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Forbes Clips

Mon, 12 May 2008 05:42:07 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: Just thought I clip this, not sure if everyone noticed.

Forbes Clips

Forbes Clips brings you the latest news and information about everything our writers and editors are reading on the web.

Tags: forbes, clipmarks

1,000 Ancient Tombs, Unique Remains Found in Colombia

Fri, 09 May 2008 23:15:16 GMT

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Clip Source: news.nationalgeographic.com

Builders clearing land for a housing project in Colombia have uncovered an ancient burial site containing nearly a thousand tombs linked to two little-known civilizations. (See photos.)

The site covers some 12 acres (5 hectares) in the impoverished Usme district in southeast Bogotá (see map) and includes one set of remains that some researchers believe could be a victim of human sacrifice.

Clip Source: news.nationalgeographic.com

The possible victim is a young woman who seems to have been buried alive, said Ana Maria Groot, one of the lead anthropologists from the National University of Colombia working at the site.

"Her mouth is open as if in terror, and her hands seem contracted as if she had tried grabbing hold of something," Groot said.

Another tomb contains the remains of a man with a curved tibia, or shinbone, possible evidence that the man was a shaman, she added.

Tags: colombia, discovery, anthropology

Practising Muslims 'will outnumber Christians by 2035'

Fri, 09 May 2008 22:01:55 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: Go ahead, get scared!

Clip Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

Practising Muslims will outnumber worshipping Christians in Britain within 30 years, according to research published today.

By 2035, there will be about 1.96 million active Muslims in Britain, compared with 1.63 million church-going Christians, according to calculations by Christian Research, a think- tank.

The figures are published in the latest in a series of reports entitled Religious Trends.

The think-tank has warned that 4,000 churches could close by 2020 if congregations continue to shrink at current rates.

According to the most recent figures from the Church of England, regular Sunday, weekly and monthly attendance each fell by one per cent in 2006.

Fewer than a million people attend church every Sunday.

Although at the last count there were only 1.6million Muslims living in Britain – compared to 41million Christians – experts have suggested Muslims are more likely to practise their faith.

British Muslims perform their traditional prayers

Tags: muslims, britain, christian, religion

India children's health 'ignored'

Fri, 09 May 2008 19:11:38 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: More than half??

Well, the more visibility is good, eventually they will reduce the numbers as they progress.

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

More than half of Indian children under the age of five do not get the health care they need, according to a report by Save the Children.

It ranks India alongside Ghana when it comes to providing basic health care to its children under five years of age.

The annual report looks at whether developing countries are delivering health care effectively to children.

It found the Philippines was performing best with almost 69% of children able to get access to health care.

Ethiopia ranks last - only 16% of children under five get health care when they need it.

Indian girls are more likely to die than boys

Tags: india, children, health, healthcare

Malaysian woman can leave Islam

Fri, 09 May 2008 19:04:53 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

A religious court in Malaysia has allowed a Muslim convert to leave the Islamic faith, in what is being hailed as a landmark ruling.

Penang's Sharia court ruled that Siti Fatimah Tan Abdullah was free to return to Buddhism, following the collapse of her marriage to a Muslim man.

It was decided she had not had proper counselling during her conversion.

Malaysians are rarely allowed to renounce the faith - those who do can be prosecuted under stringent laws.

Religious rights are a sensitive issue in Malaysia - which is 60% Muslim.

The country has large Hindu, Christian and Buddhist communities - mainly drawn from the ethnic Indian and Chinese minorities.

Tags: islam, malaysia, religion

Modern ceramics help advance technology

Thu, 08 May 2008 21:27:22 GMT

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Clip Source: www.eurekalert.org

Lausanne, Switzerland – May 8, 2008 – Many important electronic devices used by people today would be impossible without the use of ceramics. A new study published in the Journal of the American Ceramic Society illustrates the use of ceramic materials in the development of technological devices, including mobile communication and ultrasonic imaging.

Researchers led by Paul Muralt of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology reviewed the field of ceramic materials and explored the critical role that piezoelectric materials play in advancing technology.

Piezoelectric materials are functional ceramic materials that play a special role in telecommunication and ultrasonic imaging since they have the ability to efficiently transform electrical signals into mechanical vibrations, and vice versa.

Piezoelectricity refers to the ability of some materials, notably crystals and ceramics, to generate electricity when compressed.

Tags: ceramics, technology

Egyptian elite tombs accessible for all

Thu, 08 May 2008 20:52:08 GMT

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Clip Source: www.eurekalert.org

A number of elite tombs from Ancient Egypt are now accessible to all thanks to the launch of the Mastabase. The Mastabase is a CD-ROM containing descriptions and hieroglyphic inscriptions of scenes of daily life from 337 Mastaba tombs. This resource will make research into these elite tombs a lot easier. On 13 May 2008, Dutch Egyptologist René van Walsem will officially present the MastaBase in Leiden.

A Mastaba is an elite tomb from the Memphite area in Ancient Egypt (2600-2150 BC). The tombs contain scenes depicting daily life, often accompanied by inscriptions. Elite tombs are extremely complex works of art. They contain various main themes, which are further divided into sub-themes. Main themes are, for example, scenes depicting offerings, farming, fishing, et cetera. The theme fishing, for instance, can then be broken down into various sub-themes, such as fishing with a dragnet or seine, the transportation of fish and the processing of fish.

Tags: egypt

Justice in the brain: Equity and efficiency are encoded differently

Thu, 08 May 2008 20:50:21 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: An interest in such issues kept the study subjects in the scanner, despite the pain of grappling with difficult choices, Hsu said. “Quite a few came out saying: ‘This is the worst experiment I’ve ever been in. I never want to do anything like this again!’ ”

Clip Source: www.eurekalert.org

Which is better, giving more food to a few hungry people or letting some food go to waste so that everyone gets a share" A study appearing this week in Science finds that most people choose the latter, and that the brain responds in unique ways to inefficiency and inequity.

The study, by researchers at the University of Illinois and the California Institute of Technology, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the brains of people making a series of tough decisions about how to allocate donations to children in a Ugandan orphanage.

The researchers hoped to shed light on the neurological underpinnings of moral decision-making

“Morality is a question of broad interest,” Hsu said. “What makes us moral, and how do we make tradeoffs in difficult situations"”

Tags: brain, study, science

New evidence from oldest human settlement in the Americas

Thu, 08 May 2008 20:45:47 GMT

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Clip Source: www.vanderbilt.edu

N ew evidence from the Monte Verde archaeological site in southern Chile confirms its status as the earliest known human settlement in the Americas and provides additional support for the theory that one migration route followed the Pacific Coast more than 14,000 years ago.

The study was conducted by a team of anthropologists, geologists and botanists headed by Vanderbilt University's Distinguished Professor of Anthropology Tom Dillehay and is reported in the May 9 issue of the journal Science.

The paper, which includes the first new data reported from the site in 10 years, includes the identification of nine species of seaweed and marine algae recovered from hearths and other areas in the ancient settlement. The seaweed samples were directly dated between 14,220 to 13,980 years ago, confirming that the upper layer of the site, labeled Monte Verde II, was occupied more than 1,000 years earlier than any other reliably dated human settlements in the Americas.

Tags: america, archealogy, discovery

"Weird" Pygmy Whale Dissected

Thu, 08 May 2008 20:38:43 GMT

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Clip Source: news.nationalgeographic.com

A young pygmy right whale that stranded itself in New Zealand has given scientists a rare chance to study the little-known species.

The 7.5-foot-long (2.31-meters-long) specimen, probably a six-month-old male, was found dead at Spirit's Bay in the country's far north.

Pygmy right whales, the world's smallest baleen whales, can reach lengths of up to 21 feet (6.5 meters), said Anton van Helden, a marine mammal scientist at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.

Paleontologists and anatomists from New Zealand, Australia, and the United States met at Te Papa to begin dissecting the whale—only the second ever examined—on Tuesday.

Updates posted today on the museum's blog suggest that the young animal carried scars from tiny cookie-cutter sharks.

The team was also surprised to find that the whale had hair on its body. Most whales lose their hair within a few weeks of birth, the blog posting said.

Tags: whale, science, sea, study

Project goes high-tech to unearth ancient history

Thu, 08 May 2008 17:57:30 GMT

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Clip Source: www.princeton.edu

There is a small hill in a remote part of Turkey that looms large in the mind of John Haldon, a professor of history at Princeton. It likely is the ruin of an ancient fortress, but for Haldon the site is an inspiration to find new ways to unearth the history of a particular landscape.

A specialist in Byzantine history, Haldon is the director of an archaeological and historical survey project based around the modern village of Beyözü in the north-central Anatolian region of Turkey. The site, originally known as Euchaita, then Avkat in Ottoman times, is a prime example of a provincial setting in Asia Minor. By deploying innovative technologies and multidisciplinary insights, Haldon hopes his study will reveal the big picture of an area that has thus far been unexamined.

John Haldon (seated), a professor of history, consults a map of the Avkat Project in Turkey with Zachary Chitwood

Tags: history, technology, turkey, archealogy

An Uninsured Doctor in the House

Thu, 08 May 2008 17:54:26 GMT

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Clip Source: www.sciam.com

When Steve Kagen became a member of Congress, he declined health insurance coverage. Now he has a plan to provide it for everyone

One of the first things U.S. Rep. Steve Kagen (D–Wisc.) did when he took office last year was to nix his congressional health care coverage. The move stunned a human resources staffer, who, the lawmaker says, looked at him as though he were insane.

"I'll respectfully decline until you can make that same offer for all of my constituents," he says he told her, explaining his decision to turn down what many say is the Cadillac of U.S. health plans.

Kagen, 58, is now one of millions of Americans, including at least nine million children, without health insurance. "I have absolutely no health coverage at all," he told ScientificAmerican.com during a recent interview. "I have no health conditions and am pretty darn healthy." And if he gets sick? "I'd be just like the 47 [million] to 50 million American citizens who don't have coverage,"

Tags: health, insurance, congress, politics, medical

Discover history through postcards

Thu, 08 May 2008 17:52:00 GMT

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Clip Source: www.ox.ac.uk

The Bodleian Library is launching a new book series, Postcards from…, depicting some of the most defining events in the history of the 20th century through postcards.

Reforms or Revolution, from 'Postcards from the Russian Revolution'

The first two titles in the series features images drawn from a collection of postcards which has recently been donated to the Bodleian Library. The collection is the work of John Fraser, who began assembling it at the age of 12. Over the past sixty years, he amassed a remarkable collection of thousands of cards from around the world, particularly rich in political propaganda.

Clip Source: www.ouls.ox.ac.uk

Postcards] are of great historical and social interest… [They] can also be a profound artistic medium as well as projecting powerful political propaganda. At their best, they can recreate the immediacy, excitement and emotion of great historical events. – Andrew Roberts

Tags: history, post cards, library

From Dump to Park in Cairo

Wed, 07 May 2008 23:47:15 GMT

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Clip Source: www.planetizen.com

Cairo's first new green space in more than 100 years has opened -- on top of a 500-year old garbage dump.

"Amid Cairo's sprawling cityscape, there's a lush retreat where Egyptians can find some breathing space."

"Like New York's Central Park, the 74-acre Al-Azhar Park is a green getaway for the city's 17 million residents. But less than a decade ago, Al-Azhar Park was little more than a mound of dirt and trash — a 500-year-old garbage dump."

'It was … the shame of the city,' says Thomas Taha Rassam Culhane, founder of Solar Cities, a group that is installing environment-friendly solar hot-water heaters in Cairo's slums."

"At a cost of $30 million, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture hired world-class Egyptian, European and American architects who worked with the city and local residents to create Cairo's first new green space in more than a century."

Full Story: Slow but Sure Environmental Progress in Cairo

Tags: cairo, environment, park

Missing Matter Spotted by European Probe

Wed, 07 May 2008 23:06:28 GMT

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Clip Source: dsc.discovery.com

An orbital X-ray telescope has found a chunk of matter whose existence had long been theorized, but evidence for which had been lacking, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Wednesday.

Twin Galaxy Clusters

The discovery made by ESA's XMM-Newton telescope is part of so-called baryonic matter, which comprises less than five percent of the cosmos.

Most of the universe consists of matter and energy of an unknown nature, which astrophysicists call "dark matter." It is believed to be distributed in a web-like structure.

The new claim is based on the observation of a pair of distant galaxy clusters, called Abell 222 and Abell 223, located 2.3 billion light-years from Earth.

Tags: science, astronomy, discovery