Science & TechnologyS


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Ancient Humans Left Evidence from the Party that Ended 4,000 Years Ago

Kelsey Jackson
News Bureau University of Missouri
Wed, 22 Jul 2009 23:27 UTC
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© UnknownGourd and squash artifacts were recovered from the sunken pit and platform in the Fox Temple at the Buena Vista site in central Peru.
Columbia, Mo. - The party was over more than 4,000 years ago, but the remnants still remain in the gourds and squashes that served as dishware. For the first time, University of Missouri researchers have studied the residues from gourds and squash artifacts that date back to 2200 B.C. and recovered starch grains from manioc, potato, chili pepper, arrowroot and algarrobo. The starches provide clues about the foods consumed at feasts and document the earliest evidence of the consumption of algarrobo and arrowroot in Peru.

"Archaeological starch grain research allows us to gain a better understanding of how ancient humans used plants, the types of food they ate, and how that food was prepared," said Neil Duncan, doctoral student of anthropology in the MU College of Arts and Science and lead author of the study that was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) this week. "This is the first study to analyze residue from bottle gourd or squash artifacts. Squash and bottle gourds had a variety of uses 4,000 years ago, including being used as dishes, net floats and symbolic containers. Residue analysis can help determine the specific use."
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Cyprus Digs Reveal First Settlements May Be Older Than Thought

Paul Tugwell
Bloomberg.com
Wed, 22 Jul 2009 23:22 UTC
Archaeologists in Cyprus found evidence that inhabitants of the Mediterranean island may have abandoned a nomadic lifestyle for agriculture-based settlements earlier than previously believed.

The excavations at the Politiko-Troullia site, near the capital Nicosia, unearthed a series of households around a communal courtyard, and proof of intensive animal husbandry and crop-processing, according to a statement today on the Web site of the Cypriot Interior Ministry's Public Information Office.
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Cell Phone

Could u txt me ur blood sample?

Colin Barras
New Scientist
Wed, 22 Jul 2009 15:45 UTC
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© Daniel FletcherThe cellphone microscope system
In the developed world, we take camera phones for granted as ways to record our lives - but in poorer countries they could be used to save lives, say bioengineers. The US team has designed a portable microscope that straps to a camera phone and can be used to diagnose potentially fatal diseases in blood and sputum samples.

Light microscopy is an essential healthcare tool that can help to diagnose dangerous diseases including malaria and tuberculosis. If necessary, digital images of cell samples provided by camera-equipped lab microscopes are shuttled through the internet to experts at other healthcare centres for further analysis.

But these technologies are often unavailable to those in remote regions or the developing world - although life-threatening diseases are often endemic in these places, says Daniel Fletcher at the University of California in Berkeley.
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Info

Girl with half a brain retains full vision

Ewan Callaway
New Scientist
Wed, 22 Jul 2009 15:39 UTC
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© Don Hammond / Design Pics Inc. / Rex FeaturesA girl born with half of her cerebral cortex missing sees perfectly
A 10-year old girl born with half of her cerebral cortex missing sees perfectly because of a massive reorganisation of the brain circuits involved in vision, a new study finds.

"It was quite a surprise to see that something like this is possible," says Lars Muckli, a neuroscientist at the University of Glasgow, UK, who was part of the team that imaged the girl's brain.

Doctors discovered that she was missing the right half at the age of three, after she began suffering from seizures.
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Powertool

Quake Fears Stall Energy Extraction Project

James Glanz
New York Times
Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:13 UTC
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© Jim Wilson/The New York TimesAltaRock Energy has a permit pending to fracture bedrock and extract energy at its drilling site near Anderson Springs, California.
Two Federal agencies are stopping a contentious California project from fracturing bedrock miles underground and extracting its geothermal energy until a scientific review determines whether the project could produce dangerous earthquakes, spokeswomen for the Energy and Interior Departments said on Monday.

The project by AltaRock Energy, a start-up company with offices in Seattle and Sausalito, Calif., had won a grant of $6.25 million from the Energy Department, and officials at the Interior Department had indicated that it was likely to issue permits allowing the company to fracture bedrock on federal land in one of the most seismically active areas of the world, Northern California.

But when contacted last month by the New York Times for an article on the project, several federal officials said that AltaRock had not disclosed that a similar project in Basel, Switzerland, was shut down when it generated earthquakes that shook the city in 2006 and 2007. AltaRock officials denied the accusation, saying they had been forthcoming about the results of the Basel project.
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Arrow Down

No crystal ball necessary: New tool IDs predictable economic variables

Matt Shipman
North Carolina State University
Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:03 UTC
You don't need a crystal ball to tell you what is going to happen next in the economy. You need a statistical model. A new method from North Carolina State University can help researchers determine which economic variables they should focus on by identifying whether a variable can be predicted.

The new method could be a breakthrough for economists and statisticians, says Dr. Mehmet Caner, an associate professor of economics at NC State and co-author of the paper unveiling the new research. "This could lead to much great insight into the national and global economy by providing the impetus to develop new forecasting models for those variables that can be predicted," he says.
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Meteor

Tiny diamonds on Santa Rosa Island give evidence of cosmic impact

Gail Gallessich
University of California - Santa Barbara
Tue, 21 Jul 2009 23:45 UTC
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© UCSBThis is James Kennett (left) and Douglas J. Kennett.
Santa Barbara, Calif. - - Nanosized diamonds found just a few meters below the surface of Santa Rosa Island off the coast of Santa Barbara provide strong evidence of a cosmic impact event in North America approximately 12,900 years ago, according to a new study by scientists. Their hypothesis holds that fragments of a comet struck across North America at that time.

The research, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), was led by James Kennett, professor emeritus at UC Santa Barbara, and Douglas J. Kennett, first author, of the University of Oregon. The two are a father-son team. They were joined by 15 other researchers.
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Laptop

This article will self-destruct: A tool to make online personal data vanish

Hannah Hickey
uwnews.org, University of Washington News and Information
Tue, 21 Jul 2009 23:38 UTC
Computers have made it virtually impossible to leave the past behind. College Facebook posts or pictures can resurface during a job interview. A lost cell phone can expose personal photos or text messages. A legal investigation can subpoena the entire contents of a home or work computer, uncovering incriminating, inconvenient or just embarrassing details from the past.

The University of Washington has developed a way to make such information expire. After a set time period, electronic communications such as e-mail, Facebook posts and chat messages would automatically self-destruct, becoming irretrievable from all Web sites, inboxes, outboxes, backup sites and home computers. Not even the sender could retrieve them.
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Info

Tires made from trees -- better, cheaper, more fuel efficient

Kaichang Li
Oregon State University
Tue, 21 Jul 2009 23:34 UTC
Corvallis, Ore. - Automobile owners around the world may some day soon be driving on tires that are partly made out of trees - which could cost less, perform better and save on fuel and energy.

Wood science researchers at Oregon State University have made some surprising findings about the potential of microcrystalline cellulose - a product that can be made easily from almost any type of plant fibers - to partially replace silica as a reinforcing filler in the manufacture of rubber tires.

A new study suggests that this approach might decrease the energy required to produce the tire, reduce costs, and better resist heat buildup. Early tests indicate that such products would have comparable traction on cold or wet pavement, be just as strong, and provide even higher fuel efficiency than traditional tires in hot weather.
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Sun

Longest Solar Eclipse of the 21st Century


Space Weather / Science at NASA
Tue, 21 Jul 2009 20:35 UTC
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© Fred Bruenjes of moonglow.netA totally eclipsed sunrise in Antarctica.
One one-thousand, 2 one-thousand, 3 one-thousand, 4 one-thousand...

Continue counting and don't stop until you reach 399 one-thousand. Did that feel like a long time? Six minutes and 39 seconds to be exact. That's the duration of this week's total solar eclipse--the longest of the 21st century.

The event begins at the crack of dawn on Wednesday, July 22nd, in the Gulf of Khambhat just east of India. Morning fishermen will experience a sunrise like nothing they've ever seen before. Rising out of the waves in place of the usual sun will be an inky-black hole surrounded by pale streamers splayed across the sky. Sea birds will stop squawking, unsure if the day is beginning or not, as a strange shadow pushes back the dawn and stirs up a breeze of unaccustomed chill.

Most solar eclipses produce this sort of surreal experience for a few minutes at most. The eclipse of July 22, 2009, however, will last as long as 6 minutes and 39 seconds in some places, not far short of the 7 and a half minute theoretical maximum. It won't be surpassed in duration until the eclipse of June 13, 2132.
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