Art of cheese-making is 7,500 years old
Neolithic pottery fragments from Europe reveal traces of milk fats.
Traces of dairy fat in ancient ceramic fragments suggest that people have been making cheese in Europe for up to 7,500 years. In the tough days before refrigerators, early dairy farmers probably devised cheese-making as a way to preserve, and get the best use out of, milk from the cattle that they had begun to herd. |  |
'Up to 9% of deaths in London caused by air pollution'
Up to 9% of deaths in the capital's most polluted areas are down to air pollution, a new London Assembly paper has reported.
The paper highlights the percentage of deaths attributable to man-made airborne particles is highest in the City of London. Research has shown air pollution contributes to problems including lung and heart conditions. |  |
Skylon Spaceplane Engine Endorsed By European Space Agency
The Skylon, a concept spaceplane that (theoretically) could go from a standing start to orbit and back without disposing of any rocket stages, took another big step forward today as tests independently audited by the European Space Agency confirmed that the Sabre engine underpinning it is conceptually sound. It’s the second key endorsement from the ESA that Skylon and the Sabre engine have picked up in the past two years--giving Sabre-maker Reaction Engines cause to call its technology the biggest engine breakthrough since the jet.
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Flickering Stars: Could Aliens Be Sending Us Signals?
When scientists go out looking for research funding, it helps if their projects aren’t all that exciting. Excitement usually goes with the most speculative, cutting-edge science, but funding agencies usually prefer to put their money on projects that seem likely to bear fruit. “You pretty much have to demonstrate that you’ve already done half the work to demonstrate it’s feasible,” says Lucianne Walkowicz, a postdoctoral fellow in astrophysics based at Princeton University.
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What If NASA Could Figure Out the Math of a Workable Warp Drive?
When, a few weeks ago, astronomers announced that an Earth-sized planet had been detected orbiting a Alpha Centauri B, a star in the closest system of stars to our own, and that this planet might, just might, mean that there is another planet, maybe another Earth-sized one, maybe, just maybe, in that magical distance from a sun that could give rise to life, and that all this was taking place right there in our galactic backyard, the next thought was inevitable: What if there is life there?
What if we, the people of the early 21st century, could be among the generation -- the first and only of all the generations ever -- that would be first to know that we were not alone? |  |
China to Grow Veggies on Mars?
It's no secret that China's space program is progressing at fast rate, but could the nation leapfrog the US in the realm of human spaceflight by landing the first extraterrestrial "greenhouse" on Mars?
The plan, as reported by the Chinese state media on Monday, saw a 300 cubic meter "ecological life support system" test being carried out in Beijing -- an experiment that was supported by German scientists. In this trial run, four types of vegetables were grown and two people lived inside. It is not clear how long the test lasted or whether the test subjects remained healthy for the duration. |  |
How Does SpaceX Plan To Move Thousands Of Humans To Mars?
SpaceX founder/Tony Stark movie inspiration Elon Musk made some heads turn this week, as heads are wont to do when they hear someone plans to ship 80,000 people to Mars. In a talk at the Royal Aeronautical Society, Musk offered early ideas on how to start a colony on the Red Planet. Then, yesterday, he doubled down with a tweet.
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The Deep-Space Suit
By the time the alarms go off, he’s back on his feet, hoping the rover wasn’t filming, but knowing that it was—that his face-first sprawl on the surface of Phobos has been recorded for posterity. The visor’s fiber-optic display flashes ominously: suit breach. His body, or some small sliver of it, has been exposed to the raw, airless vacuum of a Martian moon.
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Evidence of Early Life Draws Ire from Scientists
Life may have first emerged on land about 100 million years earlier previously thought, suggests a study that has scientists up in arms, many of whom are arguing that the research paper should never been published in the first place.
The study, published today (Dec. 12) in the journal Nature, suggests that ancient fossilized creatures found in Southern Australian sediments actually came from land, not from the ocean. If the findings are true, the fossils would have been lichenlike plants that first colonized land, not ocean-dwelling ancestors of jellyfish. |  |
Was life inevitable? New paper pieces together metabolism's beginnings
Describing how living organisms emerged from Earth's abiotic chemistry has remained a conundrum for scientists, in part because any credible explanation for such a complex process must draw from fields spanning the reaches of science.
A new synthesis by two Santa Fe Institute researchers offers a coherent picture of how metabolism, and thus all life, arose. The study, published December 12, 2012, in the journal Physical Biology, offers new insights into how the complex chemistry of metabolism cobbled itself together, the likelihood of life emerging and evolving as it did on Earth, and the chances of finding life elsewhere.
A new synthesis by two Santa Fe Institute researchers offers a coherent picture of how metabolism, and thus all life, arose. The study, published December 12, 2012, in the journal Physical Biology, offers new insights into how the complex chemistry of metabolism cobbled itself together, the likelihood of life emerging and evolving as it did on Earth, and the chances of finding life elsewhere.
First Harbor of Ancient Rome Rediscovered
Archaeologists have unearthed the great ancient monuments of Ostia, but the location of the harbour which supplied Rome with wheat remained to be discovered. Thanks to sedimentary cores, this " lost " harbour has eventually been located northwest of the city of Ostia, on the left bank of the mouth of the Tiber. Stratigraphy has revealed that at its foundation, between the 4th and 2nd century BC, the basin was deeper than 6.5 m, the depth of a seaport.
This research was carried out by a French-Italian team of the Maison de l'Orient et de la Méditerranée (CNRS / Université Lumière Lyon 2), the Ecole Française de Rome and Speciale per i Beni Soprintendenza Archeologici di Roma -- Sede di Ostia* and will be published in the Chroniques des Mélanges de l'Ecole Française de Rome in December 2012. |  |
Africa’s hidden people hold the keys to the past
I mentioned this in passing on my post on ASHG 2012, but it seems useful to make explicit. For the past few years there has been word of research pointing to connections between the Khoisan and the Cushitic people of Ethiopia. To a great extent in the paper which is forthcoming there is the likely answer to the question of who lived in East Africa before the Bantu, and before the most recent back-migration of West Eurasians. On one level I’m confused as to why this has to be something of a mystery, because the most recent genetic evidence suggests a admixture on the order of 2-3,000 years before the past.* If the admixture was so recent we should find many of the “first people,” no? As it is, we don’t. I think these groups, and perhaps the Sandawe, are the closest we’ll get.
Mega-drought triggered collapse of prehistoric Aboriginal society
A new study has shed light on the disappearance of a pre-historic culture, pre-dating present day aboriginal inhabitants. Researchers from The University of Queensland, Central Queensland University and Wollongong University made the discovery while investigating rapid climate change and its catastrophic impacts in the remote Kimberley region of northwest Australia.
Their findings were published last month (November) in the American Geophysical Union Journal. Associate Professor Hamish McGowan from UQ’s School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Management said the studies in the north west Kimberley have shown there was a rapid change in climate around 5500 years ago. |  |
Black holes resemble both liquids and solids
In a new twist to string theory, scientists are suggesting that black holes have properties that resemble the dynamics of both solids and liquids.
Niels Obers, a professor of theoretical particle physics and cosmology at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen, says that a black hole can be looked at like a particle. A particle has in principle no dimensions. If you give it an extra dimension, it becomes a string; and adding another dimension turns it into a plane, known as a 'brane'. |  |
Higgs data reveals fundamental structure of matter
The 12 matter particles we know about are all the types there are, according to researchers analysing CERN data.
Matter particles, also called fermions, are the elementary components of the universe, making up everything visible in the universe. "For a long time, however, it was not clear whether we know all components," says Professor Ulrich Nierste of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. The standard model of particle physics puts the number of fermions at 12 and, based on their properties... |  |
Watch the 2012 Geminid meteor shower via the Internet, tonight
The 2012 Geminid meteor shower is forecast to be a lively event this year with great views in the night sky, according to scientist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Ala. The week of Dec. 10-16 is a good window for Geminid-watching, but the night of Dec. 13 is the anticipated peak of meteor activity.
On the night of Dec. 13, from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. EST, meteor experts from MSFC will be available to answer your questions via a late-night Web chat. A live Ustream video feed of the Geminid meteor shower will be available on the night of Dec. 13. The camera is mounted at MSFC in Huntsville, Ala. The camera is light-activated and will turn on at dusk. |  |
King Amenhotep II damaged in Egyptian Museum
Curators at the Egyptian Museum have discovered the big toe on King Amenhotep II’s right foot has fallen off, four months after maintenance was carried out on the royal mummy.
Hala Hassan, head of the scientific archaeological committee, said examinations had revealed there was bright material on the rear of the mummy's toe which could be behind the damage. This material could be glue or gum used to join the toe to the foot, Hassan said, and the team would send a sample of it to the museum lab for analysis. |  |
Vega Older Than Thought, Astronomers Say
According to an international group of astronomers led by Dr Peter Tuthill of the Sydney Institute for Astronomy, Vega – the brightest star in the constellation Lyra located about 25 light-years away – may be more than 200 million years older than previously thought.
The group used a tool called the Michigan Infrared Combiner and installed at the Georgia State Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy Array on Mt. Wilson in California to estimate the age of Vega by precisely measuring its spin speed. The tool collects the light gathered by six telescopes to make it appear to be coming through one that’s 100 times larger than NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. |  |
Nile-Like River Spotted on Saturn Moon Titan
NASA's Cassini spacecraft has captured a crisp image of a long river cutting across Saturn's huge moon Titan.
The hydrocarbon-filled river stretches more than 250 miles (400 kilometers) from its source to a large sea near frigid Titan's north pole. Cassini's radar image is the first high-resolution shot ever taken of such a vast river system on a world beyond Earth, researchers said, and scientists are comparing it to Earth's Nile River in Egypt. "Though there are some short, local meanders, the relative straightness of the river valley suggests it follows the trace of at least one fault, similar to other large rivers running into the southern margin of this same Titan sea,"... |  |
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