Science & TechnologyS


Bulb

Pig study sheds new light on the colonisation of Europe by early farmers


Durham University
Wed, 05 Sep 2007 14:50 UTC
The earliest domesticated pigs in Europe, which many archaeologists believed to be descended from European wild boar, were actually introduced from the Middle East by Stone Age farmers, new research suggests.

The research by an international team led by archaeologists at Durham University, which is published today in the academic journal Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences USA, analysed mitochondrial DNA from ancient and modern pig remains. Its findings also suggest that the migration of an expanding Middle Eastern population, who brought their 'farming package' of domesticated plants, animals and distinctive pottery styles with them, actually 'kickstarted' the local domestication of the European wild boar.

While archaeologists already know that agriculture began about 12,000 years ago in the central and western parts of the Middle East, spreading rapidly across Europe between 6,800 - 4000BC, many outstanding questions remain about the mechanisms of just how it spread. This research sheds new and important light on the actual process of the establishment of farming in Europe.
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Telescope

World's biggest digital camera to look for Earth-shattering asteroids

David Shiga
Newscientist
Wed, 05 Sep 2007 09:55 UTC
The world's largest digital camera has been installed on a new telescope designed to hunt for potentially dangerous asteroids.
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People

Persistence of Myths Could Alter Public Policy Approach

Shankar Vedantam
The Washington Post
Wed, 05 Sep 2007 09:17 UTC
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently issued a flier to combat myths about the flu vaccine. It recited various commonly held views and labeled them either "true" or "false." Among those identified as false were statements such as "The side effects are worse than the flu" and "Only older people need flu vaccine."

Comment: True
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Magnify

Archaeologists discover ancient beehives

MATTI FRIEDMAN,
AP
Wed, 05 Sep 2007 02:44 UTC
Archaeologists digging in northern Israel have discovered evidence of a 3,000-year-old beekeeping industry, including remnants of ancient honeycombs, beeswax and what they believe are the oldest intact beehives ever found.

The findings in the ruins of the city of Rehov this summer include 30 intact hives dating to around 900 B.C., archaeologist Amihai Mazar of Jerusalem's Hebrew University told The Associated Press. He said it offers unique evidence that an advanced honey industry existed in the Holy Land at the time of the Bible.

Comment: For a good understanding of the Bible and what the real history of the Israelite people were in the times around 900 BC, read the book by Laura Knight-Jadczyk: The Secret History of the World

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Video

"Lucky Camera" Takes Sharpest Ever Images of Stars (And it's 50,000 Times Cheaper than Hubble)


University of Cambridge
Mon, 03 Sep 2007 13:08 UTC
A team of astronomers led by Cambridge University have taken pictures of the stars that are sharper than anything produced by the Hubble telescope, at 50 thousandths of the cost.

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), used a technique called "Lucky Imaging" to take the most detailed pictures of stars and nebulae ever produced - using a camera based on the ground.

©NASA
Standard telescope view

Images from ground-based telescopes are usually blurred by the Earth's atmosphere - the same effect that makes the stars appear to twinkle when we look at them with the naked eye.

The Cambridge/Caltech team, however, surpassed the quality of images taken from space by using a high-speed camera to take numerous images of the same stars at a rate of 20 frames per second. Because of fluctuations in the atmosphere, some of these were less smeared than others. The team then used computer software to choose the best images, and these were combined to create pictures far sharper than anything that has been taken from space.
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Rocket

Rekindled Space Race? Russians Set Sights on Moon, Mars

John Borland
Wired Science
Sun, 02 Sep 2007 04:43 UTC
Following hard after forays to claim the North Pole as its Soyuznational territory, Russia policymakers are setting their sights on destinations decidedly farther afield. Next stop: the Moon.
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Question

Martian Enigma: Strange Martian feature not a 'bottomless' cave but a deep pit


New Scientist
Sat, 01 Sep 2007 10:07 UTC
An extremely dark feature on Mars is probably just a pit - not the entrance to a deep cavern that future astronauts could call home, a new image reveals.

The 150- by 157-metre feature was first noticed in an image taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on 5 May 2007 using a camera called the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE).

Viewed from directly overhead, the dark spot showed no evidence of walls or a floor, leading some HiRISE scientists to suspect it was the opening to a cavern.
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Magnify

See a Lie Inside the Brain

Gigi Stone
ABC News
Thu, 30 Aug 2007 17:01 UTC
Harvey Nathan is on a mission to prove he's not a liar.

"It's a gut-wrenching experience, " Nathan said. "It's bad."

In 2003, a deli he owned in Charleston, S.C., burned to the ground. Nathan's insurance company accused him of deliberately setting the fire to collect money on his insurance policy and pressed criminal charges.

A judge dismissed the case, but Nathan says his insurance company still does not believe him and has yet to pay for the damage.

"It's frustrating to go through and know there's nothing you can do," Nathan said.

So Nathan went to a new company based in San Diego called No Lie MRI, which claims to use "the first and only direct detection of lies in human history" by actually mapping the portion of the brain that's used in deception.

©ABC News
The FMRI scan on the right detects a brain processing a false statement; the less colorful brain on the left corresponds to someone in the middle of a truthful statement.

Comment: "Now there may be a solution: a truth serum without the needles."

Unless the person that is being tested is a psychopath. One wonders what a psychopath's FMRI imaging would show.

From Robert Hare's 'Without Conscience':
Several years ago two graduate students and I submitted a paper to a scientific journal. The paper described an experiment in which we had used a biomedical recorder to monitor electrical activity in the brains of several groups of adult men while they performed a language task. This activity was traced on chart paper as a series of waves, referred to as an electroencephalogram (EEG). The editor returned our paper with his apologies. His reason, he told us: 'Frankly, we found some of the brain wave patterns depicted in the paper very odd. Those EEGs couldn't have come from real people."

Some of the brain wave recordings were indeed odd, but we hadn't gathered them from aliens and we certainly hadn't made them up. We had obtained them from a class of individuals found in every race, culture, society, and walk of life. Everybody has met these people, been deceived and manipulated by them, and forced to live with or repair the damage they have wrought. These often charming - but always deadly - individuals have a clinical name: psychopaths. Their hallmark is a stunning lack of conscience; their game is self-gratification at the other person's expense. Many spend time in prision, but many do not. All take more than they give.
To read and participate in a discussion on psychopaths go to 'Important Notes on Psychopathy' from the SOTT forum.

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Magnify

Secrets Of Red Tide Revealed


Science Daily
Fri, 31 Aug 2007 16:04 UTC
In work that could one day help prevent millions of dollars in economic losses for seaside communities, MIT chemists have demonstrated how tiny marine organisms likely produce the red tide toxin that periodically shuts down U.S. beaches and shellfish beds.

©NIWA; photo by M. Godfrey
The dramatic appearance of a red tide algal bloom at Leigh, near Cape Rodney, New Zealand.

In the Aug. 31 cover story of Science, the MIT team describes an elegant method for synthesizing the lethal components of red tides. The researchers believe their method approximates the synthesis used by algae, a reaction that chemists have tried for decades to replicate, without success.
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Calculator

Neutron accelerator sets world record

DUNCAN MANSFIELD
AP
Fri, 31 Aug 2007 04:52 UTC
OAK RIDGE, Tenn. - The $1.4 billion Spallation Neutron Source facility, though still powering up, has established a new mark as the world's most powerful accelerator-based source of neutrons for scientific research.

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory announced Thursday that the SNS's neutron beam reached 183 kilowatts on Aug. 11, surpassing the 163-kilowatt record held by the ISIS facility at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford, England.
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