Fire and water to unlock ‘internal clocks’ of archaeological objects

September 16th, 2009 UW student finds precious gem at Israeli digSEATTLE — A University of Washington student on an archaeological dig in Israel has discovered a 2,300-year-old gemstone carved with a portrait of Alexander the Great. UW associate professor Sarah Stroup says the discovery of the half-inch-long carnelian stone by student Megan Webb is an incredibly rare find.

September 1st, 2009 WASHINGTON - Chronic alcohol consumption blunts the biological clocks ability to synchronise daily activities with light, even days after the drinking ends, according to a new study. The study describes the changes that drinking can produce on the bodys masterclock and how it affects behaviour.

August 24th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A team of scientists is all set to test nearly 300 engraved stones in a new laboratory in Mexico, in order to decipher the ancient Zapoteca Writing. The laboratory will be operating at Monte Alban Archaeological Zone in Oaxaca, Mexico.

August 13th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Researchers have discovered that the circadian rhythms or biological "clocks" in some insects can make them far more susceptible to pesticides at certain times of the day than other. With further research, it may be possible to tap into this genetic characteristic, identify the times that a target insect is most vulnerable to a specific pesticide, and use that information to boost the effectiveness of a pesticide.

August 12th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A team of archaeologists has come across evidence which proves that the "Peking Man" was able to use fire roughly 200-000 to 500,000 years ago. "Peking Man" is referred to a group of fossil specimens, hundreds of thousands of years old, discovered in 1923-27 during excavations at Zhoukoudian near Beijing (at that time known as Peking), in China.

August 12th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have said that an experimental atomic clock based on ytterbium atoms is about four times more accurate than it was several years ago, giving it a precision comparable to that of the NIST-F1 cesium fountain clock, the civilian time standard of the US. NIST scientists evaluated the clock by measuring the natural frequency of ytterbium, carefully accounting for all possible deviations such as those caused by collisions between the atoms, and by using NIST-F1 as a "ruler" for comparison.

July 31st, 2009 WASHINGTON - NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is introducing a new Web site that will provide a centralized resource for information on near-Earth objects - those asteroids and comets that can approach Earth. The "Asteroid Watch" site also contains links for the interested public to sign up for NASA's new asteroid widget and Twitter account.

July 2nd, 2009 WASHINGTON - Dutch researcher Laurens van der Maaten has developed a new analytical technique that enables the computer to recognize archaeological material and fake works of art. According to a report in www.physorg.com, the technique not only enables the computer to better interpret the content of photos and images, but also of data.

June 17th, 2009 Washington, June 17 (ANI): A new study suggests that humans' expertise in recognising faces may be attributed to their tendency to see people and faces as individuals. Vanderbilt University researchers, who led the study, say that the same approach can be learnt and applied to other objects as well.

June 16th, 2009 WASHINGTON - An innovative sky survey has begun returning images that will be used to detect unprecedented numbers of powerful cosmic explosions called supernovae in distant galaxies, variable brightness stars in our own Milky Way, and reveal new classes of astronomical objects. All of these discoveries will stem from the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) survey, which combines, in a new way, the power of a wide-field telescope, a high-resolution camera, and high-performance networking and computing, with rapid follow-up by telescopes around the globe, to open windows of discovery for astronomers.

May 26th, 2009 LONDON - Scientists are relying on fire and water to date archaeological objects by unlocking their "internal clocks", with this simple yet novel method promising to be as significant for dating ceramic materials as radiocarbon has become for organic materials such as bone or wood. Researchers from the Universities of Manchester and Edinburgh, behind the new technique, called it "rehydroxylation dating" to be used on fired clay ceramics like bricks, tile and pottery.

May 12th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Egypt's Culture Minister Farouk Hosni has said that researches conducted via satellites have confirmed the existence of 132 archaeological sites in Egypt that witnessed no excavations until now. Farouk Hosni said that Egypt shows full cooperation with the research teams to explore the archaeological sites, and has recently issued a number of laws seeking to stop the illegal digging in areas likely to contain the buried monuments.

April 14th, 2009 WASHINGTON - In a new study, a team of scientists has proposed the concept, principles and techniques of active optical clock. The study was done at the Institute of Quantum Electronics, School of Electronics Engineering and Computer Science, Peking University.

March 23rd, 2009 WASHINGTON - As the Euphrates River dries up in Iraq's western Anbar province, ancient buildings are emerging from the river bed, which archaeologists can now access for the first time. According to a report by NPR (National Public Radio), the receding waters of the Euphrates River have revealed ancient archaeological sites, some of which were unknown until now.

March 19th, 2009 WASHINGTON - With the aid of a new method developed by scientists in Germany, the output frequency of the atomic fountains clocks has become more stable. At present, Caesium fountain clocks are the most accurate clocks in the world, furnishing the second accurate to 15 places after the decimal point.