Researchers solve mystery of Palmyra
Norwegian archaeologists have solved one of the great puzzles of the Roman Empire: Why was the vibrant city of Palmyra located in the middle of the Syrian Desert?
In ancient Roman times A.D., Palmyra was the most important point along the trade route linking the east and west, reaching a population of 100 000 inhabitants. But its history has always been shrouded in mystery: What was a city that size doing in the middle of the desert? How could so many people live in such an inhospitable place nearly 2 000 years ago? Where did their food come from? And why would such an important trade route pass directly through the desert?
Norwegian researchers collaborated with Syrian colleagues for four years to find answers.
In ancient Roman times A.D., Palmyra was the most important point along the trade route linking the east and west, reaching a population of 100 000 inhabitants. But its history has always been shrouded in mystery: What was a city that size doing in the middle of the desert? How could so many people live in such an inhospitable place nearly 2 000 years ago? Where did their food come from? And why would such an important trade route pass directly through the desert?
Norwegian researchers collaborated with Syrian colleagues for four years to find answers.
June 17 2012
China launches space mission with first woman astronaut
China has launched its latest manned space mission - whose crew includes its first female astronaut, Liu Yang.
The Shenzhou-9 capsule rode to orbit atop a Long March rocket from the Jiuquan spaceport on the edge of the Gobi desert. Ms Liu and her two male colleagues are heading to the Tiangong space lab. They will spend over a week living and working on the 335km-high vessel, testing new systems and conducting a number of scientific experiments. |  |
June 17 2012
Google launches cultural map of Brazil's Amazon tribe
Google on Saturday unveiled a cultural map of Brazil' Surui indigenous people, a digital tool that will help the Amazonian tribe share their vast knowledge of the forest and fight illegal logging.
The map, the result of a five-year partnership between Surui chief Almir and the US technology giant, was released online for the first time at a business forum held on the sidelines of the UN Rio+20 conference on sustainable development here. |  |
June 17 2012
Quebec School Hypnotist Show Goes Terribly Awry, Emergency Hypnotist Summoned To Undo Damage
SHERBROOKE, Que. - It was an end-of-year school activity featuring a hypnotism show and it didn't go quite as planned.
A Quebec all-girls high school said the activity went awry as numerous students had problems after the show — including one girl who remained stuck in a trance for four hours. Thirteen students reported having headaches or nausea. At least five other appeared to experience more serious trouble after the show, given by a 20-year-old hypnotist. Some were in a daze with their eyes open. At least two were reportedly conked out on a table. |  |
June 17 2012
Scientists use light to control brain with flick of a switch
It is an area of science that has the power to control the human mind with the flick of a light switch.
Scientists have developed a way of using pulses of light to turn the brain cells that control our everyday actions and thoughts on or off at will. It provides a way of controlling the brain that has never been possible before. The researchers have already conducted tests in monkeys, our closest relatives, using light to send them to sleep. They now hope to develop the techniques further for use in humans. |  |
June 17 2012
Giant celestial disk hard to explain
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — About 80 light-years away, an enormous, dusty ring swirls around a sunlike star, with a defined inner edge that is probably sculpted by a planet orbiting at 140 times Earth’s distance from the sun.
A planet located so far from a sunlike star presents an astronomical conundrum.
“How do you get a planet out that far? We don’t know how to form something out there,” astronomer Karl Stapelfeldt of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said on June 14 at the 220th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
A planet located so far from a sunlike star presents an astronomical conundrum.
“How do you get a planet out that far? We don’t know how to form something out there,” astronomer Karl Stapelfeldt of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said on June 14 at the 220th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
June 17 2012
Japan Public Still Divided as 2 Reactors to Be Opened
TOKYO — Brushing aside widespread public opposition to avoid feared electric power shortages, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda ordered the reactivation of two nuclear reactors at a plant in western Japan on Saturday, making it the nation’s first plant to go back online since the crisis last year in Fukushima.
The decision to restart the Ohi nuclear plant ends the temporary freeze of Japan’s nuclear power industry, when all 50 of the country’s functional reactors were idled after the triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Despite the prime minister’s vows to strengthen the Ohi plant against the same sort of huge earthquake and tsunami that knocked out the Fukushima plant in March 2011, the Japanese people have remained deeply divided on the safety of nuclear power.
The decision to restart the Ohi nuclear plant ends the temporary freeze of Japan’s nuclear power industry, when all 50 of the country’s functional reactors were idled after the triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Despite the prime minister’s vows to strengthen the Ohi plant against the same sort of huge earthquake and tsunami that knocked out the Fukushima plant in March 2011, the Japanese people have remained deeply divided on the safety of nuclear power.
June 17 2012
Why the Higgs particle hunt was always going to be a waiting game
Two beams of protons circulate around the 27km circumference of the Large Hadron Collider tunnel under the Franco-Swiss border. Those protons moving clockwise collide, head on, with those moving anticlockwise and the collisions take place in the middle of cavernous detectors. The scientists working on two of these detectors have made it their immediate priority to find the much vaunted Higgs particle and, towards the end of last year, the first, tentative, evidence of the particle's existence was made public. Next month, at an international conference in Australia, we can expect to hear the latest news on the hunt. The burning question is whether, with more data, the experimental evidence will strengthen or weaken. So what is the evidence and why do we need to keep waiting on tenterhooks?.
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June 17 2012
LHC already past last year's total data output
Last year, when the Large Hadron Collider shut down at the end of August, its detectors had recorded enough data to provide a suggestive bump in the data, hinting that the Higgs boson might be lurking somewhere around 125GeV. At the time, CERN's director indicated that the facility would do what it could to make sure it had a definitive answer on the question by the end of this year's run. And, over the winter, the people running the collider picked parameters that should get us there: a slight bump in energy and a high number of proton bunches circulating at once.
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June 17 2012
Engineering mosquitos to reject malaria
One of the easiest and often most effective means of controlling the spread of malaria is to control the mosquitos that carry it to humans. Unfortunately, that has proven to be just as much of an evolutionary arms race as targeting malaria itself; mosquitos evolve resistance to pesticides almost as quickly as malaria has evolved resistance to drugs.
Recent efforts have focused on forms of control that don't impose a huge fitness burden on the mosquito population. This general approach has been tested in the wild on the mosquitos that carry Dengue fever, which scientists infected with bacteria that block the spread of the virus. Now, researchers are reporting that they've developed genetically modified mosquitos that turn mosquitos into a dead-end for the malarial parasite. Their method: have the mosquitos express antibodies against the parasite whenever it feeds on blood. |  |
June 17 2012
Algorithm beats jigsaw-solving record
We have met our match at the genteel pastime of jigsaw puzzles. It seems an algorithm can now whiz through 10,000 pieces in 24 hours. The speedy solver could also help piece together shredded documents or archaeological artefacts.
Andrew Gallagher at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, wrote the algorithm while working at photography firm Kodak. By mimicking the way a human solves jigsaws, it beat last year's record of 3300 pieces. The algorithm can even solve multiple puzzles at the same time, where the pieces have been mixed up together. |  |
June 17 2012
'Uncanny Valley' Pioneer Rethinks Creepy Objects
When a Japanese robotics pioneer first described the "uncanny valley" of creepy objects, he filled its imaginary depths with human cyborgs, corpses and undead zombies. But four decades can change a man — he now finds the faces of dead humans and Buddha statues more comforting than the faces of the living.
Masahiro Mori created the uncanny valley metaphor in 1970 to suggest how artificial figures can steadily seem more likable as they appear or behave more like humans, but only up to the point before their likability takes a sharp plunge into creepiness. His metaphor has since become a common explanation for why android robots or Hollywood's latest computer-animated films can creep people out rather than win their hearts and minds. |  |
June 17 2012
Space tourism: to infinity and beyond?
At the west end of Pall Mall, among London's most venerable and old-fashioned gentlemen's clubs, a smart new office opened its doors to the public earlier this year. Its front window proclaims, in large letters, the simple motto: "Space is Virgin Territory". Here, amid the trappings of the past, is travel's future.
Inside the office, young men and women are busy working at computers and telephones while decorators put finishing touches to plush, glass-partitioned rooms. These are the new UK headquarters of Virgin Galactic, which Richard Branson hopes will create an entirely new tourism market – in outer space. In one room, a photograph of the Earth covers two walls. In another, there are huge pictures of the company's spacecraft taking off and landing at its launch base in New Mexico. |  |
June 17 2012
Hitchhiking Adventures of Pre-Columbian Yeast
Contact between the people of the Western Hemisphere and Polynesia has been a subject of debate since long before Thor Heyerdahl sailed the Kon-Tiki from South America to the Tuamota Islands in the Pacific. Recently a humble microorganism may have added some evidence to the possibility of trans-Pacific contacts.
A particular strain of yeast was identified in three far flung corners of the globe: eastern Australia, Costa Rica and the Galapagos Islands. The yeast, a variety of Saccharomycopsis fodiens, was not found anywhere else, though microbiologists isolated thousands of different yeast strains growing on sap beetles, the microbes' preferred habitat. |  |
June 17 2012
Will Arctic Sea Ice Reach Record Low This Year?
Recent years have brought unprecedented melting to Arctic sea ice, the white cap that covers the far north. Now, months before the sea ice reaches its annual minimum extent, this summer looks likely to follow suit, bringing unusually ice-free waters.
Satellite observations analyzed by the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center show the extent of the sea ice hovering below the baseline, the average between 1979 and 2000, for most of the spring and dipping particularly low in June. |  |
June 17 2012
Lessons from the ancient Maya on green vs. greed
CITIZEN TIMES
You’ve probably heard the world as we know it is to end in December, at least according to the wild prophecies some are reading into the ancient Mayan calendar.
That’s largely a crock, as most archaeologists will tell you, based on a misunderstanding of how the Mayans looked at time. It’s not that their calendar predicted the end of the world on Dec. 21, 2012, only the end of a cosmic cycle.
Still, how that once-thriving civilization suddenly collapsed in the ninth century could offer all of us living in the 21st century a sobering lesson about sustainability.
That’s largely a crock, as most archaeologists will tell you, based on a misunderstanding of how the Mayans looked at time. It’s not that their calendar predicted the end of the world on Dec. 21, 2012, only the end of a cosmic cycle.
Still, how that once-thriving civilization suddenly collapsed in the ninth century could offer all of us living in the 21st century a sobering lesson about sustainability.