Police Rescue 150 Stolen Ferrets in Mexico City

Police in Mexico City have rescued 150 ferrets from armed robbers after a high speed chase.

Police say they found the furry contraband after the suspects crashed their car into a tree and then fled on foot.

Fourteen boxes of ferrets imported from the U.S. were taken by force by three robbers from a truck after it left the Mexico City airport. Two suspects are under arrest and another escaped.

Police said Friday that a veterinarian who purchased the ferrets reclaimed them.

The ferrets were unharmed.

via Police Rescue 150 Stolen Ferrets in Mexico City – ABC News.

Author says Robin Hood was Knights Templar

According to legend he’s annoyed the sheriff, sneaked into St Mary’s Church and maybe even propped up the bar at the Olde Trip. Now an author and historian tells ERIK PETERSEN about his research into the possible real life behind the Robin Hood story

IT can be safely assumed that, if Robin Hood really existed, he didn’t sound much like Kevin Costner.

In this parish, however, there’s always the somewhat more contentious issue of whether his accent had more in common with Arthur Seaton or, say, Geoff Boycott.

The conundrum of “Robin: Notts lad or Yorkshireman?” is just one of the mysteries of the man believed by some to have not existed at all, believed by others to have been an amalgamation of several people, and believed by others still to be a real person whose details have been lost to time and distortion over the years.

Now a writer and historian has waded into the debate with a book that offers a unique take on who this Robin fella really was.

Robin Hood: The Unknown Templar is John Paul Davis’ contribution to the body of work devoted to the question of whether that famed re-distributor of wealth actually existed. As the title indicates, Mr Davis posits the theory that the hero was a member of the powerful order of knights that fell out of favour with Rome, effectively turning many of its members into outlaws.

His theory, he said, is plausible but not definitive.

“The information we have – some of it’s open to interpretation as well,” he said.

Mr Davis’ interpretations put Robin Hood squarely in the camp of another group that has over the centuries been the subject of numerous legends and stories, but that most certainly did exist.

The Knights Templar were one of the most powerful Christian military organisations of the Middle Ages. It’s the time of their disbanding in the early 1300s that intrigued Mr Davis.

After being a dominant force for two centuries, the order suddenly found themselves out of favour across Europe. Spurred on by King Phillip of France, Pope Clement V turned to outlawing, arresting and in some cases torturing and burning at the stake members of the order.

In England however, Edward II enforced the Vatican’s orders more halfheartedly. There was little torture, and some members of the order simply fled and melted into the countryside.

But they still fled.

Mr Davis writes that “hundreds, if not thousands, of men became fugitives practically overnight and disappeared from the records for ever … It seems very possible that, hunted by Church and county officials, former Templars who had obeyed the strict code of the Order continued to do so, only now as outlaws, dwelling among the trees of England’s forests.” …

via Author says Robin Hood was Knights Templar.

Scientists want to dig up Leonardo da Vinci’s bones to see if his is the real face of the Mona Lisa

Scientists seeking permission to exhume the remains of Leonardo da Vinci plan to reconstruct his face to discover whether his masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, is a disguised self-portrait.

A team from Italy’s National Committee for Cultural Heritage, a leading association of scientists and art historians, has asked to open the tomb in which the Renaissance painter and polymath is believed to lie at Amboise castle, in the Loire valley, where he died in 1519, aged 67.

Giorgio Gruppioni, an anthropologist, said the project could throw new light on Leonardo’s most famous work. “If we manage to find his skull, we could rebuild Leonardo’s face and compare it with the Mona Lisa,” he said.

The identity of the Mona Lisa has been debated for centuries, with speculation ranging from Leonardo’s mother to Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a Florentine merchant.

Some scholars have suggested that Leonardo’s presumed homosexuality and love of riddles led him to paint himself as a woman.

Recreating Leonardo’s face could test the theory of Lillian Schwartz, an American expert who drew on computer studies to highlight apparent similarities between the features of the Mona Lisa and those of a self-portrait by the artist.

Talks about the exhumation with French cultural officials and the owners of the chateau have resulted in an agreement in principle, according to the Italian team, and the project could receive formal permission this summer.

The church in which Leonardo was buried was destroyed after the French revolution of 1789. The remains were reburied in the castle’s smaller chapel of Saint-Hubert in 1874, beneath an inscription that describes them as “presumed” to be the master’s.

Silvano Vincenti, head of the Italian team, said its first step would be to verify that the remains are Leonardo’s. They will use carbon dating and compare DNA samples from the bones and teeth to those of several male descendants buried in Bologna, central Italy.

via Leonardo da Vinci’s bones to be dug up by Italian scientists – Times Online.

Aliens are likely to look and behave like us – Telegraph

Alien life, if it exists at all, is likely to be just like us, a leading scientist has claimed. He also believes aliens would also share our human weaknesses for greed, violence and the exploitation of others.

Professor Simon Conway Morris at Cambridge University will tell a conference on alien life that extraterrestrials will most likely have evolved just like “earthlings” and so resemble us to a degree with heads, limbs and bodies.

Unfortunately they will have also evolved our foibles and faults which could make them dangerous if they ever did visit us on Earth.

The evolutionary paleobiologist’s beliefs mean that science fiction films such as Star Wars and Star Trek could be more accurate than they ever imagined in depicting alien life.

Prof Conway Morris believes that extraterrestrial life is most likely to occur on a planet similar to our own, with organisms made from the same biochemicals. The process of evolution will even shape alien life in a similar way, he added.

“It is difficult to imagine evolution in alien planets operating in any manner other than Darwinian,” he said.

“In the end the number of options is remarkably restrictive. I don’t think an alien will be a blob. If aliens are out there they should have evolved just like us. They should have eyes and be walking on two legs.

“In short if there is any life out there then it is likely to be very similar to us.”

Extra-terrestrials might not only resemble us but have our foibles, such as greed, violence and a tendency to exploit others’ resources, claims Professor Conway Morris.

They could come in peace but also be searching for somewhere to live, and to help themselves to water, minerals and fuel he is due to tell a conference at the Royal Society, in London.

However he also thinks that because much of the Universe is older than us they would have evolved further down the line and we should have heard from them by now. …

via Aliens are likely to look and behave like us – Telegraph.

Earth causes asteroids to shake apart

Earthlings casting a wary eye for rogue asteroids may be comforted to learn that our planet is not a sitting duck.

New research published in this week’s Nature shows Earth’s gravity triggers ground-shifting quakes on asteroids passing close by.

The findings may not only help scientists deflect an Earth-bound asteroid, but also provide fresh insights into the connections between asteroids and meteorites.

Scientists made the discovery by comparing differences in light reflected off asteroids that have breezed by Earth with those that orbit farther away. Though they are made of the same materials, the asteroids that encounter Earth’s gravity have fresh surfaces that are noticeably less weathered by the space environment.

Scientists believe the resurfacing is due to slow-falling landslides, triggered by tidal forces from Earth.

“Asteroids get sunburned out there by the light from the Sun, the radiation from the Sun,” says Dr Dan Durda, a planetary scientist with the Southwest Research Institute.

Over time, the weathering causes a change in an asteroid’s spectra – the breakdown of reflected light into its component wavelengths.

Backtracking the orbits of 95 near-Earth asteroids, scientists determined that over the past 500,000 years, 75 of them had passed closer to Earth than the Moon, which is about 385,000 kilometres away. The 75 asteroids included 20 bodies with spectra of fresh surface materials.

Most notably, there were no freshly surfaced asteroids among those that hadn’t had recent close encounters with Earth. The team then did some math and showed that Earth’s gravitational muscle could be strong enough to trigger asteroid-quakes as far as about one-quarter of the way to the Moon – less than 100,000 kilometres.

via Earth causes asteroids to shake apart › News in Science (ABC Science).

Evidence of Stone Age amputation forces rethink over history of surgery

The surgeon was dressed in a goat or sheep skin and used a sharpened stone to amputate the arm of his patient.

The operating theatre was not exactly Harley Street — more probably a wooden shelter — but the intervention was a success, and it has shed light on the medical talents of our Stone Age ancestors.

Scientists unearthed evidence of the surgery during work on an Early Neolithic tomb discovered at Buthiers-Boulancourt, about 40 miles (65km) south of Paris. They found that a remarkable degree of medical knowledge had been used to remove the left forearm of an elderly man about 6,900 years ago — suggesting that the true Flintstones were more developed than previously thought.

The patient seems to have been anaesthetised, the conditions were aseptic, the cut was clean and the wound was treated, according to the French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap).

The revelation could force a reassessment of the history of surgery, especially because researchers have recently reported signs of two other Neolithic amputations in Germany and the Czech Republic. It was known that Stone Age doctors performed trephinations, cutting through the skull, but not amputations. “The first European farmers were therefore capable of quite sophisticated surgical acts,” Inrap said. The discovery was made by Cécile Buquet-Marcon and Anaick Samzun, both archaeologists, and Philippe Charlier, a forensic scientist.

It followed research on the tomb of an elderly man who lived in the Linearbandkeramik period, when European hunter-gatherers settled down to agriculture, stock-breeding and pottery. The patient was important: his grave was 2m (6.5ft) long — bigger than most — and contained a schist axe, a flint pick and the remains of a young animal, which are evidence of high status.

The most intriguing aspect, however, was the absence of forearm and hand bones. A battery of biological, radiological and other tests showed that the humerus bone had been cut above the trochlea indent at the end “in an intentional and successful amputation”. Mrs Buquet-Marcon said that the patient, who is likely to have been a warrior, might have damaged his arm in a fall, animal attack or battle.

“I don’t think you could say that those who carried out the operation were doctors in the modern sense that they did only that, but they obviously had medical knowledge,” she said.

A flintstone almost certainly served as a scalpel. Mrs Buquet-Marcon said that pain-killing plants were likely to have been used, perhaps the hallucinogenic Datura. “We don’t know for sure, but they would have had to find some way of keeping him still during the operation,” she said.

Other plants, possibly sage, were probably used to clean the wound. “The macroscopic examination has not revealed any infection in contact with this amputation, suggesting that it was conducted in relatively aseptic conditions,” said the scientists in an article for the journal Antiquity….

via Evidence of Stone Age amputation forces rethink over history of surgery – Times Online.

Free Cubase iC Application Now Available

If you use Cubase recording software and you have an iPhone, check this out!

After introducing the Cubase iC remote control application running on iPhone and iPod touch at this year’s NAMM show, you now can download your version from the Apple iTunes Store for free!

Cubase iC is a powerful remote control for Cubase 5 and Cubase Studio 5, giving you immediate control of essential functions from anywhere within your Wi-Fi network’s range. With it you can access basic transport functions for monitoring playback position and controlling the unique Arranger Track, ideal for live performances.

I just downloaded this, but my studio computer has no WiFi connection so I don’t think it will work. Might be worth setting up a network card. Wish it would work with USB. Still need to install the Steinberg SKI Remote extension (from www.steinberg.net (Support > Downloads > Cubase iC).

*Apple Bonjour has to be installed and active in order to be able to select the Steinberg SKI Remote in Cubase! Bonjour is usually installed with iTunes.

Astronomers hopeful of detecting extra-terrestrial life

The chance of discovering life on other worlds is greater than ever, according to Britain’s leading astronomer.

Lord Rees, the president of the Royal Society and Astronomer Royal, said such a discovery would be a moment which would change humanity.

It would change our view of ourselves and our place in the cosmos, he said.

His comments come as scientists gather in London for an international conference to discuss the prospect of discovering extra-terrestrial life.

Scientists have been scanning the skies for radio broadcasts from intelligent life for 50 years, and so far they have only heard static.

But the chances of discovering life now were better than ever, Lord Rees said.

He said: “Technology has advanced so that for the very first time we can actually have the realistic hope of detecting planets no bigger than the earth orbiting other stars.

“(We’ll be able to learn) whether they have continents and oceans, learning what type of atmosphere they have.

“Although it is a long shot to be able to learn more about any life of them, then it’s tremendous progress to be able to get some sort of image of another planet, rather like the earth orbiting another star.”

The recent deployment of space telescopes capable of detecting earth-like planets around distant stars now make it possible to focus the search.

“Were we to find life, even the simplest life, elsewhere that would clearly be one of the great discoveries of the 21st Century.

“I suspect there could be life and intelligence out there in forms that we can’t conceive.

“And there could, of course, be forms of intelligence beyond human capacity, beyond as much as we are beyond a chimpanzee,” he added.

via BBC News – Astronomers hopeful of detecting extra-terrestrial life.

What happens and how we change will depend on the specifics of what we discover.

Humans were once an endangered species

Scientists from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City in the U.S. have calculated that 1.2 million years ago, at a time when our ancestors were spreading through Africa, Europe and Asia, there were probably only around 18,500 individuals capable of breeding (and no more than 26,000). This made them an endangered species with a smaller population than today’s species such as gorillas (approximately 25,000 breeding individuals) and chimpanzees (an estimated 21,000). They remained an endangered species for around one million years.

Modern humans are known to have less genetic variation than other living primates, even though our current population is many orders of magnitude greater. Researchers studying specific genetic lineages have proposed a number of explanations for this, such as recent “bottlenecks”, which are events in which a significant proportion of the population is killed or prevented from reproducing. One such event was the Toba super-volcano in Indonesia that erupted around 70,000 years ago, triggering a nuclear winter. Only an estimated 15,000 humans are thought to have survived. Another explanation is that the numbers of humans and our ancestors were chronically low throughout the last two million years, sometimes with only 10,000 breeding individuals surviving.

The new research is concerned with the entire genome rather than specific genetic lineages studied in the earlier research work. Using a new method of studying genetic markers of DNA in the genome has allowed geneticists to study the genetics not only modern humans, but also our early ancestors such as Homo erectus (thought the most likely to be our direct ancestors), H. ergaster and archaic H. sapiens. Remarkably, they found there was enough information in only two human DNA sequences to estimate the ancient population size. …

From these studies, they calculated there was more genetic diversity in our early ancestors than there is in modern humans. They also came to the conclusion that there had been a catastrophic event around one million years ago that was at least as devastating as the Toba volcanic eruption, and which had almost wiped out the species.

Jorde said that humans and our ancestors have gone through cycles of large population size and also periods when we were endangered. Professor Jorde and his team’s findings were reported online in PNAS, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on January 19.

via Humans were once an endangered species.

Zap that fat: Can lasers make you slimmer in minutes?

… I am visiting Harley Fit, one of a string of new companies that promise to transform your waistline in your lunch break. My visit is the culmination of a journey that began when a press release landed on my desk boasting a treatment that could make me “7 inches thinner in 20 minutes”.

It sounded too good to be true. Yet thousands of people have attended one of the hundreds of clinics around the world that offer the treatment, and scores of reviews in lifestyle magazines speak of results that are “nothing short of amazing”. At around £250 per treatment it doesn’t come cheap, but with the diet industry estimated to turn over tens of billions of dollars every year in the US alone, the appetite for a quick fix is clearly there.

Praise from customers is one thing, but independent scientific evidence corroborating the claims is harder to find. So while the promise of being able to lose inches in minutes is undeniably amazing, does the technique really work, or are people parting with their cash for a snake-oil treatment? And more importantly, is it safe?

After months of research, which involved reading several studies of the technology and questioning experts in the field, I am satisfied that I am not putting my life at risk, so I’ve come to the clinic to try the procedure for myself. To be honest, now that I’m here I’m having second thoughts. To complement “WowFatZap”, the inch-loss treatment that I’m receiving, Harley Fit also offers “WowSlimChoc”, a chocolate bar that promises to help you lose weight in one week, and the rather daunting “WowWilly”, a “medically proven permanent expansion device” which promises: “once stretched, is everlastingly expanded”. It feels like I’ve walked into the real-world equivalent of a spam email.

Despite all this, curiosity has got the better of me. If nothing else, my research revealed that getting rid of fat by zapping it with lasers is based on a scientifically plausible idea. The treatment is a form of non-invasive, laser-assisted fat-removal, or lipolysis. In 2001 Rodrigo Neira, a plastic surgeon at Red Deer Regional Hospital in Alberta, Canada, shone a laser at cultured fat cells, and found that this emulsified the targeted tissue. He presented his results later that year at the second South American Congress on Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery in Lima, Peru. …

“At this stage it is really not possible to judge what will happen with the technology,” Thomas adds. “Its effects appear to be relatively short-lived and the big problem in obesity is fat regain, so this would likely still be an issue for anyone using it as a means to reduce weight.”

According to Harley Fit I lost two-and-a-half inches (more than 60 millimetres) from around my hips and stomach after one 20-minute session. Would I go again? There are still unanswered questions over how the body deals with the released fat, and how much extra it can cope with. I would want these questions answered before returning for the treatment week after week.

“It may well be a decent alternative to liposuction which is perfectly acceptable as a cosmetic procedure, but does nothing to improve health,” says David Haslam, an obesity specialist at the Centre for Obesity Research at Luton and Dunstable Hospital, and chair of the UK National Obesity Forum. “Individuals who undergo treatment should be aware that diet and physical activity are the cornerstones, and the best way to make a long-lasting improvement in health and appearance.”via Zap that fat: Can lasers make you slimmer in minutes? – health – 22 January 2010 – New Scientist.