Science & TechnologyS


Hourglass

Archeologists find 20,000-year-old hearth in Taitung


Taipei Times
Sun, 26 Jul 2009 08:44 UTC
Basiandong
© go2taiwan.net
A team from Academia Sinica has recently discovered a neolithic stone hearth in a cave in Taitung County that has been confirmed as the earliest human relic to have been discovered in Taiwan, Taitung County Government said yesterday.

After a year of investigation and research, the prehistoric archeology research team discovered the hearth at the Basiandong (Eight Deities) Historical Site (八仙洞遺址), which carbon-dating reveals to be 20,000 years old, an official with the county's Cultural and Tourism Bureau said.

"The sample proves that humans were living in Taiwan more than 20,000 years ago," the official quoted Tsang Chen-hua (臧振華), deputy director of Academia Sinica's Institute of History and Philology, who led the research team, as saying.
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Control Panel

Wireless power system shown off

Jonathan Fildes
BBC News
Thu, 23 Jul 2009 06:40 UTC
A system that can deliver power to devices without the need for wires has been shown off at a hi-tech conference. The technique exploits simple physics and can be used to charge a range of electronic devices over many metres.

Eric Giler, chief executive of US firm Witricity, showed mobile phones and televisions charging wirelessly at the TED Global conference in Oxford. He said the system could replace the miles of expensive power cables and billions of disposable batteries.

"There is something like 40 billion disposable batteries built every year for power that, generally speaking, is used within a few inches or feet of where there is very inexpensive power," he said.
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Rocket

Ion engine could one day power 39-day trips to Mars

Lisa Grossman
New Scientist
Sat, 25 Jul 2009 19:27 UTC
There's a growing chorus of calls to send astronauts to Mars rather than the moon, but critics point out that such trips would be long and gruelling, taking about six months to reach the Red Planet. But now, researchers are testing a powerful new ion engine that could one day shorten the journey to just 39 days.

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Telescope

Giant 'soap bubble' found floating in space

Jeff Hecht
New Scientist
Sat, 25 Jul 2009 19:13 UTC
Image
© Travis A. Rector/U of Alaska Anchorage/Heidi Schweiker/NOAOThe "Cygnus Bubble" nebula may actually be a cylinder that is being seen from one of its ends. This image was taken with the Kitt Peak Mayall 4-metre telescope in Arizona.
It looks like a soap bubble or perhaps even a camera fault, but the image at right is a newly discovered planetary nebula.

Planetary nebulae, which got their name after being misidentified by early astronomers, are formed when an aging star weighing up to eight times the mass of the sun ejects its outer layers as clouds of luminous gas (see Why stars go out in a blaze of glory). Most are elliptical, double-lobed or cigar-shaped, evolving after stars eject gas from each pole (see a gallery of the nebulae).

Dave Jurasevich of the Mount Wilson Observatory in California spotted the "Cygnus Bubble" while recording images of the region on 6 July 2008. A few days later, amateur astronomers Mel Helm and Keith Quattrocchi also found it.

The bubble, which was officially named PN G75.5+1.7 last week, has been there a while. A closer look at images from the second Palomar Sky Survey revealed it had the same size and brightness 16 years ago. Jurasevich thinks it was overlooked because it is very faint.
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Star

Building blocks of early Solar System came from nearby dying star

Kerensa McElroy
Cosmos Online
Fri, 24 Jul 2009 16:59 UTC
protoplanetary disk
© Gabriel Pérez Díaz, Servicio MultiMedia, Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, SpainArtist’s impression of the protoplanetary disk (right) during the dawn of our Solar System. A nearby dying star (on the left) sheds material into space (reddish gas).
Strong winds from a nearby dying star may have injected radioactive material into the early Solar System, according to a new model of star death.

The findings challenge the theory that radioactive isotopes trapped in meteorites from the dawn of our Solar System originated in a supernova. They also shed light on the origins of water on Earth, says a study in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science, and may help astronomers predict how common water is on other planets.

"In the past, most people have been convinced that the radioactive isotopes present in the young Solar System must have come from a supernova," said co-author Maria Lugaro, an astrophysicist from Monash University in Melbourne.
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Syringe

Chinese Experts Grow Live Mice from Skin Cells

Tan Ee Lyn
Reuters
Sat, 25 Jul 2009 02:42 UTC
Hong Kong- Chinese researchers have managed to create powerful stem cells from mouse skin and used these to generate fertile live mouse pups.

They used induced pluripotent skin cells, or iPS cells -- cells that have been reprogrammed to look and act like embryonic stem cells. Embryonic stem cells, taken from days-old embryos, have the power to morph into any cell type and, in mice, can be implanted into a mother's womb to create living mouse pups.

Their experiment, published in Nature, means that it is theoretically possible to clone someone using ordinary connective tissue cells found on the person's skin, but the experts were quick to distance themselves from such controversy.
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Telescope

Huge telescope opens in Spain's Canary Islands

Carlos Moreno
Associated Press
Fri, 24 Jul 2009 02:35 UTC
Image
© AP Photo/Carlos Moreno
One of the world's most powerful telescopes opened its shutters for the first time Friday to begin exploring faint light from distant parts of the universe.

The Gran Telescopio Canarias, a euro130 million ($185 million) telescope featuring a 34-foot (10.4-meter) reflecting mirror, sits atop an extinct volcano. Its location above cloud cover takes advantage of the pristine skies in the Atlantic Ocean.

Planning for the telescope began in 1987 and has involved more than 1,000 people from 100 companies. It was inaugurated Friday by King Juan Carlos. The observatory is located at 2,400 meters (7,870 feet) above sea-level where prevailing winds keep the atmosphere stable and transparent, the Canary Islands Astrophysics Institute said.
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Cow Skull

Taiwan digs up its oldest civilization

Ralph Jennings
Reuters
Thu, 23 Jul 2009 02:14 UTC
Researchers in Taiwan have discovered what they believe is the island's oldest civilization, dating back about 20,000 years and belonging to a pygmy-like people that came from China, Southeast Asia or beyond, the team leader said on Friday.

Taiwan's government-run Academia Sinica, which found more than 200 stone tools at the Ba Hsien Cave excavation site on the island's east coast, will return next year to seek clues on who was living there, leader Tsang Chen-hua said.

The civilization was probably a dark-skinned people similar to Negritos, a term that covers several ethnic groups of short stature in isolated parts of Southeast Asia, Tsang said. Their exact origin and migration route in Asia remain a mystery.
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Footprints

DNA confirms coastal trek to Australia

Nicky Phillips
ABC Science
Sat, 25 Jul 2009 00:56 UTC
DNA
© ReutersResearchers studied mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down the female line
DNA evidence linking Indian tribes to Australian Aboriginal people supports the theory humans arrived in Australia from Africa via a southern coastal route through India, say researchers.

The research, lead by Dr Raghavendra Rao from the Anthropological Survey of India, is published in the current edition of BMC Evolutionary Biology.

One theory is that modern humans arrived in Australia via an inland route through central Asia but Rao says most scientists believe modern humans arrived via the coast of South Asia.

But he says there has never been any evidence to confirm a stop-off in India until now.
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Info

Altar to Mysterious Deity Found at Roman Fort

Rossella Lorenzi
Discovery News
Sat, 25 Jul 2009 00:15 UTC
Image
© Adam Sanford Aerial-Cam 2009Shrine to a Mysterious God
This 1.5-ton, four-foot high carved stone relic shows a god-like figure standing on the back of a bull, with a thunderbolt in one hand and a battle axe in the other. It is a representation of the Anatolian god Juppiter of Doliche, which was believed to be a favorite deity among Roman soldiers, although there is no literary reference of the god.
A massive altar dedicated to an eastern cult deity has emerged during excavations of a Roman fort in northern England.

Weighing 1.5 tons, the four-foot high ornately carved stone relic, was unearthed at the Roman fort of Vindolanda, which was built by order of the Emperor Hadrian between 122-30 A.D.

The Romans built the defensive wall across the north of Britain from Carlisle to Newcastle-on-Tyne, to keep out invading armies from what is now Scotland.
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