Science & Technology

Cro-Magnon 28,000 Years Old Had DNA Like Modern Humans

Science Daily
Wed, 16 Jul 2008 16:28 UTC

Some 40,000 years ago, Cro-Magnons -- the first people who had a skeleton that looked anatomically modern -- entered Europe, coming from Africa. A group of geneticists, coordinated by Guido Barbujani and David Caramelli of the Universities of Ferrara and Florence, shows that a Cro-Magnoid individual who lived in Southern Italy 28,000 years ago was a modern European, genetically as well as anatomically.

©David Caramelli et al.

Tibia fragment. DNA was extracted from this fragment and from skull splinters, and all extracts yielded the same HVR I sequence.

The Cro-Magnoid people long coexisted in Europe with other humans, the Neandertals, whose anatomy and DNA were clearly different from ours. However, obtaining a reliable sequence of Cro-Magnoid DNA was technically challenging.

"The risk in the study of ancient individuals is to attribute to the fossil specimen the DNA left there by archaeologists or biologists who manipulated it," Barbujani says. "To avoid that, we followed all phases of the retrieval of the fossil bones and typed the DNA sequences of all people who had any contacts with them."

Toward an Open Source Society

Infoshop News
Mon, 14 Jul 2008 16:09 UTC

One of the oldest arguments against anarchism is that it is impractical, that without central authority to keep the peons in line any large project will dissolve into chaos and disorder. Yet the open source software movement provides modern day proof that anarchism works, even when not conducted by anarchists. Source code is the human readable text of a computer program, written by programmers and compiled into binary format for execution by the computer. Without the source code, it is nearly impossible to modify a computer program, or even understand how it works. Proprietary software vendors like Microsoft keep their source code confidential, distributing binary-only software to rob users of the ability to modify it for their own purposes.

New data pinpoint Mars' wet and balmy past

Agence-France Press
Wed, 16 Jul 2008 14:52 UTC

Water bathed the surface of southern Mars for millions of years, helping to create an environment theoretically capable of nurturing life, according to a new study into the planet's mysterious oceans.

Archeologists find 1,600-year-old racecourse in Greece

RIA Novosti
Tue, 15 Jul 2008 16:42 UTC

©Unknown

An ancient horse-racing course that was written about in classical texts but thought lost has been discovered by archaeologists in Olympia in Greece, the Science Daily has reported.

The hippodrome, where the emperor Nero competed for Olympian laurels some 1,600 years ago, was discovered by a research team from Germany.

"This discovery is an archaeological sensation," said Norbert Muller of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz.

Country, the City Version: Farms in the Sky Gain New Interest

Bina Venkataraman
The New York Times
Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:40 UTC

What if "eating local" in Shanghai or New York meant getting your fresh produce from five blocks away? And what if skyscrapers grew off the grid, as verdant, self-sustaining towers where city slickers cultivated their own food?

Dickson Despommier, a professor of public health at Columbia University, hopes to make these zucchini-in-the-sky visions a reality. Dr. Despommier's pet project is the "vertical farm," a concept he created in 1999 with graduate students in his class on medical ecology, the study of how the environment and human health interact.

©SOA Architects

"The Living Tower"

The 700-year-old Mexican Mummy With A Tummy Ache

Science Daily
Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:56 UTC

Remnants of the bacterium that causes stomach ulcers, Helicobacter pylori, (H. pylori) have been discovered in gastric tissue from North American mummies. A study of human remains believed to predate Columbus' discovery of the New World has shown for the first time that H. pylori infection occurred in native populations, according to research published in BioMed Central's open access journal, BMC Microbiology.

©Yolanda Lopez Vidal and Gonzalo Castillo-Rojas

Yolanda Lòpez-Vidal and colleagues from the National Autonomous University of Mexico studied the stomach, tongue-soft palate and brains of two naturally mummified corpses - one young boy and one adult male. The researchers looked for the presence of telltale fragments of H. pylori DNA in the remains after amplification by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). According to Lòpez-Vidal, "Our results show that H. pylori infections occurred around 1350AD in the area we now know as Mexico".

Physicists Tweak Quantum Force, Reducing Barrier To Tiny Devices

Science Daily
Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:47 UTC

Cymbals don't clash of their own accord - in our world, anyway. But the quantum world is bizarrely different. Two metal plates, placed almost infinitesimally close together, spontaneously attract each other.

What seems like magic is known as the Casimir force, and it has been well-documented in experiments. The cause goes to the heart of quantum physics: Seemingly empty space is not actually empty but contains virtual particles associated with fluctuating electromagnetic fields. These particles push the plates from both the inside and the outside. However, only virtual particles of shorter wavelengths - in the quantum world, particles exist simultaneously as waves - can fit into the space between the plates, so that the outward pressure is slightly smaller than the inward pressure. The result is the plates are forced together.

©Yiliang Bao and Jie Zoue/University of Florida

A scanning electron micrograph, taken with an electron microscope, shows the comb-like structure of a metal plate at the center of newly published University of Florida research on quantum physics.

Now, University of Florida physicists have found they can reduce the Casimir force by altering the surface of the plates. The discovery could prove useful as tiny "microelectromechanical" systems - so-called MEMS devices that are already used in a wide array of consumer products - become so small they are affected by quantum forces.

Brightest Star In The Galaxy Has New Competition

Science Daily
Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:41 UTC

A contender for the title of brightest star in our Milky Way galaxy has been unearthed in the dusty metropolis of the galaxy's center.

Nicknamed the "Peony nebula star," the bright stellar bulb was revealed by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and other ground-based telescopes. It blazes with the light of an estimated 3.2 million suns.

©NASA/JPL-Caltech/Potsdam Univ.

The 'Peony nebula' star, circled, is now the second-brightest star in our galaxy.

The reigning "brightest star" champion is Eta Carina, with a whopping solar wattage of 4.7 million suns. But according to astronomers, it's hard to pin down an exact brightness, or luminosity, for these scorching stars, so they could potentially shine with a similar amount of light.

Theorist says humor is pattern recognition

UPI.com
Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:39 UTC

A British science writer says he has determined humor is just the recognition of a pattern that a person finds surprising.

"Humor occurs when the brain recognizes a pattern that surprises it and that recognition of this sort is rewarded with the experience of the humorous response, an element of which is broadcast as laughter," said researcher and theorist Alastair Clarke. "It is not the content of the stimulus but the patterns underlying it, that provide the potential for sources of humor. For patterns to exist it is necessary to have some form of content but once that content exists, it is the level of the pattern at which humor operates and for which it delivers its rewards."

Secret chamber may solve Mexican pyramid mystery

Tom Leonard
Telegraph
Tue, 15 Jul 2008 12:06 UTC

The Aztecs believed the city was divine and identified it with the place where the sun was created

Archaeologists are to open a long-sealed cave under a Mexican pyramid in the hope that it will unlock the mystery of one of ancient civilisation's greatest cities.

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Science & Technology

Cro-Magnon 28,000 Years Old Had DNA Like Modern Humans

Toward an Open Source Society

New data pinpoint Mars' wet and balmy past

Archeologists find 1,600-year-old racecourse in Greece

Country, the City Version: Farms in the Sky Gain New Interest

The 700-year-old Mexican Mummy With A Tummy Ache

Physicists Tweak Quantum Force, Reducing Barrier To Tiny Devices

Brightest Star In The Galaxy Has New Competition

Theorist says humor is pattern recognition

Secret chamber may solve Mexican pyramid mystery

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