Wednesday, July 31, 2013

FOX News: Message decoded: 3,000-year-old text sheds light on biblical history

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Message decoded: 3,000-year-old text sheds light on biblical history
Jul 31st 2013, 14:29

A few characters on the side of a 3,000-year-old earthenware jug dating back to the time of King David has stumped archaeologists until now -- and a fresh translation may have profound ramifications for our understanding of the Bible.

Experts had suspected the fragmentary inscription was written in the language of the Canaanites, a biblical people who lived in the present-day Israel. Not so, says one expert who claims to have cracked the code: The mysterious language is actually the oldest form of written Hebrew, placing the ancient Israelites in Jerusalem earlier than previously believed. 

"Hebrew speakers were controlling Jerusalem in the 10th century, which biblical chronology points to as the time of David and Solomon," ancient Near Eastern history and biblical studies expert Douglas Petrovich told FoxNews.com.

"Whoever they were, they were writing in Hebrew like they owned the place," he said.

"It is just the climate among scholars that they want to attribute as little as possible to the ancient Israelites."

- Doug Petrovich

First discovered near the Temple Mount in Jerusalem last year, the 10th century B.C. fragment has been labeled the Ophel Inscription. It likely bears the name of the jug's owners and its contents.

RELATED: Amazingly Untouched Royal Tomb Found In Peru

If Petrovich's analysis proves true, it would be evidence of the accuracy of Old Testament tales. If Hebrew as a written language existed in the 10th century, as he says, the ancient Israelites were recording their history in real time as opposed to writing it down several hundred years later. That would make the Old Testament an historical account of real-life events.

According to Petrovich, archaeologists are unwilling to call it Hebrew to avoid conflict.

"It's just the climate among scholars that they want to attribute as little as possible to the ancient Israelites," he said.

Needless to say, his claims are stirring up controversy among those who do not like to mix the hard facts of archaeology -- dirt, stone and bone -- with stories from the Bible.

Tel Aviv University archaeologist Israel Finkelstein told FoxNews.com that the Ophel Inscription is critical to the early history of Israel. But romantic notions of the Bible shouldn't cloud scientific methods -- a message he pushed in 2008 when a similar inscription was found at a site many now call one of King David's palaces.

At the time, he warned the Associated Press against the "revival in the belief that what's written in the Bible is accurate like a newspaper."

Today, he told FoxNews.com that the Ophel Inscription speaks to "the expansion of Jerusalem from the Temple Mount, and shows us the growth of Jerusalem and the complexity of the city during that time." But the Bible? Maybe, maybe not.

RELATED: Ancient Roman Road Found in Israel

Professor Aren Maeir of Bar Ilan University agrees that some archaeologists are simply relying too heavily on the Bible itself as a source of evidence.

"[Can we] raise arguments about the kingdom of David and Solomon? That seems to me a grandiose upgrade," he told Haaretz recently.

In the past decade, there has been a renaissance in Israel of archaeologists looking for historical evidence of biblical stories. FoxNews.com has reported on several excavations this year claiming to prove a variety of stories from the Bible.

Most recently, a team lead by archaeologist Yossi Garfinkel wrapped up a ten-year excavation of the possible palace of King David, overlooking the valley where the Hebrew king victoriously smote the giant Goliath. 

Garfinkel has another explanation as to the meaning behind the Ophel Inscription.

"I think it's like a [cellphone] text," Garfinkel told FoxNews.com. "If someone takes a text from us 3,000 years from now, he will not be able to understand it."

The writing on the fragmented jug is a type of shorthand farmers of the 10th century used, in his opinion, and not an official way of communication that was passed on.

"What's more important is that there is a revolution in this type of inscription being found," Garfinkel told FoxNews.com. There have been several from the same time period found across Israel in the past five years.

"When we find more and more of these inscriptions, maybe not until the next generation, we may have a breakthrough," he said. 

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FOX News: Santa not swimming: No lake at North Pole, scientist says

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Santa not swimming: No lake at North Pole, scientist says
Jul 31st 2013, 16:41

Santa's workshop is safe.

Amid all the frenzy caused by photos that appear to show a lake where one would expect to find the polar ice cap, scientists are just now starting to explain what exactly the images are portraying.

The good news: Santa and his elves don't need snorkels. Scientists at the UW Applied Physics Laboratory say that such accumulation of melted water is normal.

"Every summer when the sun melts the surface, the water has to go someplace, so it accumulates in these ponds," said Jamie Morison, a polar scientist and principal investigator since 2000 with the North Pole Environmental Observatory. "This doesn't look particularly extreme."

RELATED: Earth's Gold Forged in Stellar Collisions

'This doesn't look particularly extreme.'

- Jamie Morison, a polar scientist with the North Pole Environmental Observatory

There are numerous problems with interpreting the image itself, he said, chief among them the camera that had taken the photo itself, which uses a fisheye lens that resulted in slight distortion. What looks like mountains are actually ridges where the ice was pushed together, according to the head of the laboratory, Axel Schweiger.

The pool eventually drained late July 27, which is the normal life cycle for a meltwater pond. Forming from snow and ice, the pond eventually drains through cracks in the ice.

As for the true size of the melt pond, researchers estimate that it was actually just 2 feet deep and a few hundred feet wide – average for an Arctic ice floe in late July.

Buoys placed in the Arctic record weather, ice, and ocean data, while webcams transmit images via satellite every 6 hours. Throughout the summer melt seasons, images help track the surface conditions. Since 2000, the U.S. National Science Foundation has been funding an observatory that makes annual observations at fixed locations and installs 10 to 15 drifting buoys.

The buoy that first recorded the largely misinterpreted data had been placed approximately 25 feet from the North Pole in April, the beginning of the melt season. A second hole was drilled for a webcam placed in another direction, and shows a more typical scene. The ice floe holding both cameras have drifted over 300 miles south.

PHOTOS: Ancient Mayan Cave Explorations 

This summer will come close to, but not pass, a 2012 record for minimal ice, according to Morison. But he is having his doubts. Based on the recent photos, as well as his own experience, he says that Arctic ice is fragile.

"I think it's going to be pretty close to last year," Morison said. "Up in the Canada basin the ice looks like Swiss cheese, with lots of holes. Even though the ice extent is pretty good, our thinking is that if there's a big storm event we're going to see a rapid breakup of that ice and it's going to disappear pretty quickly."

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FOX News: X-ray reveals what is inside of a spacesuit

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X-ray reveals what is inside of a spacesuit
Jul 31st 2013, 16:47

The familiar exteriors of astronauts' spacesuits often hide all of the ingenuity and mechanics that are built inside the suits, which were first imagined as "wearable spacecraft."

Now a new art exhibit, "Suited for Space," opening Friday at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, highlights the creativity behind the suits that allowed humans to explore the moon and aspire to fly farther from Earth.

X-ray images and photographs show the suits in intricate detail, said space history curator Cathleen Lewis. The museum's X-rays are the first such images ever created to study, conserve and research the nation's spacesuits.

VIDEO: Sleeping in a Space Station

"You don't realize what a complex machine these are," Lewis said. But the X-rays of Alan Shepard's Apollo spacesuit and a 1960s prototype "allow visitors to see beyond what is visible to the naked eye, through the protective layers of the suit to see the substructures that are embedded inside."

The exhibition traces the evolution of the spacesuit from the early high-altitude test flight suits of the 1930s to the dawn of the space age with Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and space shuttle missions.

While technology drove much of the suit design to maintain an airtight barrier to the vacuum of space and to protect from solar radiation, fashion aesthetics of the time also played a role, Lewis said. The original Mercury seven astronaut suits were unique from all others with a silvery coating to introduce America's space explorers to the world.

"NASA had a demand to create the astronauts into a whole new corps, a non-military corps. So here was an opportunity to dress them in a new uniform ... that evokes sensibilities of that Buck Rogers imagination," she said. "All of these guys, the engineers, they grew up on science fiction. They fed it with their ideas, and they were consumers of it at the same time."

Curators are working to find ways to preserve spacesuits because some materials are decomposing, discoloring or becoming rigid some 50 years after they were created.

The spacesuit show is traveling to 10 cities, moving next to Tampa, Fla., Philadelphia and Seattle through 2015.

VIDEO: Russian Rocket Explodes on Live TV

Two companion exhibits at the National Air and Space Museum also highlight 50 artworks of about 550 new items added to the Smithsonian's growing space art collection over the past decade. They include portraits of astronomer Carl Sagan and astrophysicist Neal deGrasse Tyson, and a photograph of first female shuttle commander Eileen Collins by photographer Annie Leibovitz.

The museum's art collection includes 7,000 paintings, drawings, prints, posters and sculptures. Curators have been working to add more contemporary and conceptual art over the past 10 years.

Chief Curator Peter Jakab said art helps people reflect on aerospace achievements and the humanity imbued in each machine.

Albert Watson, a photographer known for his portraits of celebrities, such as Steve Jobs, and of fashion, took a break in 1990 to photograph spacesuits and other artifacts. More recently, he donated two large-scale prints of an Apollo glove and boot to the museum.

Watson said he was captivated by the thought of suits that traveled in space and came back covered with moon dust.

"When you deal with celebrities every day or super models every day and fashion people every day, there is always a nice escape to go into still life," he said. "As a child, I loved science fiction. I always remember arguing with my father about rocket ships. He said man will never go into space, he said, because what goes up must come down."

RELATED: Future Carriers Built to Carry Drone Fleets

The museum also has acquired a sculpture by Angela Palmer that evokes 46 different earth-like worlds that have been discovered by NASA's Kepler Observatory. The piece, entitled "Searching for Goldilocks," involves 18 sheets of glass marked with circles for each star with an orbiting planet.

It refers to "Goldilocks" planets that might support life. They range from 132 light-years to about 4,300 light-years away.

"If you have a look, you can stand there looking from Earth, as if you are the eye of the telescope," she said. "Or you can go to the back of the sculpture, and you can be thrown back towards Earth — 4,300 light years straight back down."

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FOX News: Return of the mammoth? Dolly scientist says beast should be cloned

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Return of the mammoth? Dolly scientist says beast should be cloned
Jul 31st 2013, 14:30

The astonishingly well-preserved blood from a 10,000-year-old  frozen mammoth could lead to mammoth stem cells, said Ian Wilmut, the scientist responsible for Dolly, the world's first cloned animal -- and might ultimately lead to a cloned mammoth.

There are several hurdles to such a venture, of course, and it may ultimately prove unsuccessful.

But Wilmut's weight lends credibility to the growing possibility of bringing back the mammoth -- "de-extinction" of a long-lost species.

'If there are reasonable prospects of them being healthy, we should do it.'

- Ian Wilmut, emeritus professor at the MRC Center for Regenerative Medicine at University of Edinburgh

"I think it should be done as long as we can provide great care for the animal," Wilmut told The Guardian. "If there are reasonable prospects of them being healthy, we should do it. We can learn a lot about them," he said.

In an essay on The Conversation, Wilmut spelled out the two main methods for turning an ancient pile of mammoth bones and blood into a living, breathing creature. The two he focused on were the use of elephant eggs to grow an embryo -- similar to the process that led to Dolly -- and the creation of embryonic mammoth stem cells.

"Stem cells of this type can also be induced to form gametes. If the cells were from a female, this might provide an alternative source of eggs for use in research, and perhaps in breeding, including the cloning of mammoths," Wilmut wrote.

Wilmut, emeritus professor at the MRC Center for Regenerative Medicine at University of Edinburgh, made headlines in 1996 when he and his colleagues cloned Dolly the sheep. Their technique involved injecting DNA into a special egg cell and transferring the product into a third sheep, which carried the egg to term. While Dolly lived a brief life, dying in 2003, her very existence was hailed as a medical marvel.

That such a noted scientist could even discuss the process of bringing back the mammoth stems from an astonishing find on a remote Russian island in the Arctic Ocean: blood so well preserved that it flowed freely from a 10,000- to 15,000-year-old creature.

"The fragments of muscle tissues, which we've found out of the body, have a natural red color of fresh meat. The reason for such preservation is that the lower part of the body was underlying in pure ice, and the upper part was found in the middle of tundra," said Semyon Grigoriev, the head of the expedition and chairman of the Mammoth Museum, after announcing the discovery.

Wooly mammoths are thought to have died out around 10,000 years ago, although scientists think small groups of them lived longer in Alaska and on Russia's Wrangel Island off the Siberian coast.

A growing chorus of scientists have been targeting the mammoth for so called "de-extinction" in recent years, at the same time that others argue against tampering with Mother Nature's plans. Bringing back a dead species raises a host of issues, wrote two ethicists recently.

"The critical ethical issue in re-creating extinct species, or in creating new kinds of animals, is to first determine through careful scientific study what is in their interests and to ensure that they live good lives in the world in which they are create," wrote Julian Savulescu, who studies ethics at Monash University, and Russell Powell, a philosophy professor at Boston University.

"If we are confident that a cognitively sophisticated organism, such as a mammoth, would lead a good life, this may provide moral reasons to create it — whether or not that animal is a clone of a member of an extinct lineage."

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FOX News: Light lives 1 quintillion years, physicists suggest

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Light lives 1 quintillion years, physicists suggest
Jul 31st 2013, 12:00

The particles that make up light, photons, may live for at least 1 quintillion (1 billion multiplied by 1 billion) years, new research suggests.

If photons can die, they could give off particles that travel faster than light.

Many particles in nature decay over time. For instance, radioactive atoms are unstable, eventually breaking down into smaller particles and giving off energy as they do so.

Scientists generally assume photons do not break down, since they are thought to lack any mass with which to decay. However, while all measurements of photons currently suggest they have no mass, they might instead potentially have masses too small for current instruments to measure. [10 Implications of Faster-Than-Light Travel]

'How much do we actually know about photons? ... Their properties are still a puzzle.'

- Particle physicist Julian Heeck at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics

"How much do we actually know about photons?" asked particle physicist Julian Heeck at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics at Heidelberg, Germany. "They led to several revolutions in science, but their properties are still a puzzle."

The current upper limit for the mass of the photon is less than two-billionths of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a kilogram. This would make it about less than a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of the mass of a proton.

Based on the Standard Model of particle physics, which governs the realm of the very tiny, Heeck calculated that photons in the visible spectrum would live for at least 1 quintillion years.

The extraordinarily long lifetime Heeck calculated is an average. "There is the possibility that some photons very few, though have decayed," he said. (The universe is currently about 13.7 billion years old.) Scientific projects such as the Planck mission, aimed at measuring the afterglow of the Big Bang, could potentially detect signs of such decay, Heeck noted.

If photons do break down, the results of such decay must be even lighter particles, ones that would travel even faster than photons. Assuming photons have mass, "there is only one particle we know from the Standard Model of particle physics that might be even lighter the lightest of the three neutrinos," Heeck said.

Neutrinos are ghostly particles that only very rarely interact with normal matter. Countless neutrinos rush through everyone on Earth every day with no effect.

"It might well be that the neutrino is lighter than the photon," Heeck said. In principle, each photon might decay into two of the lightest neutrinos.

"The lightest neutrino, being lighter than light, would then actually travel faster than photons," Heeck said.

The idea of neutrinos that move faster than photons would seem to violate the notion, based on Einstein's theory of relativity, that nothing can travel faster than light. However, this assumption is based on the idea of the photon not having any mass. Einstein's theory of relativity "just states that no particle can travel faster than a massless particle," Heeck said.

Intriguingly, the speed that photons travel at means their extraordinary life spans will pass by quickly from their perspective. Einstein's theory of relativity suggests when particles travel extraordinarily quickly, the fabric of space and time warps around them, meaning they experience time as passing more slowly than objects moving relatively slowly. This means that if photons live for 1 quintillion years, from their perspective, they will only live about three years.

Heeck detailed his findings online July 11 in the journal Physical Review Letters.

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Tuesday, July 30, 2013

FOX News: Gov’t will kill some owls to save other owls

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Gov't will kill some owls to save other owls
Jul 30th 2013, 20:05

To help out the northern spotted owl, an endangered species in the Pacific Northwest, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service plans to shoot and kill the barred owl.

And if that makes sense we've got a bridge to sell you -- by demolishing another bridge.

The Wildlife Service argues that habitat loss and competition from recently arrived barred owls, which are more aggressive and have a broader diet than their threatened cousins, are the most pressing threats to the northern spotted owl.

'Lethal removal is accomplished by attracting the barred owls with recorded calls and shooting birds that respond.'

- U.S. Fish & WIldlife Service report

"We can't ignore the mounting evidence that competition from barred owls is a major factor in the northern spotted owl's decline, along with habitat loss," director Dan Ashe said in a statement.

After an extensive environmental impact report, the agency announced it would move ahead with plans to eliminate the owls via "lethal and non-lethal methods," according to a report on NBCNews.com.

Non-lethal methods include capturing the owls and transporting them to a pre-arranged holding facility.

Lethal methods include shotguns.

"Lethal removal is accomplished by attracting the barred owls with recorded calls and shooting birds that respond by approaching closely," explains the lengthy, 505-page report. "This is usually a very quick process and therefore leaves little opportunity for barred owls to learn avoidance."

"All lethal removal should be done by shotgun of 20 gauge or larger bore, using non-toxic lead substitute (e.g., Hevi-shot) shot. Lead shot should not be used. Rifles, pistols, or other firearms or methods are not authorized under this protocol. We recommend using a shotgun with a full choke," it notes.

The report recommends an ideal shooting distance of between 20 and 30 yards away, "to provide a usable carcass for additional scientific and educational purposes."

The agency plans to begin removal in four areas: the Cle Elum in Washington; half the combined Oregon Coast Ranges and the town of Veneta in northern Oregon; the Union/Myrtle in southern Oregon; and the Hoopa/Willow Creek region in California.

Final approval of the plan is expected in August, NBCNews.com reported.

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FOX News: We grew a mushroom house! Ecovative grows furniture and more from mushrooms

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We grew a mushroom house! Ecovative grows furniture and more from mushrooms
Jul 30th 2013, 12:26

Shrooms growing in your living room are bad -- but what about a living room grown from them?

Ecovative's mushroom-made materials run the gamut from furniture to an entire house, thanks to the power of mycelium -- essentially fungus, the unseen underground part of a mushroom, which looks like a network of thin white strands. The company's homegrown housewares are water- and fire-resistant, and unlike plastic and Styrofoam, they are entirely biodegradable, explained co-founder Gavin McIntyre.

"We grew chairs," McIntyre told FoxNews.com. "We grew a house." Ecovative built the sample structure from pine wood and poured the fungal mix inside the wall cavity, where it grew as a natural insulation.

'The thought process was, can we use mycelium as growing glue?'

McIntyre says the fungal flat is self-repairing -- if a tree fell on the house, the wall would have to be rebuilt, but the insulation would grow back by itself. It's also self-protecting and has its own "immune system," which prevents microorganisms from starting colonies within.

In nature, most mycelium grows underground; we only see and eat its fruit -- mushrooms -- without realizing the hidden web underneath. Ecologically, mycelium's function is to break down waste, explained Stephen Horton, a biology professor at Union College, such as dead grass and decaying fruit.

"As it's breaking down the plant material, it's also secreting various products -- enzymes, lipids, proteins, which act as glue and hold things together," Horton told FoxNews.com.

McIntyre and his friend Eben Bayer borrowed Mother Nature's idea and ran with it. To grow fungal "ore," Ecovative inoculates natural byproducts such as seed hulls from rice, buckwheat and oats with mycelium. They steam-clean the mixture, add mycelium tissue culture, distribute the blend into molds, and let the fungus grow.

Left in the dark for a few days, the fungus digests the mix and binds its ingredients into a structural substance, shaped into whatever form McIntyre desires: wine shippers, boards or furniture, for example, all clean of such toxic chemicals as glues and lacquers.

"The material grows in the shape of the tool," McIntyre said. "Then we pop it out and dry it." Dehydrating and heat-treating is necessary to kill the fungi and stop its growth -- no one wants living furniture. Ecovative's inventions are allergen-free because they use the non-allergic mycelium spawn instead of mushroom spores, which can cause allergies in some people.

The company evolved from McIntyre's and Bayer's undergraduate project at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where they dual-majored in mechanical engineering and product design. Every semester they took a class called Inventor's Studio in which they were challenged to pick a pressing problem that faced the world and find a technological solution. They came up with the mushroom idea while they were working on a construction and insulation project in 2006.

"Eben made the observation while he was taking a stroll in the woods, that fungal mycelium was growing on the wood chips and holding them together," McIntyre recalled. "The thought process was — can we use mycelium as growing glue?"

They got some farm produce leftovers, which were cheap and easy to find, bought mycelium tissue culture on the Internet, and started growing it in their apartments. "Mycelium needs a dark place to grow, so we were incubating it in closets and underneath our beds," McIntyre explained. 

The samples they grew benchmarked well against plastic, he said. During their senior year at Rensselaer they submitted their idea to various startup competitions and won several awards, including grants from the Environmental Protection Agency, The National Science Foundation, and a $350,000 prize from DOEN Foundation in the Netherlands.

Not all fungi are the same, according to Horton, who collaborates with Ecovative on researching the behavior of various mycelium strains. Different fungi growing on different substrates — the mixtures it consumes to proliferate — can yield products with diverse characteristics. 

"We can get very elastic materials that bend or we can get them as hard as wood," McIntyre says. The more durable concoctions can be used as automotive parts such as car bumpers, Horton says. Modern car bumpers are essentially hard blocks of Styrofoam made to absorb shock, so with the right combination of fungi and its food, it's possible to grow automotive components of similar qualities, except that they would break down when exposed to the right microbes on the landfill. 

Ecovative is also experimenting with a variety of other ideas as well, from marine buoy to shoe soles.

"You can imagine all sorts of different applications," Horton said.

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FOX News: Black bear sightings on the rise in Florida's Panhandle

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Black bear sightings on the rise in Florida's Panhandle
Jul 30th 2013, 14:21

NAVARRE, Fla. –  Wildlife officials say the number of black bear sightings is on the rise in the Florida Panhandle.

Since January the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has logged 360 calls about bear sightings in a four county area. That's up from 249 during the same period last year.

The increased number of bear sightings prompted wildlife officials and state Rep. Doug Broxson to schedule a public workshop to discuss safety measures for area residents.

Broxson told the Pensacola News Journal a black bear ran in front of him during a recent bike ride.

Wildlife officials say four bears have been fatally struck by vehicles this year, including one along U.S. 98 in Navarre last Wednesday.

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FOX News: Great white mystery: Expedition to unravel shark secrets

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Great white mystery: Expedition to unravel shark secrets
Jul 30th 2013, 13:00

One of the most ambitious expeditions ever to tag great white sharks will set sail today off Cape Cod, Mass. The researchers hope to tag as many as 20 of the enormous sharks, about which very little is known.

The project is expected to be the largest shark-tagging mission in U.S. history, according to the nonprofit shark research group OCEARCH, which is leading the mission along with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). The effort is part of an initiative to better understand the animals and to inform the public about the importance of sharks, which serve as top predators and are vital for the proper function of ocean food webs, said WHOI researcher Simon Thorrold. As many as 100 million sharks are killed per year due to both legal and illegal fishing, a recent study found.

"Given how much interest there is in great white sharks, we are still scientifically trying to find out the very basics," Thorrold said.

Tagging great whites
Aboard a vessel known as the M/V OCEARCH, researchers will cast lines for great white sharks, using barbless hooks designed to minimize harm to the animals, Thorrold said. After the shark is reeled in, a special platform powered by a hydraulic lift is then raised up underneath the shark, allowing scientists to attach a GPS tag to the animal's dorsal fin and perform a variety of tests on the animal, Thorrold told LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet. [Video of Great White Shark Tagging]

Scientists have to work quickly to minimize the stress they cause the sharks, Thorrold said. During the 15 minutes the researchers spend with each shark, the animal's gills are bathed in saltwater to prevent the shark from suffocating.

"It's like a NASCAR pit crew," Thorrold said. Perhaps surprisingly, the sharks don't seem to put up much of a fight, and "really chill out on the platform," he added.

During the expedition, which runs from July 30 to Aug. 29, the scientists will take blood and tissue samples from each of the sharks they catch to learn more about the animals' health and diet. The GPS tags will allow scientists to see where the sharks are going, as well as the temperature of the water and the depths of their dives, Thorrold said.

Understanding sharks
Recent data derived from the tagging of great white sharks has shown that the animals follow two basic routes. Some of the sharks tend to stay along the East Coast and linger not far from the shore, Thorrold said. But others set out into the Atlantic Ocean, before making a wide circle and heading toward Bermuda. Previously, it wasn't known that sharks wandered far from shore, Thorrold said, adding, "That really blew our minds."

The data will be used in as many as a dozen studies and will help scientists understand the sharks' behaviors. More and more great white sharks have been spotted off Cape Cod in recent years a development that has coincided with the rebound of populations of gray seals, upon which the sharks feed, Thorrold said.

Earlier this year, OCEARCH scientists tagged a shark named Lydia off the coast of Florida. Lydia and other sharks can be tracked at the Global Shark Tracker.

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Monday, July 29, 2013

FOX News: Medieval mystery deepens as coffin-within-a-coffin found at Richard III grave site

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Medieval mystery deepens as coffin-within-a-coffin found at Richard III grave site
Jul 29th 2013, 14:45

Archaeologists have uncovered a mysterious coffin-within-a-coffin while excavating the final resting place of King Richard III.

The University of Leicester team opened the lid of a medieval stone coffin this week during the final week of their second dig at the Grey Friars site where the British king was found last September.

The stone coffin is thought to contain one of the friary's founders or a medieval monk.

Once opened, archaeologists were surprised to discover a second lead coffin inside of the stone coffin.

"We still don't know who is inside, so there is still a question mark over it."

- Grey Friars site director Mathew Morris

"None of us in the team have ever seen a lead coffin within a stone coffin before," Grey Friars site director Mathew Morris of the University of Leicester said. "We will now need to work out how to open it safely, as we don't want to damage the contents when we are opening the lid."

PHOTOS: Mass Sacrifice Found Near Aztec Temple

The archaeologists suspect that the coffin belongs to one of the three prestigious figures known to be buried at the friary.

"The coffin could contain William de Moton, Peter Swynsfeld or William of Nottingham – who are all important people," Morris said. "Swynsfeld and Nottingham were heads of the Grey Friars order in England."

Sir William de Moton of Peckleton was a prominent 14th century knight.

However, there are many other nameless people who were also buried at the church and the identity of the person in the lead coffin may never be revealed.

"The stone coffin was always the big thing we wanted to investigate during this dig," said Morris. "For me, it was as exciting as finding Richard III. We still don't know who is inside – so there is still a question mark over it."

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FOX News: Spacecraft sees giant 'hole' in sun

FOX News
FOXNews.com - Breaking news and video. Latest Current News: U.S., World, Entertainment, Health, Business, Technology, Politics, Sports. // via fulltextrssfeed.com 
Spacecraft sees giant 'hole' in sun
Jul 29th 2013, 11:30

A space telescope aimed at the sun has spotted a gigantic hole in the solar atmosphere — a dark spot that covers nearly a quarter of our closest star, spewing solar material and gas into space.

The so-called coronal hole over the sun's north pole came into view between July 13 and 18 and was observed by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO. NASA released a video of the sun hole as seen by the SOHO spacecraft, showing the region as a vast dark spot surrounded by solar activity.

Coronal holes are darker, cooler regions of the sun's atmosphere, or corona, containing little solar material. In these gaps, magnetic field lines whip out into the solar wind rather than looping back to the sun's surface. Coronal holes can affect space weather, as they send solar particles streaming off the sun about three times faster than the slower wind unleashed elsewhere from the sun's atmosphere, according to a description from NASA.

"While it's unclear what causes coronal holes, they correlate to areas on the sun where magnetic fields soar up and away, failing to loop back down to the surface, as they do elsewhere," NASA's Karen Fox at the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., explained in an image description.

These holes are not uncommon, but their frequency changes with the solar activity cycle. The sun is currently reaching its 11-year peak in activity, known as the solar maximum. Around the time of this peak, the sun's poles switch their magnetism. The number of coronal holes typically decreases leading up to the switch.

After the reversal, new coronal holes appear near the poles. Then as the sun approaches the solar minimum again, the holes creep closer to the equator, growing in both size and number, according to NASA.

The $1.27-billion SOHO satellite was launched in 1995 and is flying a joint mission between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). It watches solar activity from an orbit about the Lagrange Point 1, a gravitationally stable spot between Earth and the sun that is about 932,000 miles from our planet.

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FOX News: Hikers capture footage of mysterious 'Bigfoot' figure

FOX News
FOXNews.com - Breaking news and video. Latest Current News: U.S., World, Entertainment, Health, Business, Technology, Politics, Sports. // via fulltextrssfeed.com 
Hikers capture footage of mysterious 'Bigfoot' figure
Jul 29th 2013, 12:00

It has been the stuff of legends for as long as hikers have been traipsing through the wilderness.

But whether you believe this figure caught on camera by hikers in the Canadian wilderness is actually the legendary Bigfoot, or just a man in an ape suit, is all a matter of opinion.

Either way the sighting of the figure, which appears covered in thick black hair and is seen lumbering across the mountain top, has sparked plenty of excitement among Bigfoot fans.

In the footage the figure walks from the trees into the open, pausing briefly before disappearing back into the trees.

It remains unclear exactly where the video was shot but it is believed to have been filmed on a trail near Mission, in British Columbia.

The footage has been viewed thousands of times on YouTube with believers claiming it is evidence that the ape-like creature, known as sasquatch, actually exists.

But scientists have dismissed the Bigfoot theory, claiming it is a mixture of a hoax, folklore and incorrect identification.

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Saturday, July 27, 2013

FOX News: Medieval Spanish gold hunters’ fort found in North Carolina

FOX News
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Medieval Spanish gold hunters' fort found in North Carolina
Jul 27th 2013, 11:00

Before there was Jamestown and even before there was Roanoke, there was Spain's Fort San Juan, in the Appalachian foothills of North Carolina.

Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of the fort built by gold-hunting Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century and say it's the oldest European garrison ever found in the interior of the United States.

The settlement around Fort San Juan was occupied for less than two years and it met a rather bloody end likely brought on by the Spaniards' botched bartering for food and their sexual transgressions with Native American women. But the short-lived fort's traces serve as a reminder of how different U.S. history might have been if Spain had been more successful in its early colonial campaigns. [In Photos: Amazing Ruins of the Ancient World]

The garrison was built by Spanish Captain Juan Pardo and his men in about 1567 near what is today Morganton in western North Carolina, about 300 miles inland. It is thought to be the first and the largest of the forts that Pardo established in an attempt to colonize the American South. It's also the only one to have been discovered so far.

"Fort San Juan and six others that together stretched from coastal South Carolina into eastern Tennessee were occupied for less than 18 months before the Native Americans destroyed them, killing all but one of the Spanish soldiers who manned the garrisons," University of Michigan archaeologist Robin Beck said in a statement.

The fort was located at the Native American site of Joara, part of the mound-building Mississippian culture. Previous excavations had revealed evidence of a European presence at Joara, including houses occupied by Spanish soldiers.

"We have known for more than a decade where the Spanish soldiers were living," another excavator, Christopher Rodning of Tulane University, explained in a statement. This summer, the team returned to learn more about the Mississippian mound at the site, but last month, their excavations inadvertently exposed part of the fort.

"For all of us, it was an incredible moment," Rodning said.

In addition to excavations, the researchers used techniques like magnetometry to probe the site. This allowed them to detect features buried below the surface, including the fort's V-shaped moat and a graveled entryway. Among the artifacts found at the site were nails, tacks, pottery and an iron clothing hook for fastening a jacket or attaching a sword scabbard to a belt, the researchers say.

The Spaniards were actively prospecting for gold while they occupied the site, though they never found the gold mines that would make North Carolina's settlers of the early 1800s rich. Archaeologists believe the colonizers' downfall was brought on by their own presumptions about how to trade with the Native Americans.

"The soldiers believed that when their gifts were accepted, it meant that the native people were their subjects," Beck said in a statement. "But to the natives, it was simply an exchange. When the soldiers ran out of gifts, they expected the natives to keep on feeding them. By that time, they had also committed what Spanish documents refer to as 'indiscretions' with native women, which may have been another reason that native men decided they had to go. So food and sex were probably two of the main reasons for destroying Spanish settlements and forts."

England exploited Spain's failure when they established Jamestown in 1607, putting in motion the American frontier narrative that's in the history books today, another archaeologist, David Moore of Warren Wilson College, explained in a statement.

"For Native Americans, though, this was the beginning of a long-term and often tragic reshaping of their precolonial world," Moore added.

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Friday, July 26, 2013

FOX News: North pole now a lake

FOX News
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North pole now a lake
Jul 26th 2013, 15:30

Instead of snow and ice whirling on the wind, a foot-deep aquamarine lake now sloshes around a webcam stationed at the North Pole. 

The meltwater lake started forming July 13, following two weeks of warm weather in the high Arctic. In early July, temperatures were 2 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit higher than average over much of the Arctic Ocean, according to the National Snow & Ice Data Center.

Meltwater ponds sprout more easily on young, thin ice, which now accounts for more than half of the Arctic's sea ice. The ponds link up across the smooth surface of the ice, creating a network that traps heat from the sun. Thick and wrinkly multi-year ice, which has survived more than one freeze-thaw season, is less likely sport a polka-dot network of ponds because of its rough, uneven surface.

July is the melting month in the Arctic, when sea ice shrinks fastest. An Arctic cyclone, which can rival a hurricane in strength, is forecast for this week, which will further fracture the ice and churn up warm ocean water, hastening the summer melt. The Arctic hit a record low summer ice melt last year on Sept. 16, 2012, the smallest recorded since satellites began tracking the Arctic ice in the 1970s.  

Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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FOX News: First photos of mystery region on the sun

FOX News
FOXNews.com - Breaking news and video. Latest Current News: U.S., World, Entertainment, Health, Business, Technology, Politics, Sports. // via fulltextrssfeed.com 
First photos of mystery region on the sun
Jul 26th 2013, 11:30

NASA's newest solar observatory has taken its first photos of the lowest layers of the solar atmosphere, a mysterious and little-understood region of the sun.

The images, taken just 21 hours after mission controllers first opened the telescope's door, reveal new details of the sun's lower atmosphere — an area known as the "interface region." The IRIS spacecraft (short for Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph) captured images of thin magnetic structures and streams of material in the solar atmosphere. These early observations suggest tremendous amounts of energy flow through the interface region, according to NASA officials.

"With this grand opening of the telescope door and first observations from IRIS, we've opened a new window into the energetics of the sun's atmosphere," John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., said in a statement. "We look forward to the new insights IRIS will provide." [NASA's IRIS Solar Observatory Mission in Pictures]

'We've opened a new window into the energetics of the sun's atmosphere.'

- John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.,

The door covering the IRIS telescope was first opened on July 17, allowing it to take its first photographs of the sun. These photos showed thin, fiberlike structures that have never been seen before in the solar atmosphere, NASA officials said.

IRIS also observed vast differences in density and temperature throughout the sun's interface region, even between loops of solar material located only a few hundred miles apart from each other, the scientists said. The spacecraft also captured spots that appear to blink — rapidly brightening and then dimming — which could indicate how the energy is being transported and absorbed in this area of the sun's atmosphere.

Energy that flows through the interface region may help power the sun's dynamic atmosphere, and heat the upper layers of the solar atmosphere to scorching temperatures of about 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit, NASA officials explained.

The features observed in the lower layers of the sun's atmosphere may also drive the solar wind, which flows through the entire solar system. During powerful solar storms, the streams of charged particles that make up the solar wind can knock out satellites in their path, causing power grid failures and disrupting GPS services.

During its two-year mission, IRIS will closely study the sun's interface region, where most of the star's ultraviolet emissions are generated. The spacecraft will examine how solar material moves, gathers energy and heats up as it travels through this part of the lower atmosphere.

The spacecraft's telescope, which is a combination of an ultraviolet telescope and spectrograph, is designed to capture high-resolution images every few seconds, and can zero in on areas as small as 150 miles on the sun, NASA officials said. The onboard spectrograph analyzes the sun's light, splitting it into various wavelengths and measuring how much of any given wavelength is present.

Over the next few weeks, scientists will inspect the IRIS data to ensure that the spacecraft's instruments are performing well. So far, mission managers are impressed.

"The quality of the images and spectra we are receiving from IRIS is amazing — this is just what we were hoping for," Alan Title, IRIS principal investigator at Lockheed Martin in Palo Alto, Calif., said in a statement. "There is much work ahead to understand what we're seeing, but the quality of the data will enable us to do that."

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