Maya “Painted Pyramid” Reveals 1st Murals of Daily Life

A series of unusual Maya wall murals, complete with hieroglyphic captions, are providing archaeologists with a priceless look at day-to-day life in the empire circa A.D. 620 to 700.

Previously known Maya murals all depict the ruling elite, victories in battle, or religious themes. (Explore a map of Maya ruins.)

But exterior walls on a “painted pyramid” buried for centuries in the Mexican jungle (pictured, a corner of the pyramid undergoing excavations) have shown Maya scholars something completely different.

The murals—discovered in 2004 at the Maya site of Calakmul—depict ordinary people enjoying much more casual pursuits, according to a new, detailed description of the wall art.

“There's really nothing like this in any of the [known] murals. These are totally unexpected,” said Maya expert Michael D. Coe, curator emeritus at Yale University's Peabody Museum of Natural History and editor of the new paper.

“This is everyday life with people who are not upper-crust Maya but rather people engaged in everyday activities.”

Maya Food and Fashion

The colorful artwork shows the clothing and jewelry worn by various social classes in Calakmul, one of the largest cities of the Classic Maya period, which lasted from A.D. 300 to 900. (Take a Maya quiz.)

During this era, Calakmul was likely the capital of the Kan (Snake) Kingdom, which held great sway over the Maya world.

The murals also depict common foodstuffs as well as people involved in food preparation and distribution, including a “salt person” and a “tobacco person,” as they are labeled in the hieroglyphs. (Related: “Ancient Farm Discovery Yields Clues to Maya Diet.”)

Other scenes depict corn products that were essential to the Maya diet: A woman distributes a platter of tamales to a crowd in one panel, while a man and woman in another scene serve maize gruel.

What's more, the Calakmul murals' exterior location surprised experts, since other murals were found secreted away inside pyramids.

“In other words, they were public,” Coe said of the Calakmul paintings. “They were to be seen by everybody.” Luckily for Maya scholars, the painted pyramid's long burial helped preserve the unusual artwork.

via Maya “Painted Pyramid” Reveals 1st Murals of Daily Life.

Shuttle Atlantis Arrives at Space Station

The space shuttle Atlantis and its crew of six arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) Wednesday to drop off some massive spare parts for the orbiting laboratory.

The two vehicles linked up on time at 11:53 a.m. EST as the two spacecraft flew 220 miles above Earth.

“We’re crashing the party,” Atlantis commander Charlie Hobaugh radioed to the waiting station crew when the shuttle was about a mile away. “We’re looking forward to seeing you guys,” station astronaut Jeff Williams replied.

- via http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,575605,00.html

Inside Info on the upcoming Google ‘Super’ Phone, due 2010

The debate over Droid v. iPhone rages on, but lots more Android surprises are on the way. Get ready for the Google Phone. It’s no longer a myth, it’s real.The next “super” Android device will almost certainly be a HTC phone that’s much thinner than even the Droid or iPhone – The Dragon/Passion. This is the phone the senior Android guys at Google are now carrying around and testing, at least as of a couple of weeks ago. If you’re willing to give up the Droid’s keyboard, the Dragon/Passion is going to be a really cool phone. It should be fully available very soon.

But it isn’t the Google Phone. Everything up until now has just been a warm up to the Google Phone.

Way more interesting are the rumors we’ve been hearing for months about a pure Google-branded phone. Most of our sources have unconfirmed information, which we describe below. But there are a few things we have absolutely confirmed: Google is building their own branded phone that they’ll sell directly and through retailers. They were long planning to have the phone be available by the holidays, but it has now slipped to early 2010. The phone will be produced by a major phone manufacturer but will only have Google branding (Microsoft did the same thing with their first Zunes, which were built by Toshiba).

There won’t be any negotiation or compromise over the phone’s design of features – Google is dictating every last piece of it. No splintering of the Android OS that makes some applications unusable. Like the iPhone for Apple, this phone will be Google’s pure vision of what a phone should be.

That’s it for confirmed, super-high confidence information, which frankly isn’t a whole lot more than we all heard back in late October. But we also have a few more details as well that we’ve gathered from a number of sources. Everything that follows we still consider to be just well-sourced rumors:

One source told us that HTC, a Taiwanese company, is building the new Google phone, but we think that information is incorrect. We have some fairly good information that suggests Google is working with a Korean phone manufacturer on the Google phone – LG or Samsung (we mentioned this on CrunchGear earlier this week). Samsung has multiple parts in the iPhone and could be pressured by Apple not to work with Google, which says LG is the more likely partner for Google. So rumors like this one may be much more important than they first appear. But either way, the best information we have right now points directly at Korea as the birthplace of the Google Phone.

- via TechCrunch

Taking a page out of Apple’s “we control the customer experience” playbook, Google reportedly wants to produce a handset that will be completely dictated by the team in Mountain View. Details about the phone are incredibly thin. There’s no word on what kind of specs the handset would have, but potential manufacturers for the phone, according to Arrington, include LG and Samsung. A major advertising campaign introducing the phone could reportedly start as early as January 2010.

Google will reportedly sell its phone directly to customers as well as through retailers. That suggests the search giant may not have a network partner on board, and would sell unsubsidized phones instead. Phones sold outside of the carrier system means the Google phone could cost as much as $500, and would have to run on a SIM-friendly GSM networks such as AT&T and T-Mobile.

While a carrier-free Google phone would be an unusual move in the age of exclusivity contracts, it’s not unheard of. Handset makers such as RIM and Palm sell unlocked versions of their smartphones through Amazon and other retailers.

The suggestion that the phone will not be tied to a specific carrier, backs up a previous assertion by Northeast Securities analyst Ashok Kumor who made similar claims last month after Google’s “design partners” filled him about the phone, according to the Street.com.

- via pcworld

Apple was similarly strict about branding, but was not licensing the core operating system freely to other suppliers. Still, Google so far has crafted an unusual strategy in several ways. It created a new “open” mobile operating system that is available on a “Linux” style licensing model. It is making that operating system available to any manufacturer that wants to use it, as Microsoft did. It has what appears to be an especially close working relationship with Verizon to develop Android devices and applications, similar in some ways the “exclusive” deals hot devices typically have been offered. And it may be crafting a “demonstration” model that resembles the way Apple integrated all elements of the experience in the iPhone, perhaps as a way of spurring such thinking by other Android suppliers. To some extent, though, the move is in one way only a highly-integrated approach to crafting devices with some lead orientation, such as “Twitter” phones, or “navigation” phones or “email” phones or “Skype”  phones. Presumably a Google-branded device would go the furthest yet in optimizing user experience for Google apps.

- via TMCnet

… don’t get too excited just yet, because we’ve heard all this before.  Late last month, Scott Moritz over at TheStreet.com reported (based on the word of an analyst at Northeast Securities) pretty much the same thing: that Google was planning to build its own phone with the help of a third-party manufacturer. That rumor was quickly batted down by Google’s own head of Android development, Andy Rubin, who told CNET that “we’re not making hardware … we’re enabling others to build hardware.” There’s also a lot of skepticism about whether Google would run the risk of undercutting its hardware partners—again, like HTC, LG, Samsung, and Motorola—by producing its own, competing branded phone. But who knows? Maybe Google will stay true to its word by not “making hardware,” but go ahead and let another company build an all-Google Android phone.

- via Yahoo.com

Loren Coleman’s Cryptozoology Museum Opens

It was another rainy afternoon on Congress Street in Portland. From behind a large first-floor window, an eight foot tall model of Bigfoot watched the traffic roll by from behind a plastic shrub, trying to make sense of his new home – the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland’s Parkside neighborhood.

The museum, which shares space with the Green Hand bookshop, opened with a grand ribbon-cutting ceremony on Friday, Nov. 6. Around 300 people attended the event, which was led by Herb Adams, who represents Portland’s Parkside and Bayside neighborhoods in the Maine House of Representatives. Adams praised both Loren Coleman, the driving force behind the museum, and Michelle Souliere, who runs the book shop, for being part of the revitalization of Parkside. As he handed them official certificates of appreciation from the legislature, he said that entrepreneurs and artists like Coleman and Souliere were playing a vital role in overcoming Parkside’s reputation as a high crime district. He also pointed out that there are few places in the area with such interesting objects. “You have everything you could want here, it’s one stop shopping,” he said with a smile as he gestured toward a tray of what looked like hand crafted paws on key chains that were labeled “Yeti Feet.”

Since the grand opening, there has been a steady flow of people through the museum. Coleman believes this success is indicative of a growing societal acceptance of Cryptozoology, the study and search for “hidden animals” like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. “In the beginning, interest was small,” he explained, “but then you have things like the ‘X-Files’ using the word Cryptozoology for the first time on TV, and it’s slowly over the years become a subject of interest and a part of our culture.”

Part of that acceptance of Cryptozoology can be attributed to Coleman’s own work. Over the course of his fifty years of research and fieldwork, Coleman has written seventeen books and served as a consultant on television projects for the History Channel and the Travel Channel. He has also worked on a number of movies, including the 2002 Richard Gere film “The Mothman Prophecies,” for which he served as the resident expert on the legends surrounding the real Mothman. …

via Cryptozoology museum opens on Congress Street – Arts and Entertainment.

Congratulations Loren! I hope to visit some day. I’d like to thank you personally for all you’ve done to make life more interesting for us. There is something about searching for hidden truths, dreaming what might be (and finding evidence!) that keeps some of us excited about possibilities.

Quantum computer slips onto chips

Researchers have devised a penny-sized silicon chip that uses photons to run Shor’s algorithm – a well-known quantum approach – to solve a maths problem.

The algorithm computes the two numbers that multiply together to form a given figure, and has until now required laboratory-sized optical computers.

This kind of factoring is the basis for a wide variety of encryption schemes.

The work, reported in Science, is rudimentary but could easily be scaled up to handle more complex computing.

Shor's algorithm and the factoring of large numbers has been a particular case used to illustrate the power of quantum computing.

Quantum computers exploit the counterintuitive fact that photons or trapped atoms can exist in multiple states or “superpositions” at the same time.

For certain types of calculations, that “quantum indeterminacy” gives quantum computers a significant edge.

While traditional or “classical” computers find factoring large numbers impracticably time-consuming, for example, quantum computers can in principle crack the problem with ease.

That has important implications for encryption methods based on factoring, such as the “RSA” method that is used to make transactions on the internet more secure.

…

Optical computing has been touted as a potential future for information processing, by using packets of light instead of electrons as the information carrier.

But these packets, called photons, are also endowed with the indeterminate properties that make them quantum objects – so an optical computer can also be a quantum computer.

In fact just this kind of photon-based quantum factoring has been accomplished before, but the ability to put the heart of the machine on a standard chip is promising for future applications of the idea.

“The way people used to make this kind of circuit consumed square metres of laboratory space and took graduate students many months to align,” said Jeremy O’Brien, the University of Bristol researcher who led the work.

“Doubling the complexity of the circuit often times turns it from being a difficult task to a practically impossible one, whereas for us to double the complexity it’s really straightforward,” he told BBC News.

The Bristol team’s approach makes use of waveguides – channels etched into the chips that provide a path for the photons around the chips like the minuscule wires in conventional electronics. …

via BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Quantum computer slips onto chips.

LHC nears restart after repairs

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) could restart as early as this weekend after more than a year of repairs.

But officials have avoided giving an exact date for sending beams of protons around the 27km (17 mile) circular tunnel which houses the collider.

The LHC was first switched on in 2008, but had to be shut down when a faulty electrical connection caused one tonne of helium to leak into the tunnel.

The vast machine is located 100m below the French-Swiss border.

Operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern), the LHC will recreate the conditions just after the Big Bang.

Two beams of protons will be fired around the tunnel. These beams will travel in opposite directions around the main “ring” at close to the speed of light.

At allotted points around the tunnel, the proton beams will cross paths, smashing into one another with enormous energy.

Scientists hope to see new particles in the debris of these collisions, revealing fundamental new insights into the nature of the cosmos.

But the first beams to circulate around the collider will be injected at a low energy of about 450 billion electron volts.

For the restart, engineers are determined to take things one step at a time, and officials are not setting hard and fast deadlines.

Once the collider is circulating two beams in opposite directions, engineers will attempt low-intensity collisions.

This will provide scientists with data they can use for calibration purposes.

After this, the beams’ energy will be increased so that the first high-energy collisions can take place.

These will mark the real beginning of the LHC’s research programme.

via BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | LHC nears restart after repairs.

See you in the next universe.

Ice retreat creates new CO2 store

It is like finding a forest the size of Wales that nobody knew was there before…

Retreating ice in Antarctic has allowed tiny aquatic plants to flourish and absorb 3.5 million tonnes of carbon from the ocean and atmosphere annually.

Researchers from the British Antarctic Survey say the new “carbon sink” of phytoplankton is equivalent to discovering a forest the size of Wales.

However, the authors added, the discovery would only have a “minuscule effect on climate change”.

The findings have been published in the journal Global Change Biology.

“What we are talking about are are large ice shelves the size of an English county,” explained lead author Lloyd Peck, a marine biologist for the British Antarctic Survey.

“When they disappear, we are getting new pieces of sea,” he explained.

“In the past, you could not have had life where the ice was because it was perhaps 500m thick and stopped all light coming in. Once it had gone, then you have new areas for light to colonise.”

Writing in the paper, Professor Peck and his colleagues observed: “A range of feedback mechanisms affecting climate change have been identified.

“These feedbacks are almost universally positive, enhancing rates of climate warming.”

These included the warming of sea and air that led to a loss of ice cover, which in turn had reduced the amount of solar energy being reflected back into space by ice (the albedo effect).

Current major carbon sinks – forests and oceanic phytoplankton blooms – were also under threat, they added.

“The loss of glaciers and ice shelves is also thought of as a factor that will predominantly increase warming of the Earth because of changes in albedo and heat take-up in newly uncovered ground and ocean.

But, they said, the loss of ice cover resulted in the “opening up of new areas for biological productivity”.

via BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Ice retreat creates new CO2 store.

U.N. chief: Hunger kills 17,000 kids daily

Somewhere in the world, a child dies of hunger every five seconds — even though the planet has more than enough food for all. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon laid out this sobering statistic as he kicked off a three-day summit on world food security Monday in Rome.

“Today, more than 1 billion people are hungry,” he told the assembled leaders. Six million children die of hunger every year — 17,000 every day, he said. The summit opened with the leaders adopting a declaration to renew their commitment to eradicating hunger. They promised to do so by promoting investment, reversing the decline in funding for agriculture and tackling the effect of global warming on food security. Urgent action is critical, Ban said.  In 2050, the world will need to feed 2 billion more mouths — 9.1 billion in all. The steps Ban proposed included providing farmers with seeds and land and offering them access to better markets and fairer trade.

“These small-holder farmers are the heart and soul of food security and poverty reduction,” he said. “Our job is not just to feed the hungry but to empower the hungry to feed themselves.

“The summit came under criticism even before it began, with some aid groups skeptical that it would accomplish much. The United Nations hopes that donors will go beyond affirming their support to end hunger and fulfill a promise they made during a Group of Eight meeting in July to increase food aid significantly.

 

Though more than 60 world leaders are at the summit, all but one of the G-8 leaders were absent. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Belusconi is hosting the gathering. The United States sent the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, and Britain sent two ministers. During his speech, Ban also tied the global warming crisis to hunger eradication. …

via U.N. chief: Hunger kills 17,000 kids daily – CNN.com.

On the average, 1 person dies every second as a result of hunger – 4000 every hour – 100 000 each day – 36 million each year – 58 % of all deaths (2001-2004 estimates). – wikipedia

Wow, horrible.  Want to help fight starvation? 1) Stop having kids. 2) Try Action Against Hunger, Starvation.net, and …

 

Don’t blame fast food: Mummies had heart disease

You can’t blame this one on McDonald’s: Researchers have found signs of heart disease in 3,500-year-old mummies.

“We think of it as being caused by modern risk factors,” such as fast food, smoking and a lack of exercise, but the findings show that these aren’t the only reasons arteries clog, said Dr. Randall Thompson, a cardiologist at the Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City.

He and several other researchers used CT scans, a type of X-ray, on 22 mummies kept in the Egyptian National Museum of Antiquities in Cairo. The subjects were from 1981 B.C. to 334 A.D. Half were thought to be over 45 when they died, and average lifespan was under 50 back then.

Sixteen mummies had heart and blood vessel tissue to analyze. Definite or probable hardening of the arteries was seen in nine.

“We were struck by the similar appearance of vascular calcification in the mummies and our present-day patients,” said another researcher, Dr. Michael Miyamoto of the University of California at San Diego. “Perhaps the development of atherosclerosis is a part of being human.”

One mummy had evidence of a possible heart attack but scientists don’t know if it was fatal. Nor can they tell how much these people weighed — mummification dehydrates the body.

Of those whose identities could be determined, all were of high social status, and many served in the court of the Pharaoh or as priests or priestesses.

“Rich people ate meat, and they did salt meat, so maybe they had hypertension (high blood pressure), but that’s speculation,” Thompson said.

With modern diets, “we all sort of live in the Pharaoh’s court,” said another of the researchers, Dr. Samuel Wann of the Wisconsin Heart Hospital in Milwaukee.

The oldest mummy with heart disease signs was Lady Rai, a nursemaid to Queen Ahmose Nefertari who died around 1530 B.C. — 200 years before King Tutankhamun.

via Don’t blame fast food: Mummies had heart disease – Yahoo! News.

Sea Star Swells With Tides

A species of sea star has figured out a novel way of keeping cool on rocky shorelines. The animal literally soaks up chilly water during high tides to protect itself from the blazing temperatures that persist when the tide goes out, scientists announce today.

Sea stars live at the ocean edge on rocky shorelines, and so they endure rapid changes in temperature as the tide comes in, covering them with chilly water, and then recedes to leave them bare to the sun’s rays.

“Sea stars were assumed to be at the mercy of the sun during low tide,” said the lead study researcher Sylvain Pincebourde of François Rabelais University in Tours, France. “This work shows that some sea stars have an unexpected back-up strategy.”

Until now, scientists were not sure how the stars beat the heat. But Pincebourde suspected that perhaps fluid-filled cavities in the star’s arms might play a role.

So they placed so-called ocher sea stars, or Pisaster ochraceus, into aquariums kept at different temperatures and changed the water level to mimic tides. The animals exposed to higher temperatures were essentially bigger, or had a larger body mass, after the following high tide. The researchers figured that since the stars hadn’t eaten, the mass must have been from the water.

“This reservoir of cool water keeps the sea star from overheating when the tide recedes again the next day,” Pincebourde said.

The sea stars are likely cued during low tide that it’s a hot day, the researchers say, and that signals them to soak up more water during the next high tide.

“It would be as if humans were able to look at a weather forecast, decide it was going to be hot tomorrow, and then in preparation suck up 15 or more pounds of water into our bodies,” said study researcher Brian Helmuth of the University of South Carolina in Columbia.

via Sea Star Swells With Tides – Yahoo! News.