Science & TechnologyS


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Archaeologists stumble on 8,000-year-old skeleton in Kenyir Lake


The Star Online
Sun, 07 Feb 2010 09:39 UTC
Hulu Terengganu - Archaeologists have stumbled upon human skeletal remains believed to be from the Mesolithic Age in the Bewah Cave in the Kenyir Lake area, according to a university professor.

The remains, believed to be those of a youth, are estimated to be between 8,000 and 11,000 years old, said Prof Datuk Dr Nik Hasan Shuhaimi Nik Abdul Rahman, deputy director of the Institute of the Malay World and Civilisation (ATMA) of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM).

The remains were uncovered by archaeologists from UKM, the Museums Department and the Terengganu Museum Board at a depth of 65 to 70 centimetres, he told reporters after a visit by Terengganu Menteri Besar Datuk Ahmad Said and reporters to the cave on Saturday.
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Cuneiform tablets, Seals and Tombs Unearthed in Syria

Ruaa AL-Jazaeri
Global Arab Network
Sun, 07 Feb 2010 09:34 UTC
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© Unknown
According to Syrian media, archaeological expeditions working at North-eastern Syria (Hasaka Province) have discovered several collective tombs and parts of seals with different shapes in addition to 27 cuneiform tablets dating back to 2500 BC.

Director of Hasska Antiquities Department Abdul-Masih Baghdo said that the British expedition working at the site of Tal Barak had studied many clay jars discovered at the site.

He added that the expedition also studied several archaeological findings to find out the location of the buildings dating back to the Babylonian and Mitanni periods.

Three collective tombs were also unearthed at the site of Tal Majnuna, dating back to the period between 3600 to 3800 BC.
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Wall with Maya Seignior Glyphs Discovered at Archaeological Zone


artdaily.org
Sun, 07 Feb 2010 09:28 UTC
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© EFE/Héctor Montaño/INAHThe discovery adds up to the sarcophagus recently uncovered by specialists.
Chiapas, Mexico.- A wall with a rich glyphic text that includes the complete name of the ruler that founded one of the most important Maya military seigniories was discovered in Tonina Archaeological Zone, in Chiapas. Epigraphists point out that the finding will bring in new information regarding Maya grammar, since it shows linguistic features yet to be deciphered.

The discovery adds up to the sarcophagus recently uncovered by specialists of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH). The wall dated in 708 AD was detected at El Palacio; a stucco portrait of K'inich B'aaknal Chaahk, the most powerful seignior of the ancient Maya city, was found as well.
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Beer

Explorer's Whiskey Found Buried Near South Pole

Lauren Frayer
AOL News
Sat, 06 Feb 2010 16:26 UTC
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© New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust
It's probably the most sought-after scotch in history - crates of whiskey buried in Antarctica by the famed explorer Ernest Shackleton a century ago. He abandoned them on a failed attempt to reach the South Pole in 1909, and they've been on ice - literally - ever since.

Researchers from New Zealand found the crates while restoring a hut Shackleton built and used during the expedition. He and his team were forced to cut short the trip and abandon supplies, including their booze, to sail away before winter ice trapped them there.

Comment:


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Sherlock

Stonehenge's secret: archaeologist uncovers evidence of encircling hedges


The Guardian
Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:08 UTC
stonehedge
english-heritage.org.uk
Survey of landscape suggests prehistoric monument was surrounded by two circular hedges.

The Monty Python knights who craved a shrubbery were not so far off the historical mark: archaeologists have uncovered startling evidence of The Great Stonehenge Hedge.

Inevitably dubbed Stonehedge, the evidence from a new survey of the Stonehenge landscape suggests that 4,000 years ago the world's most famous prehistoric monument was surrounded by two circular hedges, planted on low concentric banks.

The best guess of the archaeologists from English Heritage, who carried out the first detailed survey of the landscape of the monument since the Ordnance Survey maps of 1919, is that the hedges could have served as screens keeping even more secret from the crowd the ceremonies carried out by the elite allowed inside the stone circle.
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Meteor

Dark Ages: Did a comet impact cause global catastrophe around 500 A.D.?

Richard A. Lovett
National Geographic News
Wed, 03 Feb 2010 11:04 UTC
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© Detlev van Ravenswaay, Astrofoto, Peter Arnold Images, PhotolibraryAn asteroid hurtles toward Earth in an artist's rendering.
Double impact may have caused tsunami, global cooling

Pieces of a giant asteroid or comet that broke apart over Earth may have crashed off Australia about 1,500 years ago, says a scientist who has found evidence of the possible impact craters.

Satellite measurements of the Gulf of Carpentaria (see map) revealed tiny changes in sea level that are signs of impact craters on the seabed below, according to new research by marine geophysicist Dallas Abbott.

Based on the satellite data, one crater should be about 11 miles (18 kilometers) wide, while the other should be 7.4 miles (12 kilometers) wide.

For years Abbott, of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, has argued that V-shaped sand dunes along the gulf coast are evidence of a tsunami triggered by an impact.

"These dunes are like arrows that point toward their source," Abbott said. In this case, the dunes converge on a single point in the gulf - the same spot where Abbott found the two sea-surface depressions.

The new work is the latest among several clues linking a major impact event to an episode of global cooling that affected crop harvests from A.D. 536 to 545, Abbott contends.

According to the theory, material thrown high into the atmosphere by the Carpentaria strike probably triggered the cooling, which has been pinpointed in tree-ring data from Asia and Europe.

What's more, around the same time the Roman Empire was falling apart in Europe, Aborigines in Australia may have witnessed and recorded the double impact, she said.

Comment: For an in-depth study, read Laura Knight-Jadczyk's review of New Light on the Black Death: The Cosmic Connection.

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Cell Phone

7 Gadgets That Changed the World

Stephanie Pappas
TechNewsDaily
Sat, 06 Feb 2010 09:26 UTC
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© Unknown
Companies like to call their new gadgets revolutionary. Amazon did it when it introduced its Kindle e-book reader in 2007, and Apple CEO Steve Jobs used the word often last week while unveiling his company's new iPad - a tablet computer that also doubles as an e-reader. Jobs even threw in a "magical" here and there when describing the device.

Corporations aren't the only ones predicting that the digitization of books will bring great change. Take author and journalist Steven Johnson, who's Kindle moved him to envision a paperless future:
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Chalkboard

Scientists ID a Protein That Splices and Dices Genes


Science Daily
Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:59 UTC
A novel finding offers a clue as to how genes can have what you might call multiple personalities.

The research was recently described online in the journal Science by teams from the National Cancer Institute, The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and the University of Toronto.

Genes are long strings of DNA letters, but they can be cut and spliced to make different proteins, something like the word "Saskatchewan" can have its middle cut out to leave the word "Swan," its front, middle and end deleted to leave the word "skate," or its front and back chopped off to make the word "chew."
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Chalkboard

First Measurement of Energy Released from a Virus During Infection


Science Daily
Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:45 UTC
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© Carnegie Mellon University3D reconstruction of bacteriophage lambda with (left) and without (right) DNA.
Within a virus's tiny exterior is a store of energy waiting to be unleashed. When the virus encounters a host cell, this pent-up energy is released, propelling the viral DNA into the cell and turning it into a virus factory. For the first time, Carnegie Mellon University physicist Alex Evilevitch has directly measured the energy associated with the expulsion of viral DNA, a pivotal discovery toward fully understanding the physical mechanisms that control viral infection and designing drugs to interfere with the process.

"We are studying the physics of viruses, not the biology of viruses," said Evilevitch, associate professor of physics in the Mellon College of Science at Carnegie Mellon. "By treating viruses as physical objects, we can identify physical properties and mechanisms of infection that are common to a variety of viruses, regardless of their biological makeup, which could lead to the development of broad spectrum antiviral drugs."

Current antiviral medications are highly specialized. They target molecules essential to the replication cycle of specific viruses, such as HIV or influenza, limiting the drugs' use to specific diseases. Additionally, viruses mutate over time and may become less susceptible to the medication. Evilevitch's work in the burgeoning field of physical virology stands to provide tools for the rational design of less-specialized antiviral drugs that will have the ability to treat a broad range of viruses by interrupting the release of viral genomes into cells.
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Saturn

How the face of Pluto changed in just two years (do you think they can blame it on global warming?)


UK Daily Mail
Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:01 UTC
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© AFP/Getty ImagesChanging face: Scientists are baffled after new images of the surface of dwarf planet Pluto show it has become 20 per cent more red
Nasa scientists have been left stunned after detailed images of the surface of Pluto reveal it has dramatically changed colour over just a two-year period.

The Hubble Telescope captured the images, which are the most detailed and dramatic ever taken of the distant dwarf planet.

They revealed that the cosmic body, demoted from full planet status in 2006, is significantly redder than it has been for the past several decades.

The photos show a mottled world with a yellow-orange hut, but astronomers say it is 20 per cent more red than it used to be. At the same time its illuminated northern hemisphere is getting brighter, while the southern hemisphere has darkened.
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