[Hip Priest]

Stones confirm golden past of ancient African kingdom

* 12:00 19 June 2007
* NewScientist.com news service
* Roxanne Khamsi

A black-topped beaker. Both pieces were found at the burial site and date back to the Classic Kerma period (1750-1550 BC) (Image: Oriental Institute, University of Chicago)

The discovery of a gold "factory" and burial sites along the Nile in Sudan reveals that the ancient African kingdom of Kush was more vast and powerful than realised, and traded heavily in gold.

But archaeologists fear that a planned dam will flood the area and destroy yet-uncovered evidence of this first sub-Saharan kingdom.

Much of what is currently known about the kingdom of Kush, which covered parts of what is now northern Sudan, comes from Ancient Egyptian texts. The Kushites fought battles and traded materials, such as gold, with their Egyptian neighbours.

For many years, researchers had thought that the kingdom of Kush extended some 600 kilometres from the last stretch of the Nile in Egypt to the point at which the river starts to turn in northern Sudan. But a team of archaeologists led by Geoff Emberling at the Oriental Institute Museum in Chicago, Illinois, US, has uncovered new evidence to support the idea that sometime between 2000 BC and 1500 BC, the Kushite territory reached at least 300 kilometres further down the Nile, to the town of Hosh-el-Geruf.

At a point along the Nile near Hosh-el-Geruf, the archaeologists unearthed 55 grinding stones made of the granite-like rock gneiss. "This large number of grinding stones and other tools used to crush and grind [gold] ore shows that the site was a centre for organised gold production," says Emberling.

"This is the first concrete evidence of gold extraction from the Kingdom of Kush," he adds.

Bruce Williams, another member of the team, explains that the scale of gold production they found must have required the direct oversight by the Kush kingdom in order to function. "[The Kushites] weren't just projecting power to this part of what is now Sudan, they were projecting organisation."

Without proper oversight and security, the area would have been vulnerable to attack and conflicts between gold scavengers. "The opportunities for mischief are really huge," says Williams.

The team also uncovered a burial site nearby where they found individuals laid to rest in typical Kushite fashion alongside burial items such as black-topped drinking beakers.

The researchers fear, however, that a planned flooding of this and nearby areas due to the construction of a dam at Merowe will destroy as yet undiscovered artefacts belonging to the Kush kingdom.

[floatingslowly]

an actual recording of the loudest noise my ears have ever heard (they were still ringing 10 days later):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RxY1PhkBnY


what did you say dude?

[alteredcourse]

found it !

[Пятхъдесят Шест]

Odd and loud occurrence happened in these parts yesterday:

Officials say sonic boom was made by an F-16
BY JON NYATAWA
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

It was just before 11 a.m. Wednesday when a Bellevue police captain heard the boom.

Herb Evers was in the city's fleet maintenance facility, talking to a mechanic.

"The windows in the garage doors rattled," Evers said. "It was like you could feel the concussion."

He thought a plane had exploded and called the base police at Offutt Air Force Base. The person who answered the phone said, "Yeah, I know. We heard it, too."

They weren't alone.

People heard the boom from Cunningham Lake on Omaha's northern edge to Cass County, from La Vista to the west end of Council Bluffs.

Sarpy County emergency dispatchers fielded about 100 calls, while Douglas County dispatchers were just as busy. OPPD also received a number of calls.

Officials ruled out several possibilities: fire, explosion, earthquake, meteorite.

So what caused metro-area residents to momentarily question their safety around 11 a.m. Wednesday?

An F-16 exceeding the speed of sound, an event known as a sonic boom.

The fighter plane, which can fly at twice the speed of sound, took off from McEntire Joint National Guard Base in Eastover, S.C., and was flying over the central United States, said Lt. Col. Les Carroll, a McEntire base spokesman.

Offutt has no planes that can make a sonic boom.

Carroll said planes aren't legally allowed to fly fast enough to create a sonic boom over U.S. land, except over some remote areas. They do conduct training missions over the ocean, where speed isn't restricted the same way.

"It's rare," he said. "I'm sure . . . they didn't intend to do it."

Carroll did not identify the plane's destination, but said it was scheduled for a paint job.

The lower the aircraft is traveling, the louder a sonic boom would sound, said Ken Plotkin, chief scientist at Wyle Laboratories in Virginia.

He said sonic booms aren't dangerous, but they can be startling to unsuspecting people and damaging to fragile objects, such as glass.

[Tokolosh]

 

http://www.hetemeel.com/einsteinform.php

[king_buzzo]

Originally Posted by Tokolosh

 

http://www.hetemeel.com/einsteinform.php

whoa

[king_buzzo]

[IMG]http://img.hetemeel.com/einsteinshow.php?text=%0D%0A%0D%0A%0D%0AYou+sir%2C +are+a+n00b.+%3A%29[/IMG]

[IMG]http://img.hetemeel.com/einsteinshow.php?text=%0D%0A%0D%0AYou%27re+not+jus t+a+duck%2C+You%27re+human.+%0D%0AYOU+ARE+HUMAN%21 %21%21[/IMG]

[king_buzzo]

son of a bitch, shit. I hate this board sometimes. it wont put somepics into img tags...

[Hip Priest]

I'm watching the very heavy rain that's just started.

[Hip Priest]

Ancient trade-off may explain why humans get HIV

* 19:00 21 June 2007
* NewScientist.com news service
* Roxanne Khamsi

A protein that protected our human ancestors against a virus that ravaged other primates may now be responsible for our susceptibility to HIV, a new study suggests.

The discovery could help scientists predict which viruses found in other species are most likely to cross over and lethally infect humans.

The idea that early humans had an immune system that differed from other primates first came about after biologists sequenced the chimp genome.

The chimp sequence contains 130 copies of a virus called Pan troglodytes endogenous retrovirus, or PtERV1. Retroviruses often have the ability to insert themselves into an organism's DNA. But PtERV1 is completely absent from the human genome.

Reviving ancient life

Studies have also shown that the human version of an antiviral protein called TRIM5-alpha differs dramatically to the version of this protein found in other primate species. TRIM5-alpha offers immune protection by binding to virus-containing capsules inside cells and prompting their destruction.

Michael Emerman at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, US, and colleagues decided to test whether our unique version of TRIM5-alpha could explain why PtERV1 did not invade our genome.

The team generated TRIM5-alpha from human, chimp and gorilla genes in order to see how well various versions of the protein protected against PtERV1 in cat cells grown in a laboratory dish.

There was one problem though: active versions of PtERV1 no longer exist and the copies of this retrovirus found in primate DNA are woefully degraded.

So Emerman's team looked for commonalities among the chimp versions of the virus to partly reconstruct the ancient form of PtERV1. From this ancient sequence they produced part of the PtERV1-containing capsule, and attached it to a harmless mouse virus.

HIV vulnerability

About 4% of the cat cells exposed to this resurrected PtERV1 capsule combination became infected within a day. And those cat cells that also contained the gorilla version of TRIM5-alpha did no better.

But human TRIM5-alpha protected the cat cells, leaving them 100 times less susceptible to PtERV1 infection – only 0.04% of the cells became infected.

On the flipside, Emerman notes that the human version of TRIM5-alpha does not recognise the capsule containing HIV inside cells, whereas other primate versions of this protein can.

Non-human primates do not normally get infected with HIV. So he speculates that the same attributes of TRIM5-alpha that make it effective against PtERV1 might explain why it cannot bind and destroy HIV.

Emerman suggests that monitoring how well the human version of TRIM5-alpha protects against viruses related to HIV, could help scientists predict which pathogens have the potential to cross into our species from other primates.

Journal reference: Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.1140579)

[king_buzzo]

hooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<< <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< <<Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuoooooooooooo ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooohhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[ALIEN ANAL]

i just got a msg from someone i don't know saying

"sorry woogy cant make it tonight, I'm menstruating"

hahahah what an odd msg to accidently send to someone

[jon boy]

it hasnt stopped raining for two days now. its like a nick cave novel.

[Hip Priest]

Originally Posted by jon boy

it hasnt stopped raining for two days now. its like a nick cave novel.

I'm quite enjoying it. Mind you, I don't live on a floodplain; I saw the pictures from Sheffield and they don't look good.

[Пятхъдесят Шест]

Nearly forgot to update the Gold Cup, which concluded yesterday, with the United States coming out on top again, at Mexico's expense (joyous occasion!).

Benny Feilhaber's monster, game winning goal.

The Spanish broadcast is always more exciting.

[Hip Priest]

Wasim Akram : The Greatest bowler of all time.

Best delivery ever bowled in cricket ? (the whole thing is superb, but the ball bowled by Wasim at Approx 1:08 is the one in question).

Wasim Akram is a true sporting hero.

[Пятхъдесят Шест]

I only wish I understood cricket a bit more, I'm sure its simple, and I see the obvious similarities baseball shares with it.

Strange song choice for the video.

[Hip Priest]

Yes indeed, awful track. I've put a second one up. I was hoping to find a partiular hat-trick he took against England; I'm still searching.

Cricket is one of mankind's cowning achievements, in my opinion.

[nicfit]

I thought you were talkin' about the SY Gossip Tribute Albums thing .
OH, what would you suggest to "replace" Buffy? Which shows are funny/smart enough? I already watched firefly...

[nicfit]

Nooouh, I mean, something to watch instead of buffy's reruns/dvds episodes... (ha ha, you still remember that link??)