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David Livingstone Letter Deciphered At Last

Raphael G. Satter
The Associated Press
Fri, 02 Jul 2010 13:18 UTC
Image
© AP Photo/Callum Bennetts Maverick Photo Agency
In this image made available by the Maverick Photo Agency on Friday July 2, 2010 show a letter written by famed explorer David Livingstone.
London - The contents of a long-illegible letter written by famed 19th century explorer David Livingstone have finally been deciphered, a British university said Friday, nearly 140 years after he wrote of his despair at ever leaving Africa alive.

Researchers say that the letter - which required state of the art imaging techniques to decipher - helps round out the picture of a man traditionally cast as an intrepid Victorian hero, revealing the self-doubt that tormented the missionary-explorer in one of his darkest hours.

"I am terribly knocked up but this is for your own eye only," Livingstone wrote to close friend Horace Waller in the newly revealed correspondence. "Doubtful if I live to see you again."

Livingstone was a national hero when he set off to find the source of the River Nile in 1866, but by the time he composed his four-page missive he was at the lowest point in his professional life, according to Debbie Harrison, a researcher at Birkbeck University of London.
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Info

Tibetans are the Fastest-Evolving Humans, Chinese Claim

Malcolm Moore
Daily Telegraph, UK
Fri, 02 Jul 2010 17:35 UTC
Tibetans
© Alamy
Tibetans have developed unusual genes that help them live in the thin air of the Tibetan plateau.
A study by a group of scientists at the Beijing Genomics Institute, led by Xin Yi and Jian Wang, found that Tibetans have developed unusual genes that help them live in the thin air of the Tibetan plateau.

"This is the fastest genetic change ever observed in humans," said Rasmus Nielsen, a biology professor at the University of California who led the statistical analysis of the study.

According to the scientists, the Tibetans and the Han Chinese split into two separate populations around 3,000 years ago, as the Tibetans moved up onto the high plateau around the Himalayas.

The Tibetans quickly evolved the ability to live above 13,000 feet, where oxygen levels are 40 per cent lower than they are at sea level.

At this altitude, people often tire quickly, have frequent headaches, produce babies with lower birth weights and suffer high infant mortality. The Tibetans suffer from none of these problems.
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Info

Is Frequency the Future of Medicine or an Ancient Mystery Revealed?


PR Web
Fri, 02 Jul 2010 16:49 UTC
Novel research supports the assertion that ancient Templar cross architecture contains math codes that support frequency-based medicine. The idea of revisiting lost knowledge through the use of computer constructed biometics provides a new paradigm that will change the face of future medicine.

BioAcoustics
© PR Web
Vocal Profiling is an innovative biotechnology and the inspiration of THE pioneer of BioAcoustics, Sharry Edwards™, MEd.
Albany, OH -- It usually takes a well-funded scientific breakthrough or an overwhelming catastrophe to facilitate change that actually makes a difference. People are slow to embrace new scientific information because anything fundamentally different from the status quo intimidates them. Although a major disaster forces transformation, people don't always adjust willingly. The most profound and permanent way to cause a shift in perception is through affirmative life experience.

Over the last decade, US consumers have been challenged by a struggling health care system, their own failing health and the lack of wellness of their families and clientele.

Today we are living with more autism, more heart disease, increased arthritis, diabetes, auto immune disease, insulin resistance, adrenal burnout, high blood pressure... The list seems endless with no hope in sight.

Resistant strains of pathogens, nosocomial (hospital caused) and iatrogenic (doctor caused) diseases are rampant. We are threatened with environmental pollutants, bird flu, swine flu, SARS, MRSA, flesh eating bacteria and unrestrained STD's.
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Info

Zoo to Bring Dead Animals Back to Life, "Jurassic Park"-Style

Tom Chivers
Daily Telegraph, UK
Thu, 01 Jul 2010 13:26 UTC
Jurassic Park III
© Daily Telegraph
How San Diego Zoo will look in a couple of years' time. Or possibly a still from Jurassic Park III. It's hard to tell.
A zoo in San Diego, California, is planning to use the frozen cells of dead animals in an attempt to bring endangered species back from the brink of extinction.

Researchers at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, and San Diego Zoo have collaborated to create stem cells from the skin cells of a dead drill monkey, an endangered monkey native to Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria and Cameroon.

The scientists, speaking at the International Society for Stem Cell Research in San Francisco, hope that the "induced pluripotent stem" (iPS) cells thus created can then be biochemically persuaded into becoming sperm and egg cells. They can then be implanted into the womb of another monkey, and will hopefully form a viable foetus.

San Diego Zoo's Frozen Zoo project has taken samples from 8,400 individuals of more than 800 species. It is hoped that these samples can be used in IVF programmes to improve captive breeding projects.

Jeane Loring, one of the Scripps researchers, told New Scientist: "You could actually breed from animals that are dead."

The team used genetically engineered viruses fitted with specific human genes to reprogramme adult skin cells into becoming iPS cells. The process worked in drill monkeys, but failed in white rhinoceros cells, implying that it may be necessary to use species-specific versions of the cells in some cases.
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Bulb

Spark of multicellular life two billion years old: study


Agence France Presse
Wed, 30 Jun 2010 19:22 UTC
Image
© AFP/CNRS/El Albani//Mazurier
A virtual picture released by French Sciences institute CNRS shows external (L) and internal morphology of a fossil.
Paris - Scientists unveiled fossils from west Africa Thursday that push back the dawn of multicellular life on Earth by at least 1.5 billion years.

Just how complex the newly discovered organisms are is sure to be hotly debated.

But there can be no doubt that the creatures unearthed from the hills of Gabon, visible to the naked eye, have upended standard evolutionary timelines.

"The cursor on the origin of complex multicellular life is no longer 600 million years ago, as has long been maintained, but more like 2.1 billion years," said Abderrazak El Albani, a researcher at the University of Poitiers and lead author of the study.

The findings were published in the British journal Nature.
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Info

New Supersonic Plane Could Hush Sonic Booms


The Christian Science Monitor
Fri, 30 Jul 2010 13:54 UTC
Supersonic Aircraft
© Newscom/File
Lockheed's supersonic plane concept is just one of several designs presented in April to NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, following a call for studies on advanced aircraft that could take to the skies sometime around 2030 or 2035.
A new design concept for a futuristic faster-than-sound aircraft could break through legal barriers to supersonic flights over land by shushing the sonic booms created by such vehicles.

The concept aircraft, envisioned by aerospace company Lockheed Martin, would revolutionize supersonic cruising by relying upon a so-called "inverted-V" engine-under wing configuration, where the engines sit atop the wings rather than beneath, NASA officials said in a statement.

A Lockheed illustration of the supersonic concept released by NASA is just one of several designs presented in April to the space agency's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate following a call for studies on advanced aircraft that could take to the skies sometime around 2030 or 2035.

NASA also has high hopes for air-breathing scramjet technology that could efficiently propel vehicles at hypersonic speeds and potentially help boost future space planes into Earth orbit. [Air Force's plans for hypersonic weapons.]
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Compass

New 'Fix' for Cosmic Clocks Could Help Uncover Ripples in Space-Time


Science Daily
Fri, 25 Jun 2010 00:00 UTC
Pulsars and Time
© Michael Kramer
Pulsars appear to be able to switch between two states which differ in the current of charged particles flowing from the surface into outer space. This change in current results in a change of slow-down in their rotation rate, such that the pulsar 'brakes' faster (upper panel) when the currents are large and 'brakes' less fast when the currents are weak (lower panel). These currents also result in a change in the shape of the beam emitted by the pulsar, and hence in the shape of the pulse, or tick, as the beam crosses a radio telescope.
An international team of scientists have developed a promising new technique which could turn pulsars -- superb natural cosmic clocks -- into even more accurate time-keepers.

This important advance, led by scientists at The University of Manchester and appearing June 24 in the journal Science Express, could improve the search for gravitational waves and help studies into the origins of the universe.

The direct discovery of gravitational waves, which pass over cosmic clocks and cause them to change, could allow scientists to study violent events such as the merging of super-massive black holes and help understand the universe shortly after its formation in the Big Bang.

The scientists made their breakthrough using decades-long observations from the 76-m Lovell radio telescope at The University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank Observatory to track the radio signals of extreme stars known as pulsars.
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Better Earth

Goce Satellite Views Earth's Gravity in High Definition

Jonathan Amos
BBC News
Mon, 28 Jun 2010 10:50 UTC
HS map of Earths' gravity
© BBC
A high resolotion map gathered from the satellite's data
It is one of the most exquisite views we have ever had of the Earth.

This colourful new map traces the subtle but all pervasive influence the pull of gravity has across the globe.

Known as a geoid, it essentially defines where the level surface is on our planet; it tells us which way is "up" and which way is "down".

It is drawn from delicate measurements made by Europe's Goce satellite, which flies so low it comes perilously close to falling out of the sky.

Scientists say the data gathered by the spacecraft will have numerous applications.
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Info

Archaeologists Begin Dig on Buried Stone Circle Ten Times Bigger than Stonehenge


The Daily Mail, UK
Wed, 30 Jun 2010 17:46 UTC
Marden Henge
© SWNS
Archaeologists are due to begin digging at the 4,000 year old Marden Henge, in Wiltshire.
Archaeologists have begun a major dig to unearth the hidden mysteries of a buried ancient stone circle site that is ten times bigger than Stonehenge.

The enormous 4,000 year old Marden Henge, in Wiltshire, is Britain's largest prehistoric structure stretching for 10.5 hectares, the equivalent of 10 football pitches.

English Heritage is carrying out a six-week dig hoping to reveal the secrets behind the giant henge which has baffled historians for centuries.

Most of the Neolithic henge has been destroyed over the years due to farming and erosion but minor excavations in 41 years ago estimate the site to between 2,000 and 2,400BC.
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Sherlock

Giant Whale-Eating Whale Found

Larry O'Hanlon
Discovery News
Wed, 30 Jun 2010 13:00 UTC
Image
© C. Letenneur
The massive skull and jaw of a 13-million-year-old sperm whale has been discovered eroding from the windblown sands of a coastal desert of Peru.
The skull of the 12 - 13 million-year-old sperm whale fossil found off the coast of Peru measures an astounding 10 feet long.

The massive skull and jaw of a 13-million-year-old sperm whale has been discovered eroding from the windblown sands of a coastal desert of Peru.

The extinct cousin of the modern sperm whale is the first fossil to rival modern sperm whales in size -- although this is a very different beast, say whale evolution experts.

"We could see it from very far," said paleontologist Olivier Lambert of the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris, France, who led the team which found the fossil.

The giant 3-meter (10-foot) skull of what's been dubbed Leviathan melvillei (in honor of the author of Moby Dick) was found with teeth in its top and bottom jaws up to 36 centimeters (14 inches) long. The discovery is reported in the July 1 issue of the journal Nature.
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