Science & TechnologyS


Bulb

Neandertals Ate Their Veggies, Tooth Study Shows

Sara Goudarzi
National Geographic News
Mon, 28 Apr 2008 00:04 UTC


Neandertal skull
©Kenneth Garrett/NGS
A file photo shows the skull of a Neandertal woman dubbed Krapina 3 for the cave in the Balkans where her bones were unearthed. A new analysis of Neandertal remains found in a cave in Iraq provide the first direct evidence that the human ancestors ate plants, researchers say.

Seeds and other material found in the teeth of a Neandertal skeleton unearthed in Iraq provide the first direct evidence that the human ancestors ate plants, researchers say.

Little is known about diet of Neandertals (also spelled Neanderthals), although it's widely assumed that they ate more than just meat.
Read More...
Pharoah

Iraq Museum Reclaims 700 Stolen Artifacts

Bushra Juhi
Associated Press
Mon, 28 Apr 2008 23:52 UTC
Iraq's National Museum on Sunday welcomed the return of more than 700 antiquities stolen during the chaos that followed the U.S.-led invasion five years ago.

Golden necklaces, daggers, clay statues, pots, and other artifacts were displayed briefly during a ceremony attended by Syrian and Iraqi officials.

Syrian authorities seized the items from traffickers over the years and handed custody last week to an Iraqi delegation in Damascus.

Mohammad Abbas al-Oreibi, Iraq's acting state minister of tourism and archaeology who led the negotiations with Syria, said he plans to visit Jordan soon to persuade its authorities to turn over more than 150 items.
Read More...
Better Earth

'New' ancient Antarctic sediment reveals climate change history

Sherwood W. Wise, Jr.
Florida State University
Mon, 28 Apr 2008 23:47 UTC
Recent additions to the premier collection of Southern Ocean sediment cores at Florida State University's Antarctic Marine Geology Research Facility will give international scientists a close-up look at fluctuations that occurred in Antarctica's ice sheet and marine and terrestrial life as the climate cooled considerably between 20 and 14 million years ago.
Read More...
Telescope

Northern Lights Glimmer With Unexpected Trait


sciencedaily.com
Sun, 27 Apr 2008 20:49 UTC
An international team of scientists has detected that some of the glow of Earth's aurora is polarized, an unexpected state for such emissions. Measurements of this newfound polarization in the Northern Lights may provide scientists with fresh insights into the composition of Earth's upper atmosphere, the configuration of its magnetic field, and the energies of particles from the Sun, the researchers say.

If observed on other planets, the phenomenon might also give clues to the shape of the Sun's magnetic field as it curls around other bodies in the solar system.

Northern Lights
©iStockphoto/Andrew Dawson
The glow of Earth's aurora is polarized, an unexpected state for such emissions. Measurements of this newfound polarization in the Northern Lights may provide scientists with fresh insights into the composition of Earth's upper atmosphere, the configuration of its magnetic field, and the energies of particles from the Sun.
Read More...
Bug

Insects Use Plants Like A Telephone


sciencedaily.com
Sun, 27 Apr 2008 20:32 UTC
Dutch ecologist Roxina Soler and her colleagues have discovered that subterranean and aboveground herbivorous insects can communicate with each other by using plants as telephones. Subterranean insects issue chemical warning signals via the leaves of the plant. This way, aboveground insects are alerted that the plant is already 'occupied'.

Aboveground, leaf-eating insects prefer plants that have not yet been occupied by subterranean root-eating insects. Subterranean insects emit chemical signals via the leaves of the plant, which warn the aboveground insects about their presence. This messaging enables spatially-separated insects to avoid each other, so that they do not unintentionally compete for the same plant.

subterranean and aboveground herbivorous insects
©Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research
Illustration of communication between subterranean and aboveground herbivorous insects.
Read More...
Star

Galaxies Gone Wild: Dramatic Collisions Trigger Bursts Of Star Formation


sciencedaily.com
Sun, 27 Apr 2008 20:13 UTC
Interacting galaxies are found throughout the Universe, sometimes as dramatic collisions that trigger bursts of star formation, on other occasions as stealthy mergers that result in new galaxies. A series of 59 new images of colliding galaxies has been released from the several terabytes of archived raw images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to mark the 18th anniversary of the telescope's launch. This is the largest collection of Hubble images ever released to the public simultaneously.

Galaxy mergers, which were more common in the early Universe than they are today, are thought to be one of the main driving forces for cosmic evolution, turning on quasars, sparking frenetic star births and explosive stellar deaths. Even apparently isolated galaxies will show signs in their internal structure that they have experienced one or more mergers in their past. Each of the various merging galaxies in this series of images is a snapshot of a different instant in the long interaction process.

Galaxies
©NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration and A. Evans (University of Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University), K. Noll (STScI), and J. Westphal (Caltech))
The best 12 images in the collection.
Read More...
Star

Solar Blast


SpaceWeather.com
Sun, 27 Apr 2008 20:10 UTC
No sunspots? No problem. Yesterday the blank sun unleashed a solar flare without the usual aid of a sunspot. At 1408 UT on April 26th, Earth-orbiting satellites detected a surge of X-rays registering B3.8 on the Richter scale of solar flares. Shortly thereafter, SOHO coronagraphs photographed a coronal mass ejection (CME) billowing away from the sun:

The expanding cloud could deliver a glancing blow to Earth's magnetic field late on April 28th or 29th. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras when it arrives.
Read More...
Star

Korea: Cloned sniffer dogs go on show

Hyung-Jin Kim
The Guardian/Associated Press
Fri, 25 Apr 2008 17:21 UTC
The Korean customs service has unveiled a group of seven cloned Labrador retrievers that are being trained to sniff out explosives and drugs at ports and airports.
Read More...
Magnify

First cloned dog set to produce offspring: researchers


Agence France Presse
Fri, 25 Apr 2008 17:17 UTC
Seoul - The world's first cloned dog will become a father next month in the first breeding of cloned canines, South Korean researchers said Friday.

snuppy dog
©AFP
Snuppy -- an Afghan hound -- was the world's first cloned dog
Read More...
Bulb

Princeton scientists discover exotic quantum state of matter


Princeton University
Thu, 24 Apr 2008 12:31 UTC
A team of scientists from Princeton University has found that one of the most intriguing phenomena in condensed-matter physics -- known as the quantum Hall effect -- can occur in nature in a way that no one has ever before seen.

Writing in the April 24 issue of Nature, the scientists report that they have recorded this exotic behavior of electrons in a bulk crystal of bismuth-antimony without any external magnetic field being present. The work, while significant in a fundamental way, could also lead to advances in new kinds of fast quantum or "spintronic" computing devices, of potential use in future electronic technologies, the authors said.

"We had the right tool and the right set of ideas," said Zahid Hasan, an assistant professor of physics who led the research and propelled X-ray photons at the surface of the crystal to find the effect. The team used a high-energy, accelerator-based technique called "synchrotron photo-electron spectroscopy."

And, Hasan added, "We had the right material."
Read More...