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In the
News:
'Vampire Burial' Reveals Efforts To Prevent Child's Return
From Grave - The discovery of a 10-year-old's body at
an ancient Roman site in Italy suggests measures were taken
to prevent the child, possibly infected with malaria, from
rising from the dead and spreading disease to the living.
The skeletal remains, uncovered by archaeologists from the
University of Arizona and Stanford University, along with
archaeologists from Italy, included a skull with a rock
intentionally inserted into the mouth. Researchers believe
the stone may have been placed there as part of a funeral
ritual designed to contain disease - and the body itself.
The discovery of this unusual, so-called "vampire burial"
was made over the summer in the commune of Lugnano in Teverina
in the Italian region of Umbria, where UA archaeologist
David Soren has overseen archaeological excavations since
1987. "I've never seen anything like it. It's extremely
eerie and weird," said Soren, a Regents' Professor in the
UA School of Anthropology and Department of Religious Studies
and Classics. "Locally, they're calling it the 'Vampire
of Lugnano.'" The discovery was made at La Necropoli dei
Bambini, or the Cemetery of the Babies, which dates to the
mid-fifth century when a deadly malaria outbreak swept the
area, killing many vulnerable babies and small children.
The bodies of the young victims were buried at the site
of an abandoned Roman villa that was originally constructed
at the end of the first century B.C. Until now, archaeologists
believed the cemetery was designated specifically for infants,
toddlers and unborn fetuses; in previous excavations of
more than 50 burials, a 3-year-old girl was the oldest child
found. The discovery of the 10-year-old, whose age was determined
based on dental development but whose sex is unknown, suggests
that the cemetery may have been used for older children
as well, said bioarcheologist Jordan Wilson, a UA doctoral
student in anthropology who analyzed the skeletal remains
in Italy. "There are still sections of the cemetery that
we haven't excavated yet, so we don't know if we'll find
other older kids,
Neanderthal
Healthcare Practices Crucial To Survival - Research
at the University of York has suggested that Neanderthals
embraced healthcare practices, such as assisting in cases
of serious injury and the challenges of childbirth. Previous
research at the University of York has already suggested
that compassion and caring for the injured and dying could
have been a factor in the development of healthcare practices,
but further investigation has now shown that there was evolutionary
drivers behind it too. Researchers investigated the skeletal
remains of more than 30 individuals where minor and serious
injuries were evident, but did not lead to loss of life.
The samples displayed several episodes of injury and recovery,
suggesting that Neanderthals must have had a well-developed
system of care in order to survive. Dr Penny Spikins, from
the University of York's Department of Archaeology, said:
"Neanderthals faced multiple threats to their lives, particularly
from large and dangerous animals, but in popular culture
Neanderthals have such a brutish and strong image that we
haven't really thought too deeply about their vulnerabilities
before now. We have evidence of healthcare dating back 1.6
million years ago, but we think it probably goes further
back than this. We wanted to investigate whether healthcare
in Neanderthals was more than a cultural practice; was it
something they just did or was it more fundamental to their
strategies for survival? The high level of injury and recovery
from serious conditions, such as a broken leg, suggests
that others must have collaborated in their care and helped
not only to ease pain, but to fight for their survival in
such a way that they could regain health and actively participate
in the group again."
Ghost
Objects In The Sky - Astronomers typically study objects
that are visible night after night or explode suddenly,
like supernovas, but Casey Law is scouring vast amounts
of data in search of bright objects that disappear, never
to be seen again. That search turned up the first of what
may be many "ghost" objects in the sky: in this case, an
extremely bright source of radio emissions that blazed into
existence in the 1990s and then faded out over next 25 years.
Based on the extreme brightness of the radio source and
the type of galaxy in which the flare-up occurred, Law argues
that it was the afterglow of the explosion of a massive
star, which would have emitted an undetected long-duration
gamma-ray burst. Gamma-ray bursts, whose origins are still
contentious, are among the most intense flashes in the universe
because much of their explosive energy is collimated into
a tight beam, like that from a lighthouse. "We believe we
are the first to find evidence for gamma-ray bursts that
could not be detected with a gamma-ray telescope," said
Law, an assistant research astronomer in the Department
of Astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley.
"These are known as 'orphan' gamma-ray bursts, and many
more such orphan GRBs are expected in new radio surveys
that are now underway." Gamma-ray bursts, such as that detected
last year accompanying gravitational waves from the merger
of two neutron stars, are rarely seen because the source
of the gamma rays - a relativistic jet of material emerging
from the explosive merger - must be pointing directly at
Earth. Perhaps only one in 100 explosions can be seen from
Earth by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, for example.The
fact that these explosions are followed by a decades-long
radio afterglow provides a way for astronomers to find the
rest of these explosive events, not just those heralded
by a gamma-ray burst. Finding many more gamma-ray bursts
will help resolve a major question in astronomy today: What
are these massive stellar explosions that generate gamma-ray
bursts, and what's left behind afterward?
How
The Brain Learns During Sleep - Researchers from Ruhr-Universität
Bochum and the University of Bonn have investigated which
activity patterns occur in the brain when people remember
or forget things. They were interested in how the brain
replays and stores during sleep what it had learned before.
The team recorded the brain activity of epilepsy patients
who had electrodes implanted into their brain for the purpose
of surgical planning. One result: During sleep, the brain
even reactivates memory traces that it can no longer remember
later on. Dr. Hui Zhang and Professor Nikolai Axmacher from
the Department of Neuropsychology in Bochum describe the
results together with Associate Professor Dr. Juergen Fell
from the Department of Epileptology in Bonn in the journal
Nature Communications, published on 5 October 2018. For
the experiment, the test participants were given a series
of pictures to memorize. They then took an afternoon nap.
When looking at a picture, the activity in the brain shows
a pattern that differs somewhat from picture to picture.
The researchers were able to measure these differences in
high-frequency activity fluctuations - called gamma band
activity. They analyzed brain activity not only during the
learning task, but also during sleep. They then tested which
images the participants could remember after sleep and which
they could not. The gamma band activity that was typical
of certain motifs occurred not only when looking at the
images, but also during sleep. The brain reactivated the
activity patterns - both for images the participants later
remembered and for those they later forgot. "The forgotten
images do not simply disappear from the brain," concludes
Hui Zhang. The decisive factor in whether an image was forgotten
or retained was not the reactivation of the image-specific
gamma band activity, but the activity in a brain region
that is important for memory: the hippocampus. This region
shows extremely rapid fluctuations in activity, called ripples.
A picture was only recalled later on when the reactivation
occurred at the same time as the ripples in the hippocampus.
This phenomenon only occurred during certain sleep phases,
but not when the participants were awake. Specifically,
whether an image is remembered or not depended on another
factor, namely how detailed the image was processed in the
brain. The researchers differentiated the gamma band activity
measured when viewing the images into a superficial and
a deep processing stage. The superficial processing took
place during the first half second after the presentation
of the image, the deeper processing after that. Only when
the gamma band activity from the deep processing phase was
reactivated during the ripples did the participants later
remember the image. If the activity from the early processing
phase was reactivated, the image was forgotten.
3D
Printers Have 'Fingerprints,' A Discovery That Could Help
Trace 3D-Printed Guns - Like
fingerprints, no 3D printer is exactly the same. That's
the takeaway from a new University at Buffalo-led study
that describes what's believed to be the first accurate
method for tracing a 3D-printed object to the machine it
came from. The advancement, which the research team calls
"PrinTracker," could ultimately help law enforcement and
intelligence agencies track the origin of 3D-printed guns,
counterfeit products and other goods. "3D printing has many
wonderful uses, but it's also a counterfeiter's dream. Even
more concerning, it has the potential to make firearms more
readily available to people who are not allowed to possess
them," says the study's lead author Wenyao Xu, PhD, associate
professor of computer science and engineering in UB's School
of Engineering and Applied Sciences. The study will be presented
in Toronto at the Association for Computing Machinery's
Conference on Computer and Communications Security, which
runs from Oct. 15-19. It includes coauthors from Rutgers
University and Northeastern University. To understand the
method, it's helpful to know how 3D printers work. Like
a common inkjet printer, 3D printers move back-and-forth
while "printing" an object. Instead of ink, a nozzle discharges
a filament, such as plastic, in layers until a three-dimensional
object forms. Each layer of a 3D-printed object contains
tiny wrinkles -- usually measured in submillimeters -- called
in-fill patterns. These patterns are supposed to be uniform.
However, the printer's model type, filament, nozzle size
and other factors cause slight imperfections in the patterns.
The result is an object that does not match its design plan.
For example, the printer is ordered to create an object
with half-millimeter in-fill patterns. But the actual object
has patterns that vary 5 to 10 percent from the design plan.
Like a fingerprint to a person, these patterns are unique
and repeatable. As a result, they can be traced back to
the 3D printer. "3D printers are built to be the same. But
there are slight variations in their hardware created during
the manufacturing process that lead to unique, inevitable
and unchangeable patterns in every object they print," Xu
says.
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Science
Quote of the Month - "We live in a
society exquisitely dependent on science and technology,
in which hardly anyone knows anything about science or technology"
- Carl Sagan
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What's
New at the Museum:
Making
of a Christmas Classic - It's the time of year when TV stations
reach back into their vaults and pull out holiday classics.
There is one film that has a longevity that most Christmas
films can only hope for. It's known as Babes in Toyland
or March of the Wooden Soldiers. (An encore of our classic
story). >Full Story
Mysterious
Picture of the Month - What
is this?
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Ask
the Curator:
The
Zapotec's Little Tunnels - I've heard of tunnels
found in buildings from the Zapotec empire, somewhere
in Central or South America. These tunnels, as I have
heard, were too small for adults or normal-sized children
to enter, but still had little staircases carved into
them, and ceremonial-type items were found in them. I
can't find much information on them- are they real? Are
people still trying to explore them? Any idea what they
were used for? Many thanks - Tango.
The
Zapotec Empire of central American (now Mexico) existed
from about 500 BC to 700 AD, and reached peak population
of around 16,500 around 500 AD. At this point in time
they abandoned their old capital and built a new one,
Monte Albán, atop a high plateau in the valley of Oaxaca.
Beneath the central plaza of this city runs a labyrinth
of small tunnels. The tunnels, many only a foot high,
are - as you note - too small for adults and most children.
Some appear to have steps and are connected chambers containing
artifacts like human skeletons and funerary objects. Despite
Monte Albán being one of the most studied archeological
sites in the Americans, the reason behind the tunnels
is unknown, but ideas have been proposed ranging from
water drainage to a transportation system for diminutive
aliens. One explanation seems to be that the tubes were
used for sighting the different positions of the sun,
moon and stars as they moved across the sky, but the existence
of the chambers snd artifacts seems to also suggest a
ritual connection.
This,
by far, is not the only mystery about Monte Albán. On
the north side of the site is an area called "The Gallery
of Dancers" with many stone tablets carved with reliefs
of human figures in contorted positions. Nobody is exactly
sure what these figures mean, except that they are not
really dancers. The leading theory is that they may be
human sacrifices.
Perhaps
we could understand more about the city and its strange
features if we could read the Zapotec hieroglyphics that
cover city walls. While the language is still spoken in
Mexico, the meanings of the glyphs have been lost and
only a handful are now known. Without a key, like the
Rosetta Stone which allowed
Egyptian script to be deciphered, the translation of these
texts may never be known.
Have
a question? Click here to
send it to us.
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| In
History:
King
Tut's Tomb Discovered - On November 4th of 1922, the
entrance to King Tutankhamen's tomb was discovered in Egypt
in the Valley of the Kings by English archaeologist Howard
Carter. One of Carter's excavators happened upon a stone
step, which turned out to be the first step in stairwell
that ran down to the rock tomb. Tutankhamen's mummy, with
his grave goods, was found completely intact giving archeologists
an unparalleled window into Egypt's culture. To read more
click here!
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In
the Sky:
Possible
Naked Eye Comet for the Holidays - Comet 46P/ Wirtanen
may be visible to the naked eye around mid-December as it
swings around the sun and heads back into the outer reaches
of our solar system. If it does reach that level of brightness
it will be the first in the last five years that can be
seen from the Northern Hemisphere. The comet will come within
7.2 million miles of the Earth and be visible near the Pleiades
and Hyades star clusters.
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Observed:
Headless Chicken Monster - Scientists have gotten
some good video of an Enypniastes eximia sea cucumber
walking along the ocean bottom in the Southern Ocean off
eastern Antarctica. This odd creature has been given the
nickname "the headless chicken monster" because of it resemblance
to a roasted chicken that walks. This is the first time
this species has been found in this region. Check it out
on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJvv2gAj_xc
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LGM:
Zeep
and Meep are on a well deserved vacation. In their place
we feature highlights from their past adventures.
LGM
Archive 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007,
2008, 2009,
2010, 2011,
2012,
2013,
2014
Copyright Lee Krystek 2018. All Rights Reserved.
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