Stone Age skull-smashers spark a cultural mystery
AN UNUSUAL cluster of Stone Age skulls with smashed-in faces has been found carefully separated from the rest of their skeletons. They appear to have been dug up several years after being buried with their bodies, separated, then reburied.
Collections of detached skulls have been dug up at many Stone Age sites in Europe and the Near East - but the face-smashing is a new twist that adds further mystery to how these societies related to their dead. |  |
Night Sky to Turn Bluer?
The night sky may glow bluer as yellow-orange streetlights are gradually replaced by whiter, energy-saving lights, a new study says.
Light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, cast a bluish glow in the sky and are about 20 percent more efficient than industry-standard streetlamps, which generate red-colored light pollution. With LED efficiency expected to double to 40 percent in a few years, it's inevitable that governments worldwide will opt to save energy by switching to LEDs, which also last longer and require less maintenance, experts say. |  |
The Hive Minder: Pollen Detective Sticks It to Honey Counterfeiters
Vaughn Bryant loves to drizzle a little honey into his cereal. He’s not alone—the average American slurps some 20 ounces of the stuff a year. But Bryant’s passion goes deeper. The Texas A&M anthropology prof moonlights as a honey detective, helping keep counterfeit product off the market.
The honey trade has developed a top-shelf segment, with connoisseurs paying hefty premiums for certain makers and regions of origin. Sidr honey, made from the nectar of jujube trees in Yemen, can cost $50 a jar (about 10 times more per ounce than that stuff in bear-shaped bottles). |  |
Extinct Sea Creatures Got the Bends, Fossils Suggest
Marine reptiles that cruised the planet's oceans millions of years ago may have suffered from their own version of the bends, studies of their fossils suggest. But scientists are in disagreement over why this happened.
Human divers today get the bends, or decompression sickness, when they surface too quickly from the high-pressure environment of deep water. Nitrogen bubbles form in the body and can cause immediate symptoms like joint pain and headaches. But the bends can also leave permanent scars, in the form of bone lesions from a disease called dysbaric osteonecrosis, or DON. |  |
Skydiver's Record-Breaking 'Space Jump' Delayed by Damaged Capsule
A daring supersonic "space jump" that would shatter the world record for the highest skydive in history has been delayed until October due to a damaged balloon capsule, project organizers say.
Austrian daredevil skydiver Felix Baumgartner, 43, was expected to make the historic skydive sometime this month over the New Mexico desert as part of the Red Bull Stratos project. The dive, which organizers have dubbed a "space jump," will send Baumgartner more than 120,000 feet (36,575 meters) up by balloon so he could leap into the sky from a custom-built capsule.
Austrian daredevil skydiver Felix Baumgartner, 43, was expected to make the historic skydive sometime this month over the New Mexico desert as part of the Red Bull Stratos project. The dive, which organizers have dubbed a "space jump," will send Baumgartner more than 120,000 feet (36,575 meters) up by balloon so he could leap into the sky from a custom-built capsule.
Babies May Not Have Moral Compass
An experiment five years ago suggested that babies are equipped with an innate moral compass, which drives them to choose good individuals over the bad in a wooden puppet show. But new research casts doubt on those findings, demonstrating that a baby's apparent preference for what's right might just reflect a fondness for bouncy things.
In the original study, conducted by Yale researchers in 2007, groups of 6-month-olds and 10-month-olds watched a puppet show with neutral wooden figures, where one figure, the climber, was trying to get up a hill. In one scenario, one of the other figures, called the helper, assisted the climber up the hill. In the other scenario, a third figure, called the hinderer, pushed the climber down. |  |
Turmeric spices up virus study: New research shows curcumin stops virus cells
The popular spice turmeric packs more than just flavor — it shows promise in fighting devastating viruses, Mason researchers recently discovered.
Curcumin, found in turmeric, stopped the potentially deadly Rift Valley Fever virus from multiplying in infected cells, says Aarthi Narayanan, lead investigator on the new study and a research assistant professor with Mason's National Center for Biodefense and Infectious Diseases. |  |
Scott's wrecked ship Terra Nova found off Greenland
The wreck of the ship that carried Captain Robert Scott on his doomed expedition to the Antarctic a century ago has been discovered off Greenland.
The SS Terra Nova was found by a team from a US research company. Scott and his party set off from Cardiff aboard the Terra Nova in 1910 with the aim of becoming the first expedition to reach the South Pole. The ship had a life after the polar trek, sinking off Greenland's south coast in 1943. |  |
The Oatmeal's Latest Fundraiser To Save The Tesla Tower
Matthew Inman (perhaps better known as web comic creator The Oatmeal) has an ambitious fund-raising project up his sleeve—to save Tesla’s Wardenclyffe Tower.
Wardenclyffe Tower is rich in history, a symbolic landmark of Nikola Tesla’s last great piece of scientific research that was in Tesla’s mind, destined to change the world. I sat down with The Oatmeal for this Forbes exclusive to discuss his Tesla passion, ambitious campaign plans, and his motivation to attempt to execute such a massive fundraising goal. |  |
World's most powerful X-ray laser beam refined to scalpel precision
With a thin sliver of diamond, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have transformed the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) into an even more precise tool for exploring the nanoworld. The improvements yield laser pulses focused to higher intensity in a much narrower band of X-ray wavelengths, and may enable experiments that have never before been possible.
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Back to the Future: Students digitize archeological artifacts in 3-D
What’s (really) old is new again. Thanks to cutting-edge equipment and techniques, researchers and the public alike will soon have access to an ever-expanding database of virtual, 3-D archeological artifacts that tell the story of southern Ontario.
Working at the Museum of Ontario Archeology, 10 3-D graphics interns from Loyalist College digitized, in three-dimension, approximately 350 artifacts this summer – at a rate of nearly 100 per week. Historically, scanning a single artifact could take many hours.
Working at the Museum of Ontario Archeology, 10 3-D graphics interns from Loyalist College digitized, in three-dimension, approximately 350 artifacts this summer – at a rate of nearly 100 per week. Historically, scanning a single artifact could take many hours.
Climate and drought lessons from ancient Egypt
Ancient pollen and charcoal preserved in deeply buried sediments in Egypt's Nile Delta document the region's ancient droughts and fires, including a huge drought 4,200 years ago associated with the demise of Egypt's Old Kingdom, the era known as the pyramid-building time.
"Humans have a long history of having to deal with climate change," said Christopher Bernhardt, a researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey. "Along with other research, this study geologically reveals that the evolution of societies is sometimes tied to climate variability at all scales – whether decadal or millennial." |  |
Room temperature 'maser' developed
Scientists have demonstrated that they can operate a solid-state 'MASER' at room temperature for the first time using new technology.
The team from the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) and Imperial College London say they have paved the way for the widespread adoption of MASER technology, in research published in the journal Nature. MASER stands for Microwave Amplification Stimulated Emission of Radiation and it was invented by scientists more than 50 years ago, before LASER technology was developed. Instead of creating intense beams of light, as in the case of LASERs, MASERs deliver a concentrated beam of microwaves. |  |
Syrian Conflict Imperils Historical Treasures
Preservationists and archaeologists are warning that fighting in Syria’s commercial capital, Aleppo — considered the world’s oldest continuously inhabited human settlement — threatens to damage irreparably the stunning architectural and cultural legacy left by 5,000 years of civilizations.
Already the massive iron doors to the city’s immense medieval Citadel have been blown up in a missile attack, said Bonnie Burnham, president of the World Monuments Fund, an organization that works to preserve cultural heritage sites. |  |
Siberian Princess reveals her 2,500 year old tattoos
The ancient mummy of a mysterious young woman, known as the Ukok Princess, is finally returning home to the Altai Republic this month.
She is to be kept in a special mausoleum at the Republican National Museum in capital Gorno-Altaisk, where eventually she will be displayed in a glass sarcophagus to tourists. For the past 19 years, since her discovery, she was kept mainly at a scientific institute in Novosibirsk, apart from a period in Moscow when her remains were treated by the same scientists who preserve the body of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin. |  |
Modeling reveals significant climatic impacts of megapolitan expansion
According to the United Nations' 2011 Revision of World Urbanization Prospects, global urban population is expected to gain more than 2.5 billion new inhabitants through 2050. Such sharp increases in the number of urban dwellers will require considerable conversion of natural to urban landscapes, resulting in newly developing and expanding megapolitan areas. Could climate impacts arising from built environment growth pose additional concerns for urban residents also expected to deal with impacts resulting from global climate change?
Sharks Get Worry-Free Tans
Even sharks can get a tan. Sharks' skin turns from dark brown to black as the pigment melanin increases in direct response to radiation. In other fish, the exposure can lead to skin cancer. Sharks, however, just seem to tan.
What's their secret? The answer could hold the key to preventing skin disease in humans. "As far as I'm aware, sharks appear very robust to skin damage and disease," said Michael Sweet, lead author of a study about shark tanning in the journal PLoS ONE. "There have been a lot of attempts to induce melanomas in sharks to no affect.". |  |
How Healthy Are Earth's Oceans?
In a new perspective on ocean health, one that looks through the lens of both humans and the natural world, scientists give Earth's seas a grade of 60 out of 100, meaning there's lots of room for improvement, they say.
The new index ranks oceans' health and the benefits they provide to humans using 10 categories, such as biodiversity, clean waters, ability to provide food for humans and support of the livelihood of people living in coastal regions. In addition to assessing the present, the index provides a benchmark against which to measure progress in the future, writes the research team led by Benjamin Halpern at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in California. |  |
Arctic Coastlines Hitting Ecological Tipping Point
Along rocky coastlines of the Arctic Ocean, a radical change is taking place, perhaps as profound as vanishing sea ice but less evident to the eye. Ecological foundations are shifting, with existing algae replaced by warmth- and light-loving species. It might not seem like much, but algae form the base of ocean food chains, and the change is happening fast.
“The abrupt character of these extensive changes, confirmed by our statistical analyses, provides a convincing case for tipping points being crossed,” wrote researchers led by marine biologist Susanne Kortsch of Norway’s University of Tromsø in an email to Wired. |  |
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