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aamukherjee A Slice of Entropie -
alchymista Alchymista -
crownedrose Fading Like A Dead Star -
expose-the-light Quarks to Quasars -
ikenbot CWL -
abluegirl A Blue Girl -
perscientiamlibertas A Matter of the Most Pleasant Fraternal Confidence
Oldest Pharaoh Carvings Discovered in Egypt
The oldest-known representations of a pharaoh are carved on rocks near the Nile River in southern Egypt, researchers report.
Look closely — standing on the top of this boat is a crowned figure who may represent Narmer, the first pharaoh to rule unified Egypt. Oarsmen propel the boat along. Credit: Stan Hendrickx, John Coleman Darnell & Maria Carmela Gatto
The carvings were first observed and recorded in the 1890s, but only rediscovered in 2008. In them, a white-crowned figure travels in ceremonial processions and on sickle-shaped boats, perhaps representing an early tax-collecting tour of Egypt.
The scenes place the age of the carvings between 3200 B.C. and 3100 B.C., researchers report in the December issue of the journal Antiquity. During that time, Egypt was transitioning into the dynastic rule of the pharaohs.
“It’s really the end of prehistory and the beginning of history,” in Egypt, study researcher Maria Gatto told LiveScience.
Scenes of a ruler
Gatto, a Yale University researcher, led the archaeologists who rediscovered the site in 2008. Archaeologist Archibald Sayce first sketched the carvings, found at the village Nag el-Hamdulab, in the 1890s, but the only record of Sayce’s discovery was a partial illustration published in a book.
The site was then forgotten until the 1960s, when Egyptian archaeologist Labib Habachi took photographs of the carvings, which he never published. It wasn’t until one of these photos resurfaced in 2008 that Gatto and her team started searching for the site, which many people assumed had been destroyed in the interim.
Some of the carvings have indeed been vandalized since the 1960s, but Gatto and her team found the etched rocks in a natural amphitheater west of Nag el-Hamdulab. They then compared the carvings to Habachi’s 1960s photographs.
There are seven carvings scattered throughout the area, and many are tableaus of boats flanked by prisoners. One of the most extensive carvings shows five boats, one of which houses the white-crowned pharaoh, his fan-bearer and two standard-bearers. Falcon and bull insignia on the pharaoh’s boat symbolize royalty, further emphasized by the four men with ropes standing alongside that boat, likely towing it along the Nile.
A hieroglyph labels this scene a “nautical following,” a likely reference to the following of Horus, Gatto said. In this periodic royal jaunt across Egypt, the pharaoh cemented power and collected taxes. Thus, not only do the carvings represent the oldest known vision of a pharaoh, they may also show the oldest Egyptian tax campaign.
Other carvings include a scene of people and dogs herding cattle and a cluster of animals, two of them apparently some mythical part-lion beasts. The other animals are familiar native African species, including two ostriches, an ibex and a bull. Another scene shows the brewing and drinking of beer, perhaps a reference to a festival.
ikenbot
From high altitude slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, the beginning of a night is photographed over the lights of Moshi, a town situated on the lower southern slopes of Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. The Milky Way has just become visible in the evening twilight. — Kwon O Chul
The study was released this morning and published by the National Academy of Sciences. It’s free to download, and looks at over 16,000 conflicts during 1990-2009.
Look, Obama and Romney need to discuss climate change tonight, even if it’s in the context of national security - it has to happen.
A study relating climate to conflict in East African nations finds that increased rainfall dampens conflict while unusually hot periods can cause a flare-up, reinforcing the theory that climate change will cause increased scarcity in the region. The study was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Politicians and many scientists have called climate change a security risk, based on the idea that unusual variations in weather are likely to put immense strain on rural societies dependent on farming and livestock for survival. But the results of studies trying to confirm such a hypothesis have been mixed.
The authors of the new study, from the University of Colorado and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, believe that problems with previous studies may have contributed to previous failures to link climate and conflict, including the use of data only at the country level rather than at the regional or local level.
Instead, the researchers used a conflict database called the Armed Conflict Location and Event Dataset, or ACLED, which provides location-specific tracking of individual events across Africa — from large-scale acts of war to local fights over farmland.
He would not be everyone’s first choice as an ambassador for Africa in outer space. The Sudanese president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, is wanted by the international criminal court on charges of war crimes but had other matters in mind when he addressed a regional conference on Wednesday.
“I’m calling for the biggest project, an African space agency,” Bashir told a gathering of communications ministers in Khartoum. “Africa must have its space agency.” It “will liberate Africa from the technological domination”, he said.
His call follows a controversial decision two years ago by the African Union (AU) to conduct a feasibility study that would draw up a “roadmap for the creation of the African space agency”.
[…]
A working document issued for the conference in Khartoum says the agency, called AfriSpace, would enable “co-operation among African states in space research and technology and their space applications”.
Only “a tiny minority” of countries presently control space technologies, which play a major role in everything from broadcasting to weather forecasting, agriculture, health and environmental monitoring, the document notes.
“A common continental approach will allow the sharing of risks and costs and ensure the availability of skilled and sufficient human resources. It will also ensure a critical size of geographical area and population required in terms of the plan of action for some space applications.”
AfriSpace would implement a long-term African space policy, recommend “space objectives” to member states and co-ordinate orbital slots and other space resources, the document adds.
Co-operation on space would be a notable breakthrough for a continent where political and trade barriers remain notoriously obstructive. It is hoped there would be spin-offs in terms of employment, skills and new technologies.
pieceinthepuzzlehumanity-deactiProfessor Relebohile Moletsane, who walked away with the prestigious Distinguished Woman Scientist Award (physical and engineering) has published several articles and book chapters on using digital technology and digital story telling in rural communities with the focus on HIV education. She said her goal was to ensure that vulnerable societies had all the necessary information about HIV and Aids and how the disease operates.
Dr Rapela Maphanga from the University of Limpopo won the Distinguished Young Women Scientist Award for her research on computer simulations of energy-storage device materials. She has published her research findings on high profile scientific journals and is a junior associate at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Italy. Maphanga has supervised to completion one PhD student, four masters and six honours students at her university. Speaking of her research, she said:
“I believe that the solution for most of our problems lies in science so my aim is to make the little contribution that I can to achieve change and development in our communities”.
More women like this please
Africa’s First Night Sky ‘Reserve’ Is Stargazing Haven
Image: The Milky Way, photographed from NamibRand reserve. Credit: George Tucker
The NamibRand Nature Reserve, a private nature reserve in southern Namibia, has gotten the stamp of approval to become an official night sky reserve — a spot supremely suited for some of the best stargazing on Earth.
A honey bee forages on a red ice plant. A study of parasite resistance, by scientists from Pennsylvania State University and the International Centre for Insect Physiology and Ecology in Nairobi, Kenya, could lead to improved strategies for managing honeybee populations worldwide. Photo credit: Daniel R. Schmehl, Penn State University
Big Five from Africa and Twilight Arch
The photo above shows a gathering of planets and the waning crescent Moon as captured from Tivoli, Namibia just before dawn on May 30, 2011. The “Big Five” in Africa refers to the top five big game animals; lion, leopard, rhinoceros, Cape buffalo, and elephant.
On this late autumn morning (Southern Hemisphere), however, I was able to a bring down a prize night-sky quarry — Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and our Moon all in the same frame. Venus shines brightly at magnitude -3.9, Jupiter at -2.2; Mercury at -1.0, and Mars glows dimly at 1.4 magnitude.
Only five percent of the slender Moon was illuminated. The shallow arching band of red, gold and yellow at the bottom of the photo is the twilight arch. Sunlight from the rising Sun (still about six degrees below the horizon) is scattered by the cloud-free atmosphere.
Photography & Summary by Eduard von Bergen
