Science & TechnologyS


Sherlock

Archaeologist Uncovers Evidence of Ancient Chemical Warfare


PhysOrg
Wed, 14 Jan 2009 14:11 UTC
A researcher from the University of Leicester has identified what looks to be the oldest archaeological evidence for chemical warfare - from Roman times.

At the meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America, University of Leicester archaeologist Simon James presented CSI-style arguments that about twenty Roman soldiers, found in a siege-mine at the city of Dura-Europos, Syria, met their deaths not as a result of sword or spear, but through asphyxiation.

Dura-Europos on the Euphrates was conquered by the Romans who installed a large garrison. Around AD 256, the city was subjected to a ferocious siege by an army from the powerful new Sasanian Persian empire. The dramatic story is told entirely from archaeological remains; no ancient text describes it. Excavations during the 1920s-30s, renewed in recent years, have resulted in spectacular and gruesome discoveries.
Read More...
Telescope

Stardust Scoots Pass Earth On Route For Comet Tempel 1


Space Daily
Wed, 14 Jan 2009 05:08 UTC
NASA's Stardust-NExT spacecraft
© NASAStardust-NExT on Its Way to Explore Comet Tempel 1.

On Jan. 14, NASA's Stardust-NExT spacecraft will fly by Earth during a gravity assist maneuver that will increase its velocity and sling shot the spacecraft into an orbit to meet up with comet Tempel 1 in February 2011. Flight operations for the spacecraft are performed from Lockheed Martin's Mission Support Area in Denver, Colo. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. provides the precision navigation need for the flyby and the journey to Tempel 1.

The Lockheed Martin-built spacecraft's closest approach will happen at 12:33 p.m. MST as it comes within 5,690 miles (9,157 km) of Earth. At its closest point, the spacecraft will fly over the California/Mexico border south of San Diego at a speed of approximately 22,400 miles per hour (36,000 kilometer per hour).

"We performed our final trajectory correction maneuver on Jan. 5 that put us into a precise position for the flyby," said Allan Cheuvront, Stardust-NExT program manager at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company.
Read More...
Telescope

XMM-Newton Measures Speedy Spin Of Rare Celestial Object


European Space Agency
Tue, 13 Jan 2009 21:32 UTC
SGR
© ESA/XMM-Newton/EPICFalse colour X-ray image of the sky region around SGR 1627-41 obtained with XMM-Newton. The emission indicated in red comes from the debris of an exploded massive star. It covers a region more extended than that previously deduced from radio observations, surrounding the SGR. This suggests that the exploded star was the magnetar’s progenitor.
XMM-Newton has caught the fading glow of a tiny celestial object, revealing its rotation rate for the first time. The new information confirms this particular object as one of an extremely rare class of stellar zombie - each one the dead heart of a star that refuses to die.

There are just five so-called Soft Gamma-ray Repeaters (SGRs) known, four in the Milky Way and one in our satellite galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud. Each is between 10 and 30 km across, yet contains about twice the mass of the Sun. Each one is the collapsed core of a large star that has exploded, collectively called neutron stars.

What sets the Soft Gamma-ray Repeaters apart from other neutron stars is that they possess magnetic fields that are up to 1000 times stronger. This has led astronomers to call them magnetars.
Read More...
Laptop

Trivial: the environmental impact of Google searches

Jonathan Leake and Richard Woods
Times Online
Sun, 11 Jan 2009 18:05 UTC
Physicist Alex Wissner-Gross says that performing two Google searches uses up as much energy as boiling the kettle for a cup of tea

Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research.

While millions of people tap into Google without considering the environment, a typical search generates about 7g of CO2 Boiling a kettle generates about 15g. "Google operates huge data centres around the world that consume a great deal of power," said Alex Wissner-Gross, a Harvard University physicist whose research on the environmental impact of computing is due out soon. "A Google search has a definite environmental impact."
Read More...
Telescope

Active Galaxies Are Different Near And Far, Swift Spacecraft Shows


ScienceDaily
Tue, 13 Jan 2009 11:45 UTC
galactic nuclei
© ESA/NASA/AVO/Paolo PadovaniSwift's Hard X-ray Survey offers the first unbiased census of active galactic nuclei in decades. Dense clouds of dust and gas, illustrated here, can obscure less energetic radiation from an active galaxy's central black hole. High-energy X-rays, however, easily pass through.
An ongoing X-ray survey undertaken by NASA's Swift spacecraft is revealing differences between nearby active galaxies and those located about halfway across the universe. Understanding these differences will help clarify the relationship between a galaxy and its central black hole.

"There's a lot we don't know about the workings of supermassive black holes," says Richard Mushotzky of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Astronomers think the intense emission from the centers, or nuclei, of active galaxies arises near a central black hole containing more than a million times the sun's mass. "Some of these feeding black holes are the most luminous objects in the universe. Yet we don't know why the massive black hole in our own galaxy and similar objects are so dim."

NASA's Swift spacecraft is designed to hunt gamma-ray bursts. But in the time between these almost-daily cosmic explosions, Swift's Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) scans the sky. The survey is now the largest and most sensitive census of the high-energy X-ray sky.
Read More...
Wolf

Genetic Secrets From Tassie Tiger

Jonathan Amos
BBC News
Tue, 13 Jan 2009 13:34 UTC
Keller
© Smithsonian InstitutionTwo thylacines in the Washington DC National Zoo, circa 1906
Scientists have detailed a significant proportion of the genes found in the extinct Tasmanian "tiger".

The international team extracted the hereditary information from the hair of preserved animal remains held in Swedish and US museums.

The information has allowed scientists to confirm the tiger's evolutionary relationship to other marsupials.

The study, reported in the journal Genome Research, may also give pointers as to why some animals die out.
Read More...
Magnify

Scientists Uncover Key Developmental Mechanisms Of The Amygdala


PhysOrg
Tue, 13 Jan 2009 13:03 UTC
For the first time, scientists at Children's National Medical Center have successfully identified a key developmental program for the amygdala - the part of the limbic system that impacts how the brain creates emotional memories and responses.

This knowledge could help scientists to better understand autism and similar disorders in which altered function of this region is known to occur.

The findings, published in the February edition of Nature Neuroscience, identify a group (otherwise known as a pool) of precursor cells of neurons that are earmarked specifically for the amygdala and comprise part of a unique system of growth and development for this portion of the brain.
Read More...
People

Finger length may predict financial success

Randolph E. Schmid
Associated Press
Tue, 13 Jan 2009 01:53 UTC
Washington - The length of a man's ring finger may predict his success as a financial trader. Researchers at the University of Cambridge in England report that men with longer ring fingers, compared to their index fingers, tended to be more successful in the frantic high-frequency trading in the London financial district.

Indeed, the impact of biology on success was about equal to years of experience at the job, the team led by physiologist John M. Coates reports in Monday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The same ring-to-index finger ratio has previously been associated with success in competitive sports such as soccer and basketball, the researchers noted.
Read More...
Cow Skull

Findings About Homo Erectus Overturn Prior Thinking About Human Brain Evolution


Exduco
Mon, 29 Dec 2008 00:18 UTC
Scott W. Simpson from the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and researchers report in Science.

Between 900,000 and 1.8 million years ago, Homo erectus made an evolutionary leap to develop brains closer in size to the large brains of modern-day man at birth.

Paleontologist Scott Simpson, professor of anatomy at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, is the lead author of research describing a nearly complete female of a 1.2 million-year-old H. erectus pelvic fossils found in the region of Gona, Ethiopia.
Read More...
Sun

Hazards Of Severe Space Weather Revealed


ScienceDaily
Mon, 12 Jan 2009 17:02 UTC
Earth
© Solar & Heliospheric ObservatoryA solar storm, aurora from space, and aurora on Earth.
A NASA-funded study describes how extreme solar eruptions could have severe consequences for communications, power grids and other technology on Earth.

The National Academy of Sciences in Washington conducted the study. The resulting report provides some of the first clear economic data that effectively quantifies today's risk of extreme conditions in space driven by magnetic activity on the sun and disturbances in the near-Earth environment. Instances of extreme space weather are rare and are categorized with other natural hazards that have a low frequency but high consequences.

"Obviously, the sun is Earth's life blood," said Richard Fisher, director of the Heliophysics division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "To mitigate possible public safety issues, it is vital that we better understand extreme space weather events caused by the sun's activity."
Read More...