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Tools Show Ancient Human Diet


Science Alert
Wed, 02 Jun 2010 01:22 UTC
Leaping Carp
© iStockphoto Aquatic foods such as fish may have had
an important role in the evolution of the
human brain.
Almost two million years ago, early humans began eating food such as crocodiles, turtles and fish - a diet that could have played an important role in the evolution of human brains and our footsteps out of Africa, according to new research.

In what is the first evidence of consistent amounts of aquatic foods in the human diet, an international team of researchers has discovered early stone tools and cut marked animal remains in northern Kenya. The work has just been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS).

"This site in Africa is the first evidence that early humans were eating an extremely broad diet," says Dr Andy Herries from the University of New South Wales (UNSW), the only researcher from Australia to have worked with the team. The project represents a collaborative effort with the National Museums of Kenya and is led by David Braun of the University of Cape Town in South Africa and Jack Harris of Rutgers University in the US.
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Display

Google phasing out use of Windows over security concerns


Raw Story
Tue, 01 Jun 2010 19:19 UTC
windows

Web search group Google Inc is phasing out internal use of rival Microsoft Corp's Windows operating system because of security concerns following a Chinese hacking incident, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.

Citing several Google employees, the FT said the decision to move to other operating systems including Apple Inc's Mac OS and open-source Linux began in earnest in January after Google's Chinese operations were hacked.

Internet security firm McAfee Inc said at the time the cyber attacks on Google and other businesses had exploited a previously unknown flaw in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, which was vulnerable on all recent versions of Windows.
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Magnify

Tripura relics spark rethink on history

Sekhar Datta
The Telegram
Tue, 01 Jun 2010 18:52 UTC
Image
© TelegraphRuins at the Boxanagar site.
Agartala: Archaeological excavations at Boxanagar in Sonamura subdivision of West Tripura have unearthed a large Buddhist complex, including relics of a stupa, teaching centre, a bronze image of Buddha and seals in Brahmi script, triggering a controversy over the history of the state.

The excavation commenced in 2003 under the supervision of Archaeological Survey of India's (ASI) Guwahati circle.

In the second phase under archaeologists Bimal Sinha and B.K. Pande, remains of walls and burnt bricks were recovered.
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Magnify

13,000-year-old clay figure found


The Asahi Shimbun
Tue, 01 Jun 2010 18:43 UTC
Image
© The Asahi ShimbunA clay figure found in Higashiomi, Shiga Prefecture
Otsu--A clay figure believed to be 13,000 years old and one of the oldest in the country, was found in an archaeological site in Higashiomi, Shiga Prefecture, the Shiga Prefectural Association for Cultural Heritage said.
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Telescope

Planetary scientists solve 40-year-old mysteries of Mars' northern ice cap

Daniel Stolte
University of Arizona
Tue, 01 Jun 2010 18:35 UTC
Image
© NASAThe northern ice cap is a stack of ice and dust layers up to two miles deep, covering an area slightly larger than Texas.
Researchers have reconstructed the formation of two curious features in the northern ice cap of Mars: a chasm larger than the Grand Canyon and a series of spiral troughs.

A team of planetary scientists has used radar and a high-resolution camera to reveal the subsurface geology of Mars' northern ice cap.

The findings - based on data from SHARAD (the surface-penetrating radar) and HiRISE (the high-resolution camera) on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter - were published May 27 in two papers in the journal Nature.
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Sherlock

Neanderthals Walked Into Frozen Britain 40,000 Years Earlier Than First Thought, Evidence Shows


ScienceDaily
Tue, 01 Jun 2010 10:00 UTC
Image
© iStockphotoNew evidence suggests that Neanderthals were living in Britain at the start of the last ice age, 40,000 years earlier than previously thought.
A University of Southampton archaeologist and Oxford Archaeology have found evidence that Neanderthals were living in Britain at the start of the last ice age, 40,000 years earlier than previously thought.

Commissioned by Oxford Archaeology, the University of Southampton's Dr Francis Wenban-Smith discovered two ancient flint hand tools at the M25 / A2 road junction at Dartford in Kent, during an excavation funded by the Highways Agency. The flints are waste flakes from the manufacture of unknown tools, which would almost certainly have mostly been used for cutting up dead animals. Tests on sediment burying the flints show they date from around 100,000 years ago, proving Neanderthals were living in Britain at this time. The country was previously assumed to have been uninhabited during this period.

"I couldn't believe my eyes when I received the test results. We know that Neanderthals inhabited Northern France at this time, but this new evidence suggests that as soon as sea levels dropped, and a 'land bridge' appeared across the English Channel, they made the journey by foot to Kent," says Francis.
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Telescope

Airborne telescope makes its first observations

Rachel Courtland
New Scientist
Tue, 01 Jun 2010 12:10 UTC
Image
© NASASOFIA snapped this composite infrared image of Jupiter (right) during its first flight as a working observatory. The white stripe shows a region of relatively transparent clouds that reveal the planet's warm interior
A jet with a large telescope built into its side has snapped its first in-flight images of the night sky. The flight begins a new phase for the infrared observatory, called SOFIA, which was once in danger of cancellation due to cost overruns.

The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) is a Boeing 747 jet that has been modified to carry a 2.5-metre telescope provided by the German Space Agency. The observatory is designed to fly at an altitude of about 12 kilometres.

That altitude is above more than 99 per cent of the atmosphere's water vapour, which obscures the sky at infrared wavelengths. That means SOFIA will receive roughly 80 per cent of the infrared light that hits orbiting space telescopes. It can be used to study phenomena such as star and planet formation in the Milky Way.

The telescope took off on Wednesday from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in Palmdale, California, for its first in-flight night observations. Images taken during the six-hour flight are sharp enough for the telescope to perform "front-line astronomical research", SOFIA project scientist Pam Marcum said in a statement.
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Meteor

Asteroid strike may have frozen Antarctica

Wendy Zukerman
New Scientist
Tue, 01 Jun 2010 11:27 UTC
Image
© New ScientistSeismic section displaying chaotic deformation in the inner core of the Mount Ashmore structural dome.
A massive asteroid hit the Timor Sea around 35 million years ago - and the impact apparently contributed to the formation of the Antarctic ice sheets.

So says Andrew Glikson, a specialist in the study of extraterrestrial impacts, from the Planetary Science Institute at the Australian National University in Canberra, who analysed a dome found 2.5 kilometres below the Timor Sea, about 300 kilometres off Australia's north west coast.

Based on the structure of the dome, called Mount Ashmore, there were two obvious explanations for its formation: from a mud volcano or from the movement of tectonic plates.

But using a barrage of tests including scanning electron microscopy and seismic surveys, as well as chemical analysis of the rocks, Glikson concluded that the dome was the result of an asteroid crashing into the Earth at such speeds that it caused the Earth's crust to rebound (Australian Journal of Earth Sciences, DOI: 10.1080/08120099.2010.481327).

Images from scanning electron microscopy showed that the cracks and pulverised rocks throughout the dome were unlike those seen in tectonic plate movements.
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Radar

NASA/JPL Claim 'Artificial Object' Detected

Casey Kazan
dailygalaxy.com
Mon, 31 May 2010 12:00 UTC
Image
© NASA/JPL
NASA authorities report that an unknown object approaching the Earth from deep space is almost certainly artificial in origin rather than being an asteroid. Object 2010 KQ was detected by the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona earlier this month, and subsequently tracked by NASA's asteroid-watching service, the Near-Earth Object Program headquartered at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

Observations by astronomer S J Bus, using the NASA-sponsored Infrared Telescope Facility in Mauna Kea, Hawaii, indicate that 2010 KQ's spectral characteristics do not match any of the known asteroid types, and the object's absolute magnitude (28.9) suggests it is only a few meters in size.

The mysterious artificial object has apparently made a close pass by the Earth, coming in almost to the distance of the Moon's orbit, and is now headed away again into the interplanetary void. The object has used no propulsion during the time NASA has had it under observation. However the spacewatch experts believe that it must have moved under its own power at some point, given its position and velocity.
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Rocket

'Indian rockets to soon use atmospheric oxygen as fuel'


The Hindu
Sat, 29 May 2010 23:50 UTC
indian rocket
© The HinduA Rohini sounding on its way to space
In an attempt to make its rockets lighter and carry heavier satellites, the Indian space agency is planning to flight test by the end of this year its own air-breathing engine that will use atmospheric oxygen as fuel.

Air-breathing engines use atmospheric oxygen and burn it with the stored on-board fuel to generate the onward thrust.

Conventional rockets carry both oxygen and chemical fuel on board.

"We will be doing a series of ground tests of the air breathing engine soon. We are planning an actual launch of a sounding rocket - ATV D02 - powered by such an engine by the end of this year," an official of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) told IANS on condition of anonymity.
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