Science & TechnologyS


Cow Skull

Bad Teeth Tormented Ancient Egyptians

Rossella Lorenzi
Discovery News
Thu, 03 Dec 2009 16:55 UTC
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© Getty Images
A systematic review of more than 3,000 mummy analyses reveal ancient Egyptians suffered from periodontal diseases, abscesses and cavities.

Worn teeth, periodontal diseases, abscesses and cavities tormented the ancient Egyptians, according to the first systematic review of all studies performed on Egyptian mummies in the past 30 years.

After examining research of more than 3,000 mummies, anatomists and paleopathologists at the University of Zurich concluded that 18 percent of all mummies in case reports showed a nightmare array of dental diseases.
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Satellite

California gives green light to space solar power

David Shiga
New Scientist
Tue, 08 Dec 2009 13:14 UTC
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© Mafic StudiosIn space solar power concepts, solar panel arrays would gather sunlight in orbit, then beam it to Earth
Energy beamed down from space is one step closer to reality, now that California has given the green light to a deal involving its sale. But some major challenges will have to be overcome if the technology is to be used widely.

On Thursday, the California Public Utilities Commission gave its blessing to an agreement that would see the Pacific Gas and Electric Company buy 200 megawatts of power beamed down from solar-power satellites beginning in 2016.

A start-up company called Solaren is designing the satellites, which it says will use radio waves to beam energy down to a receiving station on Earth.

The attraction of collecting solar power in space is the virtually uninterrupted sunshine available in geosynchronous orbit. Earth-based solar cells, by contrast, can only collect sunlight during daytime and when skies are clear.
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Sherlock

Ancient Roman City Found Off Libyan Coast


Indo-Asian News Service
Sun, 06 Dec 2009 07:00 UTC
Italian archaeologists have discovered the remains of an ancient Roman city submerged off the coast of Libya.

The remains of the city date back to the 2nd century A.D. and were found by archaeologists and experts from Sicily and the University Suor Orsola Benincasa of Naples, involved in the ArCoLibia archaeology project.

The discovery took place on the Cape of Ras Eteen on the western side of Libya's Gulf of Bumbah, as archaeologists were searching the area for shipwrecks and the remains of ancient ports.

Archaeologists instead found walls, streets, and the remains of buildings and ancient tombs. After a careful analysis, the experts realized the area extended for over a hectare.

Experts also said that the city could have been destroyed by a strong tsunami after an earthquake which struck the eastern coastal region of Cyrenaica in 365 A.D.

According to a statement released by Sicilian authorities, the city flourished through the manufacture of imperial dye, a purple pigment used to colour the clothing of the Roman elite.
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Info

Web searches for religious topics on the rise

A'ndrea Elyse Messer
Penn State
Mon, 07 Dec 2009 20:24 UTC
Religion is not just for churches, synagogues or mosques anymore -- it's a topic that is being actively searched for online, according to researchers at Penn State.

The researchers examined how people use search engines to locate religious information online. They analyzed more than 5.5 million searches collected from three Web search engines between 1997 and 2005 to investigate attributes of religious searching on the Web.

The religious landscape within the United States has been described as increasingly secularized and factionalized. However, Jim Jansen, associate professor, information sciences and technology and his colleagues, Andrea Tapia, assistant professor, information sciences and technology and Amanda Spink, professor, Queensland University of Technology, Australia, found from looking at religious Web searching behaviors that no evidence of secularization exists, and that religious and religious-related interests held steady and were generally mainstream.
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Bizarro Earth

Ancient human burial site shows evidence of mass cannibalism: 'Slaves were skinned and butchered like animals'

Fiona McRae
Daily Mail
Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:37 UTC
Evidence of mass cannibalism, in which men, women and children were on the menu, has been unearthed in Germany.

The 'intentionally mutilated' remains of up to 500 people were found in 7,000-year-old pits near the village of Herxheim in the south-west of the country.

Marks on the bones show that the bodies were skinned and the flesh removed using techniques normally used to butcher animals.

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Human bones at the site are evidence they had been butchered like animals

Some of the bones may have been smashed to allow the living to suck the marrow out of the dead, others were chewed and one researcher even believes the victims could have been 'spit-roasted'.
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Evil Rays

Best of the Web: Excluded from the Copenhagen Agenda: Environmental Modification Techniques (ENMOD) and Climate Change

Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research
Sat, 05 Dec 2009 16:23 UTC
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© UnknownTo what extent is 'climate change' the result of HAARP's activation? Are some natural catastrophes directed energy weapons at work in the Pathocracy's war against the people?
The manipulation of climate for military use
The term "environmental modification techniques" refers to any technique for changing - through the deliberate manipulation of natural processes - the dynamics, composition or structure of the Earth, including its biota, lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere, or of outer space. (Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques, United Nations, Geneva: 18 May 1977)

"Environmental warfare is defined as the intentional modification or manipulation of the natural ecology, such as climate and weather, earth systems such as the ionosphere, magnetosphere, tectonic plate system, and/or the triggering of seismic events (earthquakes) to cause intentional physical, economic, and psycho-social, and physical destruction to an intended target geophysical or population location, as part of strategic or tactical war." (Eco News)

"[Weather modification] offers the war fighter a wide range of possible options to defeat or coerce an adversary... Weather modification will become a part of domestic and international security and could be done unilaterally... It could have offensive and defensive applications and even be used for deterrence purposes. The ability to generate precipitation, fog and storms on earth or to modify space weather... and the production of artificial weather all are a part of an integrated set of [military] technologies." (US Air Force document AF 2025 Final Report)
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Compass

God's beliefs mirror our own

Steve Koppes
Futurity.org
Mon, 30 Nov 2009 06:31 UTC
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© Credit: Woodcut for “Die Bibel in Bilderm,” 1860, by Julius Shnorr von Carolsfeld
People often set their moral compasses according to what they presume to be God's standards, say researchers from the University of Chicago. "The central feature of a compass, however, is that it points north no matter what direction a person is facing," they note.

University of Chicago - Religious people tend to use their own beliefs as a guide in thinking about what God believes, but are less constrained when reasoning about other people's beliefs, according to a new study.

Nicholas Epley, professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business [1], led the research, which included a series of survey and neuroimaging studies to examine the extent to which people's own beliefs guide their predictions about God's beliefs. The findings - published in the Nov. 30 early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) [2] - extend existing work in psychology showing that people are often egocentric when they infer other people's beliefs.
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Info

Avatar's gaze illuminates social brain

Lucas Laursen
New Scientist
Fri, 04 Dec 2009 20:59 UTC
They may seem a little unsettling but the staring eyes of this female avatar were designed to grab your gaze and hold it, and also to obligingly follow where you look. By performing these actions with people placed inside a brain scanner, she has helped to demonstrate that guiding the gazes of others activates different brain areas than following.

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Blackbox

Jordan seeks Thai help to make artificial rain

Hani Hazaimeh
Jordan Times
Sun, 06 Dec 2009 20:19 UTC
Amman - The government is planning to benefit from Thailand's know-how in an artificial rainmaking process to be implemented during drought seasons in the Kingdom.

According to Thai Ambassador in Amman Isinthorn Sornvai, Jordan and Thailand will cooperate in a new technique adopted by the latter for purposes of artificial rain induction.

The Thai embassy in Amman has received a request from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs seeking cooperation between the two sides in this field through expediting a Jordanian team to Thailand to acquire the necessary knowledge and skills related in particular to a rain-induction technique that proved successful in the East Asian country, Sornvai told The Jordan Times on Saturday.
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Igloo

The Fiction Of Climate Science

Gary Sutton
Forbes.com
Sun, 06 Dec 2009 18:53 UTC
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© UnknownGary Sutton
Many of you are too young to remember, but in 1975 our government pushed "the coming ice age."

Random House dutifully printed The Weather Conspiracy ... coming of the New Ice Age. This may be the only book ever written by 18 authors. All 18 lived just a short sled ride from Washington, D.C. Newsweek fell in line and did a cover issue warning us of global cooling on April 28, 1975. And The New York Times, Aug. 14, 1976, reported "many signs that Earth may be headed for another ice age."

OK, you say, that's media. But what did our rational scientists say?
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