TODAY'S HEADLINES INCLUDE: Greenland Melting, Can Earth survive 10 billion people?, 1st Dynasty funerary boat discovered, Valhalla, Made-in-Space Parts, Euro Agency Backs Gene Therapy, Aztec child burials found, Tokelau: World's 1st solar-powered country and more...
Oldest Poison Pushes Back Ancient Civilization 20,000 Years
The late Stone Age may have had an earlier start in Africa than previously thought — by some 20,000 years.
A new analysis of artifacts from a cave in South Africa reveals that the residents were carving bone tools, using pigments, making beads and even using poison 44,000 years ago. These sorts of artifacts had previously been linked to the San culture, which was thought to have emerged around 20,000 years ago. "Our research proves that the Later Stone Age emerged in South Africa far earlier than has been believed and occurred at about the same time as the arrival of modern humans in Europe," study researcher Paola Villa, a curator at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, said in a statement. |  |
Greenland seeing unprecedented melting
Last week, a huge chunk of ice broke off of Greenland’s Petermann glacier, an event called a "calving". The iceberg is now moving down the glacier’s fjord, as seen by NASA’s Terra Earth-observing satellite on July 21, 2012 (right)
Note the scale. The iceberg is well over 100 square kilometers in size – about 50 square miles, or 30,000 acres. That’s larger than the island of Manhattan in New York City. An even larger iceberg broke off in 2010. This image comes on the heels of an announcement that Greenland is seeing "unprecedented" melting. By July 12, 2012, as much as 97% of Greenland’s ice sheet had experienced some degree of melting. On July 8, just four days earlier, only 40% of the ice had experienced some melting. |  |
Can the planet survive 10 billion people?
Before packed audiences in a petite London theatre, computational scientist Stephen Emmott has been giving a new kind of talk. The brainchild of Emmott and director Katie Mitchell at the Royal Court Theatre, 10 Billion is a daring one man show in which Emmott desperately strives to pull together into one grand and devastating portrait the many ways we are impacting the planet. Standing on a set that he admits eerily resembles his office in Cambridge, UK, where he is the head of Computational Science at Microsoft Research, Emmott takes theatregoers on a brisk and bracing tour through our own history and use of Earth’s resources, before offering a glimpse of what the future might look like if the population reaches 10 billion. It isn’t good.
|  |
First Prehistoric Snake Slithered Out on Land–Not at Sea
Sorry, sea serpents. Snakes, it seems, slithered off their lizard legs on land. A new analysis of a primitive snake fossil suggests that these animals emerged from a line of burrowing reptiles.
Snakes are in the same reptilian order that includes lizards, but just how and where they split off to live their legless lives has been a bit of a mystery. Transitional fossils showing the move from four-legged lizard to belly-crawling snake have remained scarce. However, that the jawbones of a Cretaceous snake from North America suggest that it might be the earliest snake on record. And this serpent was terrestrial, clearing up decades of debate about whether snakes evolved for swimming or slithering, researchers reported online July 25 in Nature (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group). |  |
First Dynasty funerary boat discovered at Egypt's Abu Rawash
During routine excavation works at the Archaic period cemetery located at Abu Rawash area northeast of the Giza Plateau, a French archaeological mission from the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology in Cairo (IFAO) stumbled on what is believed to be a funerary boat of the First Dynasty King Den (dating from around 3000BC).
The funerary boat was buried with royalty, as ancient Egyptians believed it would transfer the king's soul to the afterlife for eternity. |  |
The woman looks at peace as she lies with her arms crossed neatly over her chest and her legs stretched out – even though it is over a thousand years since she died, archaeologists can tell that she was a wealthy woman in life.
She was about 46 when she died, but her teeth are in excellent condition – indicating a good, soft diet – and her skeleton shows few signs that, during life, she ever had to do much hard work. “She was obviously treated extremely well,” says Peter Connelly, from the York Archaeological Trust.
She was about 46 when she died, but her teeth are in excellent condition – indicating a good, soft diet – and her skeleton shows few signs that, during life, she ever had to do much hard work. “She was obviously treated extremely well,” says Peter Connelly, from the York Archaeological Trust.
Stone Age Tools Help to Streamline Modern Manufacturing
Innovative research by the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) and the University of Bradford used laser microscopes to explore how stone tools were used in prehistory, and the process has helped streamline surface measurement techniques for modern manufacturers.
The analysis of stone tools is a key factor in understanding early human life including social organisation and diet. Archaeologists at the University of Bradford hypothesised that reconstructing past activities was the best way to study what each tool was used for. They proposed to measure the surface structures of replica stone tools before and after they were used in different reconstructions on two natural materials -- antler and wood. |  |
Pharaoh's playground revealed by missing fractals
THE Dahshur royal necropolis in Egypt was once a dazzling sight. Some 30 kilometres south of Cairo, it provided King Sneferu with a playground to hone his pyramid-building skills - expertise that helped his son, Khufu, build the Great Pyramid of Giza. But most signs of what went on around Dahshur have been wiped away by 4500 years of neglect and decay. To help work out what has been lost, archaeologists have turned to fractals.
|  |
Made-in-Space Parts Could Become Space Travel's New Norm
Maybe it's time to shelve the old saying, "you can't leave home without it," when it comes to packing for trips to space.
Say you're hunkered down inside Mars Base-1 and a vital piece of life-support gear breaks down. A hurried search in supply bins proves futile. The next cycler spaceship with equipment is months away. Time is running out. |  |
European Agency Backs Approval of a Gene Therapy
After more than two decades of dashed expectations, the field of gene therapy appears close to reaching a milestone: a regulatory approval.
The European Medicines Agency has recommended approval of a gene therapy to treat a rare genetic disease, according to the agency’s Web site. Gene therapy involves providing the body with genes it needs, like correct copies of defective genes that cause genetic disorders. Its use in the West so far has been confined to clinical trials. |  |
NASA Pumps Up the Volume on Space Signals
NASA wants to boost the signal coming from stars, galaxies and black holes while turning down the background noise. The U.S. space agency invented a new amplifier that can boost electrical signals from the universe and possibly help find the key to making quantum computers.
The amplifier design has superconductor materials that can conduct electricity without resistance at extremely cold temperatures. NASA's researchers used titanium nitride and niobium titanium nitride in their device to pump up the volume on weak electric signals — microwave signals, radio waves and X-rays from space. |  |
America's fascination with the apocalypse
The end of the world is nigh. Or so you might think if you immersed yourself in American popular culture.
From TV adverts to Hollywood movies, depictions of post-apocalyptic worlds are everywhere. There is a long tradition of such apocalyptic thinking in the US. But as Matthew Barrett Gross and Mel Giles argue in their book The Last Myth, it has now moved beyond religious prophecies into the secular world. |  |
The truth IS out there with rise in UFO sightings in Australia
FOR those searching for life on another planet, the mission involves not just finding the evidence but getting others to take them seriously.
UFO sightings in Australia are on the rise, according to people who track such phenomena, and international studies indicate a growing number of "closet believers" of extraterrestrial life. But people who come forward to report sightings are still pilloried by much of society.The issue emerged again last week after a video of an alleged UFO sighting over the NSW south coast was posted on YouTube and raised a few sceptics' eyebrows. |  |
Jill Tarter: A Scientist Searching For Alien Life
As a child, astronomer Jill Tarter would walk along the beaches of western Florida with her father and look up at the stars.
"I assumed, at that time, that along some beach on some planet, there would be a small creature walking with its dad and they would see our sun in their sky, and they might wonder whether anyone was there," she tells Fresh Air's Dave Davies. "But I never thought about it professionally until graduate school.". |  |
Modern humans were likely a greater threat to the Neanderthals than major natural events like extreme cold weather or volcanoes, according to British-led research released on Monday.
The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was based on an analysis of volcanic ash that showed the largest known eruption in Europe came after traces of the Neanderthals had largely disappeared. |  |
Pictures: "Important" Aztec Child Burials Found in Mexico City
Physical anthropologist Jorge Arturo Talavera González examines 1 of 17 skeletons—including 11 child burials—unearthed recently in Mexico City. The remains, he said, offer evidence of a merchant neighborhood of an Aztec people known as the Tepanec, whose glory days were some 700 years ago.
Found with the remains of a newborn baby in her arms, the woman pictured above must have died after giving birth, said Talavera González, who is affiliated with Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH).
Further analysis is required to pin down causes of death for the 17 burials, but holes in some of the skulls hint at human sacrifice. Around the bodies, experts also found an altar, fragments of rooms, and various ceremonial objects.
Found with the remains of a newborn baby in her arms, the woman pictured above must have died after giving birth, said Talavera González, who is affiliated with Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH).
Further analysis is required to pin down causes of death for the 17 burials, but holes in some of the skulls hint at human sacrifice. Around the bodies, experts also found an altar, fragments of rooms, and various ceremonial objects.
Tiny Tokelau to be world's first solar-powered country
A project to convert the tiny island nation of Tokelau to all solar power is nearing fruition, as workers finish the first of three major panel arrays. Once activated, the installations should provide more than 90 percent of the power used by the islands' 1,711 residents.
Tokelau is a remote nation northeast of New Zealand comprising three atolls, to which goods and passengers can only travel by boat. Their electricity needs, though modest, are met by burning diesel fuel in generators. The transportation of the nearly 2,000 barrels of fuel consumed each year costs the population around a million dollars — a heavy toll.
Tokelau is a remote nation northeast of New Zealand comprising three atolls, to which goods and passengers can only travel by boat. Their electricity needs, though modest, are met by burning diesel fuel in generators. The transportation of the nearly 2,000 barrels of fuel consumed each year costs the population around a million dollars — a heavy toll.
No comments:
Post a Comment