Platypuses have no nipples. After the young hatch, the mother oozes milk from the pores all over her body.
The male platypus has a poison barb on the inside of its hind legs. The purpose of this weapon is uncertain.
While often compared to the beaver, the platypus is only about 20 inches in length -- more comparable to the size of the muskrat.
The Platypus bill is actually just an elongated muzzle covered with much the same kind of tough skin found on a dog's nose. This bill contains an electrically-sensitive organ that can detect the electrical signatures of the small aquatic animals it eats.
Stevioside, the main sweet component in the leaves of the Stevia plant, tastes about 300 times sweeter than table sugar, which means only a small amount is needed for sweetening purposes. As the incidence of type-2 diabetes and obesity is sharply increasing, stevioside is an excellent substitute for sugar. The annual cost of treating these diseases is estimated at 5 billion euros in Belgium, 30 billion euros in Germany and 300 billion US dollars in the USA.
However, the European Commission in 2000 refused to approve Stevia and stevioside because of insufficient evidence for their safety. Now an international team of scientists, led by Jan Geuns and Johan Buyse of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (K.U.Leuven, Belgium), has published a book in which they prove that stevioside is completely safe for use as a sweetener.
Stevioside has numerous benefits as a sweetener: it is 100% natural, stable, contains no calories and promotes good dental health by reducing sugar intake. It can be used by diabetics, obese persons and patients suffering from phenylketonuria, an illness which requires a strict diet without artificial sweeteners such as aspartame. High concentrations of stevioside (250 mg three times daily) lower the blood pressure of hypertensive patients without affecting the blood biochemistry. No significant adverse effects have been observed, and stevioside intake does not affect male potency. It also has potential as a treatment for type-2 diabetes. (1) Comments posted about this in the forum
Contract Number MEST-CT-2004-514539 Project Title: Cultural Heritage Informatics Research Oriented Network (CHIRON) Job Title: fellow researcher on cultural heritage informatics Job Description: CHIRON aims at providing training opportunities to graduates wishing to start a research career in the field of IT applications to the research, conservation, and presentation of material Cultural Heritage.
The host institutions will provide research training according to the following scheme: PIN scrl - managing the document (PIN) • Archaeological documentation and standards • Archaeological databases (structured data from excavation and/or collections, texts, images, etc..) • User interfaces design, testing and evaluation • Web services and content management • Multimodal interfaces and wearable equipment (through collaborating institutions) • On-site experience and tool testing concerning data acquisition and management, multimedia creation and cultural communication, on a series of archaeological sites and museums of different sizes and periods (via collaborating institutions: antiquities authorities, archaeological departments, other research centers) in a Mediterranean environment • Archaeological use of IT for standing structures and monuments (data capture, documentation, communication, compatibility of contemporary actual use with preservation/museum use) University of the Aegean - creating the museum (UoA) • Theoretical background and practical training on museological issues • Design of cultural information systems • Communication of ICT information to different types of users • Design of VR applications • Evaluation of effect of ICT on end users in the cultural heritage sector • Study of use of ICT for contemporary cultural practice Ben-Gurion University - in the field (BGU) • Field experience in a Mediterranean/Near East environment, in particular in the desert • Use of IT in field archaeology: GIS, automatic field data acquisition, remote sensing and satellite imagery. • Collection management (in collaboration with the regional antiquity authorities) and re-use of pre-existing archaeological archives University of Brighton - technological and economic challenge (Brighton) • 3D modeling and real-time visualization • Interactive digital TV and multimedia production • Usability studies and Human Computer Interfaces • Cultural tourism and sustainability • Socio-economic impact of Cultural Heritage through monuments sites and museums • Business Innovation in Cultural Heritage Ename Center - managing communication and the public (Ename) • Structuring and managing data for use in public presentations • Design and development of on-site presentation applications for monuments and sites • Site technology management and evaluation • Participation in the formulation of public policy and standards for site interpretation • Adapting traditional interpretation forms (text panels, live guides, reconstructions) to a digital environment • Computer aided cultural routes • Integration of tourism and local development in cultural heritage projects • Integration of high-tech cultural heritage presentation techniques in non-technical teams University of York - digital preservation and access (UYork) • Electronic publication and digital preservation • Resource discovery; Internet technologies, metadata standards, interoperability • Database design and implementation; data structure, documentation and standards • CAD, GIS and VR modelling; web delivery of 3-D visualisation; terrain modelling; web- GIS ETH Zurich - visualizing the past (ETHZ) • Computer vision – complex texture analysis and synthesis • Virtual and augmented reality • Remote sensing and satellite imagery • Virtual archaeological reconstructions and worlds - procedural scene creation • 3D Data acquisition • Image-based content retrieval • Number of vacancies for the first year of project: PIN 2 UoA 1 BGU 1 Brighton 1 Ename 2 UYORK starting October 2005 1 ETHZ 1 For application send a complete CV and a letter of interest to one of the contact person(s): PIN - Sorin Hermon: UoA: Sofia Dascalopoulou: BGU: Isaac Gilead: Brighton: David Arnold: Ename - Daniel Pletinckx: UYork - Julian Richards: ETHZ - Luc Van Gool: More informations at the web-site(s): http://www.chiron-training.net ; www.chiron-training.org (0) Comments posted about this in the forum
Excavations by the University of Tübingen at Geißenklösterle Cave near the town of Blaubeuren in the Swabian Jura have produced a new musical instrument that dates to well over 30,000 years ago. The find is a flute that was carefully carved from mammoth ivory and documents the oldest musical tradition known worldwide. Nicholas Conard, the director of the research team, and colleagues report on this discovery in the current issue of the Archäologisches Korrespondenzblatt.
The ivory flute was discovered this year in connection with the detailed analysis of countless small fragments of carved mammoth ivory from Geißenklösterle. Thirty-one pieces of carved ivory have been assembled to form a flute with at least three finger-holes and a length of 18.7 cm. Together with two previously identified bird bone flutes from the same deposit, Geißenklösterle has produced the three oldest musical instruments known, and these finds demonstrates that origins of music can be traced back to the European Ice Age over 30,000 years ago.
The highly fragmented ivory flute lay at the base of the upper Aurignacian deposits at the site and is perhaps the oldest of the three instruments. The Aurignacian is the first cultural group of the Upper Paleolithic and dates to the period in which both the last Neanderthals and the first modern humans occupied Europe. These deposits at Geißenklösterle have produced 16 radiocarbon dates ranging between 30,000 and 36,000 years ago. Another dating method, thermoluminescence, has yielded two dates of ca. 37,000 years ago. The three flutes from Geißenklösterle are considerably older than any other musical instruments known and demonstrate that music played an important role in the lives of our Ice Age ancestors. (0) Comments posted about this in the forum
Written by Catarina Amorim (catarina.amorim@linacre.ox.ac.uk)
Dec 17, 2004 at 08:06 PM
Rhesus macaques communicate between themselves using a complex series of sounds that can signify things as distinct as the presence of danger, particular social relationships, emotions or food alerts. Now scientists in the latest issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, while analyzing the brain areas activated during the recognition of these sounds, found that not only do monkeys seem to interpret these sounds using abstract representations like humans but they also use analogue neural networks, a discovery that can help to understand the origins of language in humans.
Ricardo Gil-da-Costa, Alex Martin and colleagues at the National Institutes of Health and the Harvard University in USA and at the Gulbenkian Science Institute in Portugal used positron emission tomography, a technique which allows the measurement of the functioning of distinct areas of the human brain with the individual conscious and alert, to study in Rhesus monkeys the brain’s response to the sounds used for communication within the species.
They were particularly interested in understanding how the monkeys processed the information transmitted by these sounds and the relationship with the mechanisms for human’s conceptual representation. The team of scientists used calls known to be associated with pleasant feelings, such as food recognition and friendly approach, or unpleasant emotions, such as fear, and analysed which areas of the brain were activated in each circumstance. As controls, non-biological sounds such as those produced by musical instruments were used. (0) Comments posted about this in the forum
(0) Comments posted about this in the forum
The ivory flute was discovered this year in connection with the detailed analysis of countless small fragments of carved mammoth ivory from Geißenklösterle. Thirty-one pieces of carved ivory have been assembled to form a flute with at least three finger-holes and a length of 18.7 cm. Together with two previously identified bird bone flutes from the same deposit, Geißenklösterle has produced the three oldest musical instruments known, and these finds demonstrates that origins of music can be traced back to the European Ice Age over 30,000 years ago.
