A wall mentioned in the Bible's Book of Nehemiah and long sought by archaeologists apparently has been found, an Israeli archaeologist says.
A team of archaeologists discovered the wall in Jerusalem's ancient City of David during a rescue attempt on a tower that was in danger of collapse, said Eilat Mazar, head of the Institute of Archaeology at the Shalem Center, a Jerusalem-based research and educational institute, and leader of the dig.
Science & Technology
Michal Kusiak, a student of astronomy at Jagiellonian University in Krakow and an editor of Astronomia.pl has discovered a new comet. This young astronomy enthusiast found the object in images sent back to Earth by the SOHO Solar Observatory. Information on the discovery has been already published on a Web Site of the British Astronomical Association.
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| ©SOHO |
| Comet belonging to the Kreutz family |
IN AUGUST, radio astronomers announced that they had found an enormous hole in the universe. Nearly a billion light years across, the void lies in the constellation Eridanus and has far fewer stars, gas and galaxies than usual. It is bigger than anyone imagined possible and is beyond the present understanding of cosmology. What could cause such a gaping hole? One team of physicists has a breathtaking explanation: "It is the unmistakable imprint of another universe beyond the edge of our own," says Laura Mersini-Houghton of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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| Cosmic Microwave Background |
Rome - Archaeologists on Tuesday unveiled an underground grotto believed to have been revered by ancient Romans as the place where a wolf nursed the city's legendary founder Romulus and his twin brother Remus.
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| ©AP Photo/Italian Culture Ministry, HO |
| This photo made available by the Italian Culture Ministry during a press conference in Rome, Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2007, shows an underground grotto believed to have been worshipped by ancient Romans as the place where a wolf nursed the city's legendary founder Romulus and his twin brother Remus. Decorated with seashells and colored marble, the vaulted sanctuary lies buried 16 meters (52 feet) inside the Palatine hill, the palatial center of power in imperial Rome. |
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| ©Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. |
| Sequence of images of Comet 17P/Holmes obtained with the TSC 60/90 telescope in the V filter. They show the increase in the comet's envelope size. The colours are chosen here in order to best show the cometary nucleus (the bright point in the centre) and matter moving away from the nucleus (to the right of the nucleus). |
Comet 17P/Holmes has been intriguing astronomers since the end of October, when its sudden outburst in brightness, the biggest in the history of comet research, was observed. Scientists from Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun in Poland have published a series of images illustrating the evolution of the comet.
China's leaders celebrated the first images sent from the country's first lunar satellite on Monday, saying they showed their nation had thrust itself into the front ranks of global technological powers.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, visiting the scientists who have guided the lunar probe Chang'e 1 into space and around the moon, proclaimed the mission a success after it began to send back images, according to Xinhua news agency.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, visiting the scientists who have guided the lunar probe Chang'e 1 into space and around the moon, proclaimed the mission a success after it began to send back images, according to Xinhua news agency.
Most of us take it for granted that plants respond to light by growing, flowering and straining towards the light, and we never wonder just how plants manage to do so. But the ordinary, everyday responses of plants to light are deceptively complex, and much about them has long stumped scientists.
Now, a new study "has significantly advanced our understanding of how plant responses to light are regulated, and perhaps even how such responses evolved," says Michael Mishkind, a program director at the National Science Foundation (NSF). This study, which was funded by NSF, will be published in the November 23, 2007 issue of Science.
By conducting experiments with Arabidopsis--a small flowering plant widely used as a model organism--the researchers discovered that the plant prepares to respond to light while it is still in the dark, even before it is exposed to light. This preparation involves producing a pair of closely related proteins (known as FHY3 and FAR1) that increase production of another pair of closely related proteins (known as FHY1 and FHL) that had been identified in previous studies as critical participants in the plant's light response.
Now, a new study "has significantly advanced our understanding of how plant responses to light are regulated, and perhaps even how such responses evolved," says Michael Mishkind, a program director at the National Science Foundation (NSF). This study, which was funded by NSF, will be published in the November 23, 2007 issue of Science.
By conducting experiments with Arabidopsis--a small flowering plant widely used as a model organism--the researchers discovered that the plant prepares to respond to light while it is still in the dark, even before it is exposed to light. This preparation involves producing a pair of closely related proteins (known as FHY3 and FAR1) that increase production of another pair of closely related proteins (known as FHY1 and FHL) that had been identified in previous studies as critical participants in the plant's light response.
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| ©unknown |
| Although these steps had been identified in previous studies, the discovery of how FHY3 and FAR1 regulate plant responses to light adds an important new dimension to our understanding of them. |
Polar clouds are known to play a major role in the destruction of Earth's protective ozone layer, creating the springtime "ozone hole" above Antarctica. Now, scientists have found that polar clouds also play a significant role in removing meteoric iron from Earth's mesosphere. The discovery could help researchers refine their models of atmospheric chemistry and global warming.
Using a sensitive laser radar (lidar) system, laboratory experiments and computer modeling, researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, studied the removal of meteoric iron by polar mesospheric clouds that they observed during the summer at the South Pole.
"Our measurements and models have shown that another type of reaction that takes place in the upper atmosphere -- this time related to ice particles -- plays a very important role in the processes that influence the chemistry of metal layers in this region," said Chester Gardner, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Illinois and one of the co-authors of a paper to appear in the April 16 issue of the journal Science.
Using a sensitive laser radar (lidar) system, laboratory experiments and computer modeling, researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, studied the removal of meteoric iron by polar mesospheric clouds that they observed during the summer at the South Pole.
"Our measurements and models have shown that another type of reaction that takes place in the upper atmosphere -- this time related to ice particles -- plays a very important role in the processes that influence the chemistry of metal layers in this region," said Chester Gardner, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Illinois and one of the co-authors of a paper to appear in the April 16 issue of the journal Science.
The camera may not lie, but doctored photos do according to new research into digitally altered photos and how they influence our memories and attitudes toward public events.
When presented with digitally altered images depicting the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest in Beijing and a 2003 anti-war protest in Rome, participants in a new study by American and Italian researchers recalled the events as being bigger and more violent than they really were, suggesting that viewing doctored photographs might affect people's memories of past public events.
When presented with digitally altered images depicting the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest in Beijing and a 2003 anti-war protest in Rome, participants in a new study by American and Italian researchers recalled the events as being bigger and more violent than they really were, suggesting that viewing doctored photographs might affect people's memories of past public events.
The startling claim is made by a pair of American cosmologists investigating the consequences for the cosmos of quantum theory, the most successful theory we have.
Comment: It is startling indeed. Fits the National Enquirer standards.
Comment: It is startling indeed. Fits the National Enquirer standards.
Comment: The whole article can be summarized as follows: we have found an enormous hole in the Universe and we have no idea how to deal with it. Anyway we hope that due to this discovery everybody will get more money for whatever they are doing.