Argumentative agents for online deal-making

Software agents that play devil’s advocate and quarrel with each other may not sound like something you would want in your computer. But, say a team of researchers, argumentative agents promise faster, cheaper and more efficient online transactions.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Jan 2010 | 3:00 pm

New molecular mechanism discovered that guides visual nerves towards brain

Scientists have discovered a new molecular mechanism that permits the guidance of visual nerves towards the brain.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Jan 2010 | 3:00 pm

Study examines calorie information from restaurants, packaged foods

A new study analyzes the calorie content of 18 side dishes and entrees from national sit-down chain restaurants, 11 side dishes and entrees from national fast food restaurants and 10 frozen meals purchased from supermarkets. Researchers compared their results to the calorie content information provided to the public by the restaurants and food companies.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Jan 2010 | 3:00 pm

Sleeping Beauty hooks up with herpes to fight brain disease

Neuroscientists have forged an unlikely molecular union as part of their fight against diseases of the brain and nervous system, bringing together the herpes virus and a molecule known as Sleeping Beauty to improve gene therapy. The work has allowed scientists to reach a long-sought goal: shuttling into brain cells a relatively large gene that can remain on for an extended period of time.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Jan 2010 | 3:00 pm

Ant Has Given Up Sex Completely, Researchers Confirm

The complete asexuality of a widespread fungus-gardening ant, the only ant species in the world known to have dispensed with males entirely, has recently been confirmed.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Jan 2010 | 3:00 pm

Remote Triggering System For Avalanche Airbags developed

Many people dream of skiing off piste in deep virgin snow. But their dream would rapidly turn into a nightmare if they were to set off a slab avalanche. Researchers have now developed a remote triggering system for avalanche airbags.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Jan 2010 | 3:00 pm

Periodic paralysis study reveals gene causing disorder

Scientists have identified a gene underlying a disease that causes temporary paralysis of skeletal muscle. The finding, they say, illustrates how investigations of rare genetic diseases can drive insights into more common ones.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Jan 2010 | 9:00 am

Chloride increases response to pheromones and odors in mouse sensory neurons

How an individual vomeronasal sensory neuron (VSN) transduces chemical signals into electrical signals has been a mystery. Researchers now show that chloride acts as a major amplifier for signal transduction in mouse VSNs, increasing the responsiveness to pheromones or odorants.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Jan 2010 | 9:00 am

Echinoderms contribute to global carbon sink; impact of marine creatures underestimated

The impact on levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere by the decaying remains of a group of marine creatures that includes starfish and sea urchin has been significantly underestimated.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Jan 2010 | 9:00 am

When hooking up with opposite sex, genital complexities do matter, fruit fly research finds

Charles Darwin spent eight years studying barnacles and their genitalia. In much less time than that, modern-day evolutionary biologists have confirmed one of Darwin's theories: that genitalia complexities in some male species have developed because they assist the male in "holding her securely."
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Jan 2010 | 9:00 am

The nation's weather (AP)

AP - The deadly cold air outbreak that has gripped the East for the past several days was expected to continue into the weekend. The main frigid pool of air was forecast to drift into the eastern third of the country, finally pulling somewhat out of the Rockies and allowing that region to recover.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 9 Jan 2010 | 3:14 am

Eagleton the apologist | Theo Hobson

Terry Eagleton is not prepared to come out as a Christian. Yet his most recent book shows he is closer to Christianity than Marxism

I'm sorry to be slow in responding to a book that's been out for most of a year, but I only recently got round to reading Terry Eagleton's Reason, Faith and Revolution. I consider it one of the most important works of Christian apologetics to have emerged in recent years – despite the fact that its author is not quite willing to wear the "Christian" label.

The book is largely concerned to rebut Dawkins and Hitchens; there are many polemical thrusts against a narrow bourgeois version of rationality, and a faith in Progress that thinks it is just enlightened neutrality. This is all good stuff, but what I find really interesting is Eagleton's thoughts on revolution and Christianity.

He is of course sympathetic to Jesus's message of the kingdom of God, in which the poor will finally have justice. But he resists the normal Marxist response: that instead of fetishising the dead Jesus, we must do what Jesus failed to do. Instead he argues that the myth of Christ's death and resurrection is no escapist illusion: Jesus's "death and descent into hell is a voyage into madness, terror, absurdity, and self-dispossession, since only a revolution that cuts that deep can answer to our dismal condition." This is the sort of revolution that a normal Marxist would angrily dismiss as illusory, for "our dismal condition" can be politically mended. For Eagleton, the idea of the Fall cannot be brushed aside. This is confirmed later on, when he notes that Dawkins and Hitchens "have no use for such embarrassingly old-fashioned ideas as depravity and redemption. Even after Auschwitz there is nothing in their view to be redeemed from."

They have, he complains, have a two-dimensional idea of history: it can get well through the spread of rationality. They arrogantly gloss over a huge and profound paradox: yes, there is progress in modernity, but it is unstable, prone to error of the worst sort. The Christian view of history might rely on miraculous intervention, but on one level it makes more sense: "Christian theology believes in the possibility of transforming history without the hubris of the idea of Progress."

He concludes that the key blindness of Dawkins and Hitchens is their refusal to see that true humanism must have a "tragic" dimension: "Tragic humanism, whether in its socialist, Christian, or psychoanalytic varieties, holds that only by a process of self-dispossession and radical remaking can humanity come into its own." This begs big questions: what sort of "process" is adequate? Is it enough to see the occasional tragedy at the theatre? Or see a shrink? Or vote Labour? Or does the Christian myth of fall and redemption have special authority? If so, how can it be accessed, and inhabited, without the bossy downside of religion intruding?

What is valuable about this book is that Eagleton is not defending a stable position. Instead he is admitting that, though he is not exactly a Christian, the Christian myth seems to underlie the very best form of socialist radicalism. For a famous intellectual, he is startlingly open-minded, humbly admitting he is still not sure, almost as if he is still a student.

I think the book can be seen as a very cagey "coming out". To my mind, he shows himself to be closer to Christianity than to Marxism. For the fact is that Marxism is not compatible with the idea of fallenness. It holds that a form of human agency can be trusted to put life right; this is the only "salvation" worth talking about. Eagleton clearly does not believe this. Why is he so cagey about his Christian sympathy? I just said that he is like a student, in a good sense, of being still a sort of seeker. But perhaps he also resembles a student in that he can't quite bear the uncoolness of allowing the Christian label to stick to him.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 9 Jan 2010 | 3:00 am

Feds reopen probe in Alaska whistleblower case (AP)

AP - Federal prosecutors who look into the treatment of whistleblowers are reopening the case of an Alaska wildlife biologist who successfully sued the U.S. Forest Service and died of a heart attack days after his job was eliminated.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Jan 2010 | 10:15 pm

US solar company to build power plants in China (AP)

AP - Southern California's eSolar Inc. has signed a major agreement to build a series of solar power plants in China.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Jan 2010 | 9:10 pm

Where did SF Bay's sea lions go? Try Oregon Coast (AP)

AP - Hundreds of sea lions that abruptly blew out of San Francisco Bay's Pier 39 last Thanksgiving have apparently found a new home at another tourist attraction — 500 miles north on the Oregon coast.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Jan 2010 | 9:04 pm

Science body sued over job loss

The former director of the UK's Royal Institution (RI) is to sue for sexual discrimination after losing her job.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 8 Jan 2010 | 7:15 pm

Neanderthal 'make-up' discovered

Scientists claim to have the first evidence that Neanderthals wore "body paint" 50,000 years ago.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 8 Jan 2010 | 6:47 pm

Gates Foundation picks new head of ag program (AP)

AP - A man who has focused much of his career on agriculture technology, including development of genetically-modified seeds, was named Friday as the new head of agriculture development for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Jan 2010 | 5:40 pm

Idaho Fish and Game copter crashes with 3 on board (AP)

AP - The Idaho Department of Fish and Game says a helicopter carrying two research biologists and a pilot has crashed in northern Idaho.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Jan 2010 | 5:23 pm

Doctor, doctor: Excess salt and tonsil trouble

How much salt is really too much, and what's the evidence for medical warnings? And is an operation the best option for tonsillitis?

When I try to do without salt in my food, I find that it doesn't taste anywhere near as good. I admit I use a lot, both in cooking and at the table. I'm in my 30s and have no health problems as far as I know, so do I really have to cut down? What is the evidence against salt?
It's pretty clear, particularly in the light of the latest analysis, printed in last month's British Medical Journal, of studies following 177,025 people with varying salt intake. The figures make the results hard to argue against. The more salt you swallow, the higher your risk of heart attack and stroke, as salt drives up blood pressure – so if everyone reduced their daily intake of salt to below the WHO recommended 5g a day, it would save 850,000 lives a year. Give a low-salt diet a trial for a month – that is, no salt on the table and far less in your cooking: replace it with tasty spices that don't raise your blood pressure. The reason you need to stick to it for that long is it takes a month for your tastebuds to get used to the tastes that your salt dependence has smothered. After that, you won't want to drown your food in salt again. Best of luck.

Our six-year-old daughter has had four bouts of tonsillitis in the last year. Our doctor has suggested taking out her tonsils, but a friend suggests we would be better to wait to see if the throat infections die down naturally. In the meantime, she has missed a lot of school. What do you think?
Around 15 years ago, Dutch doctors allocated 300 children with similar histories of sore throats to surgery or to "watchful waiting", and compared their subsequent annual episodes. Watchful waiting was as effective as surgery for the children who had one or two bouts of tonsillitis each year. Above that number, however, especially if the children had such large tonsils and adenoids that they interfered with breathing during sleep, operations were the better option. With four bouts of tonsillitis a year, your child does fall into the "operate" category. Let your GP and ENT surgeon guide you on your decision: their experience and knowledge of your daughter's throat is all-important.

• Got a question for Dr Tom Smith?
Email doctordoctor@guardian.co.uk

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 8 Jan 2010 | 5:10 pm

Syria's mysterious Dead Cities

It may sound like an Indiana Jones film, but Syria's abandoned Byzantine towns are real – though barely visited – archaeological treasures

Audio slideshow: listen to Syria's last speakers of Aramaic

The stone window ledge has two rows of seven shallow depressions cut into it, and I am sitting next to them, trying to remember where on earth I've seen this pattern before. Far away, beyond the massive fortifications and the moat, are the white-capped mountains of Lebanon. I had not expected to see so much snow around, but then Syria throws up surprises all the time. Even this 12th-century crusader castle, Krak des Chevaliers, a fabulous place long picked over by archaeologists and historians, is full of mysteries. Like the timeworn inscription I found tucked away in a corner: "Ceso: LT:Bor . . ." What did it mean? A cryptic message from one of the Knights Hospitallers during the final Muslim siege of 1271, perhaps? My otherwise excellent guidebook to the monuments of the country by Ross Burns makes no mention of it.

Then more surprises: a local youth who has been watching me examine the ledge interrupts. "It's a game," he says, walking his fingers up and down the 14 hollows. "Mancala."

And I remember the African pastime, a bit like backgammon. "But how did it get here? Carved into the window ledge of the highest tower in a Crusader castle."

He shrugs and stands in the window, arms outstretched to hold the view. "I don't know, but isn't this great? I'm chuffed to bits to be here."

His English has a distant but distinct whine of Essex in it. Crusader ancestry?

"No, Top Gear," he explains, laughing. "I watch it over and over again on satellite. It's brilliant. I've never actually travelled outside Syria."

I leave him there and walk back to the entrance via the battlements, noticing the villages scattered below, some with mosques, others with churches. I've been in Syria only a couple of days, but the staggering complexity of history and culture are already clear. The previous afternoon it took me about three hours to walk a couple of hundred yards through old Damascus. Roman columns were tucked into medieval walls, the street itself following a route laid down by Alexander the Great, and the shops bursting out on passersby with the commonplace – carpets, cucumbers, Kurdish harem pants – and the rare – scarves made from the throat hair of Chinese deer, carnelian rings from Yemen, and lapis lazuli from Badakhshan.

From Damascus I had travelled north to Krak des Chevaliers, making one stop at the village of Ma'alula, a cluster of houses at the foot of a cliff and home to another surprise: it's the last place on earth where Aramaic, Jesus's mother tongue, is spoken. In the Greek Orthodox Church of St Sergius, Iranian tourists sat listening to the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic. The guide was not hopeful for the future survival of her native language. "If you come here in five or six years," she said sadly, "it will be a dead language. There are now about 50 families who speak it at home in Ma'alula."

Ma'alula and Krak des Chevaliers, however, were interesting stopping-off points on my way to my real objective, and a genuine mystery of Syrian history: the Dead Cities. These are 780 abandoned settlements dating back to between the fifth and eighth centuries, scattered across a vast swathe of northern Syria.

At Serjilla, an hour's drive south of Aleppo, I found one of the best-preserved sites dotted across a rolling upland area of treeless jagged limestone – at first glance, an impossibly inhospitable landscape. In fact, it was here that olive oil and wine manufacture made the inhabitants rich in the early years of Byzantium. The huge stone presses for oil and wine lie at the side of magnificent porticoed villas as though their owners had only recently stepped away.

I wandered through the grand old villas, exploring the town baths and church, admiring the bold Hellenistic architecture with its rich red stone. The late sun raked across pitted walls, revealing ornamental crosses and ancient inscriptions. This is an eerie and magical place, especially late on in the day when there were no other foreign visitors, just a couple of local families enjoying picnics and football matches – eighth-century columns doubling up as goalposts.

Adnan al-Hamwi, my guide and a published and respected historian, admitted that there is no proven explanation of why these cities were abandoned. "Maybe the economics changed: olive oil prices fell. Maybe a sequence of earthquakes discouraged them. The truth is, we don't know – it is a mystery."

Several of the Dead Cities have been dug by archaeologists and are laid out for visitors with useful signs and information; others lie within modern villages: strange stone towers sprouting from gardens, fragments of carved lintels lying under the pistachio trees. At one place, Qatura, we stepped through a sheep pen to reach a tomb entrance carved into the rock beneath a family house. Inside the entrance vestibule there were traces of Greek inscriptions; beyond, just a darkened sepulchre with stone benches where sacks of fertilizer were stored.

I spent the night in Aleppo at one of the many boutique hotels found in the Jdeida quarter, eating at the best restaurant in town, Beit Sissi), where black-clad waiters serve excellent Syrian wine at very reasonable prices. In the gallery, musicians played the oud, the Arab lute, with the violin – a tribute to the mixed nature of this diverse and colourful city, once a major caravanserai on the Silk Road.

Next morning I drove out with Adnan to the northern Dead Cities. At Ain Dara, we climbed a low hill overlooking the valley of Afrin where vast pomegranate and pistachio orchards spread all around. On the summit were the ruins of an Iron Age temple dating back to 1200BC: two large enclosures, one surrounded by basalt-carved figures of mythical lions.

"The dead would be brought here to the first room," explained Adnan, "and the lions would judge them and decide if they could pass to the second room – heaven."

"Judgment Day."

"Exactly. We think the idea came from Persia. The goddess worshipped here was the fertility deity, Ishtar. She is remembered in the English girl's name Esther."

We walked back down the hill and set off for the region's most famous historical site, the shrine of St Simeon Stylites. The vast ruined church, the most ambitious structure on earth in the late fifth century, contains the stump of the pillar where St Simon supposedly spent the last 36 years of his life until his death in 459AD. He was said to eat once a week, frugally of course.

"The locals say he never spoke to a woman in his life, not even his mother," Adnan explained, adding, "I don't believe it myself."

Simon's attempt to withdraw from the world up an 18m-tall pillar had one major effect. People flocked to see him. And when he died there was no respite: his body became a pawn in a power game between Byzantium and its distant, heresy-prone province. The church was abandoned in the 12th century and is now an atmospheric ruin where the wind moans in the pine trees and courting couples explore the further-flung ruins of the settlement.

Next day being Sunday I decided to tour Aleppo's churches and see for myself the toleration that Adnan claimed for Syria. He agreed to come along. "Why not? We Muslims have nothing to fear. Jesus is our prophet, too."

First was the Armenian Cathedral of the Forty Martyrs where a grand spectacle of theatre was in progress for a rather small congregation. Under the watchful gaze of a large icon representing Judgment Day, the priests were chanting and counter-chanting across the nave. Robes were donned and changed. Incense swung. Holy texts uncovered and covered. The Armenian church's rites date back to the fourth century, and this was like a glimpse of Byzantium in its glorious heyday.

The Maronite, Syriac and Latin churches passed less memorably and Adnan fell asleep. I roused him for a coffee and shisha pipe in one of the wonderful old-fashioned cafes where old men while away the hours in card games and dominoes. Then we set out for the Shia shrine of Mashhad al-Hussein where the severed head of Hussein, the prophet Muhammad's grandson, is supposed to have been brought after his martyrdom in 680AD.

We found it with some difficulty, despite its important status in the Shia world. Pilgrims were praying, tapping their foreheads on tiny tablets of baked earth from Karbala in Iraq, scene of the martyrdom. Behind an ornate screen hung with green banners was the small stone on which the holy head rested for a night, leaving a bloody trace of its passage to Damascus. The Umayyad caliph, hoping to finish off this annoying succession dispute once-and-for-all, had ordered the head to be brought to his capital for the purposes of humiliation. As so often happens in religious matters, however, violence only strengthened his enemies.

One of the men finished praying and stepped outside with me. His face being rather stern, I expected a homily of some sort, but I was quite wrong.

"From England?" he asked in good, strongly accented, English. "You've got no chance. I'm sure the winners will be Brazil again." We stood for a while on the threshold, discussing the outcome of this summer's World Cup. Adnan came up and handed me one of the small clay tablets of Karbala clay: "Something to remember this place."

Over the city the sound of church bells could be heard in the distance, mingling with the cry of the muezzin at the Great Mosque.

Getting there
BMI (0844 848 4888) flies from Heathrow to Damascus daily and Aleppo three times per week from £357 rtn inc taxes. Exodus (0845 863 9601, tripcode AXJ) offers a 16-night itinerary which takes in Damascus, Aleppo, Palmyra and the Dead Cities of Syria, as well as Jordan, from £1,429-£1,739pp, including BMI flights. Exodus is also launching a new 'Week in Syria' itinerary which includes Damascus, Aleppo, Palmyra and the Dead Cities of Syria as well as Bosra.

Further information
The Monuments of Syria, by Ross Burns, published by IB Tauris at £14.99, is an essential companion for visiting Syria's historical sites.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 8 Jan 2010 | 5:06 pm

Energy supplies: When the wind blows

Beware of suspiciously round figures. The only certain thing about the prime minister's claim yesterday that Britain's offshore wind industry "could be worth £75bn and support up to 70,000 jobs by 2020" is that none of those three numbers will turn out to be correct. He also omitted the most important fact, which is that the immense schemes given the go-ahead this week may eventually generate 32 gigawatts of electricity. On a windy night, that could be close to half of the national demand. Throw in other renewable sources and – one day – new nuclear plants, and Britain's low-carbon future suddenly seems like much more than rhetoric.

The advantages of offshore wind – and Britain already has more turbines at sea than any other country – are obvious. There are no neighbours to object (though sea birds may suffer), so turbines can be much bigger than on land. The climate is more predictable, too. But the commitment required is huge. Offshore sites are extraordinarily expensive and require subsidies and high fixed long-term energy prices to be viable. Building them will take new skills, boats, even an east coast port, vast amounts of cabling and the reconstruction of the national grid, which in its present design would collapse if huge amounts of fluctuating current were pumped into it from wind turbines. And of course there are many calm days, even in winter; generators will need backup sources of power.

The government has done the right thing by championing offshore wind, yesterday handing out nine sites to major European utilities. But it risks tangling together three separate issues. The first is the need for low-carbon energy, which wind provides, although not cheaply or always reliably. The second is the creation of new jobs and exports, which is much less certain, despite Ed Miliband's promises yesterday; 90% of contracts for the London Array scheme have gone abroad. The third issue is more prosaic: ensuring that Britain has enough energy to meet industrial and domestic needs.

The security of supply is not certain, as this week's wobble in gas supplies shows. Britain already imports electricity (at 2.30pm yesterday France was sending 1,766 megawatts under the Channel, to keep southern England lit and warm). Coal plants and nuclear plants are getting old, and making electricity with natural gas is wasteful. Late in the day, the government has woken up to the need for an energy strategy. It has backed wind with impressive enthusiasm. It now needs to find ways to finance and construct the schemes. But it faces a struggle to put Britain at the head of a green manufacturing revolution. The turbines can be built quickly, or mostly by British manufacturers, but not, unfortunately, both.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 8 Jan 2010 | 5:05 pm

Australian Aborigines Were Prime Impact Crater-Hunters

What do you get when you cross aboriginal wisdom with Google Maps? Newly discovered meteor impact craters, of course! Duane Hamacher studies aboriginal astronomy as MacQuarie University in Sydney; already a very cool job. But things got even better when ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 8 Jan 2010 | 5:05 pm

U.S. government to release emergency heating subsidies (Reuters)

Reuters - The U.S. government is set to provide more than $1 billion over the next several weeks to help low-income families pay their energy bills, an agency spokesman said on Friday.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Jan 2010 | 4:28 pm

Hero Pilot Gives NASA Safety Tips (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - When it comes to astronauts, NASA is all about safety but the space agency was not above taking some pointers this week from hero pilot Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, who made headlines when he landed his U.S. Airways passenger jet in New York's Hudson River last year.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Jan 2010 | 4:00 pm

Hominids Went Out of Africa on Rafts

ANAHEIM, Calif. — Human ancestors that left Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago to see the rest of the world were no landlubbers. Stone hand axes unearthed on the Mediterranean island of Crete indicate that an ancient Homo species — perhaps Homo erectus — had used rafts or other seagoing vessels to cross from northern Africa to Europe via at least some of the larger islands in between, says archaeologist Thomas Strasser of Providence College in Rhode Island.

Several hundred double-edged cutting implements discovered at nine sites in southwestern Crete date to at least 130,000 years ago and probably much earlier, Strasser reported January 7 at the annual meeting of the American Institute of Archaeology. Many of these finds closely resemble hand axes fashioned in Africa about 800,000 years ago by H. erectus, he says. It was around that time that H. erectus spread from Africa to parts of Asia and Europe.

Until now, the oldest known human settlements on Crete dated to around 9,000 years ago. Traditional theories hold that early farming groups in southern Europe and the Middle East first navigated vessels to Crete and other Mediterranean islands at that time.

“We’re just going to have to accept that, as soon as hominids left Africa, they were long-distance seafarers and rapidly spread all over the place,” Strasser says. Other researchers have controversially suggested that H. erectus navigated rafts across short stretches of sea in Indonesia around 800,000 years ago and that Neandertals crossed the Strait of Gibraltar perhaps 60,000 years ago.

Questions remain about whether African hominids used Crete as a stepping stone to reach Europe or, in a Stone Age Gilligan’s Island scenario, accidentally ended up on Crete from time to time when close-to-shore rafts were blown out to sea, remarks archaeologist Robert Tykot of the University of South Florida in Tampa. Only in the past decade have researchers established that people reached Crete before 6,000 years ago, Tykot says.

Strasser’s team cannot yet say precisely when or for what reason hominids traveled to Crete. Large sets of hand axes found on the island suggest a fairly substantial population size, downplaying the possibility of a Gilligan Island’s scenario, in Strasser’s view.

In excavations conducted near Crete’s southwestern coast during 2008 and 2009, Strasser’s team unearthed hand axes at caves and rock shelters. Most of these sites were situated in an area called Preveli Gorge, where a river has gouged through many layers of rocky sediment.

At Preveli Gorge, Stone Age artifacts were excavated from four terraces along a rocky outcrop that overlooks the Mediterranean Sea. Tectonic activity has pushed older sediment above younger sediment on Crete, so 130,000-year-old artifacts emerged from the uppermost terrace. Other terraces received age estimates of 110,000 years, 80,000 years and 45,000 years.

These minimum age estimates relied on comparisons of artifact-bearing sediment to sediment from sea cores with known ages. Geologists are now assessing whether absolute dating techniques can be applied to Crete’s Stone Age sites, Strasser says.

Intriguingly, he notes, hand axes found on Crete were made from local quartz but display a style typical of ancient African artifacts.

“Hominids adapted to whatever material was available on the island for tool making,” Strasser proposes. “There could be tools made from different types of stone in other parts of Crete.”

Strasser has conducted excavations on Crete for the past 20 years. He had been searching for relatively small implements that would have been made from chunks of chert no more than 11,000 years ago. But a current team member, archaeologist Curtis Runnels of Boston University, pointed out that Stone Age folk would likely have favored quartz for their larger implements. “Once we started looking for quartz tools, everything changed,” Strasser says.

Image: NASA

See Also:

• Lucy 2.0: Famous Fossil Hominid Goes Digital
• Humanity Has New 4.4 Million-Year-Old Baby Mama
• 3-D Renderings Bring Ancient Hominids to Life
• Deformed Skull Suggests Human Ancestors Had Compassion
• What an Ape: Close Human Ancestors Lived Like Gorillas

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 8 Jan 2010 | 3:59 pm

Friday News Feedbag Info for January 8th, 2010

If this is your first exposure to the Friday News Feedbag...we're glad to have you in the club. Welcome to Feedbag Nation, which stems from our weekly science news podcast that you can subscribe to here on iTunes and chat ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 8 Jan 2010 | 3:25 pm

Hubble-Hugging Astronaut Leaves NASA for Space Telescope (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - Astronaut John Grunsfeld, famous for visiting the Hubble Space Telescope three times on space shuttle missions, has left NASA to help lead the observatory's science work.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Jan 2010 | 3:01 pm

Prehistoric Jewelry Reveals Neanderthal Fashion Sense

Even Neanderthals knew how to accessorize.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 8 Jan 2010 | 3:00 pm

Spikes on Genitals Help Flies Hook Up (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - Scientists now find that spikes on the genitals of male fruit flies literally help them hold onto females.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Jan 2010 | 1:35 pm

Will Blio Change the Game for E-Readers?

I'm at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show covering all things tech this week. I've seen dozens of awesome (and sometimes odd) gadgets. I've examined computers ranging from blisteringly fast desktop machines running state-of-the-art graphics cards and I've played with smartbooks ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 8 Jan 2010 | 1:13 pm

Surfers Catch Record-Setting Wave?

In early December 2009, Super Typhoon Nida was dying in the North Pacific (that's her in her prime below). She was a real beaut - 175 mph winds, lots of energy. Some of that energy ended up in what could ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 8 Jan 2010 | 12:04 pm

Elvis Presley's Favorite Animal

Elvis Presley, who would have celebrated his 75th birthday today, famously sang about a hound dog. But his true animal passion was for horses, suggests Priscilla Presley and multiple other sources. You'll hear from Priscilla in a minute. (Image: Library ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 8 Jan 2010 | 11:36 am

Do Whales Need This War?

"We now have a real whale war on our hands," said Paul Watson of Sea Shepherd after a collision between his vessel, the Ady Gil, and the Japanese whaling ship Shonan Maru No.2 tore the bow off the former and ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 8 Jan 2010 | 11:25 am

In pictures

How aircraft contrails turn into clouds
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 8 Jan 2010 | 10:43 am

Bee Colony Collapse May Have Several Causes

When suspiciously large numbers of honeybee colonies started collapsing in late 2006, the search began to find the culprit behind the mysterious deaths. Now it seems a whole web of problems may be causing what’s known as colony collapse disorder.

It’s becoming clear that there is no single parasite, virus or chemical to blame, argues Frances Ratnieks, a bee scientist at University of Sussex in Brighton.

Instead, honeybees are probably dying for all kinds of different reasons from loss of their foraging grounds to increased exposure to global pathogens, Ratnieks wrote in a review of the issue in the journal Science.

“We may conclude that colonies are dying for different reasons in different parts of the world and I would say that if that is the case, I would not be the least bit surprised,” Ratnieks told Wired.com.

A variety of pests, viruses and parasites could all be working together to stress the bees. And in some ways, that’s worse than trying to take on a single culprit: The problems with beekeeping are systemic, Ratnieks said, and can’t be solved with a new pesticide or technique.

In an increasingly globalized world, bee pathogens travel quickly between bee populations. Over the last decades, the Varroa destructor mite has spread from Asian honeybees to the rest of the continents. The gut parasite Nosema ceranae has taken the same path. Both species are believed to make existing bee diseases worse. V. destructor took about four decades, reaching North America about a decade ago. N. ceranae circled the globe in a quarter of that time.

“It is certainly a case in the modern world, pathogens can be transmitted from one corner of the world to an another quickly,” Ratnieks said.

He compared the bee pathogen problems to those humans are encountering with swine flu and other emerging diseases, which can spread quickly thanks to modern transportation.

“Even though the U.S. is a big country, what shows up in one part of the country shows up in the other parts of the county in no-time flat,” he said.

That’s in part because of the economics of beekeeping. The $2 billion almond crop in California requires 1,000,000 honeybee hives for cross-pollination. That’s more than 40 percent of all the beehives in the country. So, come almond-tree flowering season, which begins in February, apiarists load up their hives on flatbeds and truck them to San Joaquin Valley. While this pilgrimage may be necessary to keep churning out cheap almonds, it also creates a melting pot of pathogens. And the moving and trucking itself could negatively impact the bees, too.

Ratnieks also suspects that honeybees are more susceptible to disease because their natural forage — weeds and gardens, etc. — has been wiped out by single-crop farming in the major farming valleys of the country.

Add it all up and the honeybees are fighting the battle to survive on several, interconnected fronts.

“It’s harder to keep a hive alive now. It used to be with bees in America, if the hive was alive and thriving, chances are the hive would be alive and thriving the next year,” said Ratnieks. “Now, they are feeding their hives with supplements and feeding them with chemicals, they are having to peddle pedal quite hard just to keep their hives alive.”

Last year, there were enough honeybees to keep the almond trees pollinated, but last summer’s weather conditions were bad in North Dakota and the neighboring states where the California hives often spend the season.

With the big almond flowering coming up, and the bees in bad condition, the beginning of next month could harbor a nasty surprise for nut farmers.

“In early February, that’s when the rubber hits the road or the shit hits the fan,” Ratnieks concluded.

Citation: “Clarity on Honey Bee Collapse?” by Francis L. W. Ratnieks and Norman L. Carreck in Science, 8 JANUARY 2010 VOL 327.

Image: BBCworldservice/Flickr

See Also:

• Can We Count on Native Bees to Replace Honeybees?
• Whatever Happened to Whatever Happened to the Bees?
• Mysterious Bee Disappearance Could Disrupt U.S. Agriculture
• Cellphones Aren’t Killing the Bees

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