Science & TechnologyS


Magnify

Sinai fort may hold clues to ancient Egypt defenses

Alastair Sharp
Reuters
Fri, 08 May 2009 01:13 UTC
Qantara, Egypt - A military garrison of mud-brick and seashells unearthed in Egypt's Sinai desert may be key to finding a web of pharaonic-era defenses at the northeast gateway to ancient Egypt, archaeologists said on Thursday.

Archaeologists who discovered the 3,500-year-old garrison, where up to 50,000 soldiers could be posted in times of heightened tensions, say they hope inscriptions at Luxor's Karnak temple may serve as a guide to finding other outposts.

But knowing the location of the garrison at the ancient city of Tharu, in a formerly fertile area of Egypt where a branch of the Nile river once met the Mediterranean Sea, is key to understanding where to start looking.
Read More...
Laptop

Can a video game help us fight the swine flu - and other pandemics?

David Gewirtz
CNN.com
Thu, 07 May 2009 04:42 UTC
Sometimes, seeing the future requires a certain suspension of disbelief. In this case, a popular video game might provide important lessons about how to respond to a pandemic - and what might go wrong.

If you haven't heard of (or played) World of Warcraft, consider that its more than 11.5 million paying subscribers outnumber the populations of Israel and Ireland - combined.

World of Warcraft is a "massive multiplayer online role-playing game" and that's how this story of gamers and pandemic prediction begins. In WoW, thousands of real human beings log in and interact with one another, solving problems, fighting monsters, trading goods, teaming up in guilds - all in a very large, ongoing fantasy world.

Each human player is represented in the game by a cartoon alter-ego, each with unique skills, abilities, and comparative power. I, for example, play a level 71 warlock of the Horde. My wife has a level 71 priest, which is what healers are called in the game. When we play together, I tend to fight the bad monsters and she heals me while doing so, performing as a sort of in-game M*A*S*H doctor.

And this begins to show us how WoW simulates the real world. Player characters can get hurt or sick, and in-game doctors can heal the ill.
Read More...
Info

'Ancient text' seized in Israel


British Broadcasting Corporation
Thu, 07 May 2009 01:15 UTC
Image
The document seems to concern the property of a widow called Miriam
Israeli authorities say they have recovered a papyrus document which appears to be nearly 2,000 years old.

The document measures 15cm by 15cm (6in by 6in), and contains 15 lines of ancient Hebrew script.

It appears to be a legal instruction, transferring a widow's property to her late husband's brother.

It was seized from two Palestinian men in a sting operation at a Jerusalem hotel, police said. The two could face several years in jail.
Read More...
Blackbox

Quantum arguments for God veer into mumbo-jumbo

Andy Coghlan
New Scientist
Wed, 06 May 2009 19:21 UTC
Not only does God exist, but he intervenes in our lives - at least according to Francis Collins, the former head of the human genome project.

Collins recruits quantum physics to make his religious case, and has set up a website called Biologos. The site is funded by the Templeton Foundation, which seeks to find common ground between science and religion.

Laudable aim or not, the argument seems an odd one for Collins to make, given that he's such a renowned scientist and led such a pioneering project, one grounded so deeply in the principles of scientific enquiry and discipline.

Odd, because it undermines the case that science alone can explain how and when the world came to be. Collins sort of agrees, in his book The Language of God, but says that the Bible explains the "why" we came to exist. Fair enough. But he goes a stage further - and for me strays into the realms of mumbo-jumbo.
Read More...
Sun

Orange stars are just right for life

David Shiga
New Scientist
Wed, 06 May 2009 19:11 UTC
Image
© ESOOrange stars live longer than the sun and are less violent than red dwarf stars, making the planets around them good candidates for hosting life
The universe's best real estate for life may be around stars a little less massive than the sun, called orange dwarfs, according to a new analysis. These stars live much longer than sun-like stars, and have safer habitable zones - where liquid water can exist - than those of lighter red dwarf stars.

Stars similar in mass to the sun, categorised as a yellow dwarf, have received the most attention from planet hunters. But recent research suggests orange dwarfs may provide an even better hunting ground for life-bearing planets.

Edward Guinan of Villanova University in Pennsylvania, leads a team that has been studying how the properties of stars vary with mass. The team is using observations from a variety of sources, such as archival measurements from the ROSAT X-ray satellite, and more recent measurements from ground-based telescopes.
Read More...
Cookie

Mechanisms of self-control pinpointed in brain

Todd A. Hare
ScienceDaily
Wed, 06 May 2009 15:34 UTC
When you're on a diet, deciding to skip your favorite calorie-laden foods and eat something healthier takes a whole lot of self-control--an ability that seems to come easier to some of us than others. Now, scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have uncovered differences in the brains of people who are able to exercise self-control versus those who find it almost impossible.
Read More...
Satellite

Flashback Io's Volcano Tvashtar seen by New Horizons

Emily Lakdawalla
The Planetary Society Blog
Mon, 02 Apr 2007 08:00 UTC
This image is beautiful for many reasons. It was captured by the MVIC imaging spectrometer, part of the Ralph instrument, on New Horizons, as it left the Jupiter system on March 2, 2007.

Jupiter's moons Io and Europa
© NASAJupiter's moons Io and Europa.
Tvashtar, a Vulcano on Io, is erupting a plume, shining blue near its north pole. Lava can be seen glowing.
What you are looking at is two moons of Jupiter, Io and Europa, both in crescent phase, as New Horizons has passed by Jupiter and now must look back toward the inner solar system and the Sun to see it. Europa appears to be the larger of the two, but that's an optical illusion because of their different distances from the spacecraft: larger Io (3,630 kilometers in diameter) is 4.6 million kilometers from New Horizons, while smaller Europa (3,122 kilometers in diameter) is closer at 3.8 million kilometers away.
Read More...
Pills

Big Pharma is behind most flu vaccine studies

David Gutierrez
NaturalNews.com
Wed, 06 May 2009 07:27 UTC
Flu vaccine studies that are funded by industry are significantly more likely to be published in prestigious journals and to later be cited in the scientific literature than studies without such funding, according to a survey of 274 studies conducted by researchers from the Cochrane Vaccine Field in Italy, and published in the British Medical Journal.
Read More...
No Entry

Authorities seek to crack down on Craigslist


MSNBC.com
Wed, 06 May 2009 06:28 UTC
South Carolina gives site 10 days to pull sex ads or face prosecution

Craigslist.com, the wildly popular online community and classified bazaar, is coming under intense pressure from law enforcement authorities to eliminate what they say are ads for illegal sexual activities.

South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster sent the company a letter Tuesday giving site leaders 10 days to remove illegal content and prostitution ads or face prosecution, claiming managers had "knowingly allowed the site to be used for illegal and unlawful activity after warnings from law enforcement officials and after an agreement with 40 state attorneys general."
Read More...
Magnify

U2 comet dust predates solar system

Irene Klotz
Discovery News
Tue, 05 May 2009 12:52 UTC
An innovative plan to retrieve comet particles from earth's stratosphere has hit pay dirt, with the discovery that some predate the formation of the solar system.

"It was the largest number ever found," says Dr Henner Busemann of the University of Manchester's School of Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences.
Read More...