Science & TechnologyS


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Stone Age Village Found Under Sea

Martin Neville
Isle of Wight County Press Online
Thu, 01 Oct 2009 19:23 UTC
Momber
© IWCPGarry Momber with some worked timber discovered in the excavation.
A Stone Age settlement under The Solent is in danger of being lost forever.

In a desperate race against time, marine archaeologists say the remains of a submerged mesolithic community found at Bouldnor Cliff, off Yarmouth, could be lost to the sea if money is not found soon to continue vital excavation work.

Garry Momber, director of The Hampshire and Wight Trust for Maritime Archaeology, has been excavating the site for more than a decade and believes the latest finds this summer are the most significant to date.

"This is more comprehensive than anything I thought we would ever find and I'm sure there is a lot more to be uncovered," he said.

"This really is of national and international significance - there is nothing else like it in the UK and the race is on to save what we can now. If we don't act now, these findings could be lost forever."
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Polychrome mural found in archaeological complex of Chotuna


Andina
Thu, 01 Oct 2009 19:18 UTC
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© Silvia DepazArqueólogo Carlos Wester muestra mural polícromo hallado en complejo arqueológico Chotuna, en Lambayeque.
Chiclayo - A polychrome mural was found in the facade of a ceremonial temple located in the northern part of the Chotuna archaeological complex, 10 miles west of Lambayeque city, which features friezes with circular designs and the anthropomorphic wave, icon of Lambayeque's culture.

The religious building dates from 9th and 10th centuries AD, corresponding to the Lambayeque culture, said the leader of excavations at the Chotuna-Chornancap camp, Carlos Wester, who presented the findings today.

According to Wester, a platform emerged only after the systematic removal of a dune higher than 15 meters.

Evidences of polychrome surfaces - with red and cream colored chess designs- were found at the north facing top level of this platform.
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Network

What Network Neutrality Is REALLY About

Karl Bode
DSLreports.com
Thu, 01 Oct 2009 17:48 UTC
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© Unknown
If you've paid attention, you know the modern "network neutrality" debate took off in 2005, when then AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre proudly, though dumbly, proclaimed that Google got a "free ride" on his network. According to Ed, this unfairness could only be rectified by charging companies who already pay for bandwidth money to ensure their traffic reaches AT&T consumers quickly. Such a bizarre statement obviously resulted in fear that phone companies planned to act as trolls under the metaphorical Internet bridge, grumpily extorting passers by. That created a desire by content companies and consumers for laws that would prevent this from happening.

The entire concept of network neutrality is really very simple. It was born out of phone company executive greed, and remains driven by legitimate fear of market abuses by companies with a long history of them. Unfortunately, over the years the debate has been so badly mutilated by PR folk, shoddy journalism and policy wonks that it has become a nonsensical mess. Thanks to said wonks, we're still having the exact same debate we were back in 2005, as this painful editorial in the Wall Street Journal pretty clearly illustrates. Say hello, Mr. Holman W. Jenkins Jr.:
...everything you need to know was contained in the first act, when AOL began bleating about "open access" when broadband first threatened its dial-up empire. AOL's business model depended on free riding on the infrastructure paid for by phone users. AOL users were dialing up and keeping a line open for days or even weeks at a time - yet faced no cost for the disproportionate capacity they used up.
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Blackbox

Mercury's Mysterious Bright Spot Photographed Up Close

Andrea Thompson
SPACE.com
Thu, 01 Oct 2009 17:04 UTC
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© NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of WashingtonA mysterious bright area on the surface of Mercury is seen near the top center of this image. The MESSENGER probe also imaged this spot in its second flyby of the planet last year. Color images from MESSENGER's Wide Angle Camera reveal that the irregular depression and bright halo have distinctive color.
During its most recent flyby of Mercury, NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft caught another glimpse of the innermost planet's mysterious bright spot.

The MESSENGER probe skimmed just 142 miles (228 km) above Mercury at its closest approach as it whipped around the planet during the flyby, the last of three designed to guide the spacecraft into orbit around the planet in 2011.

The $446 million probe snapped several new images of Mercury during the flyby, despite a minor data hiccup that delayed the downlink of some of the images.

One of the new images shows a bright spot on the planet's surface, a feature that scientists cannot yet explain.

The new view was the third of the spot, which was first seen in telescopic images of Mercury obtained from Earth by astronomer Ronald Dantowitz. The second view was obtained by the MESSENGER Narrow Angle Camera during the spacecraft's second Mercury flyby Oct. 6, 2008. At that time, the bright feature was just on the planet's limb (edge) as seen from MESSENGER.
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Telescope

Stripped down: Hubble highlights 2 galaxies that are losing it

Colleen Sharkey
ESA/Hubble Information Centre
Wed, 30 Sep 2009 18:45 UTC
Image
© NASA & ESAThis composite shows the two ram pressure stripping galaxies NGC 4522 and NGC 4402. Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys allows astronomers to study an interesting and important phenomenon called ram pressure stripping that is so powerful, it is capable of mangling galaxies and even halting their star formation.
Ram pressure is the drag force that results when something moves through a fluid - much like the wind you feel in your face when bicycling, even on a still day - and occurs in this context as galaxies orbiting about the centre of the cluster move through the intra-cluster medium, which then sweeps out gas from within the galaxies.

The spiral galaxy NGC 4522 is located some 60 million light-years away from Earth and it is a spectacular example of a spiral galaxy currently being stripped of its gas content. The galaxy is part of the Virgo galaxy cluster and its rapid motion within the cluster results in strong winds across the galaxy as the gas within is left behind. Scientists estimate that the galaxy is moving at more than 10 million kilometres per hour. A number of newly formed star clusters that developed in the stripped gas can be seen in the Hubble image.
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Info

MU Researchers Use Computational Models to Study Fear

Kelsey Jackson
News Bureau University of Missouri
Wed, 30 Sep 2009 18:38 UTC
The brain is a complex system made of billions of neurons and thousands of connections that relate to every human feeling, including one of the strongest emotions, fear. Most neurological fear studies have been rooted in fear-conditioning experiments. Now, University of Missouri researchers have started using computational models of the brain, making it easier to study the brain's connections. Guoshi Li, an electrical and computer engineering doctoral student, has discovered new evidence on how the brain reacts to fear, including important findings that could help victims of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
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Eye 1

Scientists Decry "Flawed" and "Horrifying" Nationality Tests

John Travis
Science Insider
Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:37 UTC
Scientists are greeting with surprise and dismay a project to use DNA and isotope analysis of tissue from asylum seekers to evaluate their nationality and help decide who can enter the United Kingdom. "Horrifying," "naïve," and "flawed" are among the adjectives geneticists and isotope specialists have used to describe the "Human Provenance pilot project," launched quietly in mid-September by the U.K. Border Agency. Their consensus: The project is not scientifically valid--or even sensible.

"My first reaction is this is wildly premature, even ignoring the moral and ethical aspects," says Alec Jeffreys of the University of Leicester, who pioneered human DNA fingerprinting.
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Network

Neutering the 'Net

Holman W. Jenkins
Wall Street Journal
Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:49 UTC
Net Neutrality
© Getty
The real agenda of Google, Amazon, Microsoft and other status-quo web powers behind the Obama administration's Net Neutrality campaign

Like Chekhov's gun, "net neutrality" gets dragged down from the mantel for every act of the broadband rollout. It's getting dragged down now for the rollout of wireless broadband.

Yet everything you need to know was contained in the first act, when AOL began bleating about "open access" when broadband first threatened its dial-up empire. AOL's business model depended on free riding on the infrastructure paid for by phone users. AOL users were dialing up and keeping a line open for days or even weeks at a time - yet faced no cost for the disproportionate capacity they used up.

This is the basic pricing model the biggest Web companies (especially Google) seek to preserve on the Internet. Their business models are built on a Web that makes their services appear "free" to users.
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Telescope

Flashback Generations Of Stars Pose For Stunning Family Portrait In Constellation Cassiopeia


Science Daily
Mon, 25 Aug 2008 02:39 UTC
A new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope tells a tale of life and death amidst a rich family history. The striking infrared picture shows a colorful cosmic cloud, called W5, studded with multiple generations of blazing stars.

Image
©NASA/JPL-Caltech/Harvard-Smithsonian CfA
Generations of stars can be seen in this new infrared portrait from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

It also provides dramatic new evidence that massive stars -- through their brute winds and radiation -- can trigger the birth of stellar newborns.

"Triggered star formation continues to be very hard to prove," said Xavier Koenig of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. "But our preliminary analysis shows that the phenomenon can explain the multiple generations of stars seen in the W5 region." Koenig is lead author of a paper about the findings in the December 1, 2008, issue of the Astrophysical Journal.
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Info

Space radiation hits record high

David Shiga
New Scientist
Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:02 UTC
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© Richard Mewaldt/CaltechThe solar system is protected from galactic cosmic rays by the heliosphere, a giant magnetic bubble around the sun
Like a wounded Starship Enterprise, our solar system's natural shields are faltering, letting in a flood of cosmic rays. The sun's recent listlessness is resulting in record-high radiation levels that pose a hazard to both human and robotic space missions.

Galactic cosmic rays are speeding charged particles that include protons and heavier atomic nuclei. They come from outside the solar system, though their exact sources are still being debated.

Earth dwellers are protected from cosmic rays by the planet's magnetic field and atmosphere. But outside Earth's protective influence, cosmic rays can play havoc with spacecraft electronics - they may be responsible for some recent computer glitches on NASA's Kepler spacecraft, which temporarily halted its planet-hunting observations. They can also damage astronaut DNA, which can lead to cancer.

Now, the influx of galactic cosmic rays into our solar system has reached a record high. Measurements by NASA's Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) spacecraft indicate that cosmic rays are 19 per cent more abundant than any previous level seen since space flight began a half century ago.
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