Posts by AltonParrish:
New Titanosaurus, Yongjinglong Datang
February 2nd, 2014
By University of Pennsylvania.
University of Pennsylvania paleontologists has characterized a new dinosaur based on fossil remains found in northwestern China. The species, a plant-eating sauropod namedYongjinglong datangi, roamed during the Early Cretaceous period, more than 100 million years ago. This sauropod belonged to a group known as Titanosauria, members of which were among the largest living creatures to ever walk the earth.
A team led by University of Pennsylvania paleontologists has characterized a new dinosaur based on fossil remains found in northwestern China. The species, a plant-eating sauropod named Yongjinglong datangi, roamed during the Early Cretaceous period, more than 100 million years ago. This sauropod belonged to a group known as Titanosauria, members of which were among the largest living creatures to ever walk the earth. At roughly 50-60 feet long, the Yongjinglong individual discovered was a medium-sized Titanosaur. Anatomical evidence, however, points to it being a juvenile; adults may have been larger.
Credit: University of Pennsylvania
At roughly 50-60 feet long, theYongjinglong individual discovered was a medium-sized Titanosaur. Anatomical evidence, however, points to it being a juvenile; adults may have been larger.
The find, reported in the journal PLOS ONE, helps clarify relationships among several sauropod species that have been found in the last few decades in China and elsewhere. Its features suggest that Yongjinglong is among the most derived, or evolutionarily advanced, of the Titanosaurs yet discovered from Asia.
Doctoral student Liguo Li and professor Peter Dodson, who have affiliations in both the School of Veterinary Medicine’s Department of Animal Biology and the School of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Earth and Environmental Science, led the work. They partnered with Hailu You, a former student of Dodson’s, who now works at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, and Daqing Li of the Gansu Geological Museum in Lanzhou, China.
Until very recently, the United States was the epicenter for dinosaur diversity, but China surpassed the U.S. in 2007 in terms of species found. This latest discovery was made in the southeastern Lanzhou-Minhe Basin of China’s Gansu Province, about an hour’s drive from the province’s capital, Lanzhou. Two other Titanosaurs from the same period, Huanghetitan liujiaxiaensis and Daxiatitan binglingi, were discovered within the last decade in a valley one kilometer from the Yongjinglong fossils.
“As recently as 1997 only a handful of dinosaurs were known from Gansu,” Dodson said. “Now it’s one of the leading areas of China. This dinosaur is one more of the treasures of Gansu.”
During a trip to Gansu, Liguo Li was invited to study the remains, which had been in storage since being unearthed in 2008. They consisted of three teeth, eight vertebrae, the left shoulder blade, and the right radius and ulna.
The anatomical features of the bones bear some resemblance to another Titanosaur that had been discovered by paleontologists in China in 1929, named Euhelopus zdanskyi. But the team was able to identify a number of unique characteristics.
“The shoulder blade was very long, nearly 2 meters, with sides that were nearly parallel, unlike many other Titanosaurs whose scapulae bow outward,” Li said.
The scapula was so long, indeed, that it did not appear to fit in the animal’s body cavity if placed in a horizontal or vertical orientation, as is the case with other dinosaurs. Instead, Li and colleagues suggest the bone must have been oriented at an angle of 50 degrees from the horizontal.
In addition, an unfused portion of the shoulder blade indicated to the researchers that the animal under investigation was a juvenile or subadult.
“The scapula and coracoid aren’t fused here,” Li said. “It is open, leaving potential for growth.”
Thus, a full-grown adult might be larger than this 50-60 foot long individual. Future finds may help elucidate just how much larger, the researchers noted.
The ulna and radius were well preserved, enough so that the researchers could identify grooves and ridges they believe correspond with the locations of muscle attachments in the dinosaur’s leg.
The researchers were also able to draw evidence about the dinosaur’s relationship to other species from the vertebrae, one of which was from the neck and the other seven from the trunk. Notably, the vertebrae had large cavities in the interior that the team believes provided space for air sacs in the dinosaur’s body.
“These spaces are unusually large in this species,” Dodson said. “It’s believed that dinosaurs, like birds, had air sacs in their trunk, abdominal cavity and neck as a way of lightening the body.”
In addition, the longest tooth they found was nearly 15 centimeters long. Another shorter tooth contained unique characteristics, including two “buttresses,” or bony ridges, on the internal side, while Euhelopus had only one buttress on its teeth.
To gain a sense of where Yongjinglong sits on the family tree of sauropods, the researchers were able to compare its characteristics with specimens from elsewhere in China, as well as from Africa, South America and the U.S.
“We used standard paleontological techniques to compare it with phylogenies based on other specimens,” Dodson said. “It is definitely much more derived than Euhelopus and shows close similarities to derived species from South America.”
Not only does the discovery point to the fact that Titanosaurs encompass a diverse group of dinosaurs, but it also supports the growing consensus that sauropods were a dominant group in the Early Cretaceous — a view that U.S. specimens alone could not confirm.
“Based on U.S. fossils, it was once thought that sauropods dominated herbivorous dinosaur fauna during the Jurassic but became almost extinct during the Cretaceous,” Dodson said. “We now realize that, in other parts of the world, particularly in South America and Asia, sauropod dinosaurs continued to flourish in the Cretaceous, so the thought that they were minor components is no longer a tenable view.”
Funding for the research was provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Hundred Talents Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Gansu Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resourcesand the National Science Foundation.
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Underground oceans on Earth?
January 29th, 2014
By University of Liverpool.
Scientists at the University of Liverpool have shown that deep sea fault zones could transport much larger amounts of water from the Earth’s oceans to the upper mantle than previously thought.
Credit: University of Liverpool
Water is carried mantle by deep sea fault zones which penetrate the oceanic plate as it bends into the subduction zone. Subduction, where an oceanic tectonic plate is forced beneath another plate, causes large earthquakes such as the recent Tohoku earthquake, as well as many earthquakes that occur hundreds of kilometers below the Earth’s surface.
Seismic modelling
Seismologists at Liverpool have estimated that over the age of the Earth, the Japan subduction zone alone could transport the equivalent of up to three and a half times the water of all the Earth’s oceans to its mantle.
Using seismic modelling techniques the researchers analysed earthquakes which occurred more than 100 km below the Earth’s surface in the Wadati-Benioff zone, a plane of Earthquakes that occur in the oceanic plate as it sinks deep into the mantle.
Summary of subduction zone structure inferred for waveform modelling of dispersed P-wave arrivals
Analysis of the seismic waves from these earthquakes shows that they occurred on 1 – 2 km wide fault zones with low seismic velocities. Seismic waves travel slower in these fault zones than in the rest of the subducting plate because the sea water that percolated through the faults reacted with the oceanic rocks to form serpentinite – a mineral that contains water.
Some of the water carried to the mantle by these hydrated fault zones is released as the tectonic plate heats up. This water causes the mantle material to melt, causing volcanoes above the subduction zone such as those that form the Pacific ‘ring of fire’. Some water is transported deeper into the mantle, and is stored in the deep Earth.
“It has been known for a long time that subducting plates carry oceanic water to the mantle,” saidTom Garth, a PhD student in the Earthquake Seismology research group led by Professor Andreas Rietbrock.
“This water causes melting in the mantle, which leads to arc releasing some of the water back into the atmosphere. Part of the subducted water however is carried deeper into the mantle and may be stored there.
Large amounts of water deep in the Earth
“We found that fault zones that form in the deep oceanic trench offshore Northern Japan persist to depths of up to 150 km. These hydrated fault zones can carry large amounts of water, suggesting that subduction zones carry much more water from the ocean down to the mantle than has previously been suggested.
“This supports the theory that there are large amounts of water stored deep in the Earth.”
Understanding how much water is delivered to the mantle contributes to knowledge of how the mantle convects, and how it melts, which helps to understand how plate tectonics began, and how the continental crust was formed.
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Murder for hire: Shadowy world of Britain’s discount hitmen
January 29th, 2014By Alton Parrish.
Contract killing is one of the least studied, but most intriguing areas of organized crime; and new research into British hitmen has found that in some cases victims were murdered for as little as £200. The first typological study of British hitmen, published in The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, identified four main types of contract killer; the novice, the dilettante, the journeyman; and the master.
“Hitmen are familiar figures in films and video games, carrying out ‘hits’ in underworld bars or from the roof tops with expensive sniper rifles,” said Professor David Wilson from Birmingham City University’s Center for Applied Criminology. “The reality could not be more different. British hitmen are more likely to murder their victim while they walk the dog or go shopping in suburban neighborhoods.”
The team analyzed newspaper articles from an electronic archive of national and local papers from across Britain, using the reports to piece together a list of cases which could be defined as contract killings. The finalist comprised of 27 contract killings, committed by 35 hitmen, and one hitwoman, active on the British mainland from 1974 to 2013.
“Using court transcripts and off-the-record interviews with ex-offenders we were able to identify recurring traits and patterns of behaviors amongst British hitmen,” said Professor Wilson. “We explored demographic data about the contract killers, who the targets had been, how they had been murdered, if the killer had been caught, if the killer was already known to the police, and how much they had been paid to carry out the hit.”
While the age of hitmen ranged from 15 to 63, the average age of a British contract killer was 38, while the average age of their victim was 36. Guns were the most common murder weapon of choice, accounting for 25 of the 35 victims.
The cost of ordered murder in Britain was also found to vary considerably, with the average cost standing at £15,180. The lowest fee in the sample was a mere £200, in contrast to the highest fee of £100,000.
Far from being carried out in smoky underworld clubs, the majority of hits took place in suburban neighborhoods, often as the victim was walking their dog or going shopping. Often the hitman and their victim lived in the same area, which is one of the most common reasons behind their eventual arrest.
Contract killings are overwhelmingly likely to be carried out by men. The only female hitwoman to be identified was Te Rangimaria Ngarimu, a 27-year-old Maori who was found guilty of being paid £7,000 to murder her victim in 1992.
Building on this data the team identified four main types of hitmen:
The Novice:
While a novice is a beginner who may be carrying out a hit for the first time, this is not to suggest that they are incompetent. One example of the novice was 16-year-old Santre Sanchez Gayle, who committed murder for £200 in 2010 and was only caught after bragging to his friends.
The Dilettante:
This type of killer is often older than the novice and of the four types, they are the least likely to have a criminal background and therefore they may lack access to firearms. The dilettante is likely to accept a contract as a way to resolve a personal financial crisis, and may not take to contract killing with much enthusiasm or skill. One example is Orville Wright, the “hitman who lost his nerve”, who decided he could not go through with the £5000 hit, after talking to his intended victim.
The Journeyman:
This killer is someone who is capable, experienced and reliable but not an especially exceptional hitman. As a ‘career criminal’, they are highly likely to have strong connections to their local criminal underworld. While this allows them to source guns, it also means that the police can use local intelligence networks to identify them.
The Master:
This final type of hitman is the most elusive to study, as they are also the least likely to be caught. Dr Wilson’s team suggests these killers are likely to come from a military or para-military background and could be responsible for up to 100 hits. The major reason the master killer evades justice is that they travel to an area to carry out the hit, without any local ties, leaving minimum local intelligence about the hit or the hitman.
“The motivations to pay a hitman the relatively small amount to carry out a murder were often depressingly banal. Spouses fell out, business deals fell apart, and young gang members wanted to impress their elders,” concluded Professor Wilson. “The reality of British hitmen stands in strong contrast to the fiction and we hope these profiles will help the police to identify patterns and behavioral traits common to contract killers in Britain.”
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Volatility in oil prices’ stymie global economic growth
January 29th, 2014
By University of Oxford.
The volatility of oil prices is a ‘fundamental barrier to stability and economic growth’, according to a new study by the University of Oxford published in Frontiers in Energy.
It recommends a raft of measures to bring prices under control, saying the amount of speculative trading taking place in the oil derivatives market is a large part of the problem. It suggests the ‘behaviour of speculators compounds existing volatility’ and previously unrelated volatility is spilling over from the stock market to the oil market and vice versa. This has changed the nature of the oil derivatives market, driving it away from its original purpose of ‘hedging’ – a means by which businesses could protect themselves against price fluctuations, say the researchers from the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment.
While the authors welcome the European Commission’s proposed Financial Transactions Tax on transactions in the oil derivatives market, they say the amount (pegged at 0.01%) is too small and therefore unlikely to deter speculators. It could even carry the risk of curbing hedging as an unintended consequence, says the report. They conclude that the planned EU tax for financial transactions is a good first step, but unlikely to be sufficient to cut out unnecessary trading.
In the study, Sir David King, Dr Oliver Inderwildi and Zoheir Ebrahim recommend a combination of policies to tackle both the supply and demand side of the oil industry. They highlight the importance of collective action, such as the strategic oil reserve administered by the International Energy Agency (IEA) that can effectively be used to reduce price volatility in times of crisis. The study says given the IEA’s projections of oil prices reaching at least $215 a barrel by 2035, global cooperation is fundamental to the management and reduction of future price volatility.
‘In this regard, the IEA collective action framework, which mandates the maintenance of strategic oil reserves, has been highly effective on several occasions in reducing the extent of price volatility in the context of oil-supply disruptions,’ says the report. It recommends strengthening and expanding such frameworks to improve future market stability.
The study also suggests the introduction of new regulation to make it mandatory for major oil-reliant industries to maintain their own oil stocks, thereby insulating oil prices from sudden spikes during crises in oil-rich parts of the world.
Governments should provide incentives to businesses and companies investing in infrastructure that promotes alternative fuel and energy sources or that develop new greener energy provision, says the study.
The authors note that additional unconventional fossil fuel resources obtained through processes such as fracking are due to come online over the next decade, suggesting this is ‘highly likely’ to keep resource prices at a relatively low level. It describes this development as ‘terrible news for the environment’, but ‘excellent news for the economy’ which will ‘buy us time for decarbonisation endeavours’.
To reduce the volatility of oil prices in the long term, the study says governments need to take charge of the ‘politically challenging task’ of removing subsidies on fuel, particularly in non-OECD countries where fuel subsidies are institutionalised. It says policies aimed at improving energy efficiency, such as the adoption of fuel-economy standards and government requirements for greater energy efficiency, provide a significant opportunity to reduce demand for oil.
Dr Oliver Inderwildi said: ‘Unconventional fossil fuel resources are a blessing at the moment as cheap fuel will support the global economic recovery. In the long term, however, we have to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels because of the great damage they are causing to the environment and the toxic economic effect of price volatility. This will require many measures, from extending the strategic oil reserves to the restructuring of derivative markets and large-scale investments in modern, energy efficient infrastructure.
‘Reducing our dependence on fossil resource should also increase the energy security of OECD countries and in the long term, as a knock-on effect, this would also be likely to improve relations in areas where there are geopolitical tensions. However, this can only be achieved if countries that depend on imports of resources like oil and gas take collective action.’
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Why life got big in the earths early oceans?
January 27th, 2014
By University of California Los Angeles.
Why did life forms first begin to get larger and what advantage did this increase in size provide?
UCLA biologists working with an international team of scientists examined the earliest communities of large multicellular organisms in the fossil record to help answer this question.
The life scientists used a novel application of modeling techniques at a variety of scales to understand the scientific processes operating in the deep sea 580 million years ago. The research reveals that an increase in size provided access to nutrient-carrying ocean flow, giving an advantage to multicellular eukaryotes that existed prior to the Cambrian explosion of animal life, said David Jacobs, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology in the UCLA College of Letters and Science and senior author of the research.
Canopy flow and rangeomorph communities.
A: Bedding plane, at Mistaken Point, Newfoundland, showing the preservation of rangeomorph taxa.
B: Schematic of the reconstructed community showing the velocity gradient (blue arrows) and large Kelvin-Helmholtz vortices.
C: Kelvin- Helmholtz vortices visualised at the boundary between parallel flows of different velocity.
D: The waving of a vegetated canopy produced by Kelvin-Helmholtz vortices.
E: Kelvin-Helmholtz Vortices produced in a cloud layer. Arrows in C-E indicate the relative velocity of flow.
F: ‘The Fields’ by Vincdent van Gogh was among a number of his paintings inspired by Kelvin-Helholtz behavior of fields and clouds.
Credit: Current Biology
The study findings are published Jan. 23 in the journal Current Biology.
A multidisciplinary research team reconstructed ocean flow in the fossil community using “canopy flow models,” a particular class of flow models consistent with the dense spacing of organisms on the ancient seabed.
The research was inspired by the NASA Astrobiology Institute’s “Foundations of Complex Life” meeting in Newfoundland, Canada, where the oldest known fossil communities of large, multicellular organisms — collectively called rangeomorphs — are found on rock surfaces exposed along the coast. These feather- or brush-shaped creatures ranged in size from several millimeters to tens of centimeters in height.
The scientists addressed the absorption properties of the rangeomorphs’ surfaces based on the model’s results. These rangeomorphs could not photosynthesize because they lived in the extreme depths, where light did not penetrate, Jacobs said. Their complex surfaces suggest that they absorbed dissolved nutrients directly from the water — which raises the question of how rangeomorphs competed with bacteria, which also specialize in absorbing nutrients from seawater.
Understanding what advantages rangeomorphs gained over bacteria by growing tall would provide scientists with insights into what drove the evolution of the first communities of large life forms in the fossil record, Jacobs said.
Rangeomorph fossils: The oldest known fossil communities of large, multicellular organisms called rangeomorphs are found on rock surfaces along the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.
Credit: Current Biology
The scientists discovered that rangeomorphs had an advantage when they grew off the sea floor, as they were exposed to higher flow, generating much greater “nutrient uptake.”
The inducement to “grow upwards is a function of the canopy, which controls the velocity of ocean water as it moves through the rangeomorph community,” Jacobs said. “As individuals grow upwards, the properties ofwater flow change, which promotes further upward growth.”
Both the canopy-flow and surface-uptake models represent significant advances in scientists’ ability to understand the ecology of fossil and modern communities, Jacobs said. Such modeling may prove critical to understanding processes that affect ocean life today, such as coral bleaching, he said.
Co-authors of the research include David Gold, a UCLA graduate student in Jacobs’ laboratory; Roger Summons (MIT) and David Johnston (Harvard), who helped reconstruct the paleoceanography of this time; and Guy Narbonne (Queens University), Marc LaFlamme (University of Toronto) and Matthew Clapham (UC Santa Cruz), who contributed the paleontological data necessary to populate the model. Marco Ghisalberti of the University of Western Australia in Perth developed and conducted the modeling in collaboration with Jacobs and Gold, who developed the paleo-biomechanical conceptual models to be tested, assembled the research team and directed the research.
For more information about NASA’s “Foundations of Complex Life” astrobiology research, visithttp://www.complex-life.org. For more on Jacobs’ research, visit his website. The research is funded by the NASA Astrobiology Institute.
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Robots as platforms?
January 23rd, 2014
By Alton Parrish.
An odd concept for anyone raised on the idea of robots as clunky metal machines or toys designed to make life easier or more fun, but a new EU-funded research project introduces the idea of robots as platforms to deliver smart, user-friendly robotic applications.
Society is undergoing dramatic demographic changes as the number of elderly and people requiring support in their daily life steadily increases. And while the digital revolution is offered as a cost-effective solution to help the health-care sector deal with its growing workload, digital illiteracy means many older citizens are effectively excluded from a vast array of electronic services and benefits.
‘Socially interactive robots can help families and caregivers by physically assisting people and functioning as a companion,’ according to the team of researchers behind the FP7-funded RAPP (‘Robotic applications for delivering smart user empowering applications’) project.
‘Robots may also adopt the role of a friendly tutor for people who want to partake in the electronic feast and they don’t know where to start,’ they continue.
The three-year RAPP project will work on the computational and storage capabilities of robots and enable machine-learning operations, distributed data collection and processing, and knowledge-sharing among robots in order to provide applications adapted to individual needs.
RAPP will use an open-source software platform to help developers create better applications for different types of robots targeting people with different needs, capabilities and expectations, while at the same time respecting their privacy and autonomy. The emphasis will be on getting robots to understand and respond to the intentions and needs of people at risk of exclusion, especially the elderly.
The nearly EUR 2.5 million RAPP project, which began in December 2013, will thus provide the platform (infrastructure) for developers of robotic applications (RApps). The seven partners from five countries – Greece, France, United Kingdom, Spain and Poland – also plan to create a repository from which the robots can download RApps and upload useful monitoring information as needed.
The team, which includes pioneers in the fields of assistive robotics, machine learning and data analysis, motion planning and image recognition, software development and integration as well as social inclusion experts, will develop ways to improve knowledge transfer and re-use between humans and robots, and among other artificial systems. They plan to validate this approach by deploying appropriate pilot cases to demonstrate the use of robots for health and motion monitoring, and for assisting technologically illiterate people or people with mild memory loss.
Ultimately, the RAPP project is working to enable and promote the adoption of small home robots and service robots as both helpers and companions. And according to a statement, the consortium is committed to identifying ‘the best ways to train and adapt robots to serve and assist people with special needs’.
Project factsheet
http://cordis.europa.eu/projects/rcn/111123_en.html
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27-dimensional quantum state
January 21st, 2014Posted by Alton Parrish.
Measurement technology continues to show its potential for quantum information
Until recently measuring a 27-dimensional quantum state would have been a time-consuming, multistage process using a technique called quantum tomography, which is similar to creating a 3D image from many 2D ones. Researchers at the University of Rochester have been able to apply a recently developed, alternative method called direct measurement to do this in a single experiment with no post-processing. The work is of interest because fast, accurate and efficient methods for characterizing high-dimensional states like this could be central in developing high security quantum communications systems, as well as to probe our fundamental understanding of quantum mechanics.
Schrödinger’s cat: a cat, a flask of poison, and a radioactive source are placed in a sealed box. If an internalmonitor detects radioactivity (i.e. a single atom decaying), the flask is shattered, releasing the poison that kills the cat. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that after a while, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when one looks in the box, one sees the cat either alive or dead, not both alive and dead. This poses the question of when exactly quantum superposition ends and reality collapses into one possibility or the other.
Credit: Wikipedia
“Our work shows that direct measurement offers an exciting alternative to quantum tomography,” said Robert Boyd, Professor of Optics and Physics at the
University of Rochester and Canada Excellence Research Chair in Quantum Nonlinear Optics at the University of Ottawa. “As the field of quantum information continues to advance, we expect direct measurement to play an increasingly important role in this.” Boyd added that although it is unclear exactly how much more efficient direct measurement is compared to quantum tomography, the lack of post-processing is a major factor in speeding-up direct measurements.
The direct measurement technique offers a way to directly determine the state of a quantum system. It was first developed in 2011 by scientists at the National Research Council Canada, who used it to determine the position and momentum of photons. Last year, a group of Rochester/Ottawa researchers led by Boyd showed that direct measurement could be applied to measure the polarization states of light. The new paper is the first time this method has been applied to a discrete, high dimensional system.
Such direct measurements of the wavefunction might have appeared to be ruled out by the uncertainty principle – the idea that certain properties of a quantum system could be known with precision only if other properties were known poorly. However, direct measurement involves a “trick” that makes it possible.
Direct measurements consists of two types of measurements performed one after the other, first a “weak” measurement followed by a “strong” measurement. In quantum mechanics the act of measuring a quantum state disturbs it irreversibly, a phenomenon referred to as collapse of the wavefunction. The trick lies with the first measurement being so gentle that it only slightly disturbs the system and does not cause the wavefunction to collapse.
“It is sort of like peeking into the box to see if Schrodinger’s cat is alive, without fully opening the box,” said lead author Dr. Mehul Malik, currently a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Vienna and who was a Ph.D. in Boyd’s group when the work was performed. “The weak measurement is essentially a bad measurement, which leaves you mostly uncertain about whether the cat is alive or dead. It does, however¬, give partial information on the health of the cat, which when repeated many times can lead to near certain information as to whether the cat is alive or dead.” Malik adds that the beauty of the weak measurement is that it does not destroy the system, unlike most standard measurements of a quantum system, allowing a subsequent measurement—the “strong” measurement of the other variable.
This sequence of weak and strong measurements is then repeated for multiple identically prepared quantum systems, until the wave function is known with the required precision.
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Giant sarcophagus leads Penn museum team in Egypt to the thomb of a previlusly unknown pharaoh
January 21st, 2014
By Alton Parrish.
Archaeologists working at the southern Egyptian site of Abydos have discovered the tomb of a previously unknown pharaoh: Woseribre Senebkay—and the first material proof of a forgotten Abydos Dynasty, ca. 1650–1600 BC. Working in cooperation with Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, a team from the Penn Museum,University of Pennsylvania, discovered king Senebkay’s tomb close to a larger royal tomb, recently identified as belonging to a king Sobekhotep (probably Sobekhotep I, ca. 1780 BC) of the 13th Dynasty.
Photo: Josef Wegner, Penn Museum
In the last few weeks of excavations, fascinating details of a series of kings’ tombs and a lost dynasty at Abydos have emerged. Archaeologists now know that the giant quartzite sarcophagus chamber derives from a royal tomb built originally for a pharaoh Sobekhotep—probably Sobekhotep I, the first king of Egypt’s 13th Dynasty. Fragments of that king’s funerary stela were found just recently in front of his huge, badly robbed tomb. A group of later pharaohs (reigning about a century and a half later during Egypt’s Second IntermediatePeriod) were reusing elements from Sobekhotep’s tomb for building and equipping their own tombs. One of these kings (whose name is still unknown) had extracted and reused the quartzite sarcophagus chamber. Another king’s tomb found just last week is that of the previously unknown pharaoh: Woseribre-Senebkay.
A Lost Pharaoh and a Forgotten Dynasty
The newly discovered tomb of pharaoh Senebkay dates to ca. 1650 BC during Egypt’s Second IntermediatePeriod. The identification was made by Dr. Wegner and Kevin Cahail, Ph.D. student, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University of Pennsylvania. The tomb of Senebkay consists of four chambers with a decorated limestone burial chamber. The burial chamber is painted with images of the goddesses Nut, Nephthys, Selket, and Isis flanking the king’s canopic shrine. Other texts name the sons of Horus and record the king’s titulary and identify him as the “king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Woseribre, the son of Re, Senebkay.”
The skeleton of the previously unknown pharaoh Woseribre Senebkay lays on a table. The king’s body was originally mummified, but robbers ripped the body apart. Surrounding the skeleton (from left to right) are Matt Olson, Graduate Student, NELC Department, University of Pennsylvania; Alexander Wegner; and Paul Verhelst, Graduate Student, NELC Department, University of Pennsylvania
The discovery provides significant new evidence on the political and social history of Egypt’s SecondIntermediate Period. The existence of an independent “Abydos Dynasty,” contemporary with the 15th (Hyksos) and 16th (Theban) Dynasties, was first hypothesized by Egyptologist K. Ryholt in 1997. The discovery of pharaoh Senebkay now proves the existence of this Abydos dynasty and identifies the location of their royal necropolis at South Abydos in an area anciently called Anubis-Mountain. The kings of the Abydos Dynasty placed their burial ground adjacent to the tombs of earlier Middle Kingdom pharaohs including Senwosret III (Dynasty 12, ca. 1880–1840 BC), and Sobekhotep I (ca. 1780 BC).
The tomb of pharaoh Senebkay is modest in scale. An important discovery was the badly decayed remains of Senebkay’s canopic chest. This chest was made of cedar wood that had been reused from the nearby tomb of Sobekhotep I and still bore the name of that earlier king, covered over by gilding. Such reuse of objects from the nearby Sobekhotep tomb by Senebkay, like the reused sarcophagus chamber found during the summer, provides evidence that suggests the limited resources and isolated economic situation of the Abydos Kingdom which lay in the southern part of Middle Egypt between the larger kingdoms of Thebes (Dynasties 16–17) and the Hyksos (Dynasty 15) in northern Egypt. Unlike these numbered dynasties, the pharaohs of the Abydos Dynasty were forgotten to history and their royal necropolis unknown until this discovery of Senebkay’s tomb.
“It’s exciting to find not just the tomb of one previously unknown pharaoh, but the necropolis of an entire forgotten dynasty,” noted Dr. Wegner. “Continued work in the royal tombs of the Abydos Dynasty promises to shed new light on the political history and society of an important but poorly understood era of Ancient Egypt.”
Abydos and the Penn Museum
Penn Museum scholars have been excavating at the site of Abydos since 1967, as part of the Pennsylvania-Yale-Institute of Fine Arts/NYU Expedition to Abydos. Abydos is located on the western side of the Nile in Upper Egypt and was a religious center associated with the veneration of the funerary god Osiris. Dr. Josef Wegner has been excavating at the site of Abydos since 1994. Excavations in the area of South Abydos have revealed a thriving royal cult center that developed around the subterranean tomb of pharaoh Senwosret III located at the area called Anubis-Mountain.
The Penn Museum (the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology) in Philadelphia is dedicated to the study and understanding of human history and diversity. Founded in 1887, the Museum has sent more than 300 archaeological and anthropological expeditions to all the inhabited continents of the world. With an active exhibition schedule and educational programming for children and adults, the Museum offers the public an opportunity to share in the ongoing discovery of humankind’s collective heritage. Information: www.penn.museum.
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BOSS measures the universe to one-percent accuracy
January 16th, 2014
Posted by Alton Parrish.
Researchers from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) have announced that they have measured the distances to galaxies more than six billion light-years away to an unprecedented accuracy of just one percent. Their measurements place new constraints on the properties of the mysterious “dark energy” thought to permeate empty space, which causes the expansion of the Universe to accelerate.
“There are not many things in our daily lives that we know to one-percent accuracy,” said David Schlegel, a physicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and the principal investigator of BOSS. “I now know the size of the Universe better than I know the size of my house.”
Credit: Zosia Rostomian, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
The new distance measurements were presented today at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society by Harvard University astronomer Daniel Eisenstein, the director of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III), the worldwide collaboration of which BOSS is a part. They are detailed in a series of articles submitted to journals by the BOSS collaboration last month, all of which are now available as online preprints.
“Determining distance is a fundamental challenge of astronomy,” said Eisenstein. “You see something in the sky — how far away is it? Once you know how far away it is, learning everything else about it is suddenly much easier.”
Throughout history, astronomers have met this challenge using many different techniques: for example, distances to planets in the Solar System can be measured quite accurately using radar, but for more distant objects, astronomers must turn to less-direct methods. Regardless of the method, every measurement has some uncertainty, which can be expressed as a percentage of the thing being measured — for example, if you measure the distance from Washington to New York (200 miles) to within 2 miles of the true value, you have measured to an accuracy of 1%.
Only a few hundred stars and a few star clusters are close enough to have distances measured to one-percent accuracy. Nearly all of these stars are only a few thousand light-years away, and all are still within our own Milky Way galaxy. Reaching out a million times farther away, the new BOSS measurements probe far beyond our Galaxy to map the Universe with unprecedented accuracy.
With these new, highly-accurate distance measurements, BOSS astronomers are making new inroads in the quest to understand dark energy. “We don’t yet understand what dark energy is,” explained Eisenstein, “but we can measure its properties. Then, we compare those values to what we expect them to be, given our current understanding of the Universe. The better our measurements, the more we can learn.”
Making a one-percent measurement at a distance of six billion light-years requires a completely different technique from measurements in the Solar System or the Milky Way. BOSS, the largest of the four projects that make up the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III), was built to take advantage of this technique: measuring the so-called “baryon acoustic oscillations” (BAOs), subtle periodic ripples in the distribution of galaxies in the cosmos.
These ripples are imprints of pressure waves that moved through the early Universe, which was so hot and dense that particles of light (photons) moved along with the protons and neutrons (known collectively as “baryons”) that today make up the nuclei of atoms. The original size of these ripples is known, and their size today can be measured by mapping galaxies.
“With these galaxy measurements, nature has given us a beautiful ruler,” said Ashley Ross, an astronomer from the University of Portsmouth. “The ruler happens to be half a billion light years long, so we can use it to measure distances precisely, even from very far away.”
Making these measurements required astronomers to map the locations of 1.2 million galaxies. BOSS uses a specialized instrument that can make detailed measurements of 1000 galaxies at a time. “On a clear night when everything goes perfectly, we can add more than 8000 galaxies and quasars to the map,” said Kaike Pan, who leads the team of observers at the SDSS-III’s Sloan Foundation 2.5-meter Telescope at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico.
The BOSS team presented preliminary BAO measurements from its early galaxy maps a year ago, but the new analysis covers an area more than twice as large, and thus provides a much more precise measurement. The new dataset also includes the first BAO measurements from a sample of nearby galaxies. “Making these measurements at two different distances allows us to see how the expansion of the Universe has changed over time, which will help us understand why it is accelerating,” explained University of Portsmouth astronomer Rita Tojeiro, who co-chairs the BOSS galaxy clustering working group along with Jeremy Tinker of New York University.
Mariana Vargas-Magaña, a postdoctoral researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, led a companion paper that investigates many of the subtle effects that could influence the BOSS measurement. “When you’re trying to reach one percent, you have to be paranoid about everything that could go even slightly wrong,” said Vargas-Magaña — for example, slight differences in how galaxies were identified could have thrown off the entire measurement of their distribution, so different parts of the sky had to be checked carefully. “Fortunately,” Vargas-Magaña said, “there are plenty of careful people on our team to check our assumptions. By the time all of them are satisfied, we are sure we didn’t miss anything.”
For now, the BOSS measurements appear consistent with a form of dark energy that stays constant through the history of the Universe. This “cosmological constant” is one of just six numbers needed to make a modelthat matches the shape and large-scale structure of the Universe. Schlegel likens this six-number model to a pane of glass, which is pinned in place by bolts that represent different measurements of the history of the Universe. “BOSS now has one of the tightest of those bolts, and we just gave it another half-turn,” said Schlegel. “Each time you ratchet up the tension and the glass doesn’t break, that’s a success of the model.”
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First farmers and stockbreeders painted with the same pigments as their hunter ancestors
January 16th, 2014By Alton Parrish.
Credit: Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)
The artists used iron oxides and terrigenous as pigments. These materials are easily found in the environment of the analyzed shelters: the Abrigo Grande de Minateda, the most emblematic to define the origin and evolution of rock art in the Mediterranean Basin of the Iberian Peninsula, and the Abrigo del Barranco de la Mortaja.
Alberto Jorge, CSIC researcher at the National Museum of Natural Sciences, states: “The compositions of the pigments used in both styles, separated by several millenniums in time, are identical, which means that the artists did not turn to intentioned recipes as it was previously thought. The truth is that it is an abundant and good-quality pigmenting material that was easy to find nearby”.
New interpretations
Another conclusion of the work has implications in the research methodology of the pigments of rock art outdoors. The presence of calcium oxalate would prove that pigment and carrier merged with the outer layer over the centuries. Jorge explains: “This result would question the studies conducted so far, based on distinguishing three stratigraphic layers – surface, pigment and patina-, as these are continuously merged and altered, which introduces a clear random factor in the dating”. Researchers have also detected the presence of certain fatty acids, which would suggest that when pigments were processed, applied or stored, could come into contact with animal skins.
CSIC researcher adds: “From now on, we need to be very cautious when we talk about rituals in the preparation of pigments, as these interpretations came up when substances such as calcium phosphates, interpreted as charred and crushed bones, were found in the pigments. These extrapolations are not correct since we also found these substances in the rocky substrate itself”.
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Pacific ocean’s “global chimney” – Remote waters affect millions of people, shape climate and air chemistry worldwide
January 14th, 2014By Alton Parrish.
Credit: NSF-NCARWith the warmest ocean waters on Earth, the Western tropical Pacific fuels a sort of chimney whose output has global reach.
The region feeds heat and moisture into huge clusters of thunderstorms that loft gases and particles into the stratosphere, where they spread out over the entire planet and influence climate.
“To figure out the future of the air above our heads, we need to go to the western Pacific,” said Laura Pan, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and one of the principal investigators on the field project.
“This region has been called the holy grail for understanding global air transport, because so much surface air gets lifted by the storms and then spreads globally.”
Credit: NASAThe field project is called CONTRAST (Convective Transport of Active Species in the Tropics). It is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), which sponsors NCAR.
More than 40 scientists are taking part from NCAR, the University of Maryland, the University of Miami, other universities across the country and NASA.
CONTRAST, which is based in Guam, is being coordinated with two other field projects in order to give researchers a detailed view of the air masses over the Pacific with a vertical range spanning tens of thousands of feet.
Credit: IRD, FranceOne of these projects, NASA’s Airborne Tropical Tropopause Experiment (ATTREX), will use a Global Hawk robotic aerial vehicle to study upper-atmospheric water vapor, which influences global climate.
The other, CAST (Coordinated Airborne Studies in the Tropics), is funded by Britain’s Natural Environment Research Council Facility and will deploy a BAe146 research aircraft that will focus on air near the ocean surface.
Together, the sensor-laden research flights will provide a comprehensive view of the atmosphere from the ocean surface, where gases produced by marine organisms enter the air, to the stratosphere, more than 60,000 feet above.
“It’s a huge region, and that means we have to use multiple aircraft,” said University of Maryland’s Ross Salawitch, a CONTRAST principal investigator.
“We will attempt to stage these three airplanes in harmony to measure the atmospheric composition over the western Pacific when both ocean biology and atmospheric storms are raging.”
As trade winds blow across the tropical Pacific, they push warm water to the west, where it piles up in and near the CONTRAST study region.
The waters around Guam have the world’s highest sea surface temperatures in open oceans. They provide heat and moisture to feed clusters of thunderstorms that lift air through the troposphere (the lowest level of the atmosphere) and the tropopause (a cold, shallow region atop the troposphere) and then up into the stratosphere.
Once in the stratosphere–where the air tends to flow horizontally–the gases and particles spread out around the world and linger for years or even decades.
Some of the gases, such as ozone and water vapor, affect the amount of energy from the sun that reaches Earth’s surface.
“Research results from CONTRAST will be extremely important for understanding the ozone-depleting effects of certain chemicals, such as short-lived halogen species like those containing chlorine and bromine, in the tropical upper troposphere and lower stratosphere,” said Sylvia Edgerton, program director in NSF’s Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences.
“It appears that high particle concentrations in the tropical tropopause can increase the ozone-depleting potential of short-lived halogens in the region,” said Edgerton.
The amount of these gases in the stratosphere is important for the planet’s climate.
Chemicals such as bromine compounds have indirect effects by destroying ozone or otherwise altering thechemistry of the stratosphere. And the gases produced by ocean organisms create a chemical reaction that can be detected in the stratosphere.
“There are so few measurements of atmospheric composition in this important region of the atmosphere that we expect to be able to significantly advance our understanding with the data we will be able to collect during CONTRAST,” said Elliot Atlas of the University of Miami, a CONTRAST principal investigator.
As atmospheric patterns evolve and sea surface temperatures warm further due to climate change, the storm clusters over the Pacific are likely to influence climate in ways that are now challenging to anticipate, NCAR’s Pan said.
“Understanding the impact of these storms will help us gain ground truth for improving the chemistry-climate models we use to project future climate,” she said.
The CONTRAST team will deploy the NSF/NCAR HIAPER aircraft, a Gulfstream V jet modified for advanced research that will fly at altitudes between about 25,000 and 50,000 feet.
Using spectrometers and other instruments on board, the researchers will measure various chemicals and take air samples across a wide region, both in storm clouds and far away from them.
The measurements will be analyzed in conjunction with data from the ATTREX Global Hawk (covering altitudes up to 65,000 feet) and CAST BAe146 (with observations from the ocean surface to about 20,000 feet).
The researchers are planning as many as 16 flights, targeting both towering storms that loft fresh air into the stratosphere as well as collapsed storms to examine the composition of the air that remains lower down, in the troposphere.
State-of-the-art models of atmospheric chemistry will help guide the research flights in the field, as well as aid in subsequent analysis of the observations.
The Cyborg era has begun
January 12th, 2014By Alton Parrish.
(Figure: KIT/S. Giselbrecht, R. Meyer, B. Rapp)
They are known from science fiction novels and films – technically modified organisms with extraordinary skills, so-called cyborgs. This name originates from the English term “cybernetic organism”. In fact, cyborgs that combine technical systems with living organisms are already reality.
In recent years, medical implants based on smart materials that automatically react to changing conditions, computer-supported design and fabrication based on magnetic resonance tomography datasets or surface modifications for improved tissue integration allowed major progress to be achieved. For successful tissue integration and the prevention of inflammation reactions, special surface coatings were developed also by the KIT under e.g. the multidisciplinary Helmholtz program “BioInterfaces”.
Progress in microelectronics and semiconductor technology has been the basis of electronic implantscontrolling, restoring or improving the functions of the human body, such as cardiac pacemakers, retinaimplants, hearing implants, or implants for deep brain stimulation in pain or Parkinson therapies.
BMI are often considered data suppliers. However, they can also be used to feed signals into the brain, which is a highly controversial issue from the ethical point of view. “Implanted BMI that feed signals into nerves, muscles or directly into the brain are already used on a routine basis, e.g. in cardiac pacemakers or implantsfor deep brain stimulation,” Professor Christof M. Niemeyer, KIT, explains. “But these signals are neither planned to be used nor suited to control the entire organism – brains of most living organisms are far too complex.”
Brains of lower organisms, such as insects, are less complex. As soon as a signal is coupled in, a certain movement program, such as running or flying, is started. So-called biobots, i.e. large insects with implanted electronic and microfluidic control units, are used in a new generation of tools, such as small flying objects for monitoring and rescue missions. In addition, they are applied as model systems in neurosciences in order to understand basic relationships.
Electrically active medical implants that are used for longer terms depend on reliable power supply. Presently, scientists are working on methods to use the patient body’s own thermal, kinetic, electric or chemical energy.
In their review the KIT researchers sum up that developments combining technical devices with organisms have a fascinating potential. They may considerably improve the quality of life of many people in the medical sector in particular. However, ethical and social aspects always have to be taken into account.
“Angewandte Chemie” (applied chemistry) is the most important journal for chemical research worldwide. The first issue was published 125 years ago. The review of the KIT scientists on cyborgs is the cover story of the final issue of the anniversary volume.
U.S. Cargo ship launches to ISS on first resupply mission
January 10th, 2014By Alton Parrish.
Dozens of new NASA investigations and other science experiments from across the country are headed to the station aboard Orbital Sciences Corp.’s Cygnus spacecraft as part of the agency’s commercial partnerships with U.S. aerospace companies.
The launch aboard Orbital’s Antares rocket took place from NASA’s Wallop’s Flight Facility in Virginia Thursday, at 1:07 p.m. EST.
The Orbital-1 mission began the company’s first contracted cargo delivery flight to the station through a $1.9 billion NASA Commercial Resupply Services contract. Orbital will fly at least eight cargo missions to the space station through 2016.
“Today’s launch demonstrates how our strategic investments in the American commercial spaceflight industry are helping create new jobs
here at home and keep the United States the world leader in space exploration,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. “American astronauts have been living and working continuously in space for the past 13 years on board the International Space Station, and we’re once again sending them supplies launched from U.S. soil. In addition to the supplies, the passion and hard work of many researchers and students are being carried by Cygnus today. I congratulate Orbital and the NASA teams that made this resupply mission possible.”
The pressurized Cygnus can accommodate a variety of scientific payloads. The Orbital-1 mission is carrying 2,780 pounds of supplies to the station, not including the weight of packaging materials. This cargo includes vital science experiments, crew provisions, spare parts and other hardware. More than 10,000 students will be involved with 23 experiments they designed. One NASA experiment will study the decreased effectiveness of antibiotics during spaceflight. Another will examine how different fuel samples burn in microgravity, which could inform future design for spacecraft materials.
A portion of the space station had been designated a U.S. National Laboratory, managed by the Center for Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS). CASIS selects and funds new research to use the national lab’s unique microgravity environment to conduct experiments not possible on Earth. In one educational experiment selected by CASIS, students will compare how ants’ behavior differs in space and on Earth.
Small, relatively inexpensive satellites collectively referred to as CubeSats will provide a variety of technology demonstrations. They will be launched using the NanoRacks Smallsat Deployment Program from the station’s Japanese Experiment Module (JEM) airlock. The NanoRacks CubeSats will be deployed with the JEM Small Satellite Orbital Deployer. ArduSat-2 is a CubeSat built and operated by NanoSatisfi of San Francisco, which will help determine potential commercial applications for CubeSat data collection and commercial off-the-shelf electronics. Testing sensors through this mini-satellite format may help lower the cost of applications that use low-Earth observation techniques.
Cygnus will be grappled at 6:02 a.m. Sunday, Jan. 12, by Expedition 38 Flight Engineer Michael Hopkins of NASA, who will use the station’s robotic arm to take hold of the spacecraft. Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency will support Hopkins in a backup position. Wakata will serve as the primary crew member to berth the spacecraft to the station. NASA’s Rick Mastracchio will support him in a backup position. The capsule is scheduled to depart the station in February and burn up during reentry in Earth’s atmosphere.
Orbital Sciences is one of two companies that built and tested new cargo spacecraft under NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. COTS was completed late last year with an Orbital Sciences demonstration mission to the space station. Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), the other company that partnered with NASA under COTS, also is providing commercial resupply services for the agency.
In addition to cargo flights, NASA’s commercial space partners are making progress toward a launch of astronauts from U.S. soil within the next three years.
The International Space Station is a convergence of science, technology and human innovation that demonstrates new technologies and makes research breakthroughs not possible on Earth. The space station has been continuously occupied since November 2000. In that time, it has been visited by more than 200 people and a variety of international and commercial spacecraft. The space station remains the springboard to NASA’s next great leap in exploration, including future missions to an asteroid and Mars.
How ancient artist used palace floor as a creative canvas
January 9th, 2014By Alton Parrish.
The floors of Greek Bronze Age palaces were made of plaster that was often incised and painted with grids containing brightly colored patterns and/or marine animal figures.
In researching one such floor in the Throne Room at the Palace of Nestor, one of the best-preserved palaces of the Mycenaean civilization, University of Cincinnati Department of Classics doctoral student Emily Catherine Egan has found evidence that the floor’s painted designs, dating back to between 1300-1200 BC, were meant to replicate a physical hybrid of cloth and stone – serving not only to impress but also to instruct the ancient viewer.
Image courtesy of the Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati.
She will present her findings at the Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America, Jan. 2-5, in Chicago, one of a number of UC presentations at the conference. Her work at the Palace of Nestor builds on a long tradition in UC’s McMicken College of Arts and Sciences since the remains of the site were first discovered in 1939 by UC archaeologist Carl Blegen.
According to Egan, “Mycenaean palatial floor paintings are typically believed to represent a single surfacetreatment – most often cut stone or pieced carpets. At Pylos, however, the range of represented patterns suggests that the floor in the great hall of the palace was deliberately designed to represent both of these materials simultaneously, creating a new, clever way to impress visitors while simultaneously instructing them on where to look and how to move within the space.”
As part of her work with UC’s Hora Apotheke Reorganization Project (HARP), Egan conducted research on thepainted floor at the Palace of Nestor from 2012-13. She examined firsthand sections of the floor, as well as published and unpublished excavation documents and drawings.
During her research, Egan noted that some of the intricate motifs of the Throne Room floor recalled the mottled and veined patterns of painted stone masonry, while other elements mimicked patterns on depictions of textiles in wall paintings both from Crete and the Greek mainland.
Courtesy of the Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati.
She contended that the hybrid combination of these materials on the Throne Room floor (also evident in other paintings in the palace) was specifically designed to “supersede reality. It depicted something that could not exist in the real world, a floor made of both carpet and stone. As such, the painting would have communicated the immense, and potentially supernatural power of the reigning monarch, who seemingly had the ability to manipulate and transform his physical environment.”
Egan also argued that the hybrid quality of the floor was intended to draw attention to one of its other notable features – a dramatic diagonal in the grid design, apparent upon standing at the doorway of the room. Past studies had posited that this introduction of a strong diagonal into the floor’s otherwise regular grid pattern had been an uncorrected mistake.
However, Egan’s firsthand examination of parts of the floor found evidence that small mistakes on individualpainted tiles had been corrected by the ancient artists. Thus, she reasoned, “Since they corrected such small mistakes, it seems highly unlikely that those same artists would have left a major error, like misaligning a large portion of the room’s floor, uncorrected. Instead, I believe that the diagonal was intentional – a way to draw both a visitor’s eyes and his or her footsteps toward the throne positioned along the right-hand wall of the room. It was painting with a purpose.”
In addition, Egan’s study at the Palace of Nestor has uncovered the first evidence for the use of a drafting technique called an artist’s grid to paint a floor. Until now, artists’ grids have only been identified in Bronze Age wall paintings, almost all of them from Crete. (An artist’s grid is just that, a faint grid laid down on a surface to be painted in order to subdivide that surface and aid in breaking down and accurately spacing a complex, repeating pattern or design.)
Courtesy of the Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati.
According to Egan, “A fragment of wall painting from Pylos shows evidence of the use of an artist’s grid, and nine squares of the Throne Room’s floor feature the same technique. As on walls, the floor grids were used to create a range of sophisticated, balanced designs – only this time on a horizontal rather than vertical canvas. This find is particularly exciting because it solves a longstanding riddle. When first excavated, these ‘mini grids’ were tentatively identified as functional elements of the room – marking out places for dignitaries to stand on occasions of state. My re-study of the grids, however, now shows that they were artists’ tools, providing us with important new information about how the painted floor was designed and constructed.”
Egan’s research was supported by the Louise Taft Semple Fund of the UC Department of Classics, in support of the Pylos Excavations, and the Institute for Aegean Prehistory, under a grant awarded to Sharon Stocker, UC senior research associate of classics, in support of the Pylos Excavations. Preliminary research for Egan’s work was also conducted with the support of an Ione Mylonas Shear Fellowship from the American School of Classical Studies at Athens from 2010-11.
Mysterious earthquake lights linked to rifts
January 6th, 2014By Alton Parrish.
From the early days of seismology, the luminous phenomena associated with some earthquakes have intrigued scholars. Earthquake lights (EQL) appear before or during earthquakes, but rarely after.
Earthquake lights from Tagish Lake, Yukon-Alaska border region, around the 1st of July, probably 1972 or 1973 (exact date unknown). Estimated size: 1m diameter. Closest orbs slowly drifted up the mountain to join the more distant ones.
Credit: Photo credit: Jim Conacher, used with permission
Continental rift environments now appear to be the common factor associated with EQL. In a detailed study of 65 documented EQL cases since 1600 A.D., 85 percent appeared spatially on or near rifts, and 97 percent appeared adjacent to subvertical faults (a rift, a graben, strike-slip or transform fault). Intraplate faults are associated with just 5 percent of Earth’s seismic activity, but 97 percent of documented cases of earthquake lights.
“The numbers are striking and unexpected,” said Robert Thériault, a geologist with the Ministère des Ressources Naturelles of Québec, who, along with colleagues, culled centuries of literature references, limiting the cases in this study to 65 of the best-documented events in the Americas and Europe.
“We don’t know quite yet why more earthquake light events are related to rift environments than other types of faults,” said Thériault, “but unlike other faults that may dip at a 30-35 degree angle, such as in subduction zones, subvertical faults characterize the rift environments in these cases.”
Two of the 65 EQL events are associated with subduction zones, but Thériault suggests there may be an unknown subvertical fault present. “We may not know the fault distribution beneath the ground,” said Thériault. “We have some idea of surface structures, but sedimentary layers or water may obscure the underlying fault structure.”
While the 65 earthquakes ranged in magnitude, from M 3.6 to 9.2, 80 percent were greater than M 5.0. The EQL varied in shape and extent, though most commonly appeared as globular luminous masses, either stationary or moving, as atmospheric illuminations or as flame-like luminosities issuing from the ground.
Timing and distance to the epicenter vary widely. Most EQL are seen before and/or during an earthquake, but rarely after, suggesting to the authors that the processes responsible for EQL formation are related to a rapid build-up of stress prior to fault rupture and rapid local stress changes during the propagation of the seismic waves. Stress-activated mobile electronic charge carriers, termed positive holes, flow swiftly along stress gradients. Upon reaching the surface, they ionize air molecules and generate the observed luminosities.
Eyewitness reports and security cameras captured a large number of light flashes during the 2007 Pisco, Peru M 8.0 earthquake. Together with seismic records obtained on a local university campus, the automatic security camera records allow for an exact timing and location of light flashes that illuminated a large portion of the night sky. The light flashes identified as EQL coincided with the passage of the seismic waves.
Thériault likes the account of a local L’Aquila resident, who, after seeing flashes of light from inside his home two hours before the main shock, rushed his family outside to safety.
“It’s one of the very few documented accounts of someone acting on the presence of earthquake lights,” said Thériault. “
Atlas mountains float on superhot rock, study finds
January 5th, 2014
By Alton Parrish.
The Atlas Mountains defy the standard model for mountain structure in which high topography must have deep roots for support, according to a new study from Earth scientists at USC.
In a new model, the researchers show that the mountains are floating on a layer of hot molten rock that flows beneath the region’s lithosphere, perhaps all the way from the volcanic Canary Islands, just offshore northwestern Africa.
Credit: Figure 2 from the Geology paper, courtesy of Meghan Miller and Thorsten Becker
The study, coauthored by Thorsten Becker, professor of Earth sciences at USC Dornsife, was published by Geology on Jan. 1, 2014 and highlighted byNature Geoscience.
A well-established model for the Earth’s lithosphere suggests that the height of the Earth’s crust must be supported by a commensurate depth, much like how a tall iceberg doesn’t simply float on the surface of the water but instead rests on a large submerged mass of ice. This property is known as “istostacy.”
“The Atlas Mountains are at present out of balance, likely due to a confluence of existing lithospheric strength anomalies and deep mantle dynamics,” Becker said.
Miller and Becker used seismometers to measure the thickness of the lithosphere – that is, the Earth’s rigid outermost layer – beneath the Altas Mountains in Morocco. By analyzing 67 distant seismic events with 15 seismometers, the team was able to use the Earth’s vibrations to “see” into the deep subsurface.
They found that the crust beneath the Atlas Mountains, which rise to an elevation of more than 4,000 meters, reaches a depth of only about 35 km – about 15 km shy of what the traditional model predicts.
“This study shows that deformation can be observed through the entire lithosphere and contributes to mountain building even far away from plate boundaries” Miller said.
Miller’s lab is currently conducting further research into the timing and effects of the mountain building on other geological processes.
This research was funded by the National Science Foundation, grant EAR-0809023.
Soft biological robots will move through the body
January 1st, 2014
By Alton Parrish.
Increasingly small robots that carry out their functions even inside the human body. No, this isn’t a sci-fi dream but a close possibility. On one condition: the miniaturization of these devices requires them to acquire the same “softness” and flexibility as biological tissues.
Credit: SISSA
This is the opinion of scientists like Antonio De Simone, from SISSA (the International School for Advanced Studies of Trieste and Marino Arroyo from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, who have just published a paper in the Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids: taking inspiration from unicellular water micro-organisms, they studied the locomotion mechanisms of “soft robots
“Forget cogwheels, pistons and levers: miniaturized robots of the future will be “soft”. “If I think of the robots of tomorrow, what comes to mind are the tentacles of an octopus or the trunk of an elephant rather than the mechanical arm of a crane or the inner workings of a watch. And if I think of micro-robots then I think of unicellular organisms moving in water. The robots of the future will be increasingly like biological organisms” explains Antonio De Simone who, together with Marino Arroyo of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, has just published a study in the Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids.
De Simone and his team at SISSA have been studying the movement of euglenids, unicellular aquaticanimals, for several years. One of the aims of De Simone’s research – which has recently been awarded a European Research Council Advanced Grant of 1,300,000 euro – is to transfer the knowledge acquired in euglenids to micro-robotics, a field that represents a promising challenge for the future. Micro-robots may in fact carry out a number of important functions, for example for human health, by delivering drugs directly to where they are needed, re-opening occluded blood vessels, or helping to close wounds, to name just a few.
To do this, these tiny robots will have to be able to move around efficiently. “Imagine trying to miniaturize a device made up of levers and cogwheels: you can’t go below a certain minimal size.
Instead, by mimicking biological systems we can go all the way down to cell size, and this is exactly the direction research is taking. We, in particular, are working on movement and studying how certain unicellular organisms with highly efficient locomotion move”.
In their study, De Simone and Arroyo simulated euglenid species with different shapes and locomotion methods, based chiefly on cell body deformation and swelling, to describe in detail the mechanics and characteristics of the movement obtained.
“Our work not only helps to understand the movement mechanism of these unicellular organisms, but it provides a knowledge base to plan the locomotion system of future micro-robots”.
De Simone and Arroyo’s paper has been selected to appear in the special issue of the J. Mech. Phys. Solids published to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the prestigious journal.
Cloud atlas reshapes astronomers’ views of stellar birthplaces
December 31st, 2013By Alton Parrish.
The background is a color image of M51 by the Hubble Space Telescope. Superimposed in blue is the CO(1-0) radiation emitted by carbon monoxide (CO) molecules, as measured for the PAWS study using the millimeter telescopes of the Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique. The CO molecules are used as tracers for molecular hydrogen.
Credit: PAWS team/IRAM/NASA HST/T. A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage)
Most of a galaxy’s stars are born within giant molecular clouds – accumulations of hydrogen molecules with total masses between a thousand and several million times that of our Sun. As a region within such a cloud collapses under its own gravity, it contracts until pressure and temperature are high enough for nuclear fusion to set in: a new star is born.
Now, a new study challenges astronomers’ traditional views about these stellar birthplaces. Study leader Eva Schinnerer (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy) explains: “Over the past four years, we have created the most complete map yet of giant molecular clouds in another spiral galaxy similar to our own Milky Way, reconstructing the amounts of hydrogen molecules and correlating them with the presence of new or older stars. The picture that is emerging is quite different from what astronomers thought these clouds should be like.”The survey, known as PAWS, targeted the Whirlpool galaxy, also known as M51, at a distance of about 23 million light-years in the constellation Canes Venatici (“Hunting dogs”).
Annie Hughes, a post-doctoral researcher at MPIA involved in the study, says: “We used to think of giant molecular clouds as solitary objects, drifting within the surrounding interstellar medium of rarified gas in isolated splendor; the main repository of a galaxy’s supply of hydrogen molecules. But our study shows that 50% of the hydrogen is outside the clouds, in a diffuse, disk-shaped hydrogen fog permeating the galaxy!”
This “fog” of surrounding gas plays an important role in star formation. So does a structural feature characteristic of spiral galaxies: the spiral arms, which slowly move through the galaxy like ripples on a lake, and are somewhat more densely filled with stars and gas than the rest of the galactic disk. Sharon Meidt, another MPIA post-doctoral researcher involved in the study, says: “These clouds are definitely not isolated. On the contrary, interactions between clouds, fog, and overall galactic structure appear to hold the key to whether or not a cloud will form new stars. When the molecular fog moves relative to the galaxy’s spiral arms, the pressure it exerts on any clouds within is reduced, in line with a physical law known as Bernoulli’s principle. Clouds feeling this reduced pressure are unlikely to form new stars.”
Incidentally, Bernoulli’s law is also thought to be responsible for part of the well-known shower-curtain effect:shower curtains blowing inward when one takes a hot shower, another display of reduced pressure.
Jerome Pety of the Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique (IRAM), which operates the telescopes used for the new observations, says: “It’s good to see our telescopes live up to their full potential. A study that needed such extensive observation time, and required both an interferometer to discern vital details and our 30 m antenna to put those details into a larger context, would not have been possible at any other observatory.”
Schinnerer concludes: “So far, the Whirlpool galaxy is one example which we have studied in depth. Next, we need to check that what we have found also applies to other galaxies. For our next steps, we hope to profit from both the extension NOEMA of the compound telescope on the Plateau de Bure and from the newly opened compound telescope ALMA in Chile, which will allow in-depth studies of more distant spiral galaxies.”
Adult stem cells found to suppress cancer while dormant
December 29th, 2013
By UCLA.
Researchers at UCLA’s Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research have discovered a mechanism by which certain adult stem cells suppress their ability to initiate skin cancer during their dormant phase — an understanding that could be exploited for better cancer-prevention strategies.
The study, which was led by UCLA postdoctoral fellow Andrew White and William Lowry, an associate professor of molecular, cell and developmental biology who holds the Maria Rowena Ross Term Chair in Cell Biology in the UCLA College of Letters and Science, was published online Dec. 15 in the journal Nature Cell Biology.
Hair follicle stem cells, the tissue-specific adult stem cells that generate the hair follicles, are also the cells of origin for cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, a common skin cancer. These stem cells cycle between periods of activation (during which they can grow) and quiescence (when they remain dormant).
Using mouse models, White and Lowry applied known cancer-causing genes to hair follicle stem cells and found that during their dormant phase, the cells could not be made to initiate skin cancer. Once they were in their active period, however, they began growing cancer.
“We found that this tumor suppression via adult stem cell quiescence was mediated by PTEN, a gene important in regulating the cell’s response to signaling pathways,” White said. “Therefore, stem cellquiescence is a novel form of tumor suppression in hair follicle stem cells, and PTEN must be present for the suppression to work.”
Understanding cancer suppression through quiescence could better inform preventative strategies for certain patients, such as organ transplant recipients, who are particularly susceptible to squamous cell carcinoma, and for those taking the drug vemurafenib for melanoma, another type of skin cancer. The study also may reveal parallels between squamous cell carcinoma and other cancers in which stem cells have a quiescent phase.
Collapse of the Universe is closer than ever before
December 25th, 2013
By University of Southern Denmark.
Maybe it happens tomorrow. Maybe in a billion years. Physicists have long predicted that the universe may one day collapse, and that everything in it will be compressed to a small hard ball. New calculations from physicists at the University of Southern Denmark now confirm this prediction – and they also conclude that the risk of a collapse is even greater than previously thought.
This violent process is called a phase transition and is very similar to what happens when, for example water turns to steam or a magnet heats up and loses its magnetization. The phase transition in the universe will happen if a bubble is created where the Higgs-field associated with the Higgs-particle reaches a different value than the rest of the universe. If this new value results in lower energy and if the bubble is large enough, the bubble will expand at the speed of light in all directions. All elementary particles inside the bubble will reach a mass, that is much heavier than if they were outside the bubble, and thus they will be pulled together and form supermassive centers.
“Many theories and calculations predict such a phase transition– but there have been some uncertainties in the previous calculations. Now we have performed more precise calculations, and we see two things: Yes, the universe will probably collapse , and: A collapse is even more likely than the old calculations predicted”, says Jens Frederik Colding Krog, PhD student at the Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics Phenomenology (CP ³ – Origins) at University of Southern Denmark and co-author of an article on the subject in the Journal of High Energy Physics.
“The phase transition will start somewhere in the universe and spread from there. Maybe the collapse has already started somewhere in the universe and right now it is eating its way into the rest of the universe. Maybe a collapsed is starting right now right here here. Or maybe it will start far away from here in a billionyears. We do not know”, says Jens Frederik Colding Krog.
More specifically he and his colleagues looked at three of the main equations that underlie the prediction of a phase change. These are about the so-called beta functions, which determine the strength of interactions between for example light particles and electrons as well as Higgs bosons and quarks.
So far physicists have worked with one equation at a time, but now the physicists from CP3 show that the three equations actually can be worked with together and that they interact with each other. When applying all three equations together the physicists predict that the probability of a collapse as a result of a phase change is even greater than when applying only one of the equations.
The theory of phase transition is not the only theory predicting a collapse of the universe. Also the so-called Big Crunch theory is in play. This theory is based on the Big Bang; the formation of the universe. After the Big Bang all material was ejected into the universe from one small area, and this expansion is still happening. At some point, however, the expansion will stop and all the material will again begin to attract each other and eventually merge into a small area again. This is called the Big Crunch.
“The latest research shows that the universe’s expansion is accelerating, so there is no reason to expect a collapse from cosmological observations. Thus it will probably not be Big Crunch that causes the universe to collapse”, says Jens Frederik Colding Krog.
Although the new calculations predict that a collapse is now more likely than ever before, it is actually also possible, that it will not happen at all. It is a prerequisite for the phase change that the universe consists of the elementary particles that we know today, including the Higgs particle. If the universe contains undiscovered particles, the whole basis for the prediction of phase change disappears.
“Then the collapse will be canceled”, says Jens Frederik Colding Krog.
In these years the hunt for new particles is intense. Only a few years ago the Higgs-particle was discovered, and a whole field of research known as high-energy physics is engaged in looking for more new particles.
Illustration: A collapse of the universe will happen if a bubble forms in the universe where the Higgs particle-associated Higgs-field will reach a different value than the rest of the universe. If this new value means lower energy, and if the bubble is large enough, the bubble will expand at the speed of light in all directions. All elementary particles inside the bubble will reach a mass that is much heavier than if they were outside the bubble, and thus they will pull each other into supermassive centers.