9 | Was the New World Settled Twice? Andrew Lawler June 14, 2010 | Were the primary ancestors of today's Native Americans really the first people to set foot in the New World? Genetic evidence suggests so, but ancient skeletons tell a different story. Now, the most detailed analysis yet of ancient American skulls concludes that there were two distinct waves of colonizers from Asia, suggesting that another group got here first. A team of paloeanthropologists compared the skulls of several dozen Paleoamericans, which date back to the early days of migration 11,000 years ago, with those of more than 300 Amerindians, which date to 1000 years ago. The Paleoamerican remains came from four sites in South and Central America, and the researchers also compared them with more than 500 skulls from East Asia. In all, the team found clear differences in the shapes and sizes of the Paleoamerican and Amerindian samples. That suggests that more than one group of individuals migrated to the Americas from Asia, the team reports online today in PLoS ONE. And due to the age of the skeletons, the researchers say, this other group of individuals arrived before the primary ancestors of today's Native Americans. | 10 | Lucy's Family is Complete: Hominid Trio Offer Insight Into Human Evolution Jason Mick June 22, 2010 | Much like the revolution of modern astronomy in the late 1400s and early 1500s dissolved the notion that the Sun revolved around the Earth, a renaissance in paleontology is dissolving virtually any doubt that remained about man's origins. Another new discovery has just been completed, the latest of several high profile publications over only the last year. The new skeleton is a male Australopithecus afarensis, which has been discovered in Ethiopia’s Afar region. The skeleton joins the celebrated "Lucy" skeleton, unearthed by paleoanthropologists in 1974, and a child skeleton unearthed last year. The ancient male, an ancestor of modern man, lived approximately 3.6 million years ago in the plains of Eastern Africa, according to several dating techniques. Yohannes Haile-Selassie of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, who led the team, says the skeleton offers some major new insights into the species. | 11 | Christopher Monckton humiliated yet again Richard Littlemore 25 June 10 | If the Viscount of Brenchley says it; does that mean it HAS to be wrong? Christopher Walter, the Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley has been caught once again with his facts around his ankles. Like others before him, Brigham Young University Professor Barry Bickmore has taken the time to check whether Monckton's pronouncements can pass any objective standard of accuracy and he has found, "SPOILER ALERT: The final result is classic Monckton" - a carefully constructed, but infuriating opaque veil of academic references, a loose mix of relatively accurate facts, and a conclusion that is precisely contrary to that drawn by the experts whom Monckton claims to quote. | 12 | Sup, Geordi? Electronic Corrective Eyewear to Hit the Market This Year Ty Dunitz Jun 23 | How have you been making use of your time? PixelOptics have spent the last decade developing emPower, which is – get this – electronic spectacles that can change focus via an electrical current run through a layer of liquid crystal in the lenses, effectively rendering the bifocal obsolete. You tell me what’s not bad ass about that. Just tell me. I dare you. The specs have three modes: when off, they act as a regular progressive lens – not the greatest, but suitable for everyday activity. When in manual mode, the electronic layer is locked in the on position, and the glasses function more or less like traditional bifocals (effectively eliminating the need for the product, I guess...?). But where the true badassery lay is in automatic mode. While activated, the specs will dynamically shift focus via motion sensors, depending on the tilt of the wearer’s head. Y’know in sci fi movies, there’ll be, like, a cyborg antagonist, and he’ll have one robot eye, and he’ll enter an empty warehouse where the protagonist is hiding, and look around, and his robot eye’ll shift focus and go VZZZT, VZZZT all cool-like? Yeah, this is that. This is exactly that. | 13 | Video: "Smart Sheets" Can Self-Assemble Into Airplanes, Boats Rebecca Boyle 06.28.2010 |
Scientists at MIT and Harvard have invented self-folding smart fiberglass sheets that can crease themselves into origami airplanes and boats. It's a far cry from previous programmable matter research we've seen, which works at the nanoscale to create scaffolds and gears. | 14 | 'Programmable Matter' Could Lead to Universal Toolbox Charles Q. Choi 28 June 2010 | Scientists have invented self-folding sheets of fiberglass that can flex themselves into origami airplanes and boats. The achievement could help pave the way for "programmable matter" that could one day serve much like a Swiss Army knife, bending and creasing into any number of tools. The sheets are each less than a half-millimeter thick and made of triangular fiberglass tiles each roughly less than a half-inch (1 cm) wide, connected together by elastic silicone rubber creases. | 15 | World's Largest Dinosaur Graveyard Found Jennifer Viegas Jun 22, 2010 | The world's largest dinosaur graveyard has been discovered in Alberta, Canada, according to David Eberth of the Royal Tyrrell Museum and other scientists working on the project. The Vancouver Sun reports that the massive dinosaur bonebed is 1.43-square miles in size. Eberth says it contains thousands of bones belonging to the dinosaur Centrosaurus, which once lived near what is now the Saskatchewan border. Centrosaurus was a plant-eating, cow-sized dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous, around 75 million years ago. It cut quite a figure back then, with its top-of-the-head frills and rhino-like nose horn. There is some evidence that it engaged in horn to horn combat among its own species, probably males fighting over mates. | 16 | LHC smashes beam collision record Katia Moskvitch
| Scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) say they have moved a step closer to their aim of unlocking the mysteries of the Universe. The world's highest-energy particle accelerator has produced a record-breaking particle collision rate - about double the previous rate. The collider is now generating around 10,000 particle collisions per second, according to physicist Andrei Golutvin. | 17 | Science Historian Cracks the ‘Plato code’ Sasha Holburn June 28, 2010 | A science historian at The University of Manchester has cracked "The Plato Code" – the long disputed secret messages hidden in the great philosopher’s writings. Plato was the Einstein of Greece’s Golden Age and his work founded Western culture and science. Dr Jay Kennedy’s findings are set to revolutionise the history of the origins of Western thought. Dr Kennedy, whose findings are published in the leading US journal Apeiron, reveals that Plato used a regular pattern of symbols, inherited from the ancient followers of Pythagoras, to give his books a musical structure. A century earlier, Pythagoras had declared that the planets and stars made an inaudible music, a ‘harmony of the spheres’. Plato imitated this hidden music in his books. | |