Science & TechnologyS


Sherlock

Minnesota: Bones Found During Excavation in Avon


The Associated Press
Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:00 UTC
The state archaeologist will try to determine the age and origin of some human bones uncovered in Avon during the construction of a new credit union.

The bones were found about 5 p.m. Thursday and work was stopped. Avon Police Chief Corey Nellis says State Archaeologist Scott Anfinson has agreed to let work resume.

Stearns County Sheriff's Office Chief Deputy Bruce Bechtold says an archaeologist from St. Cloud State University told investigators the bones could be hundreds of years old. Sheriff John Sanner calls them "pre-European."
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Magnify

German Archaeologists Labor to Solve Mystery of the Nok

Matthias Schulz
Spiegel Online International
Sat, 22 Aug 2009 02:21 UTC
Image
© Bert Bostelmann The mysterious Nok culture lived in a large area of modern-day Nigeria around 2,500 years ago. Peter Breunig, an archaeologist from the University of Frankfurt am Main, is trying to unearth the secrets of their culture.
Some 2,500 years ago, a mysterious culture emerged in Nigeria. The Nok people left behind bizarre terracotta statues -- and little else. German archaeologists are now looking for more clues to explain this obscure culture.

Half a ton of pottery shards is piled on the tables in Peter Breunig's workroom on the sixth floor of the University of Frankfurt am Main. There are broken pots, other storage vessels, a clay lizard and fragments of clay faces with immense nostrils.

The chipped head of a statue depicts an African man with a moustache, a fixed glare and hair piled high up on his head. He looks gloomy, almost sinister. Just a few days ago, the ceramics traveled 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles) by sea from Nigeria, where they were unearthed.
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Magnify

Face to face with the 5,000-year-old 'first Scot'

Frank Urquhart
News.Scottsman.com
Sat, 22 Aug 2009 02:14 UTC
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© UnknownArchaeologist Jakob Kainz shows off the remarkable figure unearthed on the island of Westray. Picture: Historic Scotland.
At first glance, it appears little more than a tiny fragment of sandstone with a few crude scratches on the surface.

Yet this precious object is one of the most exciting archaeological discoveries made in Scotland - the earliest representation of a human face and body ever found north of the Border.

The face and its lozenge-shaped body - measuring just 3.5cm by 3cm - were carved on the Orkney island of Westray between 4,500 and 5,000 years ago.

The enigmatic figurine had lain undisturbed in the earth at the Links of Noltland - one of Orkney's richest archaeological sites - until just last week.
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Telescope

Storm Brews Over Titan's Tropical Desert


Saturn Daily / SPX
Fri, 21 Aug 2009 18:46 UTC
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© Gemini Observatory/AURA/Henry Roe, Lowell Observatory/Emily Schaller, Insitute for Astronomy, University of Hawai'iGemini North adaptive optics image of Titan showing storm feature (bright area).
While far from a tropical rain forest, the equatorial region of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, has recently displayed tantalizing evidence that the parched, dry desert can support large-scale storms.

The research, published in the journal Nature, announces the discovery of significant cloud formation (about three million square kilometers) within the moon's tropical zone near its equator. Prior to this event (in April 2008) it was not known whether significant cloud formation was possible in Titan's tropical regions.

This activity in Titan's tropics and mid-latitudes also seems to have triggered subsequent cloud development at the moon's south pole where it was considered improbable due to the sun's seasonal angle relative to Titan.

The evidence comes from a team of US astronomers using the Gemini North telescope and NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) both on Hawaii's Mauna Kea.
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Sherlock

Genetic Link Between Physical Pain And Social Rejection Found

Naomi Eisenberger & Shelley E. Taylor
Science Daily
Fri, 21 Aug 2009 13:20 UTC
UCLA psychologists have determined for the first time that a gene linked with physical pain sensitivity is associated with social pain sensitivity as well.

Their study indicates that variation in the mu-opioid receptor gene (OPRM1), often associated with physical pain, is related to how much social pain a person feels in response to social rejection. People with a rare form of the gene are more sensitive to rejection and experience more brain evidence of distress in response to rejection than those with the more common form.

The research was published Aug. 14 in the early online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and will appear in the print version in the coming weeks.
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Evil Rays

Gravitational wave detectors home in on their quarry

Ivan Semeniuk
New Scientist
Fri, 21 Aug 2009 17:13 UTC
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© Joe McNally/GettyThe hunt continues
For the first time, detectors on Earth have put a meaningful limit on the strength of gravitational waves - the ripples in space-time - created during the first instants of the universe's existence.

According to Einstein's general relativity, gravitational waves should have been emitted during inflation, when the universe expanded exponentially moments after the big bang. "[Gravitational waves] can tell us how the laws of physics operated at that time," says Vuk Mandic of the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. "This is very valuable because we cannot reproduce these high-energy conditions in the lab."

The latest measurement, made jointly by the US-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and VIRGO, its European counterpart, was sensitive to gravitational waves at frequencies around 100 hertz. But they found nothing. The null result, however, puts an upper limit on the energy density of gravitational waves in the infant universe, the most convincing yet. The results improve upon the limits set by the theory of big bang nucleosynthesis, based on the observed abundances of light elements such as hydrogen and helium (Nature, DOI: link).
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Rocket

Rude awakening for NASA's human space-flight dream

Rachel Courtland
New Scientist
Fri, 21 Aug 2009 17:06 UTC
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© NASA2020 vision, or just an illusion?
In a presentation that was likened to pulling back the curtain to reveal the Wizard of Oz, former astronaut Sally Ride stood before a crowd several blocks from the White House last week and unveiled the consequences of years of NASA scrimping.

Ride and a committee of nine other space-industry professionals were tasked by President Barack Obama in May to review NASA's plans for human space flight. The meeting, the final public gathering before the formal report is due at the end of August, painted a bleak picture of an agency mired in financial woes.

The US's mission to return to the moon, with flights scheduled to begin by 2020, will have to be put off to beyond 2028 if NASA is stuck with its current budget, Ride warned. And the agency's replacement for the 30-year-old space shuttle will not fly its first crew into space until almost three years after the planned retirement of the International Space Station (ISS) in 2016, when the outpost will be dismantled and its constituent pieces sent careening into the ocean.

"It will be difficult with the current budget to do anything that's terribly inspiring in human space flight," said committee chair Norman Augustine, previously CEO of Lockheed Martin.
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Telescope

Saturn moon's mirror-smooth lake 'good for skipping rocks'

Lisa Grossman
New Scientist
Fri, 21 Aug 2009 16:59 UTC
Image
© NASA/JPL/Space Science InstituteThe kidney-shaped feature in this image of Titan's south polar region is Ontario Lacus, which is thought to be filled with liquid hydrocarbons
The largest lake on Saturn's moon Titan is as smooth as a mirror, varying in height by less than 3 millimetres, a new study shows. The find, based on new radar observations, adds to a deluge of evidence that the moon's lakes are indeed filled with liquid, rather than dried mud.

"Unless you actually poured concrete and spread it really, really smoothly, you'd never see something like that on Earth," says team member Howard Zebker of Stanford University.

Astronomers have waffled on whether Saturn's largest moon is dry or wet, but the bulk of the evidence points to liquid lakes.

The radar on the Cassini spacecraft, which arrived at Saturn in 2004, turned up dark splotches at Titan's poles. The darkness in radar indicates those regions are very smooth, like the signal expected from the surface of a liquid lake.
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Network

Tech giants unite against Google

Maggie Shiels
BBC
Fri, 21 Aug 2009 11:27 UTC
library1
© BBCNot everyone in the coalition wants the deal blocked, some want revisions
Three technology heavyweights are joining a coalition to fight Google's attempt to create what could be the world's largest virtual library.

Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo will sign up to the Open Book Alliance being spearheaded by the Internet Archive.

They oppose a legal settlement that could make Google the main source for many online works.

"Google is trying to monopolise the library system," the Internet Archive's founder Brewster Kahle told BBC News.
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Robot

Artificial life is only months away, says biologist Craig Venter

Mark Henderson
The Times
Fri, 21 Aug 2009 08:51 UTC
chromosome
© unknownChromosome
Artificial life will be created within four months, a controversial scientist has predicted. Craig Venter, who led a private project to sequence the human genome, told The Times that his team had cleared a critical hurdle to creating man-made organisms in a laboratory.

"Assuming we don't make any errors, I think it should work and we should have the first synthetic species by the end of the year," he said.

Dr Venter, who has been chasing his goal for a decade, is already working on projects to use synthetic biology to create bacteria that transform coal into cleaner natural gas, and algae that soak up carbon dioxide and turn it into hydrocarbon fuels. Other potential applications include new ways of manufacturing medicines and vaccines.
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