Scientists decode contents of dreams
The Japanese researchers managed to decode the dreams of a group of volunteers and pinpointed when they were dreaming about such things as cars and women.
They scanned the brains of three male volunteers as they slept to monitor changes in activity which could be related to the content of their dreams. They also monitored electrical patterns in the men's brain waves, so that they could wake them up whenever the signals indicated that they had begun dreaming. |  |
October 27 2012
Early humans 'still climbed trees 3m years ago'
Fossilised shoulder bones from a forerunner of humans known as Australopithecus afarensis, the species of the famous "Lucy" skeleton, suggest that their bodies were shaped by a life spent clinging on to branches with their hands.
From the shape of the species' feet it has long been clear that they could walk on two legs, but experts have been unable to prove whether, like their contemporary apelike species, they also spent part of their lives in trees. |  |
October 27 2012
Georgia Aquarium Beluga Plan Raises Whale Culture Questions
Opponents of the Georgia Aquarium’s controversial plan to move 18 wild beluga whales into captivity say their capture wasn’t just inhumane, but potentially destructive to a beluga clan, perhaps even a culture.
The idea that whales should be seen in cultural terms, rather than grouped genetically, is a fairly new one, but supported by science. And while the aquarium rightly defends the capture as unthreatening to the survival of belugas at large in Russia’s Sea of Okhotsk, it’s possible that a smaller, unique group was damaged. The possibility could affect the aquarium’s request for federal endorsement of the plan, which needs to be approved before it can go forward. |  |
October 27 2012
Habitat Loss, Misinformation Spur Chimpanzee Aggression
As tens of thousands of refugees crowd into the area around Virunga National Park in the warn-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the animals that already lived there are getting squeezed out their native habitats. Some of them apparently aren’t too happy about it. Incidents of chimpanzee attacks on humans are reportedly on the rise—as are the number of unhelpful rumors about the apes.
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October 27 2012
Guatemala finds grave of king who ushered in Mayan rule
Archaeologists in Guatemala have discovered the grave of an ancient king credited with laying the foundations for the Mayan civilization more than two thousand years ago, experts said on Thursday.
Researchers from Guatemala uncovered the grave of King K'utz Chman, a priest who is believed to have reigned around 700 B.C., at the Tak'alik Ab'aj dig in Retalhuleu in western Guatemala. |  |
October 27 2012
'Fox hole' opens passage to Neolithic past, possibly Hades
A Field Museum curator is digging around a cave in Southern Greece that’s been compared to the mythical underworld, Hades. That cave might help explain why people choose to migrate to big cities or high tail it to the suburbs.
And it has a surprising Chicago tie. William Parkinson is the associate curator of Eurasian anthropology at the Field Museum. He is on a research team, called The Diros Project, made up of two Greek and two American archaeologists (both Chicago natives). They are excavating Alepotrypa Cave, which is nearly four football fields long. The researchers compare the most striking room in the cave to a Cathedral. |  |
October 27 2012
Circumnavigating The World To Map The Polluted Skies
In the atmosphere, soot traps heat like carbon dioxide does. But unlike CO2, soot stays near its source and falls to Earth in weeks, so it’s considered low-hanging fruit in the fight against global warming. The first step to reducing atmospheric soot is to find it, which scientists have been doing since the 1980s with a particle-measuring tool called an aethalometer.
A tube catches outside air and sends it to the instrument’s main box, where the air passes through a particle-catching filter. The device shines light of different wavelengths through the filter, and a sensor and processor analyze how the particles block light. This reveals their concentration and their origin: whether they came from fossil fuel burning or wood fires. |  |
October 27 2012
Core sample sends carbon clock farther back in time
The carbon clock is getting reset. Climate records from a Japanese lake are set to improve the accuracy of the dating technique, which could help to shed light on archaeological mysteries such as why Neanderthals became extinct.
Carbon dating is used to work out the age of organic material — in effect, any living thing. The technique hinges on carbon-14, a radioactive isotope of the element that, unlike other more stable forms of carbon, decays away at a steady rate. Organisms capture a certain amount of carbon-14 from the atmosphere when they are alive. By measuring the ratio of the radio isotope to non-radioactive carbon, the amount of carbon-14 decay can be worked out, thereby giving an age for the specimen in question. |  |
October 27 2012
Digital map of the Roman Empire
The Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World was published in 2000 as part of an international effort to create a comprehensive map and a directory of all ancient places mentioned in sources and a selection of important archaeological sites.
During the following decade two digitization projects based on the Barrington Atlas were produced; Pleiades, which began as a historical gazetteer of locations and the DARMC project which is a complete layered historical atlas.
During the following decade two digitization projects based on the Barrington Atlas were produced; Pleiades, which began as a historical gazetteer of locations and the DARMC project which is a complete layered historical atlas.
October 27 2012
Prehistoric Human Populations Prospered Before the Agricultural Boom
Researchers from China's Fudan University have found major prehistoric human population expansions may have begun before the Neolithic period, which probably led to the introduction of agriculture.
Major prehistoric human population expansions in three continents may have begun before the Neolithic period -- around 15-11,000 years ago in Africa, from around 13,000 years ago in Europe and around 12-8,000 years ago in the Americas. The findings are published in Scientific Reports. |  |
October 27 2012
Ancient DNA sheds light on Arctic whale mysteries
Scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society, the American Museum of Natural History, City University of New York, and other organizations have published the first range-wide genetic analysis of the bowhead whale using hundreds of samples from both modern populations and archaeological sites used by indigenous Arctic hunters thousands of years ago.
In addition to using DNA samples collected from whales over the past 20 years, the team collected genetic samples from ancient specimens —extracted from old vessels, toys, and housing material made from baleen—preserved in pre-European settlements in the Canadian Arctic. The study attempts to shed light on the impacts of sea ice and commercial whaling on this threatened but now recovering species. The study appears in the most recent edition of Ecology and Evolution. |  |
October 27 2012
Proof of Moon's Birth in Giant Impact Found in Zinc: Study
Water on the moon boiled away in massive quantities in a cataclysmic evaporation event during the moon's birth, bolstering the theory that a Mars-sized body collided with the Earth to form its only natural satellite, scientists say.
Researchers examined rocks collected by astronauts during NASA's Apollo lunar landing missions, as well as a meteorite that originated on the moon to make the find. They looked for traces of zinc, and found the ratios of heavy to light isotopes are greater than on Earth, which suggests the moon went through an intense evaporation event early in its formation. |  |
October 27 2012
Saturn’s Moon Titan Has A Soft, Crusty Surface, Like Freshly Frozen Snow
Walking on the surface of Titan would be like walking on a beach while the tide is going out, according to a new study. Or, if snow is your preferred outdoor surface, it’s like breaking a snowshoe trail on a sunny day. The huge Saturnian moon’s surface has the consistency of damp sand or crusty snow--you can walk gently on top, but push hard with your foot and you’ll break through, sinking down at least a few inches.
October 27 2012
Fidel Castro Hired Nazi SS to Train Military, German Intel Documents Reveal
In 1962, then President of Cuba, Fidel Castro recruited two former Nazi SS soldiers to help train his military at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, according to declassified documents released by Germany's secret intelligence agency, the BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst).
Castro invited four SS officers to Havana, where he offered them quadruple the average salary a German made at that time in exchange for their expertise. Two of the four accepted his offer, the documents, dated October 26, 1962, reveal. The men served in Adolf Hitler's Waffen-SS, a force separate from the army and known as the armed wing of the Nazi party. |  |
October 27 2012
Justice for the Mau Mau: Court Case in the U.K. Sheds Light on Grim Colonial Past
Time after time they stood defiant; slight, frail figures before the imposing grandeur of Britain’s Royal Courts of Justice, in the heart of London. The three elderly Kenyans—Paulo Muoka Nzili, 85, Wambugu Wa Nyingi, 84, and Jane Muthoni Mara, 73—stood in the same spot many times over the past four years, waiting patiently as they held aloft placards with the words, “Human Rights For All.” They came to the U.K. to ask for justice for horrors allegedly perpetrated against them over five decades ago in Kenya, when the British colonial powers that then ran the country cracked down brutally on the armed pro-independence movement, Mau Mau. On Oct. 5, their wait for their day in court finally came to an end when the British High Court ruled that their legal case, which accuses the British government of carrying out torture half a centuryago, could proceed.
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October 27 2012
The Assyrian city of Tushhan: a race against time
The ancient mound at Ziyaret Tepe in Diyarbakir province of southeastern Turkey, comprises two distinct areas: a high citadel and an extensive lower town. Since 1997 an international team of archaeologists have been excavating a site that was occupied nearly continuously for 2400 years from the Early Bronze Age (c. 3000 BCE).
Over most of this time Ziyaret Tepe was a modest village situated on the fertile Tigris floodplain. However, Professor Timothy Matney of the University of Akron, (the project director) in collaboration with Professor McGinnis of the University of Cambridge discovered that during the Middle Iron Age (c. 882 – 610BCE) Ziyaret Tepe acted as an important urban centre situated on the northern periphery of the Assyrian Empire and was known as the city of Tushhan.
Over most of this time Ziyaret Tepe was a modest village situated on the fertile Tigris floodplain. However, Professor Timothy Matney of the University of Akron, (the project director) in collaboration with Professor McGinnis of the University of Cambridge discovered that during the Middle Iron Age (c. 882 – 610BCE) Ziyaret Tepe acted as an important urban centre situated on the northern periphery of the Assyrian Empire and was known as the city of Tushhan.
October 27 2012
Scientists to simulate human brain inside a supercomputer
There's no escaping the fact that the Human Brain Project, with its billion-dollar plan to recreate the human mind inside a supercomputer, sounds like a science fiction nightmare.
But those involved hope their ambitious goal of simulating the tangle of neurons and synapses that power our thought processes could offer solutions to tackling conditions such as depression, Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's. |  |
October 27 2012
Hueyatlaco: 250,000 Year Old Settlement In Mexico Found Under Volcanic Ash
Humans were hunting mastodons in Mexico 250,000 years ago. This archaeological heresy is supported by finding at Hueyatlaco.
Hueyatlaco is an archeological site in Valsequillo, Mexico. Several potential pre-Clovis localities were found in the 1960s around the edge of the Valsequillo Reservoir, Mexico. One of these localities is the site of Hueyatlaco. This site was excavated by Cynthia Irwin-Williams in 1962, 1964, and 1966. |
October 27 2012
Border Patrol agents discover ancient artifacts in Arizona
U.S. Border Patrol agents in Arizona have discovered a pair of ancient artifacts while making their rounds—two pieces of Native American pottery that could be up to 1,000 years old.
One piece appears to be fully intact while the other was part of a larger piece of pottery.
The Border Patrol agents found the pottery in the Patagonia Mountains in southern Arizona, according to the Arizona Family website.
One piece appears to be fully intact while the other was part of a larger piece of pottery.
The Border Patrol agents found the pottery in the Patagonia Mountains in southern Arizona, according to the Arizona Family website.
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