Italian archeologists have found in Egypt what may be the world's oldest indoor bowling alley, Egyptian media said Monday.
A spacious room, with a shallow lane running through into a pit and two heavy stone balls lying nearby, was found at an ancient site in the province of Al-Fayyum, 90 kilometers (56 miles) south of Cairo, and appears to be man's first attempt to create an area for a game that was to become the prototype for modern-day bowling, archeologists taking part in the excavations were reported as saying.
The site dates back to the Ptolemaic era, which began in 332 B.C with Ptolemy I Soter declaring himself Pharaoh of Egypt following Alexander the Great's conquest, and ended with the Roman conquest in 30 B.C.
Science & Technology
Certain army ants in the rainforests of Central and South America conduct spectacular predatory raids containing up to 200,000 foraging ants. Remarkably, some ants use their bodies to plug potholes in the trail leading back to the nest, making a flatter surface so that prey can be delivered to the developing young at maximum speed.
The raid always remains connected to the nest by a trail of forager traffic, along which prey-laden foragers run back to run back to the nest. This trail can be extremely uneven and full of 'pot holes' as it passes over leaves and branches on the forest floor.
The study, by Dr Scott Powell and Professor Nigel Franks at the University of Bristol, and reported in the June issue of Animal Behaviour, shows that these living 'plugs' improve the quality of the surface. This increases the overall speed of the traffic and results in an increase in the amount of prey delivered to the nest each day.
Professor Franks said: "I think every road user who has ever inwardly cursed as their vehicle bounced across a pothole - jarring every bone in their body - will identify with this story. When it comes to rapid road repairs, the ants have their own do-it-yourself highways agency."
The raid always remains connected to the nest by a trail of forager traffic, along which prey-laden foragers run back to run back to the nest. This trail can be extremely uneven and full of 'pot holes' as it passes over leaves and branches on the forest floor.
The study, by Dr Scott Powell and Professor Nigel Franks at the University of Bristol, and reported in the June issue of Animal Behaviour, shows that these living 'plugs' improve the quality of the surface. This increases the overall speed of the traffic and results in an increase in the amount of prey delivered to the nest each day.
Professor Franks said: "I think every road user who has ever inwardly cursed as their vehicle bounced across a pothole - jarring every bone in their body - will identify with this story. When it comes to rapid road repairs, the ants have their own do-it-yourself highways agency."
Human remains found in a 1,400-year-old Chinese tomb belonged to a man of European origin, DNA evidence shows.
Chinese scientists who analyzed the DNA of the remains say the man, named Yu Hong, belonged to one of the oldest genetic groups from western Eurasia.
Chinese scientists who analyzed the DNA of the remains say the man, named Yu Hong, belonged to one of the oldest genetic groups from western Eurasia.
The discovery of a major prehistoric site where experts believe an open-air royal temple once stood has stalled construction of a controversial four-lane highway in Ireland.
A large circular enclosure estimated to be at least 2,000 years old was revealed at Lismullin in County Meath, prior to work on a 37-mile-long (60-kilometer-long) road northwest of Dublin (see map of Ireland).
The find is located just 1.25 miles (2 kilometers) from the Hill of Tara, once the seat of power of Ireland's Celtic kings, and likely represents a ritual site, according to government archaeologists attached to the road project.
The new road is intended to ease congestion along a busy commuter route to Dublin but is fiercely opposed by campaigners who say it threatens a treasure trove of ancient remains.
Work was halted last month after archaeologists with the National Roads Authority (NRA) reported a large timber monument 80 meters (262 feet) in diameter, with a 16-meter-round (52-foot-round) structure inside thought to have been a temple.
A large circular enclosure estimated to be at least 2,000 years old was revealed at Lismullin in County Meath, prior to work on a 37-mile-long (60-kilometer-long) road northwest of Dublin (see map of Ireland).
The find is located just 1.25 miles (2 kilometers) from the Hill of Tara, once the seat of power of Ireland's Celtic kings, and likely represents a ritual site, according to government archaeologists attached to the road project.
The new road is intended to ease congestion along a busy commuter route to Dublin but is fiercely opposed by campaigners who say it threatens a treasure trove of ancient remains.
Work was halted last month after archaeologists with the National Roads Authority (NRA) reported a large timber monument 80 meters (262 feet) in diameter, with a 16-meter-round (52-foot-round) structure inside thought to have been a temple.
The frequency of intense hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean appears to be closely connected to long-term trends in the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the West African monsoon, according to new research from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). Geologists Jeff Donnelly and Jonathan Woodruff made that discovery while assembling the longest-ever record of hurricane strikes in the Atlantic basin.
Donnelly and Woodruff began reconstructing the history of land-falling hurricanes in the Caribbean in 2003 by gathering sediment-core samples from Laguna Playa Grande on Vieques (Puerto Rico), an island extremely vulnerable to hurricane strikes. They examined the cores for evidence of storm surges - distinctive layers of coarse-grained sands and bits of shell interspersed between the organic-rich silt usually found in lagoon sediments - and pieced together a 5,000-year chronology of land-falling hurricanes in the region.
In examining the record, they found large and dramatic fluctuations in hurricane activity, with long stretches of frequent strikes punctuated by lulls that lasted many centuries. The team then compared their new hurricane record with existing paleoclimate data on El Niño, the West African monsoon, and other global and regional climate influences. They found the number of intense hurricanes (category 3, 4, and 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale) typically increased when El Niño was relatively weak and the West African monsoon was strong.
Donnelly and Woodruff began reconstructing the history of land-falling hurricanes in the Caribbean in 2003 by gathering sediment-core samples from Laguna Playa Grande on Vieques (Puerto Rico), an island extremely vulnerable to hurricane strikes. They examined the cores for evidence of storm surges - distinctive layers of coarse-grained sands and bits of shell interspersed between the organic-rich silt usually found in lagoon sediments - and pieced together a 5,000-year chronology of land-falling hurricanes in the region.
In examining the record, they found large and dramatic fluctuations in hurricane activity, with long stretches of frequent strikes punctuated by lulls that lasted many centuries. The team then compared their new hurricane record with existing paleoclimate data on El Niño, the West African monsoon, and other global and regional climate influences. They found the number of intense hurricanes (category 3, 4, and 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale) typically increased when El Niño was relatively weak and the West African monsoon was strong.
The poet Dylan Thomas wrote, "The force that drives the green fuse drives the flower." Now, a team of international scientists has unlocked some of the secrets of that force: it has described the rules that govern how plants arrange flowers into branching structures, known in technical terms as 'inflorescences.' Nature has literally thousands of examples of inflorescences, which include the flower clusters of Mountain Ash, the tiny filigreed blossoms on Lilac and the stalkier inflorescences in Fireweed.
Published in the May 24 online edition of the journal Science, the team's paper outlines the mathematical model, molecular genetics and evolutionary processes that work together to create inflorescences as different as Forget-Me-Not and Snapdragon.
"This is a unifying theory that provides an explanation for the diversity of inflorescences we see in nature," says Dr. Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz, the paper's lead author and a University of Calgary computer scientist. "It was thought that separate mechanisms explained the many differences in form and development of inflorescences in nature, but now we see that these are just facets of the same mechanism."
Published in the May 24 online edition of the journal Science, the team's paper outlines the mathematical model, molecular genetics and evolutionary processes that work together to create inflorescences as different as Forget-Me-Not and Snapdragon.
"This is a unifying theory that provides an explanation for the diversity of inflorescences we see in nature," says Dr. Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz, the paper's lead author and a University of Calgary computer scientist. "It was thought that separate mechanisms explained the many differences in form and development of inflorescences in nature, but now we see that these are just facets of the same mechanism."
You might call it a tale of "monkey see, monkey do." Researchers at Ohio University have found that after primates evolved the ability to see red, they began to develop red and orange skin and hair.
Humans, apes and Old World monkeys, such as macaques and leaf monkeys, all have trichromatic vision, which allows these primates to distinguish between blue, green and red colors. Primatologists have disagreed about whether this type of color vision initially evolved to help early primates forage for ripe fruit and young, red leaves among green foliage or evolved to help them select mates.
Now a new study published online this week in American Naturalist by Ohio University researchers André Fernandez and Molly Morris rules out an initial advantage for mating and suggests that red-color vision evolved for non-social purposes, possibly foraging. But once developed, trichromaticism drove the evolution of red skin and hair through sexual selection.
Humans, apes and Old World monkeys, such as macaques and leaf monkeys, all have trichromatic vision, which allows these primates to distinguish between blue, green and red colors. Primatologists have disagreed about whether this type of color vision initially evolved to help early primates forage for ripe fruit and young, red leaves among green foliage or evolved to help them select mates.
Now a new study published online this week in American Naturalist by Ohio University researchers André Fernandez and Molly Morris rules out an initial advantage for mating and suggests that red-color vision evolved for non-social purposes, possibly foraging. But once developed, trichromaticism drove the evolution of red skin and hair through sexual selection.
Enormous sound waves seen rippling through a galaxy cluster are heating up its gas, new observations suggest. This may solve a longstanding puzzle about why such clusters refuse to cool down.
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| ©University of Cambridge - Chandra Observatory |
| Sound waves ripple through a galaxy cluster in this image from the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Bright x-rays from the gas near the centre has been filtered out to make the ripples more visible |
Twenty two years ago, safety concerns closed Tennessee Valley's the Browns Ferry nuclear power plant. After 8.1 billion dollars and one day's operation it is closing again.
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| ©Tennessee Valley Authority |
| Terminally ill Brown's Ferry nucleaer reactor |
Plasma astrophysicists at the University of Warwick have found that key information about the Sun's 'storm season' is being broadcast across the solar system in a fractal snapshot imprinted in the solar wind. This research opens up new ways of looking at both space weather and the unstable behaviour that affects the operation of fusion powered power plants.
Fractals, mathematical shapes that retain a complex but similar patterns at different magnifications, are frequently found in nature from snowflakes to trees and coastlines. Now Plasma Astrophysicists in the University of Warwick's Centre for Fusion, Space and Astrophysics have devised a new method to detect the same patterns in the solar wind.
The researchers, led by Professor Sandra Chapman, have also been able to directly tie these fractal patterns to the Sun's 'storm season'. The Sun goes through a solar cycle roughly 11 years long. The researchers found the fractal patterns in the solar wind occur when the Sun was at the peak of this cycle when the solar corona was at its most active, stormy and complex - sunspot activity, solar flares etc. When the corona was quieter no fractal patterns were found in the solar wind only general turbulence.
Fractals, mathematical shapes that retain a complex but similar patterns at different magnifications, are frequently found in nature from snowflakes to trees and coastlines. Now Plasma Astrophysicists in the University of Warwick's Centre for Fusion, Space and Astrophysics have devised a new method to detect the same patterns in the solar wind.
The researchers, led by Professor Sandra Chapman, have also been able to directly tie these fractal patterns to the Sun's 'storm season'. The Sun goes through a solar cycle roughly 11 years long. The researchers found the fractal patterns in the solar wind occur when the Sun was at the peak of this cycle when the solar corona was at its most active, stormy and complex - sunspot activity, solar flares etc. When the corona was quieter no fractal patterns were found in the solar wind only general turbulence.
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