Science & TechnologyS


Sherlock

Ancient Celtic coin cache found in Netherlands

Amsterdam - A hobbyist with a metal detector struck both gold and silver when he uncovered an important cache of ancient Celtic coins in a cornfield in the southern Dutch city of Maastricht.
ancient Celtic and Germanic coins
© AP Photo/ VU/Gemeente Maastricht, HO A hobbyist with a metal detector has found a cache of ancient Celtic and Germanic coins in a cornfield in the southern city of Maastricht. The city says the trove of 39 gold and 70 silver coins are dated to the middle of the first century B.C. The hobbyist, Paul Curfs, 47, found several coins this spring and called attention to the find, which eventually led to an archaeological investigation by Amsterdam's Free University.

"It's exciting, like a little boy's dream," Paul Curfs, 47, said Thursday after the spectacular find was made public.

Archaeologists say the trove of 39 gold and 70 silver coins was minted in the middle of the first century B.C. as the future Roman ruler Julius Caesar led a campaign against Celtic tribes in the area.

Curfs said he was walking with his detector this spring and was about to go home when he suddenly got a strong signal on his earphones and uncovered the first coin.

"It was golden and had a little horse on it - I had no idea what I had found," he said.

After posting a photo of the coin on a Web forum, he was told it was a rare find. The following day he went back and found another coin.

Dig

Rare Hebrew seal from First Temple period discovered in archaeological excavations in Jerusalem's Western Wall Plaza

In archaeological excavations the Israel Antiquities Authority is carrying out at the behest of the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, in the northwestern part of the Western Wall plaza in Jerusalem, a rare and impressive Hebrew seal was discovered that dates to the latter part of the First Temple period. The seal was found in a building that is currently being uncovered, which dates to the seventh century BCE - to the time when the kings Manasseh and Josiah reigned.
Hebrew seal
© Israel Antiquities AuthorityA rare and impressive Hebrew seal was discovered that dates to the latter part of the First Temple period.
The seal will be shown today (Thursday, October 30, 2008) during a study day dealing with "Innovations in the Archaeology of Jerusalem and its Surroundings", organized by the Jerusalem Region of the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Fish

Marine Plankton Found In Amber

Marine microorganisms have been found in amber dating from the middle of the Cretaceous period. The fossils were collected in Charente, in France. This completely unexpected discovery will deepen our understanding of these lost marine species as well as providing precious data about the coastal environment of Western France during the Cretaceous.
Diatom in amber
© Laboratoire géosciences RennesDiatom in amber.

This work was carried out by researchers at the Géosciences Rennes laboratory (CNRS/Université de Rennes 1), together with researchers from the Paléobiodiversité et Paléoenvironnement laboratory in Paris (CNRS/Muséum national d'histoire naturelle/Université Pierre et Marie Curie) and the Centre de Géochimie de la Surface in Strasbourg (CNRS/Université de Strasbourg 1). It was published in the 11 November 2008 issue of PNAS.

Telescope

Mysterious New Aurora On Saturn

Saturn has its own unique brand of aurora that lights up the polar cap, unlike any other planetary aurora known in our solar system. This odd aurora revealed itself to one of the infrared instruments on NASA's Cassini spacecraft.
aurora on Saturn
© NASA/JPL/University of ArizonaThis image of the northern polar region of Saturn shows both the aurora and underlying atmosphere, seen at two different wavelengths of infrared light as captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

"We've never seen an aurora like this elsewhere," said Tom Stallard, a scientist working with Cassini data at the University of Leicester, England. Stallard is lead author of a paper that appears in the Nov. 13 issue of the journal Nature. "It's not just a ring of auroras like those we've seen at Jupiter or Earth. This aurora covers an enormous area across the pole. Our current ideas on what forms Saturn's aurora predict that this region should be empty, so finding such a bright aurora here is a fantastic surprise."

Bizarro Earth

Simulation Shows What Would Happen If Magnitude 7.8 Earthquake Hit California

What would happen in California was hit by the Big One? New 3-D animations of a magnitude 7.8 earthquake scenario are now available to the public.*
San Andreas fault
© USGSStill image from a movie showing a view of southern California with the seismic waves radiating outward from the fault as the rupture propagates towards the northwest along the San Andreas fault.

Fourteen animations can be downloaded from the site in high definition format. The 3-D animations show, from the perspective of a several different Southern California locations, how intensely the ground would shake and shift during a very strong 7.8 earthquake with an epicenter on the southern end of the San Andreas Fault.

The science-based earthquake scenario, developed by USGS scientists and partners, is used for both the Great Southern California ShakeOut drill on November 13 and the statewide Golden Guardian 2008 emergency response exercise from November 13 - 18.

Sun

Light Triggers New Code For Brain Cells

Brain cells can adopt a new chemical code in response to cues from the outside world, scientists working with tadpoles at the University of California, San Diego report in the journal Nature.

Hourglass

Mysterious changes seen on distant dwarf planet

The surface of the largest known 'plutoid' appears to have changed in recent years, according to new measurements of how elements are layered on its icy surface. But astronomers cannot explain the cause of the apparent change.

Eris is the largest known object beyond the orbit of Neptune, weighing nearly a third more than Pluto. It travels on an elongated path around the Sun that takes about 560 years to complete.

Astronomers think the distant world is covered by a layer of frozen methane and small amounts of nitrogen ice. When it comes near the Sun, these ices are thought to vaporise from sunlit portions of the surface and condense onto regions in shadow.

Eris is now near its farthest point from the Sun, so it is expected to be cold and inactive. But a new study suggests the dwarf planet's surface may have changed in the last few years.

"We're really scratching our heads," says author Stephen Tegler of Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff.

Calculator

DOE's Jaguar Supercomputer Achieves Sustained Petaflop Performance

Supercomputers are used in science and research to perform very complex calculations and simulations that are needed in scientific research. Research often involves modeling climate change and other projects.

The Cray XT Jaguar supercomputer installed at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) was upgraded recently to increase its performance significantly. The supercomputer is now capable of 1.64 petaflops per second. A petaflop is quadrillion mathematical calculations per second.

The upgrade makes the XT Jaguar the first petaflop system in the world dedicated to open research. One of the first calculations achieved a sustained performance of more than 1.3 petaflops.

Info

Google Uses Searches to Track Flu's Spread

There is a new common symptom of the flu, in addition to the usual aches, coughs, fevers and sore throats. Turns out a lot of ailing Americans enter phrases like "flu symptoms" into Google and other search engines before they call their doctors.

That simple act, multiplied across millions of keyboards in homes around the country, has given rise to a new early warning system for fast-spreading flu outbreaks, called Google Flu Trends.

Tests of the new Web tool from Google.org, the company's philanthropic unit, suggest that it may be able to detect regional outbreaks of the flu a week to 10 days before they are reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In early February, for example, the C.D.C. reported that the flu cases had recently spiked in the mid-Atlantic states. But Google says its search data show a spike in queries about flu symptoms two weeks before that report was released. Its new service at google.org/flutrends analyzes those searches as they come in, creating graphs and maps of the country that, ideally, will show where the flu is spreading.

Bulb

'Odourprinting' could be used to identify people

Human beings could one day be identified by our smells, according to research that shows individual "odourprints" cannot be masked by diet.

Every person has a unique fragrance, similar to a fingerprint or DNA sample, which could be used to create a database of human scents, scientists said.

Eating powerful foods such as chili or garlic may change how we smell, but it does not disguise our underlying genetically-determined aroma, tests on mice have shown. Creatures who were given strong-smelling foods were still recognised by their peers.

The signature smells may have evolved to help in choosing mates and marking out territories.

Jae Kwak, lead author of the study at Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, said that the research suggested that "odourprinting" could soon have a practical use.