Genes reveal grain of truth to Queen of Sheba story
The genomes of Ethiopian people hold echoes of the meeting between a legendary king and queen.
About 3000 years ago, the Queen of Sheba purportedly travelled from what is now Ethiopia to meet King Solomon in Israel. Ethiopian folklore even tells of a child between the pair. But that's just a story, right? Perhaps not entirely. |  |
Ridley Scott movie 'Prometheus' rests on some real astronomy
Hollywood has always loved invading aliens — but now we're invading them, in a spate of recent flicks ranging from Avatar to Friday's just-opened Prometheus.
Astronomers have discovered more than 700 worlds orbiting nearby stars in the last two decades, and the moviegoing public is just getting the message about the new planets, say astronomers such as Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute. So, in a way, pop culture is reflecting science, including efforts such as NASA's Kepler space telescope, which is looking to find more planets in their stars' "habitable zone," warm enough for liquid oceans like Earth's that may be able to support life forms. |  |
Google’s Artificial Brain Learns to Find Cat Videos
When computer scientists at Google’s mysterious X lab built a neural network of 16,000 computer processors with one billion connections and let it browse YouTube, it did what many web users might do — it began to look for cats.
The “brain” simulation was exposed to 10 million randomly selected YouTube video thumbnails over the course of three days and, after being presented with a list of 20,000 different items, it began to recognize pictures of cats using a “deep learning” algorithm. This was despite being fed no information on distinguishing features that might help identify one. Picking up on the most commonly occurring images featured on YouTube, the system achieved 81.7 percent accuracy in detecting human faces, 76.7 percent accuracy when identifying human body parts and 74.8 percent accuracy when identifying cats. |  |
This robot will beat you at rock-paper-scissors 100 percent of the time
When someone claims they're good at rock-paper-scissors, they're usually just trying to psyche you out so they can predict your next move. But this robot, created by the Ishikawa Oku Laboratory in Japan, doesn't need to psyche you out, because it knows it will beat you every single time.
How can it do it? One thing it certainly doesn't do is any kind of high-level analysis of the game. It doesn't put your last sequence of moves through a complex semantic analysis and try to predict the move. It doesn't use anti-random tactics like "five scissors in a row" to throw you off. All it needs is a high-speed camera and quick reflexes.
How can it do it? One thing it certainly doesn't do is any kind of high-level analysis of the game. It doesn't put your last sequence of moves through a complex semantic analysis and try to predict the move. It doesn't use anti-random tactics like "five scissors in a row" to throw you off. All it needs is a high-speed camera and quick reflexes.
The Moon's Peculiar Dust Gets More Peculiar Still
The moon has never had all that much. It doesn't have atmosphere, it doesn't have water and it sure doesn't have life. What it does have, though, is dirt — lots and lots of dirt — and it's some of the coolest stuff you ever saw. Now it's even cooler, thanks to the discovery this week of a wholly unexpected ingredient stirred into the lunar mix.
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U.Va. Class Looks at Nature to Reveal Our Past and Future
June 26, 2012 — Archaeology doesn't just live behind glass in museums. Case in point: the research of University of Virginia anthropology lecturer Jack Stoetzel and his summer-school course, "Archaeology of Human Habitat," in which he emphasizes the notion that "we imprint our habitats with our culture" – not just in the past, but every day.
Stoetzel and his students are "looking for ways we have manufactured environments we have occupied" and thus "what it means for ourselves and future selves," since there is a cyclical relationship in the way that "we change something and the act of changing brings about new changes we respond to," said Stoetzel...
Stoetzel and his students are "looking for ways we have manufactured environments we have occupied" and thus "what it means for ourselves and future selves," since there is a cyclical relationship in the way that "we change something and the act of changing brings about new changes we respond to," said Stoetzel...
Nanoparticles May Explain Moon Dirt's Odd Behavior
The famously strange behavior of lunar soil may be caused by nanoparticles embedded in the dirt, a new study reports.
The study found that nanoparticles — specks of matter whose tiny size imparts exotic and often bizarre properties — are common in samples of moon dirt brought back to Earth by Apollo astronauts. The discovery may explain why moon soil is such a poor conductor of heat, why it hovers above the lunar surface far longer than gravity should allow, and why it's so sticky and abrasive — characteristics observed, and sometimes deplored, by moonwalking astronauts four decades ago. |  |
US & UK Team Up to Protect Against Space Weather Threat
The United States and the United Kingdom are teaming up to fight against a growing threat from space: sun storms.
An international space weather agreement between the two countries will expand collaboration to protect against the potentially damaging effects of solar radiation, which is due to increase as the sun ramps up activity toward a maximum in 2013. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the United Kingdom Government Office for Science announced today (June 26) that the nations will share space weather resources and scientific expertise to guard valuable power and electronic infrastructure from solar outbursts. |  |
Astronomers Discover Galaxy They Thought Couldn’t Exist
Astronomers have spotted one of the rarest and most extreme galaxy clusters in the universe and, behind it, an object that shouldn’t exist.
Galaxy clusters are collections of galaxies that orbit one another and are the most massive objects in the universe. The newly discovered cluster, first detected by the Hubble space telescope, is over 500 trillion times the mass of the sun. It is located approximately 10 billion light-years away. Because looking out into the distant cosmos means also looking back in time, the cluster formed during an era when the universe was a quarter its present age. |  |
Reality Show on Mars Could Fund Manned Colony by 2023
A Dutch company aims to land humans on Mars by 2023 as the first step toward establishing a permanent colony on the Red Planet.
The project, called Mars One, plans to drop four astronauts on Mars in April 2023. New members of the nascent colony will arive every two years after that, and none of the Red Planet pioneers will ever return to Earth. To pay for all of this, Mars One says it will stage a media spectacle the likes of which the world has never seen — a sort of interplanetary reality show a la "Big Brother." |  |
What NASA’s Next Mars Rover Will Discover
NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory is on its way. In a little more than a month, the 1-ton rover, which launched in November, will descend to the Martian surface.
The nuclear-powered robot is designed to make spectacular new discoveries about the Red Planet. It will drill and analyze the Martian soil to search for signs of water, past or present, and determine whether or not the planet was ever able to support life. |  |
Brazilian prisoners given novel way to reduce their sentence
Brazil will offer inmates in its crowded federal penitentiary system a new way to shorten their sentences: a reduction of four days for every book they read.
Inmates in four federal prisons holding some of Brazil's most notorious criminals will be able to read up to 12 works of literature, philosophy, science or classics to trim a maximum 48 days off their sentence each year, the government announced. |  |
Tourists stealing cobblestones and mosaic from ancient Rome
Dozens of the square stones used by Romans 2,000 years ago to pave roads are ending up in passengers hand luggage.
Security staff screening bags at the Italian capital's main airports at Fiumicino and Ciampino have reported a surge in findings as x-ray scanners pick up the objects when luggage is screened and they in turn call police. On Sunday, police in Rome put on display a vast collection of the cobblestones and artefacts that they have seized from passenger luggage in the first six months of this year. |  |
Experiments Show We Really Can Learn While We Sleep
The average American sleeps some 7.6 hours a night—maybe not as much as one would like, but a number that still amounts to more 200,000 hours total over the course of a lifetime. What if there were some way to use all these hours to do something we don’t have the time to do while awake, like learn to play a musical instrument or speak a foreign language?
The idea that you can learn new things through some sort of magical mental osmosis while you sleep has long been wishful thinking. But a new study by Northwestern University researchers indicates that, depending on what we hear during the night, it is indeed possible to reinforce existing memories and enhance our recall after we wake up. |  |
Archaeologist hopes to resume investigation in Syria
There’s a mystery in the Syrian desert shielded by the conflict tearing apart the Middle Eastern nation.
In 2009, archaeologist Robert Mason of the Royal Ontario Museum was at work at an ancient monastery when, walking nearby, he came across a series of rock formations: lines of stone, stone circles, and what appeared to be tombs. |  |
When Did the Human Mind Evolve to What It is Today?
Archaeologists excavating a cave on the coast of South Africa not long ago unearthed an unusual abalone shell. Inside was a rusty red substance. After analyzing the mixture and nearby stone grinding tools, the researchers realized they had found the world’s earliest known paint, made 100,000 years ago from charcoal, crushed animal bones, iron-rich rock and an unknown liquid. The abalone shell was a storage container—a prehistoric paint can.
The find revealed more than just the fact that people used paints so long ago. It provided a peek into the minds of early humans. Combining materials to create a product that doesn’t resemble the original ingredients and saving the concoction for later suggests people at the time were capable of abstract thinking, innovation and planning for the future. |  |
A new dating method shows cave art is 20,000 years older than previously thought
Scientists from several universities and research institutions, such as João Zilhão, ICREA researcher from the Prehistoric Studies and Research Seminar (SERP) of the UB, have published in the journal Science the paper “U-series dating of Palaeolithic art in eleven caves in Spain” in which a new method has been applied to date the cave paintings in eleven cave sites in Cantabria and Asturias.
In particular, uranium-series disequilibrium dating has been used to date the formation of calcite deposits overlying or underlying cave paintings and engravings. This technique, quite common in geological research and which circumvents the problems related to carbon dating, indicates that the paintings studied are older than previously thought: at least 20,000 years older. |  |
Panguite: Ancient mineral newly discovered
A fireball that tears across the sky is not just a one-time skywatching event — it can reap scientific dividends long afterward. In fact, one that lit up Mexico's skies in 1969 scattered thousands of meteorite bits across the northern Mexico state of Chihuahua. And now, decades later, that meteorite, named Allende, has divulged a new mineral called panguite.
Panguite is believed to be among the oldest minerals in the solar system, which is about 4.5 billion years old. Panguite belongs to a class of refractory minerals that could have formed only under the extreme temperatures and conditions present in the infant solar system. |  |