[DrCaleb]

$1:

A 2,000-year-old stylus makes a point about ancient Roman humor



"I have come from the City. I bring you a welcome gift with a sharp point that you may remember me,” reads the Latin inscription on the 2,000-year-old iron stylus. “I ask, if fortune allowed, that I might be able [to give] as generously as the way is long [and] as my purse is empty." The “City" almost certainly refers to Rome, and the souvenir stylus essentially boasts a more flowery version of today’s “I went to Rome, and all I brought you was this pen.”

The stylus dates to around 70 CE—about 20 years after the founding of Roman Londinium, a decade after a Celtic uprising burned it to the ground and about 50 years before the first stones were laid for Hadrian’s Wall. It’s among 14,000 artifacts unearthed during the construction of Bloomberg’s European headquarters starting in 2013, and conservators are finally ready to put it on display.

. . .

Cheap though it may have been, the ancient souvenir certainly does have a sharp point. It shows us the links between far-flung parts of the Roman Empire, and it reminds us that ancient people had the same personalities, quirks, and (occasionally terrible) senses of humor as people today.

Tourism, in particular, hasn’t changed much in two or three millennia. Archaeologists working in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings found Greek and Latin graffiti in the tomb of Pharaoh Ramses VI, who ruled from 1132 to 1125 BCE. They say it dated from around 332 BCE, when Alexander the Great conquered Egypt, to the fall of the Roman Empire around 476 CE.

Many of the hastily etched comments would look right at home among modern Yelp reviews. “I visited, and I did not like anything except the sarcophagus!" wrote one visitor. "I cannot read the hieroglyphs!” complained another. The tomb walls even contain comments on the original “posts” from other visitors: “Why do you care that you cannot read the hieroglyphs?” some ancient Roman visitor wrote in response to the comment above. “I do not understand your concern.”

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/07 ... man-humor/

[stratos]

$1:

Many of the hastily etched comments would look right at home among modern Yelp reviews. “I visited, and I did not like anything except the sarcophagus!" wrote one visitor. "I cannot read the hieroglyphs!” complained another. The tomb walls even contain comments on the original “posts” from other visitors: “Why do you care that you cannot read the hieroglyphs?” some ancient Roman visitor wrote in response to the comment above. “I do not understand your concern.”

Ancient Social Media

[llama66]

Carmina libri was big back then.

[DrCaleb]

[DrCaleb]

$1:

North Atlantic right whales in crisis - and the people risking lives to save them

Once hunted to near extinction, North Atlantic right whales are now facing new human threats that could end the species. Here are the people risking their lives to save them.

For whale rescuer Mackie Greene, there's no feeling in the world like seeing fishing ropes slip free of from a trapped whale.

"It's almost like you could get out of the boat and run home," he says.

"It's like you're bouncing that high - and they must be able to hear us for miles cause you're hollering and hooting and the whole way in."

There's a flipside though: the times when the Campobello Whale Rescue Team head home with little to show for their efforts.

That was the case when they returned to Shippagan, a New Brunswick fishing village, after a long day on the water.

Three entangled North Atlantic right whales had recently been seen in the area and a rescue mission launched. Aerial surveillance had spotted one of the whales about 40 miles (65km) offshore and Greene's team headed out.

They got close enough to the animal - which can weigh up to 70 tonnes and grow to over 55 feet, about the length of a bowling lane - to see fishing rope wrapped around the tail stock and cutting deep into its flesh.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-48998569

[DrCaleb]

$1:

High-Luminosity LHC: Diggers at work 100 meters underground

Dig, dig, dig. One hundred meters underground, excavation work is under way for the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider project. This next-generation LHC, which will begin operation in 2026, will reach luminosities five to ten times higher than its predecessor. This increased number of collisions will increase the chances of observing rare processes.

https://phys.org/news/2019-08-high-lumi ... round.html

[DrCaleb]

$1:

Myth about how science progresses is built on a misreading of the story of penicillin

Many professions have creation myths about much-revered pioneers. For nursing, it is Florence Nightingale in Scutari, flitting between beds bearing her lamp. For engineers, it is Isambard Kingdom Brunel, driving railway lines across the countryside and building ships. These myths often tell us more about how professions want to be seen than about the historic events on which they are based.

One of the myths in medical science is the discovery of penicillin. It has been retold to generations of school children: Alexander Fleming came back from his holidays in 1928 to his laboratory at St Mary's Hospital in London and looked at some petri dishes before throwing them away. On one of the dishes he sees a mould growing, with a clearing around it where the bacteria had been killed. A eureka moment allows him to deduce that the fungus is releasing a molecule that kills the bacteria.

The action then moves to Oxford where Howard Florey and Ernst Chain discover how to isolate the molecule, now called penicillin. They realise the importance of the drug for the war effort, and with the help of American companies, large amounts of penicillin arrive just in time to treat wounded allied soldiers during World War II. The curtain call is taken by Fleming, Chain and Florey when they win a Nobel Prize in 1945.

This is a very satisfying story. It includes the serendipity of a contaminated culture dish (the Fountains Abbey pub in nearby Praed Street makes unlikely claims that the mould came from their beer, tying the discovery of penicillin into British culture). It involves a moment of effortless brilliance, with Fleming seeing the implications of the clearing. It describes research working out in a predictable and rapid manner; once Fleming saw the dish, it was just a matter of time before the wonder drug started saving lives.

Much of this is wrong.

https://phys.org/news/2019-08-myth-scie ... story.html

[stratos]

"During the invasion of Sicily, when penicillin was still in short supply, some argued that it should be reserved for wounded soldiers, rather than to relieve "scallywags" of the consequences of their own indiscretions."

And a time honored way of getting out of fighting was removed.

Interesting and informative. I heard the same story about seeing the mold when he got back from vacation and eureka miracle drug discovered.

[DrCaleb]

stratos stratos:

"During the invasion of Sicily, when penicillin was still in short supply, some argued that it should be reserved for wounded soldiers, rather than to relieve "scallywags" of the consequences of their own indiscretions."

And a time honored way of getting out of fighting was removed.

Interesting and informative. I heard the same story about seeing the mold when he got back from vacation and eureka miracle drug discovered.

I laughed at that too.

$1:

Did penicillin help win the war? It certainly saved thousands of soldiers from dying of gangrene and sepsis. But its greatest contribution to the war effort may have been the treatment of gonorrhoea, helping keep the army at full strength.

Edit:

stratos stratos:

Interesting and informative. I heard the same story about seeing the mold when he got back from vacation and eureka miracle drug discovered.

There are a lot of myths that everyone believes are true. I'm about 'truth', so I'm always happy to shatter those myths when I can.

The point about the actual discovery of penicillin is that it wasn't an accident. Science is hard, and it takes a lot of hard work to make a discovery. They don't just fall into your lap.

[raydan]

Is the "microwaves and chocolate bar" story true?

[DrCaleb]

raydan raydan:

Is the "microwaves and chocolate bar" story true?

That the microwave oven was partially discovered by a melting chocolate bar?

True!

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/4003 ... microwave/

[stratos]

Oh man never freaking knew about that. So freaking cool.

[DrCaleb]

$1:

2 experimental Ebola drugs show positive results, will 'undoubtedly save lives'

$1:

A health worker disinfects an ambulance transporting a suspected Ebola patient to the newly constructed Doctors Without Borders Ebola treatment centre in Goma, Congo, on Aug. 4. On Monday, scientists said two experimental drugs were proving to be effective in the fight against the disease. (Baz Ratner/Reuters)

Scientists are a step closer to finding the first effective treatments for the deadly Ebola hemorrhagic fever after two potential drugs showed survival rate of as much as 90 per cent in a clinical trial in Congo.

Two experimental drugs — Regeneron's REGN-EB3 and a monoclonal antibody called mAb114 — were developed using antibodies harvested from survivors of Ebola infection.

The treatments are going to be offered to all patients in Congo, according to U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

They showed "clearly better" results in patients in a trial of four potential treatments being conducted during the world's second largest Ebola outbreak in history, now entering its second year in Congo.

The drugs improved survival rates from the disease more than two other treatments being tested — ZMapp, made by Mapp Biopharmaceutical, and Remdesivir, made by Gilead Sciences — and those products will be dropped, said Anthony Fauci, one of the researchers co-leading the trial.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/ebola-dr ... -1.5244200

[DrCaleb]

$1:

The banana is one step closer to disappearing





A fungus that has wreaked havoc on banana plantations in the Eastern Hemisphere has, despite years of preventative efforts, arrived in the Americas.

ICA, the Colombian agriculture and livestock authority, confirmed on Thursday that laboratory tests have positively identified the presence of so-called Panama disease Tropical Race 4 on banana farms in the Caribbean coastal region. The announcement was accompanied by a declaration of a national state of emergency.

The discovery of the fungus represents a potential impending disaster for bananas as both a food source and an export commodity. Panama disease Tropical Race 4—or TR4—is an infection of the banana plant by a fungus of the genus Fusarium. Although bananas produced in infected soil are not unsafe for humans, infected plants eventually stop bearing fruit.


Spreading fast

First identified in Taiwanese soil samples in the early 1990s, the destructive fungus remained long confined to Southeast Asia and Australia, until its presence was confirmed in both the Middle East and Africa in 2013. Experts feared an eventual appearance in Latin America, the epicenter of the global banana export industry.

“Once you see it, it is too late, and it has likely already spread outside that zone without recognition,” says Gert Kema, Professor of Tropical Phytopathology at Wageningen University in the Netherlands whose lab analyzed soil samples to confirm TR4 in Colombia, as well as in earlier outbreaks.

No known fungicide or biocontrol measure has proven effective against TR4. “As far as I know, ICA and the farms are doing a good job in terms of containment, but eradication is almost impossible,” says Fernando García-Bastidas, a Colombian phytopathologist who coordinated testing.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/envi ... ng-future/

[DrCaleb]

$1:

Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides

Bees, butterflies, and other insects are under attack by the very plants they feed on as U.S. agriculture continues to use chemicals known to kill.



America’s agricultural landscape is now 48 times more toxic to honeybees, and likely other insects, than it was 25 years ago, almost entirely due to widespread use of so-called neonicotinoid pesticides, according to a new study published today in the journal PLOS One.

This enormous rise in toxicity matches the sharp declines in bees, butterflies, and other pollinators as well as birds, says co-author Kendra Klein, senior staff scientist at Friends of the Earth US.

“This is the second Silent Spring. Neonics are like a new DDT, except they are a thousand times more toxic to bees than DDT was,” Klein says in an interview.

Using a new tool that measures toxicity to honey bees, the length of time a pesticide remains toxic, and the amount used in a year, Klein and researchers from three other institutions determined that the new generation of pesticides has made agriculture far more toxic to insects. Honey bees are used as a proxy for all insects. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency does the same thing when requiring toxicity data for pesticide registration purposes, she explained.

The study found that neonics accounted for 92 percent of this increased toxicity. Neonics are not only incredibly toxic to honeybees, they can remain toxic for more than 1,000 days in the environment, said Klein.

“The good news is that we don’t need neonics,” she says. “We have four decades of research and evidence that agroecological farming methods can grow our food without decimating pollinators.”

“It’s stunning. This study reveals the buildup of toxic neonics in the environment, which can explain why insect populations have declined,” says Steve Holmer of American Bird Conservancy.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/envi ... riculture/