Science & TechnologyS


Blackbox

Decoding antiquity: Eight scripts that still can't be read

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© Museo di Villa Giulia, RomeThe Etruscan Alphabet - Shown here are two of three gold plaques from Pyrgi, circa 500BC. The plaque on the left is written in Etruscan, while the one on the right is written in Phoenician. They both describe the same event - the dedication by the Etruscan ruler Thefarie Velianas of a cult place
Writing is one of the greatest inventions in human history. Perhaps the greatest, since it made history possible. Without writing, there could be no accumulation of knowledge, no historical record, no science - and of course no books, newspapers or internet.

The first true writing we know of is Sumerian cuneiform - consisting mainly of wedge-shaped impressions on clay tablets - which was used more than 5000 years ago in Mesopotamia. Soon afterwards writing appeared in Egypt, and much later in Europe, China and Central America. Civilisations have invented hundreds of different writing systems. Some, such as the one you are reading now, have remained in use, but most have fallen into disuse.

These dead scripts tantalise us. We can see that they are writing, but what do they say?

Saturn

Exoplanet found by measuring star's sideways shift

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© NASA/JPL-CaltechA planet six times as massive as Jupiter (left) has been found around the red dwarf star VB 10 (right). The star is the lightest known to host a planet
An extrasolar planet has been found by observing subtle changes in a star's position in the sky for the first time. The technique, called astrometry, is best suited to finding planets at great distances from their stars, complementing more common techniques, which tend to turn up planets orbiting their stars at close range.

The planet's star is also the lightest known to host a planet, and researchers hope other such discoveries will shed light on how common planets are around low-mass stars, which far outnumber their higher-mass cousins.

Info

Vikings visited Canadian Arctic

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© P. Sutherland, Canadian Museum of Civilization, Canwest News ServiceThis May 26 handout photo shows a Nanook archeological site on Baffin Island. Traces of a stone-and-sod wall found at the site, if confirmed, would represent only the second location in the New World where Norse seafarers -- popularly known as Vikings -- built a dwelling.
Artifacts suggest Norse settlement in Nunavut.

One of Canada's top Arctic archeologists says the remnants of a stone-and-sod wall unearthed on southern Baffin Island may be traces of a shelter built more than 700 years ago by Norse seafarers, a stunning find that would be just the second location in the New World with evidence of a Viking-built structure.

The tantalizing signs of a possible medieval Norse presence in Nunavut were found at the previously examined Nanook archeological site, about 200 kilometres southwest of Iqaluit, where people of the now-extinct Dorset culture once occupied a stretch of Hudson Strait shoreline.

A UNESCO World Heritage site at northern Newfoundland's L'Anse aux Meadows -- about 1,500 kilometres southeast of the Nanook dig -- is the only confirmed location of a Viking settlement in North America. There, about 1,000 years ago, it's believed a party of Norse voyagers from Greenland led by Leif Eiriksson built sod-and-wood dwellings before abandoning their colonization attempt under threat from hostile natives they called "Skraelings."

Laptop

Microsoft revamps search engine, dubbed "Bing"

Seattle - Microsoft Corp is revamping its search engine to counter the dominance of Google Inc in the Web search and related advertising business.

The world's largest software company, which is still in talks with Yahoo Inc over a potential partnership, has long been determined to play a major role in the lucrative Web search market after watching upstart Google take a stranglehold.

Microsoft, which has been testing the search engine internally under the name Kumo for several months, plans to introduce the new service, re-christened "Bing," over the next few days, with a full launch next Wednesday. The service will be available at www.bing.com.

Info

GM monkey passes jellyfish gene to offspring

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© E.Sasaki et al. 2009Marmoset offspring from a genetically modified father have feet that glow green on the soles when observed in UV light
A genetically engineered monkey has for the first time passed an introduced "alien" gene to its offspring.

Since breeding is cheaper and easier than genetic engineering, the researchers hope the breakthrough will herald development of monkeys that are better models of human disease than genetically modified mice.

Erika Sasaki of the Central Institute for Experimental Animals in Kawasaki, Japan, gave marmosets a jellyfish gene that made them glow green under UV light.

Telescope

Yin-yang planet has phases like the moon

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© Leiden Observatory/Leiden UniversityThe extrasolar planet Corot-1b has phases like the moon's
A super-hot planet 1500 light years away has been seen waxing and waning like the moon. The discovery hints that hot gas giants come in two varieties.

The phases of Corot 1b were detected by a team at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, who analysed changes in the amount of red light from the system. A small component of the light smoothly dims and brightens as the planet orbits. This is probably alternation between the dark of Corot 1b's relatively cool night side and the glow of its red-hot day side, which permanently faces its star and reaches a temperature of about 2400 kelvin (Nature, DOI: link).

Evil Rays

Rare Radio Supernova In Nearby Galaxy Is Nearest Supernova In Five Years

radio supernova M82
© UnknownThe radio supernova was discovered on April 8 in M82, a small irregular galaxy located nearly 12 million light years from Earth in the M81 galaxy group, by the Very Large Array, a New Mexico facility operated by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory
The chance discovery last month of a rare radio supernova - an exploding star seen only at radio wavelengths and undetected by optical or X-ray telescopes - underscores the promise of new, more sensitive radio surveys to find supernovas hidden by gas and dust.

"This supernova is the nearest supernova in five years, yet is completely obscured in optical, ultraviolet and X-rays due to the dense medium of the galaxy," said Geoffrey Bower, assistant professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, and coauthor of a paper describing the discovery in the June issue of the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. "This just popped out; in the future, we want to go from discovery of radio supernovas by accident to specifically looking for them."

Magnify

Research Examines How Past Communities Coped With Climate Change

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© Jago CooperJago Cooper and Nelson Torna, who originally uncovered the excavation site.
Research led by the University of Leicester suggests people today and in future generations should look to the past in order to mitigate the worst effects of climate change.

The dangers of rising sea levels, crop failures and extreme weather were all faced by our ancestors who learnt to adapt and survive in the face of climate change.

Dr Jago Cooper, of the School of Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Leicester, has been studying the archaeology of climate change in the Caribbean as part of a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship.

The international study involvess researchers from Britain, Cuba and Canada. Dr Cooper said: "Populations in the Caribbean, from 5000 BC to AD 1492, successfully lived through a 5m rise in relative sea levels, marked variation in annual rainfall and periodic intensification of hurricane activity.

Magnify

Gypsum Cave holds important glimpses of the past

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© (Courtesy Amy Gilreath, Far West Anthropological Work at the mouth of Gypsum Cave in 2004
When he excavated Gypsum Cave in the 1930s, archeologist Mark Harrington concluded that humans and Late Pleistocene animals used the cave around the same time.It was an astounding theory, because it would have made the cave, which is in the Frenchman Mountains east of Las Vegas, one of the oldest human habitation sites in North America.

More recently technology indicates the humans came much later than Harrington supposed, but the cave is still an important archeological and paleontological site, members of Friends of Gold Butte heard last Tuesday,

Amy Gilreath of Far West Anthropological Research Group spoke to the group about the research she and colleague D. Craig Young carried out in 2004.

Gypsum Cave is about 10 miles east of Las Vegas, and a popular site. It is also adjacent to a utility corridor. When another power line was proposed through the area, the Bureau of Land Management required an assessment of the cave's value and the risk posed by increased traffic.

Control Panel

KOBIAN: Emotional Humanoid Robot

Researchers from Waseda University have teamed up with Kyushu-based robot manufacturer tmsuk to develop a humanoid robot that uses its entire body to express a variety of emotions.