Science & TechnologyS


Sherlock

The Dogu Have Something To Tell Us

Victoria James
Japan Times
Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:00 UTC
Venus
© Chino City Board of EducationTanabatake "Venus": A big-bottomed dogu from Nagano Prefecture, 2500-1500 B.C.
Neither human nor animal, Japan's Jomon sculptures are a mystery to be enjoyed

They are, according to their kanji, part earth and part spirit, somewhere between animal and human. They are dogu, the most remarkable products of Japan's Jomon Period, a Neolithic era before the advent of rice cultivation, when the Japanese archipelago supported higher population densities than any other pre-agricultural society in the world.

The dogu are humanoid forms shaped in clay, large and small, richly decorated or homely and unadorned. Some 18,000 of them have been unearthed to date, in Jomon-period settlements stretching from Kyushu, north through Tohoku to Hokkaido. The oldest are nearly 10,000 years old, the youngest a mere 2,300. Yet despite their advanced age, they're on the move.

Sixty-seven dogu, loaned from collections across Japan, have taken up temporary residence in the British Museum, London, for a new exhibition: "The Power of Dogu." In December, they return home for three months' display at Tokyo National Museum.
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Sherlock

Archaeologists Discover 'Count Dracula's' Cellar

Christopher Szabo
Digital Journal
Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:00 UTC
Dracula
© WikipediaDuke of Wallachia, Vlad III Tepes, "Dracula"
Archaeologists have found a cellar in the university town of Pécs in southern Hungary, which they believe to have belonged to Wallachian Duke Vlad III, more commonly known as "Dracula."

Tamás Fedeles, tutor of medieval and early modern history at Pécs University said his research showed that Vlad III Tepes alias "Dracula," lived in a two-story town house on what is now the city's central square.

Fedeles says the Duke of Wallachia (modern-day southern Rumania) owned the house in the 1460s and this is confirmed by a 1489 document that refers to it as "Drakulya House." The document contains a detailed description of the house and from this, Fedeles says the cellar most likely belonged to "Drakulya".

Olivér Gábor, a local archaeologist, agrees. He says this cellar was one of the most impressive medieval cellars found to date. In his opinion, further excavations could turn up interesting finds.
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Better Earth

Ancient Earth's Magnetic Field was Structured like Today's Two-Pole Model


Science Daily
Sat, 03 Oct 2009 00:00 UTC
basalt
© Catherine RoseThe well-exposed layering of basalt flows in formations near Lake Superior is aiding scientific understanding of the geomagnetic field in ancient times.
Princeton University scientists have shown that, in ancient times, the Earth's magnetic field was structured like the two-pole model of today, suggesting that the methods geoscientists use to reconstruct the geography of early land masses on the globe are accurate. The findings may lead to a better understanding of historical continental movement, which relates to changes in climate.

By taking a closer look at the 1.1 billion-year-old volcanic rocks on the north shore of Lake Superior, the researchers have found that Earth's ancient magnetic field was a geocentric axial dipole -- essentially a large bar magnet centered in the core and aligned with the Earth's spin axis.

Some earlier studies of these rocks had led other teams to conclude that the magnetic field of the ancient Earth had a far more complex structure -- some proposing the influence of four or even eight poles -- implying that present models of the supercontinents that relied on paleomagnetic data and an axial dipole assumption were wrong.
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Sherlock

Sacrifice to the Gods: A View into the Sacred Well of Chichen Itza

Julie Carmen
Examiner
Fri, 02 Oct 2009 14:59 UTC
Sacred Well
© Julie CarmenSacred Well
Mexico has a rich history of cultures and the archaeological sites they left behind. One such site, and perhaps the most eerie, is Chichen Itza with its sacred well. Chichen Itza, unceremoniously called "chicken pizza" by gringos and locals alike, is a spectacular Mayan site located on the Yucatan peninsula about 100 miles from Cancun.

There are many beautiful buildings including a huge step pyramid, known as El Castillo, built in the center of the site. Other important archaeological features at Chichen include the Observatory, which is aligned to astronomical occurrences, and the largest ancient ball court in Mesoamerica. (see slideshow)

There are various versions of the 3000 year-old ball game, the goal of which was to score a point by causing a ball to go through a circular stone ring on the sides of the court. The losing team would often be sacrificed. The game is wonderfully recreated nightly at Xcaret, a beautiful park located on the Yucatan coast.
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Sherlock

Mysterious Sailor Unearthed by Cranfield Archaeologists


PhysOrg
Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:00 UTC
Penny
© PhysOrgThe 'Made in Gosport, 1794 halfpenny.
Mystery surrounds a sailor who was unearthed as part of Cranfield University's dig at Royal Hospital Haslar this summer.

Dr Andrew Shortland and his team from Cranfield's Centre for Archaeological and Forensic Analysis have been working at the Gosport site for three years.

Two metal discs that were probably placed over his eyes before burial were found near the skeleton; one was a medal that featured a kneeling slave engraved with the phrase 'Am I not a man and a brother?' and the other was a halfpenny with the picture of a ship and the words 'Made in Gosport, 1794'. Unlike the rest of the burials that were set out all aligned one way, this particular sailor was placed at the far end of the grave yard and out of alignment.

The area to the south-west of the building was used to bury sailors and marines that died in the hospital from 1753. It is thought the grounds could have up to 15,000 burials.

Dr Shortland said: "We believe the kneeling slave coin was bought by people to show their support for the abolition of slavery so we think we have found a very earlier abolitionist sailor.
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Sherlock

Ardi's Secret: Did Early Humans Start Walking for Sex?

Jamie Shreeve
National Geographic Magazine
Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:00 UTC
skeleton
© J. H. MatternesThe world's oldest known skeleton of a human ancestor—4.4-million-year-old "Ardi," after her species Ardipithecus ramidus—is shown in an artist's conception flanked by a silhouette of a chimpanzee (left) and an Australopithecus afarensis, the early human ancestor species made famous by the Lucy skeleton.
The big news from the journal Science today is the discovery of the oldest human skeleton - a small-brained, 110-pound (50-kilogram) female of the species Ardipithecus ramidus, nicknamed "Ardi." She lived in what is now Ethiopia 4.4 million years ago, which makes her over a million years older than the famous Lucy fossil, found in the same region 35 years ago.

Buried among the slew of papers about the new find is one about the creature's sex life. It makes fascinating reading, especially if you like learning why human females don't know when they are ovulating, and men lack the clacker-sized testicles and bristly penises sported by chimpanzees.

One of the defining attributes of Lucy and all other hominids - members of our evolutionary lineage, including ourselves - is that they walk upright on two legs. While Ardi also walked on two legs on the ground, the species also clambered about on four legs in the trees. Ardi thus offers a fascinating glimpse of an ape caught in the act of becoming human.
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Magnify

Making People Move in Slow Motion

Victoria Gill
BBC News
Fri, 02 Oct 2009 03:00 UTC
Brain Waves
© SPLBrain waves appear to have a direct effect on behaviour
Researchers have used electrodes to make people move in slow motion.

The scientists "boosted" human subjects' brain waves - applying a small alternating current via electrodes on the volunteers' scalps.

These waves are patterns generated naturally by groups of neurons, or brain cells, firing in a rhythm.

In the journal Current Biology, the researchers described how their finding shows that brain waves directly affect human behaviour.

The results also reveal clues about movement disorders, such as Parkinson's disease, sufferers of which have difficulty making voluntary movements.

Lead author Professor Peter Brown, from University College London in the UK, said: "We induced the same patterns as you see in normal brains via electrodes."

He and his team boosted one specific form of relatively low frequency brain wave called a beta oscillation.
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Telescope

The Invisible Universe: Milky Way's Ghostly Halo

Casey Kazan
The Daily Galaxy
Tue, 06 Oct 2009 04:00 UTC
Milky Way
© K. Johnston, J. Bullock
Most of the mass of the Milky Way (and the Universe) is believed to be in the form of dark matter - an invisible component that has so far been only indirectly detected through the effects of its gravity on visible matter such as the dwarf galaxies orbiting at the outer edge of the Milky Way. In the theory of supersymmetry in particle physics, there is a corresponding dark-matter-particle candidate that interacts only weakly with the rest of the Universe, and is very difficult to detect directly.

It is now believed that about 95% of the Galaxy is composed of dark matter, which does not seem to interact with the rest of the Galaxy's matter and energy in any way except through gravity. The dark matter halo is more than ten times as much mass as all of the visible stars, gas, and dust in the rest of the galaxy. While the luminous matter we see in the night skymakes up approximately 90,000,000,000 solar masses, he dark matter halo is believed to include around 600,000,000,000 to 3,000,000,000,000 solar masses of dark matter.

The Milky Way's dark halo is believed to outweigh the galaxy's normal matter by around a factor of 20. While the inner edge of the luminous hypothesized outer ring that surrounds the spiral disk of the Milky Way may be around 120,000 light-years across, the dark halo encompasses and permeates even the enormous luminous halo of scattered individual stars and globular clusters, extending some 300,000 to 400,000 light years out from the galactic center in radius.
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Rocket

Plasma Rocket Could Travel to Mars in 39 Days

Lisa Zyga
PhysOrg
Tue, 06 Oct 2009 00:00 UTC
VASIMR rocket
© Ad Astra Rocket CompanyIn the VASIMR rocket, magnetic fields force the charged plasma out the back of the engine, producing thrust in the opposite direction.
Last Wednesday, the Ad Astra Rocket Company tested what is currently the most powerful plasma rocket in the world. As the Webster, Texas, company announced, the VASIMR VX-200 engine ran at 201 kilowatts in a vacuum chamber, passing the 200-kilowatt mark for the first time. The test also marks the first time that a small-scale prototype of the company's VASIMR (Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket) rocket engine has been demonstrated at full power.

"It's the most powerful plasma rocket in the world right now," says Franklin Chang-Diaz, former NASA astronaut and CEO of Ad Astra. The company has signed an agreement with NASA to test a 200-kilowatt VASIMR engine on the International Space Station (ISS) in 2013. The engine could provide periodic boosts to the ISS, which gradually drops in altitude due to atmospheric drag. ISS boosts are currently provided by spacecraft with conventional thrusters, which consume about 7.5 tonnes of propellant per year. By cutting this amount down to 0.3 tonnes, Chang-Diaz estimates that VASIMR could save NASA millions of dollars per year.
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Telescope

Invisible Hand in Invisible Matter


PhysOrg
Tue, 06 Oct 2009 01:00 UTC
Invisible Hand
© Conejero Misti & Mazlin
An international team of astronomers have found an unexpected link between mysterious 'dark matter' and the visible stars and gas in galaxies that could revolutionise our current understanding of gravity.

One of the astronomers, Dr Hongsheng Zhao of the SUPA Centre of Gravity, University of St Andrews, suggests that an unknown force is acting on dark matter. The findings are published this week in the scientific journal Nature.

Only 4% of the universe is made of known material. Stars and gas in galaxies move so fast that astronomers have speculated that the gravity from a hypothetical invisible halo of dark matter is needed to keep galaxies together. However, a solid understanding of dark matter as well as direct evidence of its existence has remained elusive.

Now the team believes that the interactions between dark and ordinary matter could be more important and more complex than previously thought, and even speculate that dark matter might not exist and that the anomalous motions of stars in galaxies are due to a modification of gravity on extragalactic scales.
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