In 1996 in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Italian mineralogist Vincenzo de Michele spotted an unusual yellow-green gem in the middle of one of Tutankhamun’s necklaces. The jewel was tested and found to be glass, but intriguingly it is older than the earliest Egyptian civilisation. Working with Egyptian geologist Aly Barakat, they traced its origins to unexplained chunks of glass found scattered in the sand in a remote region of the Sahara Desert. But the glass is itself a scientific enigma. How did it get to be there and who or what made it? Thursday’s BBC Horizon programme reports an extraordinary new theory linking Tutankhamun’s gem with a meteor. Sky of fire An Austrian astrochemist Christian Koeberl had established that the glass had been formed at a temperature so hot that there could be only one known cause: a meteorite impacting with Earth. And yet there were no signs of an impact crater, even in satellite images. American geophysicist John Wasson is another scientist interested in the origins of the glass. He suggested a solution that came directly from the forests of Siberia. ‘When the thought came to me that it required […]
Being working class or marrying into the working classes could dramatically reduce an individual’s lifespan, new research has claimed. A study of hundreds of female twins found those deemed working class – employed in a manual, unskilled job – can expect to age significantly faster than their middle-class peers. It could reduce life expectancy by seven years. And moving into the working class through marriage could have an even bigger impact, adding nine years to a woman’s biological age. The association between the rate at which people age and the social class they belong to cannot adequately be explained by low income, poor education or risk factors known to afflict lower socioeconomic groups most, such as smoking, obesity, lack of exercise and bad diet. However, stress may be the key, the researchers believe. People from lower social backgrounds are more likely to feel insecure, it is claimed. The stress this causes is thought to inflict cellular damage that accelerates ageing. The findings, soon to appear in the journal Aging Cell, are the latest to emerge from the twin research unit at London’s St Thomas’s Hospital. Working with colleagues in the US, the researchers, led by […]
WASHINGTON — The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced $287 million in grants on Wednesday to create an international network of 16 labs to try new approaches to making a vaccine against AIDS. The foundation says it wants the program to transform the so-far unsuccessful AIDS vaccine effort by rewarding individual labs that come up with innovative ideas and helping them develop those ideas, but also ensuring that they collaborate with other researchers, who under ordinary circumstances would often be considered rivals. ‘This is the foundation’s largest-ever investment in HIV vaccine development. In fact, it’s our largest-ever package of grants for HIV and AIDS,’ Dr. Nicholas Hellmann, acting director of the Gates Foundation’s HIV, TB, and Reproductive Health program, told reporters in a telephone briefing. AIDS was first described in 1981 and the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS was found soon after — but it has proven extremely difficult to find a way to make an effective vaccine. The virus attacks the very immune cells that are usually stimulated by a vaccine, and mutates quickly to evade back-up immune responses. More than 30 vaccines are being tested in people now, but no scientists expect that […]
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate has approved and sent to President Bush a bill that would allow federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. The president opposes the measure on moral grounds, and is expected to veto it as early as Wednesday. The Senate passed the legislation on a 63 to 37 vote, with broad bipartisan support. Supporters say such research is key to medical advances, and that only donated embryos that would otherwise be thrown away would be used. ‘There are some 400-thousand frozen embryos, and the choice is discarding them or using them to save lives. Embryonic stem cells have the flexibility for the potential of curing Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, heart disease and cancer,’ said Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican. But opponents, mostly those who make up the conservative base of the Republican party, argue such research amounts to taking human life because embryos are destroyed in the process. Senator Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican, wants donated embryos to be adopted by infertile couples. ‘We have a lot of frozen embryos and we are saying ‘let’s make some utility out of them’. Isn’t that against human dignity to say ‘let’s research on this,’ when […]
In a SPIEGEL interview, United States oil expert Daniel Yergin discusses fears of a global energy crisis, the growing confidence of oil-rich nations and changes in world politics caused by rising energy prices. Spiegel: Mr. Yergin, Europe is dependent on Russian gas, Venezuela and Bolivia nationalize their oil industries, Iran threatens to use oil as a weapon. How secure is the world’s energy supply? Daniel Yergin: We are living in a new age of energy supply anxiety. A premium in the oil price of somewhere between 10 to 15 dollars a barrel reflects this heightened anxiety. What we see is the rebirth of 1970s-style resource nationalism that is riding on this crest of high energy prices. The balance of power has changed, the exporting countries are in a much stronger position today. Spiegel: Would Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez or Russian President Vladimir Putin act so self-confidently if a barrel still cost only 20 dollars? Yergin: Probably not; their position has changed dramatically. Just a little more than half a decade ago the oil businesss was the oldest of the old economies, all governments were tending to privatize their state oil companies and tried desperately to draw […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
