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Researchers Uncover Genetic Legacy of Lost Phoenician Civilization

Isabel Cowles
Finding Dulcinea
Tue, 04 Nov 2008 23:02 UTC
Byblos
© Hussein Malla/Associated Press
Byblos: the Phoenician port city
Researchers have discovered that one in seventeen men living in the Mediterranean has genetic ties to the Phoenicians, the lost people of Carthage.

Carthage destroyed, but Phoenicians live on

Recent genetic research has indicated that one in seventeen men living around the Mediterranean can trace his genetic heritage to the ancient Phoenicians.

The Phoenicians founded the city of Carthage, which was located in modern-day Lebanon. In the first millennium B.C.E. they prospered as sailors and traders, spreading their genes through colonization and migrations that went as far as Spain and North Africa.
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Info

Social Interactions Can Alter Gene Expression In Brain, And Vice Versa


Science Daily
Fri, 07 Nov 2008 18:41 UTC
Our DNA determines a lot about who we are and how we play with others, but recent studies of social animals (birds and bees, among others) show that the interaction between genes and behavior is more of a two-way street than most of us realize.

This is not a new idea to neuroscience, but one that is gaining strength, said University of Illinois entomology and neuroscience professor Gene Robinson, lead author of a review on the subject this week in the journal Science. Stanford University biology professor Russell Fernald and Illinois cell and developmental biology and neuroscience professor David Clayton are co-authors.
zebra finch or canary
© Sarah London
Clayton discovered in 1992 that gene expression changes in the brain of a zebra finch or canary when it hears a new song from a male of the same species.

Genes in the brain are malleable, turning on or off in response to internal and external cues. While genetic variation influences brain function and social behavior, the authors write, social information also alters gene expression in the brain to influence behavior.
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Robot

Robots Show That Brain Activity Is Linked To Time As Well As Space


Science Daily
Fri, 07 Nov 2008 18:08 UTC
Humanoid robots have been used to show that that functional hierarchy in the brain is linked to time as well as space.

Researchers from RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Japan, have created a new type of neural network model which adds to the previous literature that suggests neural activity is linked solely to spatial hierarchy within the animal brain.
humanoid robot
© PLoS Computational Biology
A humanoid robot was fixed to a stand. In front of the robot, a workbench was set up, and a cubic object was placed on the workbench to serve as the goal object. The task for the robot was to autonomously generate various types of movements.

Details are published November 7 in the open-access journal PLoS Computational Biology.

An animal's motor control system contains a functional hierarchy, whereby small, reusable parts of movements are flexibly integrated to create various action sequences. For example, the action of drinking a cup of coffee can be broken down into a combination of small movements including the motions of reaching for a cup, grasping the cup, and bringing it to one's mouth.
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Heart

Russia: Old Romeo and Juliet Unearthed in Krasnodar


Russia-ic.com
Tue, 28 Oct 2008 10:33 UTC
bronze age couple
Archeologists have found remains of an ancient loving couple buried together. Did the man and the woman who lived about three and a half thousand years ago, die on the same day?

Some mysterious tribe unknown to science inhabited those Kuban lands. It is this people that archeologists assign construction of dolmens to. Now the experts are examining the burial ground that has been found at the crossroads of Postovaia and Sedin Streets of Krasnodar.
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Magnify

'Junk' DNA proves functional


Physorg
Tue, 04 Nov 2008 18:59 UTC
In a paper published in Genome Research on Nov. 4, scientists at the Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS) report that what was previously believed to be "junk" DNA is one of the important ingredients distinguishing humans from other species.
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Info

Seeing A Brain As It Learns To See


Science Daily
Thu, 06 Nov 2008 18:47 UTC
A brain isn't born fully organized. It builds its abilities through experience, making physical connections between neurons and organizing circuits to store and retrieve information in milliseconds for years afterwards.
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Telescope

Fingers, Loops And Bays In The Crab Nebula's Pulsar Wind Viewed By Chandra X-ray Observatory


Science Daily
Thu, 06 Nov 2008 16:36 UTC
NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has provided the first clear view of the faint boundary of the Crab Nebula's X-ray-emitting pulsar wind nebula.
Crab Nebula's X-ray-emitting pulsar wind nebula
© NASA/CXC/SAO/F.Seward
View of the faint boundary of the Crab Nebula's X-ray-emitting pulsar wind nebula.

The nebula is powered by a rapidly-rotating, highly-magnetized neutron star, or "pulsar" (white dot near the center). The combination of rapid rotating and strong magnetic field generates an intense electromagnetic field that creates jets of matter and anti-matter moving away from the north and south poles of the pulsar, and an intense wind flowing out in the equatorial direction.
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Chalkboard

Black holes on Earth: Scientists hope borrowed gravity holds the key

John Mangels
Cleveland.com
Tue, 04 Nov 2008 10:04 UTC
You know black holes, right? Those fearsome cosmic quicksand pits that swallow everything, even light?

They're the unhappy consequence of exhausted stars that collapse in on themselves. The resulting maw seethes with gravity so powerful it can, as astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson writes in Death by Black Hole, rip apart anything that strays too close, "atom by atom."

Given such a nasty disposition, why would scientists want to try to create black holes here on Earth? And not just one, but lots of them -- miniature black holes belched out as often as once per second like exploding popcorn kernels by the just-activated Large Hadron Collider, an underground machine so colossal it straddles two countries, Switzerland and France?

Because of the remarkable things they would reveal about the universe, physicists say.
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Pharoah

Ancient Egypt had powerful Sudan rival, British Museum dig shows

Stephen Adams
Telegraph
Thu, 16 Oct 2008 05:45 UTC
The Second Kushite Kingdom controlled the whole Nile valley from Khartoum to the Mediterranean from 720BC to 660BC.

Now archaeologists have discovered that a region of northern Sudan once considered a forgotten backwater once actually "a real power-base".

They discovered a ruined pyramid containing fine gold jewellery dating from about 700BC on a remote un-navigable 100-mile stretch of the Nile known as the Fourth Cataract, plus pottery from as far away as Turkey.

Other finds included numerous examples of ancient rock art and 'musical' rocks that were tapped to create a melodic sound.
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Saturn

Saturn's rings may be remains of ancient moon


New Scientist
Sat, 11 Oct 2008 05:40 UTC
Saturn's rings
Why are Saturn's rings so spectacular? It could be that the planet managed to cling onto a moon when all the other gas giants in our solar system had already lost theirs. Today's rings formed when the moon was smashed up.

Sebastien Charnoz and colleagues at the University of Diderot, Paris, suggest it was during the "late heavy bombardment", 700 million years after Saturn formed, that a chunk of debris collided with one of the planet's moons. Because the moon was orbiting at just the right distance from Saturn when it shattered - within the so-called Roche limit - the tiny pieces formed the rings instead of dispersing.
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