Simulated 520-Day Mars trip begins June 3.

The first two members of Russia’s upcoming 18-month “Mars mission” have been selected by the European Space Agency; Frenchman Romain Charles and Colombian-Italian Diego Urbina will join 3 Russians and one Chinese national in the Mars500 spaceship, which will carry out a 520-day simulated mission to Mars beginning June 3. Let’s hope they all get along.

The upcoming mission follows on the success of last year’s precursor isolation experiment, in which a crew of six was sealed inside a fake “spacecraft” in Moscow for 105 days. During that time researchers studied the effects of isolation on the crew, as well as the strain of close living quarters and working conditions. That mission simulated an abbreviated trip to the Red Planet; the upcoming “journey” will mirror the real thing.

At 520 days, the mission will mimic an actual voyage to the Moon and back. The sealed containers (again in Moscow) in which the mockup mission will unfold contain not only a spacecraft, but a Mars lander a Martian landscape as well. Around 250 days in the crew will be split, with half of the astronauts moving into the lander for a simulated trip to Mars’ surface. There will even be a simulate spacewalk, in which the crew will suit up in modified Russian Orlan spacesuits. For the duration, the crew will be constantly monitored for both psychological and physiological signs of stress or deteriorating wellness.

Those chosen to go to the “surface” will likely relish the opportunity to stretch their legs. Living quarters inside the experiment only add up to less than 20,000 cubic feet. That might sound like a lot, but for a crew of six that’s not a whole lot of space, especially when you factor in the 18-month grocery supply that must be stored on board as well.

There will be communication with the outside world via radio and email, but radio communications will be delayed a full 20 minutes as they would be on a real interplanetary mission and emails will take twice that time to get through. Both will be disrupted periodically, because what’s the point of locking six men in a container if you don’t mess with their heads a bit?

The remaining four crew members will be named later this month.

via Space – Astronaut – Mars – Crew – Technology | Popular Science.

Mysterious Mayan ceremonial head found at Tak´alik Ab´aj

Discovery of an extraordinary offering of a jadeite mosaic miniature ceremonial head underscores the importance and political power at the beginning of Early Classic of the ancient Maya city Tak’alik Ab’aj

Tak’alik Ab’aj is an ancient pre-Hispanic city situated in El Asintal, Department of Retalhuleu at the pacific piedmont of Guatemala. This important long distance trade and cosmopolitan cultural center is transcendent because of its long history which endured 1700 years (800 B.C. – 900 A.D). At its beginnings Tak’alik Ab’aj interacted and participated with the Olmec culture, and at its surmise, was one of the protagonists in the development of the early Maya culture. This particularity in addition to the extraordinary production of sculpture programs during these two important cultural periods, make Tak’alik Ab’aj unique in the history of Mesoamerica.

Previous excavations conducted in the center of Structure 6 – one of the most important ceremonial buildings of the main architectonic complex called Central Group at Tak’alik Ab’aj – revealed a series of precious offerings. These offerings were deposited in a sequence of episodes into the earthen construction fill of one of the last versions of this building during the first part of Early Classic (150-300 B.C. – Phase Alejos).

These offerings consisted of ceramic vessels, the most beautiful of these vessels is decorated with a stepped fret design; a small pedestal stone sculpture, re-used to ceremonially grind jadeite, plenty of intentionally broken stone grinding artifacts for maize or probably cacao (metates), a pyrite mosaic mirror and a few pieces of jadeite.

On March 23, 2010 the team of archaeologists of Tak´alik Ab´aj, discovered in the ongoing excavations at the center of Structure 6 another extraordinary treasure: an offering of 50 jadeite mosaics which had been deposited into the soil of the mentioned construction fill.

These mosaics compose a miniature ceremonial head with celt like plaques hanging underneath the chin, which were worn as part of the ceremonial waist belt of the rulers, as is vastly represented at the Maya steles from Preclassic to Classic times.

These miniature ceremonial heads are made of jadeite mosaics, masterfully worked in order to fit neatly together like a puzzle.

In previous excavations at Tak’alik Ab’aj archaeologists had experienced the unique opportunity to find a miniature ceremonial head made of blue jadeite mosaics in situ in the royal burial No. 1 which had been introduced in Structure 7, the most sacred building of the Central Group by end of the Late Preclassic (200 B.C. -150 A.D. – Phase Ruth). The precise position of the miniature mosaic head in the waist area of the burial confirmed by then that effectively those miniature heads were part of the ceremonial waist belt, an element which can be considered as important in the royal outfit worn by the rulers as the headdress. …

via Mysterious Mayan ceremonial head found at Tak´alik Ab´aj.

Using Laser to Map Ancient Civilization in a Matter of Days

For a quarter of a century, two archaeologists and their team slogged through wild tropical vegetation to investigate and map the remains of one of the largest Maya cities, in Central America. Slow, sweaty hacking with machetes seemed to be the only way to discover the breadth of an ancient urban landscape now hidden beneath a dense forest canopy.

Even the new remote-sensing technologies, so effective in recent decades at surveying other archaeological sites, were no help. Imaging radar and multispectral surveys by air and from space could not “see” through the trees.

Then, in the dry spring season a year ago, the husband-and-wife team of Arlen F. Chase and Diane Z. Chase tried a new approach using airborne laser signals that penetrate the jungle cover and are reflected from the ground below. They yielded 3-D images of the site of ancient Caracol, in Belize, one of the great cities of the Maya lowlands.

In only four days, a twin-engine aircraft equipped with an advanced version of lidar (light detection and ranging) flew back and forth over the jungle and collected data surpassing the results of two and a half decades of on-the-ground mapping, the archaeologists said. After three weeks of laboratory processing, the almost 10 hours of laser measurements showed topographic detail over an area of 80 square miles, notably settlement patterns of grand architecture and modest house mounds, roadways and agricultural terraces.

“We were blown away,” Dr. Diane Chase said recently, recalling their first examination of the images. “We believe that lidar will help transform Maya archaeology much in the same way that radiocarbon dating did in the 1950s and interpretations of Maya hieroglyphs did in the 1980s and ’90s.”

The Chases, who are professors of anthropology at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, had determined from earlier surveys that Caracol extended over a wide area in its heyday, between A.D. 550 and 900. From a ceremonial center of palaces and broad plazas, it stretched out to industrial zones and poor neighborhoods and beyond to suburbs of substantial houses, markets and terraced fields and reservoirs.

This picture of urban sprawl led the Chases to estimate the city’s population at its peak at more than 115,000. But some archaeologists doubted the evidence warranted such expansive interpretations.

“Now we have a totality of data and see the entire landscape,” Dr. Arlen Chase said of the laser findings. “We know the size of the site, its boundaries, and this confirms our population estimates, and we see all this terracing and begin to know how the people fed themselves.”

The Caracol survey was the first application of the advanced laser technology on such a large archaeological site. Several journal articles describe the use of lidar in the vicinity of Stonehenge in England and elsewhere at an Iron Age fort and American plantation sites. Only last year, Sarah H. Parcak of the University of Alabama at Birmingham predicted, “Lidar imagery will have much to offer the archaeology of the rain forest regions.” …

via Using Laser to Map Ancient Civilization in a Matter of Days – NYTimes.com.

Working overtime increases heart risk, a study finds

People who regularly put in overtime and work 10 or 11-hour days increase their heart disease risk by nearly two-thirds, research suggests.

The findings come from a study of 6,000 British civil servants, published online in the European Heart Journal.

After accounting for known heart risk factors such as smoking, doctors found those who worked three to four hours of overtime a day ran a 60% higher risk.

Experts said the findings highlighted the importance of work-life balance.

Overall, there were 369 cases where people suffered heart disease that caused death, had a heart attack or developed angina.

And the number of hours spent working overtime appeared to be strongly linked in many cases.

The researchers said there could be a number of explanations for this.

People who spend more time at work have less time to exercise, relax and unwind.

They may also be more stressed, anxious, or have depression.

A career-minded person will also tend to be a “Type A” personality who is highly driven, aggressive or irritable, they say.

“Employees who work overtime may also be likely to work while ill – that is, be reluctant to be absent from work despite illness,” they add.

Lead researcher Mianna Virtanen, an epidemiologist at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health in Helsinki and University College London, said: “More research is needed before we can be confident that overtime work would cause coronary heart disease.”…

via BBC News – Working overtime increases heart risk, a study finds.

Pope Benedict places blame for sex scandals on Catholic Church

Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday blamed the church’s own sins for the clerical sex-abuse scandal — not a campaign mounted by outsiders — and called for profound purification to end what he called the “greatest persecution” the church has endured.His strongly worded comments placed responsibility for the crisis squarely on the sins of pedophile priests, repudiating the Vatican’s initial response to the scandal, in which it blamed the news media as well as advocates of abortion rights and legalizing same-sex marriage for mounting what it called a campaign against the church and the pope. Speaking en route to Portugal, Benedict said the Catholic Church has always suffered from problems of its own making but that “today we see it in a truly terrifying way.”"The greatest persecution of the church doesn’t come from enemies on the outside but is born from the sins within the church,” the pontiff said. “The church needs to profoundly relearn penitence, accept purification, learn forgiveness — but also justice.” The comments marked Benedict’s most thorough admission of the church’s guilt in creating the scandal. Previously he blamed abusers themselves and, in the case of Ireland, the bishops who failed to stop them. He was responding to journalists’ questions, submitted in advance, aboard the papal plane as he flew to Portugal. His four-day visit will take him from Lisbon to the famed Fatima shrine to Portugal’s second city, Porto. Despite the Vatican’s initial defensive response to hundreds of reports of clerical abuse in Europe, Benedict has promised that the church will take action. He has already started cleaning house, accepting the resignations of a few bishops who either admitted they molested youngsters or covered up for priests who did. …

via Pope Benedict places blame for sex scandals on Catholic Church.

Good. He’s starting to get it right… and he looks less like a Sith Lord in this photo than any photo before.  It would be useful if he would come around on the issue of birth control too. Clean house and then admit that the need to reduce our population is more important than the need for the church to grow new members.