Big dinosaur footprint find in China

Scientists in China say they have discovered more than 3,000 dinosaur footprints, all facing the same way.

The footprints - thought to belong to at least six dinosaur types - were found in eastern Shandong province, state news agency Xinhua reports.

Experts believe the prints are more than 100 million years old and say they could represent a migration or a panicked attempt to escape predators.

From the BBC.

Crash Blossoms

In their quest for concision, writers of newspaper headlines are, like Robert Browning, inveterate sweepers away of little words, and the dust they kick up can lead to some amusing ambiguities. Legendary headlines from years past (some of which verge on the mythical) include “Giant Waves Down Queen Mary’s Funnel,” “MacArthur Flies Back to Front” and “Eighth Army Push Bottles Up Germans.” The Columbia Journalism Review even published two anthologies of ambiguous headlinese in the 1980s, with the classic titles “Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim” and “Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge.”

From the NY Times. Gotta get those anthologies, but it looks as if they are out of print and not cheap!

Two other classics from the article: “McDonald’s Fries the Holy Grail for Potato Farmers" and "British Left Waffles on Falklands".

Copyright madness infects Australia

The CNN writeup is more balanced, but the BBC's better highlights the outrageousness of the underlying issues:

The Australian band Men at Work are facing a big legal bill after a court ruled it had plagiarised a Girl Guides' song in its 1983 hit, Down Under.

Larrikin Music had claimed the flute riff from was stolen from Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree, written by Marion Sinclair in 1934.

"Stolen" and "plagiarized" clearly do not apply here. What has the world come to, when you are not allowed to make a quick bow to an iconic and now-traditional Australian melody in a song about being Australian? This was just a quick riff, an allusion and tribute of the sort that has enriched music since time immemorial. But now that tip of the hat is being repaid with lawsuits, leaving everyone the poorer.

The federal court in Sydney ordered compensation to be paid.

That amount has yet to be determined but Larrikin's lawyer said it could reach 60% of income from the song.

The decision is bad enough, but 60% would be an outrage. This isn't a case involving the central melody, or any lyrics.

"It's a big win for the underdog," said Larrikin's lawyer Adam Simpson after the judgment.

That's pretty rich.

Sinclair, who died in 1988, wrote the song for performance at a Girl Guides Jamboree in 1935.

Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree has since been sung by generations of Australian schoolchildren.

And American, as well. Wonder if they'll be trying to collect royalties from the kids next.

Record price for Giacometti

A life-size bronze sculpture of a man by Alberto Giacometti has been sold at auction in London for the world record price of £65,001,250.

It took just eight minutes for bidders to reach the hammer price after L'Homme Qui Marche I opened at £12m at Sotheby's auction house.

Sotheby's said it was the most expensive work ever sold at auction. . .

Gustav Klimt's Kirche in Cassone went for £26,921,250, above the £12m to £18m estimate.

From the BBC.

Action/reaction

Inspired by Hollywood cowboy films, researchers have delved into the science of gun fights.

Scientists discovered that people move faster when reacting to something than when they perform "planned actions".

This is not at all surprising. When reacting, it is easy to focus entirely on reacting, and an external "go" signal provides a clean, sharply defined trigger. By comparison, initiating an action on ones own is mushy: having to decide for oneself when to move means waiting for an internal decision that is usually more of a process than a clear-cut yes/no.

Those who reacted to their opponent were on average 21 milliseconds faster than those who initiated the movement.

Although some feeds misstate the fact, action still beats reaction:

Dr Welchman explained that it took around 200 milliseconds to respond to what an opponent was doing, so, in a gunfight, the 21 millisecond reactionary advantage would be unlikely to save you.

"The person who draws second is going to die. They'll die happy that they are the faster person to move but it's not much consolation in this context," said Dr Welchman.

A problem with the study as pertains to combat, however, is the use of untrained subjects. Boxers, fencers, martial artists, all train (or should train) to be able to initiate attacking movements swiftly and crisply. It's not an easy skill to develop: as noted above, the natural tendency is to mushiness -- telegraphing one's intentions by an initial tensioning or "creep" before the main motion is launched, that initial tension not only delaying but also slowing the main motion. When you get it, though, initiation of motion becomes almost unconscious -- and at that point, I bet that 21 milliseconds will be gone. Full BBC article here.

Reburying the WW1 dead

The first of 250 British and Australian soldiers whose remains were recovered from a World War I battlefield in northern France has been reburied.

The unidentified soldier, who died in the 1916 Battle of Fromelles, was reburied with full military honours in a special service near the site.

It is the first new cemetery built for World War I or II soldiers in 50 years.

The bodies, which were buried by German forces, were excavated from six mass graves in 2008.

The cemetery, which has been built by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, is currently only 70% complete but due to be finished by July.

Full article here.

Source of Trajan's aquaduct found at last

The long-sought source of the aqueduct that brought clean fresh water to ancient Rome lies beneath a pig pasture and a ruined chapel, according to a pair of British filmmakers who claim to have discovered the headwaters of Aqua Traiana, a 1,900-year-old aqueduct built by the Emperor Trajan in 109 A.D. . .

Edward O'Neill and his father Michael were searching for the Aqua Alsietina, Rome's lost aqueduct, when local people suggested investigating a long abandoned church known as the Madonna of the Flower.

Exploring the chapel, the documentary makers found a concealed door which led to a subterranean chamber. . .

Quilici confirmed that the building was Roman, rather than medieval, as had long been believed. . .

Beyond the subterranean chamber, a 125-meter-long (410-foot-long) gallery led to the beginning of the aqueduct. But what struck the researchers was the chamber's decorations, made with a rare and costly type of paint known as Egyptian blue (calcium copper silicate).

"This was an extraordinary monument, a vaulted, three-chambered semicircular nymphaeum . . .
At the center there was a small temple dedicated the the spring god, while on both sides there were two basins"

From Discovery News.

Fake Byzantine codex unmasked

A clever bit of detective work by US scholars and scientists has proven that one of the jewels of the University of Chicago’s manuscript collection is, in fact, a skilled late 19th- or early 20th-century forgery.

Although speculation as to the authenticity of the Archaic Mark codex has been rife for more than 60 years, prior to this definitive research many believed it was an early record (possibly as early as the 14th century) of the Gospel of Mark and the closest of any extant manuscript to the world’s oldest Greek Bible—the fourth-century Codex Vaticanus.

Full article here. The original University of Chicago press release came out in early December.

Gandhi laid to rest, again and again and again

Some of Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi's ashes, kept for decades by a family friend, have been scattered off the South African coast.

The ashes were sprinkled on to the Indian Ocean in a Hindu ceremony attended by about 200 people to mark the 62nd anniversary of Gandhi's death.

They were handed over to the family last year after the family friend died.

After Gandhi's assassination, his body was cremated and the ashes distributed among family, friends and followers.

Full article here.

License to steal

It didn't take long for the abuses to begin after police were first allowed a cut of property seized from criminals. Yet now over 25 years have passed, and despite one notable attempt at reform, things look worse than ever:

Over the past three decades, it has become routine in the United States for state, local, and federal governments to seize the property of people who were never even charged with, much less convicted of, a crime. Nearly every year, according to Justice Department statistics, the federal government sets new records for asset forfeiture. And under many state laws, the situation is even worse. . .

Forfeiture may also undermine actual enforcement of the law. In a 1994 study reported in Justice Quarterly, criminologists J. Mitchell Miller and Lance H. Selva observed several police agencies that identified drug supplies but delayed making busts to maximize the cash they could seize, since seized cash is more lucrative for police departments than seized drugs. This strategy allowed untold amounts of illicit drugs to be sold and moved into the streets, contrary to the official aims of drug enforcement.

Full article here.

Old San Francisco

For those looking for some great old footage of San Francisco, a friend recently brought this YouTube video to my attention, which features a streetcar's-eye view of the ride down Market to the Ferry Building. The footage was apparently shot very shortly before the 1906 earthquake.

This got me looking for more of the similar, which turned up Rick Prelinger's work. There's a lot there, starting here and continuing here. Don't be put off by the initial screens -- the complete footage is of two forums in which Prelinger presented his material, so the first segments are devoted to preliminary remarks, introductions, etc. You can just scroll down the initial page, skipping right to where the individual films are listed.

Birds and birdlike dinosaurs: more pieces for the puzzle

The discoveries keep on flooding out of China. What a time to be a palaeontologist!

A newly discovered fossil has shed light on why a group of dinosaurs looks like birds, say scientists.

Haplocheirus sollers may not be as charismatic as T. rex or as agile as a pterodactyl but it's thought to solve a long standing puzzle.

Researchers believe its short arms and large claw show how bird-like dinosaurs evolved independently of birds.

From the BBC.

Dinosaur coloration find

Still no telling about skin and scales, but feathers are another matter, now:

Confuciusornis' feathers were preserved in extraordinarily complete fossils that were recently discovered in northern China.

Using a powerful electron microscope to look inside the feathers, researchers were able to see microscopic structures called melanosomes, which, in life, contain the pigment melanin. . .

Professor Benton explained that differently shaped melanosomes produced different colours, with blacks or greys produced by "sausage-shaped" melanosomes, and reddish or "russet" shades found in spherical ones.

Read the full article at the BBC.

Ptolemaic temple find in Alexandria

Archaeologists in Egypt have discovered a 2,000-year-old temple in Alexandria dedicated to a cat goddess.

The temple is the first trace of the royal quarters of the Ptolemaic dynasty to be revealed in Alexandria.

The find confirms the Greek dynasty of Egyptians continued the worship of ancient animal deities.

Many more ruins of the ancient capital of Hellenic Egypt lie preserved under the modern city, yet to be unearthed, archaeologists say.

From the BBC.

Ancient papyrus seized in Jerusalem

Undercover Israeli officers foiled an attempt by two Palestinian men to sell an ancient, valuable papyrus document on the black market, police said Wednesday. The men were arrested at a Jerusalem hotel Tuesday after a sting operation lasting several weeks, police said. The 1,900-year-old Hebrew document, previously unknown and valued at millions of dollars, was rescued, and police showed it to reporters.

It was unclear where the two men obtained it, police and archaeologists said. Similar documents have been found in caves in the Judean Desert near the Dead Sea, where they have been preserved over the centuries by the dry climate, they said.

Full article here. Am a bit dubious about the valuation, considering it appears to be a rather unexciting legal contract -- no lost gospels or the like.

What doesn't kill us -- becomes us

The borna virus is at once obscure and grotesque. It can infect mammals and birds, but scientists know little about its effects on its victims. In some species it seems to be harmless, but it can drive horses into wild fits. . .

Some scientists have even claimed that borna viruses alter human behavior, playing a role in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. . .

The virus now turns out to have an intimate bond with every person on Earth. In the latest issue of Nature, a team of Japanese and American scientists report that the human genome contains borna virus genes. The virus infected our monkey-like ancestors 40 million years ago, and its genes have been passed down ever since.

Borna viruses are not the only viruses lurking in our genome. Scientists have found about 100,000 elements of human DNA that probably came from viruses. . .

Scientists who hunt for these viruses think of themselves as paleontologists searching for fossils. Just as animals get buried in rock, these viruses become trapped in the genomes of their hosts. While their free-living relatives continue to evolve, fossil viruses are effectively frozen in time. . .

Fossil viruses are also illuminating human evolution. Scientists estimate that 8.3 percent of the human genome can be traced back to retrovirus infections.

But this estimate may be far too conservative. And most interesting is the notion that the incorporation of viruses may play an important role in evolution:

Dr. Tomonaga and his colleagues suspect that borna viruses didn’t actually invade mammal genomes. Instead, the genomes kidnapped them. . .

Two of the four copies of the borna virus gene carry crippling mutations. It’s impossible for our cells to make proteins from them. But the other two genes look remarkably intact, perhaps suggesting that our bodies use them for our own benefit. Exactly what they do isn’t clear though.

Studies on other captive viruses have revealed that some help ward off viral invasions. One virus protein, syncytin, is essential for our being born at all.

From the NY Times.

Miep Gies dies at 100

Miep Gies, the last surviving member of the group who helped protect Anne Frank and her family from the Nazis, has died in the Netherlands aged 100.

She and other employees of Anne Frank's father Otto supplied food to the family as they hid in a secret annex above the business premises in Amsterdam.

Anne's diary of their life in hiding, which ended in betrayal, is one of the most famous records of the Holocaust.

It was rescued by Mrs Gies, who kept it safe until after the war.

From the BBC.

Irish cathedral fire

Gardaí have begun their on-site investigation of the remains of St Mel’s Cathedral in Longford town, which was destroyed by fire early on Christmas Day . . .

Precious and irreplaceable artefacts which were on display at the diocesan ecclesiastical museum at the cathedral were destroyed in the fire.

Raghnall Ó Floinn, head of collections at the National Museum of Ireland, said there were some important pieces among the 500 or so kept at the diocesan museum at the cathedral.

The most important were the Crozier of St Mel, the patron saint of the Diocese of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise, dating from the 10th century, and also the book shrine of St Caillin, dating to 1536 [12th-century, remade in the 16th -- D.]. . .

Also in the collection was St Caillin’s Bell, known as the Bell of Fenagh.

More in the Irish Times.

Mobile phone radiation protective against Alzheimer's?

After all the concern over possible damage to health from using mobile phones, scientists have found a potential benefit from radiation.

Their work has been carried out on mice, but it suggests mobiles might protect against Alzheimer's.

Florida scientists found that phone radiation actually protected the memories of mice programmed to get Alzheimer's disease.

They are now testing more frequencies to see if they can get better results.

From the BBC.

Tracks of the earliest vertebrates

The oldest evidence of four-legged animals walking on land has been discovered in southeast Poland.

Rocks from a disused quarry record the "footprints" of unknown creatures that lived about 397 million years ago.

Scientists tell the journal Nature that the fossil trackways even retain the impressions left by the "toes" on the animals' feet.

The team says the find means that land vertebrates appeared millions of years earlier than previously supposed.

"This place has yielded what I consider to be some of the most exciting fossils I've ever encountered in my career as a palaeontologist," said team member Per Ahlberg from Uppsala University, Sweden.

Full article here.

Big tomb find at Saqqara

Archaeologists in Egypt have said they have discovered the largest known tomb in the ancient necropolis of Sakkara, to the south of Cairo.

The tomb dates back 2,500 years to the 26th Dynasty and contains important artefacts, including mummified eagles.

It is one of two newly discovered tombs found by an Egyptian team working close to the entrance of Sakkara, the burial ground for Egypt's ancient capital.

The tomb was not fully intact, but seems to still be full of good stuff. From the BBC.

DNA: separating old from new

Possibly a very significant advance:

Svante Paabo, from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and colleagues used the latest DNA sequencing techniques to study genetic information from human remains unearthed in 1954 at Kostenki, Russia. . .

The DNA analysed in this study comes from a male aged 20-25 who was deliberately buried in an oval pit some 30,000 years ago. . .

Using technology pioneered in the study of DNA from Neanderthal bones, they were able to distinguish between ancient genetic material from the Kostenki male and contamination from modern people who handled the bones, or whose DNA reached the remains by some other means.

From the BBC.

First Vickers airplane, found in Antarctica

A HISTORIC monoplane - a relic of Sir Douglas Mawson's 1911-14 expedition - has been found in Antarctica thanks to freakish luck after a three-year search.

An Australian heritage carpenter stumbled on the remains of the craft - the first Vickers aircraft ever made - on New Year's Day at Cape Denison.

The cast iron framework of the plane was revealed by an unusually low tide and reduced ice cover.

Full article here. BBC article here includes photos and video clips, and makes clear that the remains are rather fragmentary. A bit more digging turned up the expedition blog entry describing the find in detail, with photos.

Capsule hotel as flophouse

For Atsushi Nakanishi, jobless since Christmas, home is a cubicle barely bigger than a coffin -- one of dozens of berths stacked two units high in one of central Tokyo’s decrepit “capsule” hotels.

“It’s just a place to crawl into and sleep,” he said, rolling his neck and stroking his black suit — one of just two he owns after discarding the rest of his wardrobe for lack of space. “You get used to it.”

Grim, though.

The jobless rate, at 5.2 percent, is at a record high, and the number of households on welfare has risen sharply. The country’s 15.7 percent poverty rate is one of the highest among industrialized nations.

From the NY Times.

Hope for Tasmanian Devils?

Scientists fighting a cancer that threatens to wipe out Australia's Tasmanian devils say they have made a breakthrough.

A contagious facial tumour has cut the number of the animals by more than half in 10 years. . .

They are the world's largest marsupial carnivores and only found on the island state of Tasmania.

Tumours spread among groups of devils through biting, and infected animals die within months of the symptoms first appearing.

From the BBC.