Science & TechnologyS


Pharoah

Statue head of King Tut's grandfather found in Luxor


france24.com
Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:16 UTC
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© Egypt's Antiquities DepartmentA picture released by Egypt's Antiquities Department on February 28, 2010 shows a 3,000 year-old red granite head of King Amenhotep III. Egyptian archaeologists have unearthed a colossal statue head of the pharaoh whom DNA tests revealed last week was King Tutankhamun's grandfather, the government has said.
Egyptian archaeologists have unearthed a colossal statue head of the pharaoh whom DNA tests revealed last week was King Tutankhamun's grandfather, the government said on Sunday.

The red granite head of King Amenhotep III, part of a larger 3,000 year-old statue, was discovered at the site of the pharaoh's funerary temple in Luxor, Egypt's culture ministry said in a statement.

"The newly discovered head is intact and measures 2.5 metres (8.2 foot) high," antiquities chief Zahi Hawass was quoted as saying.
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Info

Syria's Stonehenge: Neolithic stone circles, alignments and possible tombs discovered


The Independent
Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:00 UTC
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© Dr. Robert MasonOne of the corbelled stone structures found in the Syrian desert. Archaeologists suspect that its an ancient stone tomb. In the front of it are the remains of a stone circle.
For Dr. Robert Mason, an archaeologist with the Royal Ontario Museum, it all began with a walk last summer. Mason conducts work at the Deir Mar Musa al-Habashi monastery, out in the Syrian Desert. Finds from the monastery, which is still in use today by monks, date mainly to the medieval period and include some beautiful frescoes.

Dr. Mason explains that he "went for a walk" into the eastern perimeter of the site - an area that hasn't been explored by archaeologists. What he discovered is an ancient landscape of stone circles, stone alignments and what appear to be corbelled roof tombs. From stone tools found at the site, it's likely that the features date to some point in the Middle East's Neolithic Period - a broad stretch of time between roughly 8500 BC - 4300 BC.

It is thought that in Western Europe megalithic construction involving the use of stone only dates back as far as ca. 4500 BC. This means that the Syrian site could well be older than anything seen in Europe.
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Fish

Scientists rethink old whale tales

Kelly Shiers
The Chronicle Herald
Sun, 28 Feb 2010 13:33 UTC
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© unknown
A 500-year-old right whale bone discovered deep in the frigid waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence is shedding new light on the demise of one of the world's most endangered marine mammals.

With fewer than 400 North Atlantic right whales alive today, experts have long believed that the species first ran into serious trouble with the arrival of Basque whalers from Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. They harpooned them by the thousands off the coast of Labrador, mainly for their oil.

But research on ancient whale bones, including one found near a sunken 16th century Basque galleon, is rewriting the animals' history, suggesting there may not have been as many right whales as previously estimated, even before commercial whalers took their devastating toll.

As a result, researchers are left with a puzzle, trying to figure out what - if anything - caused the initial right whale population crash.
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Info

The Aging Brain Is Less Quick, But More Shrewd

Michelle Trudeau
National Public Radio
Mon, 01 Mar 2010 02:46 UTC
Old Man
© iStockphotoLifelong learning and brain stimulation can help increase memory and decision-making ability, according to neuroscientists.
For baby-boomers, there is both good news and bad news about the cognitive health of the aging brain.

Brain researcher Gary Small from UCLA conveys the bad news first: "Reaction time is slower," he says. "It takes us longer to learn new information. Sometimes it takes us longer to retrieve information, so we have that tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon - where you almost have that word or that thought. That's typical of the middle-age brain."

As we age, our ability to multi-task diminishes. "We're quick, but we're sloppy when we're in middle-age. We make more errors when we're in middle age," says Small.
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Bulb

Large Hadron Collider restarts


RIA Novosti
Sun, 28 Feb 2010 23:04 UTC
The world's most powerful atom smasher has been restarted, the Symmetry magazine reported Sunday.

The first protons were injected into the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) on Saturday following a pre-New Year technical shutdown and traveled in both directions successfully.

"The circulating beams marked the end of a ten week particle-free hiatus for the world's largest particle accelerator, during which LHC scientists and engineers have prepared the machine for its biggest challenge yet, particle collisions at an energy of seven trillion electron volts (TeV). The beams also mark the beginning of the LHC's first long run, expected to last until at least mid-year 2011," Symmetry said.
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Meteor

Small Asteroids, Bread Flour, and a Dutch Physicist's 150-year Old Theory

Jean Tate
Universe Today
Sat, 27 Feb 2010 15:17 UTC
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© JAXAItokawa, a dusty asteroid
No, it's not the Universe Puzzle No. 3; rather, it's an intriguing result from recent work into the strange shapes and composition of small asteroids.

Images sent back from space missions suggest that smaller asteroids are not pristine chunks of rock, but are instead covered in rubble that ranges in size from meter-sized boulders to flour-like dust. Indeed some asteroids appear to be up to 50% empty space, suggesting that they could be collections of rubble with no solid core.

But how do these asteroids form and evolve? And if we ever have to deflect one, to avoid the fate of the dinosaurs, how to do so without breaking it up, and making the danger far greater?

Johannes Diderik van der Waals (1837-1923), with a little help from Daniel Scheeres, Michael Swift, and colleagues, to the rescue.
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Blackbox

Scientists Unravel Mysteries of Intelligence

Amanda Gardner
HealthDay News
Fri, 26 Feb 2010 12:55 UTC
It's not a particular brain region that makes someone smart or not smart.

Nor is it the strength and speed of the connections throughout the brain or such features as total brain volume.

Instead, new research shows, it's the connections between very specific areas of the brain that determine intelligence and often, by extension, how well someone does in life.

"General intelligence actually relies on a specific network inside the brain, and this is the connections between the gray matter, or cell bodies, and the white matter, or connecting fibers between neurons," said Jan Glascher, lead author of a paper appearing in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "General intelligence relies on the connection between the frontal and the parietal [situated behind the frontal] parts of the brain."

The results weren't entirely unexpected, said Keith Young, vice chairman of research in psychiatry and behavioral science at Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine in Temple, but "it is confirmation of the idea that good communication between various parts of brain are very important for this generalized intelligence."

General intelligence is an abstract notion developed in 1904 that has always been somewhat controversial.
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Star

New 'alien' invaders found in the Milky Way: Queen's University astronomer


Queen's University
Fri, 26 Feb 2010 02:14 UTC
As many as one quarter of the star clusters in our Milky Way - many more than previously thought - are invaders from other galaxies, according to a new study. The report also suggests there may be as many as six dwarf galaxies yet to be discovered within the Milky Way rather than the two that were previously confirmed.

"Some of the stars and star clusters you see when you look into space at night are aliens from another galaxy, just not the green-skinned type you find in a Hollywood movie. These 'alien' star clusters that have made their way into our galaxy over the last few billion years," says Terry Bridges, an astronomer at Queen's University in Kingston, Canada.

The study (co-authored by Duncan Forbes of Swinburne University of Technology in Australia) has been accepted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
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Sherlock

"Vampire of Venice" Unmasked: Plague Victim & Witch?

Christine Dell'Amore
National Geographic News
Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:00 UTC
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© National Geographic TelevisionThe skull of the "Vampire of Venice," found in a mass plague grave with a brick stuck in its jaw.
A female "vampire" unearthed in a mass grave near Venice, Italy, may have been accused of wearing another evil hat: a witch's.

The 16th-century woman was discovered among medieval plague victims in 2006. Her jaw had been forced open by a brick - an exorcism technique used on suspected vampires in Europe at the time.

The discovery marked the first time archaeological remains had been interpreted as those of an alleged vampire, project leader Matteo Borrini, a forensic archaeologist at the University of Florence in Italy, said when the skull was first revealed in March 2009.

New investigations have now shed light on who this "vampire" was, why people may have suspected her of dabbling in the dark arts, and even what she looked like.
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Sherlock

'Pompeii-Like' Excavations Tell Us More About Toba Super-Eruption


ScienceDaily
Sat, 27 Feb 2010 00:00 UTC
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© University of OxfordMapping of stone tool artefacts on a Middle Palaeolithic occupation surface under the Toba ash.
Newly discovered archaeological sites in southern and northern India have revealed how people lived before and after the colossal Toba volcanic eruption 74,000 years ago.

The international, multidisciplinary research team, led by Oxford University in collaboration with Indian institutions, unveiled to a conference in Oxford what it calls 'Pompeii-like excavations' beneath the Toba ash.

The seven-year project examines the environment that humans lived in, their stone tools, as well as the plants and animal bones of the time. The team has concluded that many forms of life survived the super-eruption, contrary to other research which has suggested significant animal extinctions and genetic bottlenecks.

According to the team, a potentially ground-breaking implication of the new work is that the species responsible for making the stone tools in India was Homo sapiens. Stone tool analysis has revealed that the artefacts consist of cores and flakes, which are classified in India as Middle Palaeolithic and are similar to those made by modern humans in Africa.
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