Outta My Way

 

Ancient Writing Finally Deciphered

Artists and archeology

(photo credit: ITSIK MAROM)

The ancient language of Linear Elamite may have finally been deciphered, according to a peer-reviewed paper recently published in the journal Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie (Journal of Assyriology and Near Eastern Archaeology).


The findings, based on a set of ancient silver vessels, propose a new method for decoding Linear Elamite's symbols, according to the Smithsonian magazine.


“This is one of the major archaeological discoveries of the last decades,” said Massimo Vidale, an archaeologist at the University of Padua who was not involved in the research. “It was based on the same approach of Champollion’s breakthrough – identifying and reading phonetically the names of kings.”


The language originates in the 5000-year-old city of Susa, in what today is southwestern Iran. An ancient urban oasis and the capital of Elam, Susa was one of the first places to use written symbols in its bustling society.


French archeologists in the early 20th century uncovered the first evidence of a writing system nearly as old, or older, than Sumerian cuneiform that used a different set of symbols. 

The system appeared to have fallen out of use, but after a few hundred years a new written language popped up which scholars have named Linear Elamite. The previous Elamite writing system was called Proto-Elamite.  READ MORE...

Excited Dog

 

Alleged Mafia Gambling Hangout

Sal's Shoe Repair in Merrick, New York, was doing more than fixing heels and worn soles.

The Genovese organized crime family operated an illegal gambling operation out of the shop, generating "substantial revenue," which was then laundered through cash transfers, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn said.

Nine purported members and associates of the Genovese and Bonanno organized crime families were charged Tuesday with racketeering and illegal gambling offenses for running gambling parlors out of other legitimate-seeming establishments in Queens and on Long Island, including a coffee bar and La Nazionale Soccer Club.


Salvatore Rubino, 58, known as "Sal the Shoemaker," was among those arrested, prosecutors said.

A Nassau County police detective, Hector Rosario, is also among the defendants. He allegedly accepted money from the Bonanno family in exchange for offering to arrange police raids of competing gambling locations, according to the indictment. He is charged with obstructing a grand jury investigation and lying to the FBI.  READ MORE...

Kitten Eating Fish

 

Webb Discovers Galaxy That Could Break Physics

 

Iceland

 

Mountain Top City

 

Early Church by Sea of Galilee

The mosaic more than 1,500 years old cites the church’s donor and a plea for intercession that shores up the case of el-Araj as Bethsaida and the basilica as the Church of the Apostles

An inscription with a plea to St. Peter found at the archaeological site of el-Araj strongly supports the case that this is the lost city of Bethsaida and that the basilica there is the Church of the Apostles, a discovery likely to further buoy Christian tourism at the Sea of Galilee.

The mosaic was filthy, as is the case with inscriptions buried in silt for more than 1,500 years. Cleaning it off in the blistering heat of this summer’s excavation season at el-Araj – right by the Ottoman mansion Beit HaBek – was the season’s highlight, say archaeologists Prof. Mordechai Aviam and Prof. R. Steven Notley.

El-Araj is on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee and isn’t the only candidate for the biblical village of Bethsaida on which the Roman polis of Julias arose. 

The New Testament is inconsistent about the abode of Peter and his brother Andrew, but the evidence points to Bethsaida as their home, not the fishing village of Capernaum, many researchers say.  READ MORE...

Underwater Creature

 

Red Star Betelgeuse Had Explosion

NASA Says Restless Red Giant Star Betelgeuse Had an Unprecedented Explosion

Its famous dimming event from a few years ago turns out to be evidence of a recent explosion rather than an imminent supernova.

Massive red supergiant star Betelgeuse is at the end of its life span, at least on cosmic timescales, but the gargantuan fireball is going out kicking and screaming.

Astronomers used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and other observatories to determine that the senior star actually blew off part of its surface in 2019.

"We've never before seen a huge mass ejection of the surface of a star. We are left with something going on that we don't completely understand," Andrea Dupree, from the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said in a statement.

"It's a totally new phenomenon that we can observe directly and resolve surface details with Hubble. We're watching stellar evolution in real time."  READ MORE...

Morning Deer

 

Prehistoric Grave Contains Gold Rings

ARCHAEOLOGISTS HAVE UNCOVERED A PREHISTORIC GRAVE CONTAINING 169 GOLD RINGS NEAR THE BIHARIA COMMUNE IN BIHOR COUNTY, CRIȘANA, ROMANIA.

The discovery was made during construction works for a new road that connects the city of Oradea with the A3 highway.

Excavations were conducted from march till the end of June by a multi-national team representing institutions from across Romania and Hungary, revealing three sites from the Neolithic Period, two from the middle to late Bronze Age, two from the Roman Period, and two sites from the Middle Ages.

In a press release announced by the Tarii Crisurilor Museum, archaeologists excavating near Biharia found the grave of a woman belonging to the Tiszapolgár culture.

The Tiszapolgár culture (4500–4000 BC), was an Eneolithic archaeological culture of the Great Hungarian Plain, the Banat, Crișana and Transylvania, Eastern Slovakia, and the Ukrainian Zakarpattia Oblast in Central Europe.  READ MORE...

Hungry Duck

 

Not Too Smart

 

Walking After Eating Lowers Diabetes

Sometimes it can be difficult to get in the full 150-minutes of moderate-intensity activity every week. Between meetings and making dinner, or cleaning the kitchen and preparing for presentations, movement can sometimes take a back seat. 

But, new research found that just two minutes of walking (yes, really!) can have a positive impact on your blood sugar levels and potentially ward off type 2 diabetes.

A meta-analysis of seven studies, published in the journal Sports Medicine, examined the impact of sitting for long periods of time compared to either light-intensity walking or standing on cardiometabolic health markers.

Study participants were either placed in a walking or standing group and were instructed to walk or stand for two to five minutes every 20 to 30 minutes over the course of one day. Two of the seven studies included participants with and without diabetes. 

The remaining five included participants without any history of diabetes. Researchers found that even these few minutes of slow walking were enough to create a drop in blood sugar levels.

Specifically, walking within 60 to 90 minutes after eating (when blood sugar levels are at their peak) was associated with more gradual changes in blood sugar levels compared to sitting or standing. 

This is important for those with prediabetes or another type of diabetes looking to avoid dramatic blood sugar swings.

Researchers measured heart health through systolic blood pressure (the higher number that represents the force at which the heart pumps blood around the body), postprandial glucose (a measure of glucose in your bloodstream within four hours of eating a meal), and insulin (the hormone that regulates blood sugar).

The study did not find any significant influence on insulin or blood pressure. Additionally, the research found standing also helped lower blood sugar levels, but not to the same degree as walking.  READ MORE...

Geese

 

Europe Faces Historic Drought

Water levels in rivers across Europe are dropping in the historic drought, revealing “hunger stones” 

carved with centuries-old warnings of famine and hardship. PETR DAVID JOSEK AP

Water levels have dropped in major rivers across Europe as the region suffers under a historic drought. In those dry riverbeds, centuries-old warning messages have emerged, locals report. 

The “horrifying” boulders are known as “Hungersteine,” or “Hunger Stones,” local German reporter Olaf Koens said in an Aug. 11 tweet. 

One of these stones is embedded in the Elbe River, which runs from the mountains of Czechia through Germany to the North Sea, POLITICO journalist Aitor Hernández-Morales tweeted the same day.

The stone, dating back to a drought in 1616, is once again visible in the dry riverbed, Hernández-Morales said. The warning reads, “Wenn du mich seehst, dann weine” – “If you see me, weep.” 

“Hunger stones” like this one were used as “hydrological landmarks” across central Europe, NPR reported when the stones last surfaced during a 2018 drought.

These stones are “chiselled with the years of hardship and the initials of authors lost to history,” a team of Czech researchers wrote in a 2013 study. “The basic inscriptions warn of the consequences of drought. 

It expressed that drought had brought a bad harvest, lack of food, high prices and hunger for poor people.” The stones commemorate historic droughts, the researchers said.  READ MORE...

Sleeping Cats

 

Ignition in a Fusion Experiment

A major breakthrough in nuclear fusion has been confirmed a year after it was achieved at a laboratory in California.

Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's (LLNL's) National Ignition Facility (NIF) recorded the first case of ignition on August 8, 2021, the results of which have now been published in three peer-reviewed papers.

Nuclear fusion is the process that powers the Sun and other stars: heavy hydrogen atoms collide with enough force that they fuse together to form a helium atom, releasing large amounts of energy as a by-product. Once the hydrogen plasma "ignites", the fusion reaction becomes self-sustaining, with the fusions themselves producing enough power to maintain the temperature without external heating.

Ignition during a fusion reaction essentially means that the reaction itself produced enough energy to be self-sustaining, which would be necessary in the use of fusion to generate electricity.

If we could harness this reaction to generate electricity, it would be one of the most efficient and least polluting sources of energy possible. No fossil fuels would be required as the only fuel would be hydrogen, and the only by-product would be helium, which we use in industry and are actually in short supply of.  READ MORE...