from National Geographic News
Archaeologists have uncovered more remnants from Tharu, the largest known fortified city in ancient Egypt, which sits near the modern-day border town of Rafah.
The fortress, also known as Tjaru or Tharo, covered about 31 acres, Egyptian authorities say. Its discovery near the Suez Canal was announced in July 2007.
Tharu helped guard the empire's eastern front in the Sinai Peninsula and served as a military cornerstone for Egypt's ancient leaders. "It was built [more than] 3,000 years ago, and it was an important and strategic point," said Mohamed Abdel-Maqsoud, of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.
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from Scientific American
History is riddled with the remnants of photographic tampering. Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Mussolini, Castro and Brezhnev each had photographs manipulated—from creating more heroic-looking poses to erasing enemies or bottles of beer.
In Stalin's day, such phony images required long hours of cumbersome work in a darkroom, but today anyone with a computer can readily produce fakes that can be very hard to detect.
Barely a month goes by without some newly uncovered fraudulent image making it into the news. In February, for instance, an award-winning photograph depicting a herd of endangered Tibetan antelope apparently undisturbed by a new high-speed train racing nearby was uncovered to be a fake.
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from New Scientist
The goal of finding an Earth-like planet around another star has just come closer. Astronomers announced today they have discovered a planet of about three Earth masses orbiting a star smaller than our sun.
The planet has the closest mass to Earth of all the known extrasolar planets, and is the lightest planet ever found orbiting a normal-size star.
"Our discovery indicates that even the lowest mass stars can host planets," David Bennett of the University of Notre Dame, who led an international team of astronomers to the discovery, said on Monday at the American Astronomical Society meeting in St Louis, Missouri, US.
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from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)
WASHINGTON—A major climate-change measure goes before the Senate this week for the first time since Democrats declared it a priority after taking control of Congress, but the long-awaited debate is ranging beyond the effects of global warming. It also is focusing on Washington's most primal issue, money.
The bill would impose new pollution regulations on industries while significantly expanding another business, carbon "offsetting." Billions of dollars would potentially be available for farmers who offered polluters a way to make amends for excess emissions—a provision that could attract crucial support from farm-state lawmakers.
"I definitely think this debate will be primarily about economics, because there are very few voices left who want to argue about whether or not global warming is really a problem," said Dan Lashof, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council climate center, a bill supporter.
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from ABC News
Surgeons at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., report that Sen. Ted Kennedy is doing well after nearly four hours of surgery [yesterday] to remove a cancerous brain tumor.
For part of the surgery, the 76-year-old Massachusetts senator was awake and conscious, according to an Associated Press report. This relatively new and dramatic approach is being used by surgeons in cases when a malignant tumor isn't readily accessible on the surface of the brain.
So after cutting into Kennedy's skull, Dr. Allan Friedman—the surgeon wielding the scalpel—had to find a pathway through the brain to get at the tumor. For this he needed the patient's conscious help to avoid damaging brain cells essential for speech, movement and other important functions.
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from the Christian Science Monitor
True or false: Violent video games cause children to become more aggressive. Sorry, that was a trick question.
Despite much bandying of statistics and loud talking by critics on both sides of the argument, the real answer is that there is no real answer—at least not one that's been proved scientifically.
So say Cheryl Olson and Lawrence Kutner in their new book, "Grand Theft Childhood." "In fact, much of the information in the popular press about the effects of violent video games is wrong," write the husband and wife team, who direct the Center for Mental Health and Media at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
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from the Baltimore Sun
CHICAGO (Associated Press) - A drug to prevent bone loss during breast cancer treatment also substantially cut the risk that the cancer would return, results that left doctors excited about a possible new way to fight the disease.
It is the first large study to affirm wider anti-cancer hopes for Zometa and other bone-building drugs called bisphosphonates. Zometa, made by Novartis AG, is used now for cancers that have already spread to the bone.
The new study involved 1,800 premenopausal women taking hormone treatments for early-stage breast cancer. Zometa cut by one-third the chances that cancer would recur—in their bones or anywhere else.
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from the New York Times (Registration Required)
Before we get to Ray Kurzweil's plan for upgrading the "suboptimal software" in your brain, let me pass on some of the cheery news he brought to the World Science Festival last week in New York.
Do you have trouble sticking to a diet? Have patience. Within 10 years, Dr. Kurzweil explained, there will be a drug that lets you eat whatever you want without gaining weight.
Worried about greenhouse gas emissions? Have faith. Solar power may look terribly uneconomical at the moment, but with the exponential progress being made in nanoengineering, Dr. Kurzweil calculates that it'll be cost-competitive with fossil fuels in just five years, and that within 20 years all our energy will come from clean sources.
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Federal officials say childhood obesity may have leveled off in the United States. A new analysis of the most recent data found the first sign since the 1980s that the number of 2-to-19-year-olds who are overweight may have stopped rising.
Another study found that lead exposure early in life could be linked to higher arrest rates later on. Experts say the first study to follow lead-exposed children from before birth into adulthood could provide the strongest evidence yet that lead exposure plays a major role in crime.
Meanwhile, researchers in Maryland are trying to determine why flu vaccines aren't as effective for older people. Flu vaccines reportedly work in only 30 percent to 40 percent of those over age 65 - compared with 80 percent to 90 percent of younger adults.
And, finally, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute is expanding its flagship investigators program through a $600 million initiative. By endowing scientists' research over many years, the institute hopes they will make major discoveries in a variety of fields, including genetics and biology.
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The BBC reported that a Canadian military expedition has uncovered dramatic evidence of the breakup of giant Arctic ice shelves in Canada's far north. The team found a network of cracks stretching for more than 10 miles on Ward Hunt, the area's largest shelf. Scientists with the troops said it could be another indicator of climate change.
In other environment news, marine scientists in Seattle said at a congressional field hearing last week that increasing acidity in coastal waters along the Pacific Northwest could threaten food chains and, ultimately, the shellfish industry there.
A massive coal-burning power plant under construction in Germany will be one of the biggest in the world, underscoring that however much Europe may be moving toward renewable energy, coal is still a big part of the energy equation there.
And the Associated Press profiled a scientist whose main mission is to protect the $17 billion U.S. wheat crop from such threats as the destructive fungus that has infected fields in Africa and the Middle East. But Congress has reportedly cut his research budget.
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An electrical short in the Phoenix Lander's mechanical arm delayed its exploration of the Martian north pole last week, but new photos on Saturday revealed that the spacecraft's thrusters had uncovered a large patch of ice, which is exactly what scientists hope to sample and analyze.
But the planet may be too salty to support life as we know it. At least that is the conclusion of a study of minerals near the Martian surface in the Meridiani plain. The rover Opportunity discovered ancient deposits of magnesium sulphate there that appear to have been left behind by salty water.
Even beyond our system, there may be many Earth-like planets in the cosmos. A four-year study of 400 stars found that as many as 30 percent possess close-in, relatively small planets with some Earthly characteristics.
And an amateur stargazer has been credited with discovering the fastest rotating natural object in our solar system. The space rock, as big as a house, spins once every minute. It zoomed past earth in April.
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In last week's issue of Nature, researchers reported a dramatic advance in brain-machine interface. Two monkeys with tiny sensors implanted in their brains were able to control a mechanical arm with their thoughts. It suggests that brain-controlled prosthetics, if not yet practical, are at least technically feasible.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is planning to begin sending drone airplanes into hurricanes this season as part of a program to monitor the atmosphere. The data sent back should help forecasters predict the intensity of the storms.
Robot submarines turned up several artifacts on the sea floor off the coast of Rhode Island last week, including objects associated with the wreck of the HMS Cerberus, which was scuttled by its British captain during the American Revolution. The robots were designed to hunt for underwater mines.
At a science summit in New York, leading American scientists criticized the decline in federal support for science and lamented the nation's diminished role as a leader in research and technology. It was the opening event for the first World Science Festival.
And, finally, it was also announced last week at the science festival that seven men are the first winners of new science prizes established by philanthropist, businessman and physicist Fred Kavli. The Kavli Prizes are worth $1 million in the fields of astrophysics, nanoscience and neuroscience. They will be awarded every other year.
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British archaeologists said last week that Stonehenge, the prehistoric stone monument, appears to have served as a cemetery for as long as 500 years and may have been a burial site for a single important family, perhaps a royal dynasty.
In other news, researchers said a massive release of methane 635 million year ago may have caused a jump in temperature that triggered rapid melting of global glaciation on earth. The sudden burst of methane may have occurred when ice sheets that stretched all the way to the equator broke apart.
Scientists say a 380-million-year-old fossil fish with an embryo still attached to its umbilical cord has provided the oldest example of a live birth. The specimen was found in Australia. Until now, scientists thought creatures from that time period reproduced by laying eggs.
And speaking of fossils, New Jersey sediment known as glauconite has yielded some curious specimens of late. One in particular, of a sabertooth salmon, suggests that the dinosaur-era fish may have survived longer than anyone thought, based on the geologic record.
And, finally, divers reported finding the ruins of an ancient temple in the Nile River that was built in honor of the Egyptian fertility god Khnum. Because the river has shifted course over the centuries, archaeologists said they expect to make other such finds through underwater excavations.
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from the Times (London) Giant "kitchen towels" could replace booms, bombs and detergents as the best remedy for a catastrophic oil spill, researchers said after inventing a super-absorbent membrane.
The wafer-thin sheet, made from nanowires, acts like blotting paper on oil and has the capacity to absorb 20 times its own weight. It is impervious to water, remaining dry even when left under water for a month, but soaks up oil and other contaminants, which can then be removed and disposed of safely.
Researchers believe that it will lead to the development of huge "towels" that could be dropped into the seas or dragged through the water to soak up oil spills like those caused by the Torrey Canyon, Exxon Valdez and Amoco Cadiz.
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from USA Today A new study shows which colorectal cancer patients may benefit from a drug - and which would be better off without it.
The drug Erbitux doesn't work in patients whose tumor has a certain genetic mutation, according to a study of nearly 600 patients, presented Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago.
About 36 percent of patients in the study have the mutation, in a gene called KRAS, says co-author Eric Van Cutsem, of University Hospital Gasthuisberg in Belgium. All of the patients in the study had colorectal cancer that had spread to other organs.
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from the Washington Post A vast government effort to bring oysters back to the Chesapeake Bay has turned out so dismally that it has the ring of a math-class riddle. How do you spend $58 million to get more of something and wind up with less of it?
Since 1994, state and federal authorities have poured these millions into rejuvenating the famous bivalves and the centuries-old industry that relies on them. They have succeeded at neither.
Instead, official estimates show there are fewer oysters in the bay and fewer oystermen trying to catch them. If those estimates are accurate, the effort would be a failure of environmental policy that stands out for its scale, even on a bay where policymakers frequently promise big and deliver small.
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from National Geographic News After late or missed warnings, operators are struggling to figure out why a recently launched earthquake early-alert system in Japan isn't working as planned.
The system, run by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), is designed to give people in the quake-prone country up to two minutes' warning of approaching shock waves.
"If the system works properly, then it will contribute significantly to reducing the impact of disasters," said Masahiko Murata, deputy director of the projects department at the Disaster Reduction and Human Renovation Institution in Kobe.
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from the Economist Tradition has it that boys are good at counting and girls are good at reading. So much so that Mattel once produced a talking Barbie doll whose stock of phrases included "Math class is tough!"
... Luigi Guiso of the European University Institute in Florence and his colleagues have just published the results of a study which suggests that culture explains most of the difference in math, at least.
In [last] week's Science, they show that the gap in mathematics scores between boys and girls virtually disappears in countries with high levels of sexual equality, though the reading gap remains.
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from Scientific American It's not your normal, electronic silicon-based machine, but scientists have made a computer from a small, circular piece of DNA, then inserted it into a living bacterial cell and unleashed the microbe to solve a mathematical sorting problem.
"A computer is any system that can read some input and give some readable output," says Karmella Haynes, a biologist at Davidson College in North Carolina and co-author of a new study appearing in the Journal of Biological Engineering.
Haynes and her team looked to harness the power of DNA recombination to solve the so-called "burnt pancake problem": a puzzle about how to stack different-size flapjacks that are burned on one side and perfectly cooked on the other using the fewest number of flips to arrange them so the largest are on the bottom and all are golden side up.
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from the Scientist
Timothy Caulfield has spent years listening to scientists complain that the media does a poor job of explaining science. ... Finally, he decided to find out for himself.
Caulfield pored over the print media's coverage of genetic discoveries from around the English-speaking world and compiled a list of 627 newspaper articles reporting on 111 different scientific journal articles.
Together with a team of coders, all of whom had scientific backgrounds, he compared the newspaper articles with the original journal studies for signs of technical errors or exaggerated claims of the research findings. Contrary to perceived opinions, he found that only 11 percent of the media stories could be categorized as inaccurate or exaggerated.
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from the Los Angeles Times
HAT CREEK, CALIF. - In this remote volcanic valley near Mt. Shasta, 42 telescope dishes have sprouted amid the soaring ponderosa pines, listening for a voice from space.
Every few seconds the 20-foot-wide dishes, scattered over dozens of acres, pirouette in perfect synchronicity, like dancers practicing their pas de deux before opening night.
... The Hat Creek Radio Observatory will be the biggest radio telescope in the world specifically designed to search for extraterrestrial intelligence when the full 350-dish array is completed in the next few years.
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from the New York Times
The shuttle Discovery blasted its way into orbit on Saturday through wispy clouds against blue skies on its way to deliver a bus-size laboratory to the International Space Station.
... The laboratory, the $1 billion Kibo module, is the largest and the second part of three shuttle payloads that will bring the full Kibo assembly up to the station.
It will be the largest "room" on the station, and will eventually include an exposed area, like a back porch, where some experiments will be exposed to the harsh vacuum and temperature extremes of space.
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from the San Francisco Examiner
Sharp new images received Saturday from the Phoenix lander largely convinced scientists that the spacecraft's thrusters had uncovered a large patch of ice just below the Martian surface, team members said.
That bodes well for the mission's main goal of digging for ice that can be tested for evidence of organic compounds that are the chemical building blocks of life.
Team members had said Friday that photos showing the ground beneath the lander suggested the vehicle was resting on splotches of ice. Washington University scientist Ray Arvidson said the spacecraft's thrusters may have blown away dirt covering the ice when the robot landed one week ago.
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The announcement last week that U.S. senator Edward Kennedy has a malignant brain tumor (a glioma) prompted many media outlets to report on the treatment options and prognosis for this medical condition.
In other news, the British parliament approved research using hybrid embryos that contain human and animal material. Experts said cytoplasmic hybrids are never likely to be transplanted into sick patients, and any insights about diseases revealed through this line of research are probably years away.
Meanwhile, U.S. health officials expressed concern that narcotic painkillers and other legitimate pharmaceuticals are replacing illegal substances as the drugs of choice among drug abusers.
According to a study released at the American Urological Association's annual meeting, a "wait-and-see" approach is appropriate for men who have low-risk prostate tumors that have not spread. But many patients still opt for treatment, preferring not to take any chances.
And a Mayo Clinic study found a sharp rise after 2003 in the number of women diagnosed with breast cancer there who decided to have mastectomies rather than lumpectomies. Researchers said one possible explanation is that magnetic resonance imaging is detecting more growths than mammography.
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Such non-food crops as reeds and wild grasses may seem an attractive alternative to corn for making biofuel, but scientists warned last week that many of the crops being discussed qualify as invasive species. As such, they could spread to adjacent farms and other land, doing economic and ecological harm in the process.
In other news, researchers say the encroachment of conifer forests on Arctic tundra threatens to accelerate warming in the far north in areas now covered by reflective snow much of the year.
A new study in the journal Nature Geoscience suggests that we may experience fewer rather than more hurricanes as the world warms. But there may be a "modest increase" in the intensity of the storms.
The Washington Post looked at how symbols can overshadow substance when it comes to climate change initiatives. When the 2 million residents of Sydney, Australia, turned off their lights for an hour, it was a dandy publicity stunt—that didn't really save a significant amount of energy.
And the Minneapolis Star Tribune featured local television meteorologist Mike Fairbourne, who is among thousands of scientists who have signed a petition saying that human influence on global warming is exaggerated. The petition drive is the work of several staff members at the non-profit Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine.
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With the price of gasoline nearing $4 a gallon, many American motorists are deciding that hybrid cars represent a technology whose time has come. Dealers are selling them as fast as they are delivered. But it takes a lot of driving to offset the sticker price.
In other technology news, the Brooklyn Bridge, which remains a powerful symbol of engineering and imagination, celebrated its 125th birthday last week. Thousands of people turned out for the party last Thursday. The bridge opened on May 24, 1883.
And a touring exhibit called "Building America's Canals" reveals the engineering challenges that were overcome in constructing the historic waterways that aided westward expansion. Created by the National Canal Museum in Easton, Pa., the exhibit is currently in Williamsport, Md.
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A fossil rediscovered in the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., could provide new insights into the origins of modern amphibians. Experts say the 290-million-year-old fossil, found in Texas in the 1990s, suggests the creature had features of both frogs and salamanders.
Elsewhere, Danish scientists reported the oldest and most northerly fossil of a parrot ever discovered. Found on Denmark's Isle of Mors, the fossil is estimated to be 54 million years old.
And dinosaur footprints have been found for the first time on the Arabian Peninsula. The 150-million-year-old tracks—more than 100 in all—were made by plant-eating ornithopods and sauropods. The footprints are said to suggest herding behavior along a coastal mudflat in the late Jurassic period.
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Mars was a big news-maker last week, with the successful landing on Sunday of the Phoenix Mars Lander. The probe performed perfectly, which was a relief in the wake of the 1999 disappearance of the Mars Polar Lander.
Earlier in the week, scientists reported that radar imaging from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft detected as many as seven layers of ice and dust under the planet's north pole. Phoenix will dig down into the polar soil to determine what's there. Elsewhere on the planet, the Mars rover Spirit uncovered evidence of ancient hot springs, a discovery with possible implications for life.
In other space news, astronomers said they were just plain lucky to witness the beginning of a supernova, the fiery death of a star. It was detected by a NASA X-ray satellite while observing another, more advanced supernova.
And astrophysicists reported that much of the missing matter in the universe appears to be clustered in the space between galaxies in a vast web-like structure. But they say they cannot fully account for the majority of normal matter believed to have been created by the big bang.
Ten years ago this month the Astronomical Journal accepted a paper for publication that revealed a dark side to gravity. So-called "dark energy," a force that repels gravity, has become the most profound problem in physics, according to National Geographic.
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from the Guardian (UK)
The world's largest mud volcano that has been erupting continuously since 2006 is beginning to show signs of "catastrophic collapse," according to geologists who have been monitoring it and the surrounding area. The volcano - named Lusi - has already devastated homes and businesses in Sidoarjo, East Java, Indonesia, displacing around 10,000 people and killing 14.
Now scientists say that the land near the central vent could sag by up to
146 metres in the next decade. In March, the scientists observed drops of up to 3 metres in one night. Most of the subsidence in the area around the volcano is more gradual, at around 0.1cm per day.
"It is starting to show signs that the central part is undergoing a more catastrophic collapse," said Prof Richard Davies, a geologist at Durham University.
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from the Washington Post
Some of the nation's leading scientists, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's top science adviser, [Wednesday] sharply criticized the diminished role of science in the United States and the shortage of federal funding for research, even as science becomes increasingly important to combating problems such as climate change and the global food shortage.
Speaking at a science summit that opens this week's first World Science Festival, the expert panel of scientists, and audience members, agreed that the United States is losing stature because of a perceived high-level disdain for science.
They cited U.S. officials and others questioning scientific evidence of climate change, the reluctance to federally fund stem cell research, and some U.S. officials casting doubt on evolution as examples that have damaged America's international standing.
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