researcher at the University of Bath has discovered that during thunderstorms, giant natural particle accelerators can form 40 kilometers above the surface of the Earth.

On April 14, Dr. Martin Fullekrug presented his new work at the RAS National Astronomy Meeting (NAM 2010) in Glasgow.

When particularly intense lightning discharges in thunderstorms coincide with high-energy particles coming in from space (cosmic rays), nature provides the right conditions to form a giant particle accelerator above the thunderclouds.

The cosmic rays strip off electrons from air molecules and these electrons are accelerated upwards by the electric field of the lightning discharge. The free electrons and the lightning electric field then make up a natural particle accelerator.
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Bulb

New PV Cell Generates Electricity From UV, Visible, Infrared Lights

Tetsuo Nozawa, Nikkei Electronics
Tech On
Tue, 23 Mar 2010 14:05 UTC
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The PV cell prototyped at the Kyoto Institute of Technology by adding cobalt to a p-type GaN thin film and laminating an n-type material (right). The cell with an absorbing layer measures 10 x 10mm. The surrounding thin rectangular patterns are electrodes. And the p-type GaN thin film without cobalt (left).
A Japanese research group prototyped a photovoltaic (PV) cell that can generate electricity from a wide wavelength band of light including ultraviolet light, visible light and infrared light.

The group, which is led by Saki Sonoda, associate professor at the Kyoto Institute of Technology, made the announcement March 19, 2010, at the 57th Spring Meeting of the Japan Society of Applied Physics.

The PV cell was realized by adding "3d transition metals" including manganese (Mn) to transparent composite semiconductors with a wide bandgap such as gallium nitride (GaN). It could enable to develop a highly-efficient PV cell by using a simply-joined cell without making a multi-junction cell.

Currently, the conversion efficiency of the new PV cell is low, but its open voltage (Voc) is as high as 2V.

The research group delivered a 90-minute lecture on the cell under the title "Nitride Semiconductor Added With Transition Metals as a Photoelectric Conversion Material for Ultraviolet, Visible and Infrared Lights ~ In the Aim of Realizing the Next-generation Super-efficient PV Cell With a Simple Element Structure."
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