The chameleon snake and a nanotube film

The Kapuas mud snake, Enhydris gyii, was recently discovered in the forests of Borneo. It is the first new snake species to be discovered in over 5 years. The snake is venemous, measures half a metre in length and is capable of changing colour.

Scientists at Rice University have produced a film clip of carbon nanotubes, using standard optical microscopes and video cameras. The nanotubes in the film are in a drop of soapy water trapped between two pieces of glass. A fluorescent dye in the water droplet makes the nanotubes visible. The film shows that the nanotubes can be bent, or 'plucked' like guitar strings, when bombarded by individual water molecules.

Carbon nanotubes are 100 times stronger than steel despite being only one-billionth of a metre in diameter; by comparison, a human hair has a diameter of 80,000 nanometres).

Discovery of 100,000-year-old jewellery

These beads, discovered by archaeologists and dated to 100,000 years ago, are the oldest known examples of jewellery.

The ancient ornaments were found at Oued Djebbana and Skhul, in what are now Algeria and Israel, respectively. They are made from the shells of Nassarius gibbosulus, a marine gastropod, and are perforated, so it seems that they were hung around the neck or wrist.

The Algerian site is 120km from the sea, so the presence of shells at the site provides evidence that they were traded and transported. The discovery of the beads therefore suggests that human culture emerged far earlier than was previously thought.

The leggiest animal in the world is rediscovered

(Nature)

The millipede Illacme plenipes is the leggiest animal in the world - an adult of this ancient species can have up to 750 legs.

There are 10,000 known species of millipede; this particular one is extremely rare, and has only been seen once before, over 80 years ago in California.

The scanning electron micrographs above show the complex internal structure of I. plenipes. The fine hairs covering each segment (visible in c and d, above) secrete a silky substance whose function is yet to be determined. The image on the bottom right shows the male copulatory organ.

I smell something fishy about this...

According to Seed Magazine, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency will be spending $15 million next year on the "Unique Signiture Detection Project," the aim of which is to be able to identify terrorists from scents secreted in bodily fluids.

The project is based on the idea, for which there is little evidence, that the Major Histocompatability Complex (MHC) genes of the immune system are responsible for a unique odour given off by every person.

NSA to Digg social bookmarks for personal data

Let's face it: what the U.S. and British governments refer to as 'intelligence' is actually nothing of the kind. The information obtained by the so-called intelligence agencies is often inaccurate or completely wrong, and there have been tragic consequences as a result, such as the killing of Jean Charles de Menesez two years ago and, more recently, the fumbled 'terror raid' in Forest Gate.

According to New Scientist, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) "is funding research into the mass harvesting of information [from] social networks".

The popularity of social bookmarking sites such as Digg, del.icio.us and Blinklist has grown enormously in recent months. These sites are part of the 'semantic web', a project to create a universal medium for the exchange of information, based on placing documents whose meaning (or semantics) can be processed by computers, and information from them could easily be combined with other personal data from online banking and retail records. Social bookmarking allows for the easy sharing of information between people of similar interests and, therefore, the creation of online 'communities' focused around a particular topic.

The revelation that the White House has been tapping telephones and logging calls since the attacks on the World Trade Centre shocked Americans. More recently, the Bush administration requested internet search data from companies such as Google, Yahoo and MSN in an effort to harvest information about suspected terrorists.

A paper entitled Semantic Analytics on Social Networks, presented at the W3C web standards organization's WWW2006 conference in Edinburgh last month, reveals how much personal information can be obtained by mining the social web. The paper describes work by an international research team that is partly funded by Advanced Research Development Activity (ARDA), a U.S. government agency whose main aim, according to a Congressional Research Service report, is to analyse data obtained by the NSA.

This is no mean feat, as the NSA is accumulating data at the rate of millions of gigabytes a month. But perhaps the NSA should bear something in mind: as policemen trying to infiltrate paedophile rings well know, people are not always completely truthful abouot their online identity. The intelligence obtained by mining social web data may not, therefore, be as 'intelligent' as they would hope.

Al-Zarqawi killed in air raid

"Arguably, over the last several years, no single person on this planet has had the blood of more innocent men, women and children on his hands that Zarqawi."

U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The names of two people who certainly do have more blood on their hands than Zarqawi immediately spring to mind: Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush.

Nour speaks from behind bars

Below is a translation of a letter written by Ayman Nour, smuggled out of prison by his wife (from The Arabist).

Nour is the founder of the Egyptian political opposition party Ghad. He was charged with forging signatures to register his party, which was formed in October 2004. The U.S. pressed the Egyptian government into delaying his trial until last year's presidential election, in which Nour won 8% of the votes, a result he insisted was rigged.

After the election, Nour was put on trial for fraud, and the jury delivered a verdict of guilty. Nour is now serving a 5-year term in prison. His imprisonment is politically motivated, serving to stifle his calls for reform of the Egyptian political system.

30 May 2006. Tura Mazraa Prison, South Cairo.

From: Ayman Nour

To: Esteemed Members of the European Union Deputy Head of the European
Parliament

I address this very short letter to you and to all the honorable and free people in the world, to all the representatives of the free people and those whose consciences refuse oppression, injustice, false accusations and merciless murder.

My letter is very short due to the circumstances out of my control restricting my freedom and depriving me of my human rights, the foremost of which is the right to write, express and reject the injustice and suffering I am subjected to!!

The day my freedom was taken away in January 2005, your great efforts –after God and combined with the efforts of my supporters- played a crucial role in my release. The first faces I saw –an honor to me- were the faces of a delegation of European male and female parliament representatives. Your visit to me during my imprisonment is not only reason for breaking the doors of this prison and my temporary release, it also gave me the possibility of exercising my right in running for the first presidential election. I was imprisoned to prevent me from running for the election in January 2005. With God’s grace and the enthusiasm of the reformists
I was able to come in second to the president and be the only competitor to him
and his son despite the rigging and all forms of injustice, defamation and
changing the results. I also paid an extra price when my constituency’s election
results were rigged thus causing me to lose my permanent seat in the parliament
due to blatant rigging. Some of you were in Cairo and witnessed a part of the
tragedy.

Today I pay a new and high price as punishment for having run for the presidential election. I am also being prevented from continuing the democratic reform path in Egypt so that the current regime can strengthen its presence by claiming there is no alternative for it other than fundamentalism and terrorism, thus forcing people inside and outside Egypt to accept its presence.

Unfortunately, ladies and gentlemen, I do not pay this price alone. My children, family, party, my whole generation and all the reformists in this country pay the price, too. I lost my freedom, my work as a lawyer, journalist and chairman of the first and only civil political party to be established in a quarter of a century, the duration of Mubarak’s rule. I am threatened of remaining in prison for five years and prevented from exercising my political rights for another five years to guarantee that Egypt is inherited by Mubarak’s son, as well as making me an example to anyone who thinks of breaking the power monopoly not only in Egypt but in the Arab world!!

I call upon you to exert every effort to defend my fair case not for my sake, nor
for the sake of my children or my party that is being destroyed, my human rights
which are violated in this prison every morning, or my life which illness, injustice and oppression are eating away at. I ask you to defend my fair case to keep hope alive for the coming generations which we do not want to lose hope. It is for these generations that I call upon you to exert every effort to defend my fair case and to visit me in prison to witness the truth which the Egyptian regime is very good at concealing and telling lies to prove the opposite. Free people of the world. I am dying alone for a principle, for my country and for freedom. Please raise my voice before my spirit departs this world.

Ayman Nour

A volcanic eruption observed from space

This photogroah of a plume of volcanic ash spewing out of the Cleveland volcano in Alaska was taken by Jeffrey N. Williams, a flight engineer on the International Space Station.

The volcano, located on Chuginadak Island, erupted on 23rd May. The ash plume visible in the photo is moving west-southwest from the volcano's summit and may have been as high as 6,000m (20,00ft.) above sea level, according to the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

Also visible in the photo is a bank of fog (upper right), a common meteorological feature of the Aleutian Islands.

The Cleveland volcano is one of the most active of the volcanoes in the Aleutian Islands. It is a stratovolcano, consisting of alternating layers of volcanic rock, compacted volcanic ash and hardened lava. Its summit is 1,730m high, and its activity is produced by the northwestward movement of the Pacific tectonic plate under the North American plate.

Blix: "Abandon the War on Terror"

Despite its rhetoric about spreading freedom and democracy throughout the world, the United States remains the biggest threat to peace.

Former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, one of the few people whose integrity remained intact throughout the Iraq war debacle, has said that the U.S. must abandon its 'war on terror' to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

In a report by the WMD Committee, published earlier this month, Blix warns that the U.S. policy of pre-emptive strikes against 'rogue' states believed to possess WMDs, and its development of the Star Wars II missile defence shield and new types of nuclear weapons, are likely to bring about a new global arms race.

"The U.S. missile shield may be triggering countermeasures by China and Russia," states Blix in the preface to the 231-page report. The world's major military powers, he says, should develop new security strategies without the use of WMDs, and the U.S. should stop testing nuclear weapons to encourage countries such as India and pakistan to comply with the UN's test-ban treaty.

Blix is chairman of the WMD Commission, which was set up by the Swedish government in 2003, "to respond to the recent, profoundly worrying developments in international security."

Word of the day

Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia - fear of the number 666.

So, the Antichrist has not appeared. But the day is not over yet...

Tiananmen Square: 15th Anniversary

(Slate)

Last weekend marked the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, in which a protest for democratic reform by intellectuals, students and activists was violently suppressed by the Chinese government.

Earlier this year, Google launched its Chinese search engine, google.cn, and capitulated with requests from Beijing to censor search results. A search for "tienanmen square" on google.com produces 3,530,000 pages, compared to just 538 on google.cn

View the complete picture essay at Slate.com

The Number of the Beast

Let anyone with understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the
number of a person. Its number is six hundred and sixty-six.

(Revelation 13: 18)

The remake of the 1976 film The Omen, in which an American ambassador, played by Gregory Peck, discovers that his son is the Antichrist, is released tomorrow (06.06.06).

The age-old superstition about the number 666 originates in the Book of Revelation, according to which it is the Number of the Beast. Superstitious people believe the number is sinister, and predict that bad things will happen on any date or place in which the number occurs.

Superstition is a form of what anthropologists call "magical thinking," or non-scientific causal reasoning. Like religion, superstitions are used to try and explain events that are not understood.

Phillips Stevens, Jr., an anthropologist at the University of Buffalo, Texas, says that the superstition about the number 666 is based on "widespread misinterpretation" of the Book of Revelation.

"Biblical scholars have pointed out that there are several 'beasts' referred to in Chapter 13 [of Revelation] and elsewhere, and they all refer variously to Rome, Roman emperors and Roman cults of God- and emperor-worship," says Stevens, who is an expert on the origins of superstitions.

The Book of Revelation is believed to have been written by St. John the Apostle. At the time of its writing, adherents of the new Christian faith were being persecuted by the Roman empire. The author of Revelation therefore used a code to write to other Christians.

According to Stevens, "many of the strange elements in Revelation signify events, people or institutions familiar to first-century Christians...the mark of the beast, 666, signifies those in thrall to the emperor and thus opposed Christianity, and is most probably the numerical equivalent of the Hebrew letters for Nero."

The First and Second Letters of John also use the term 'Antichrist' to refer to lapsed Christians.

"Many perceived enemies of Christianity have been labelled the Antichrist, and Nero was the first," says Stevens. Many historical figures, including Salahuddin, Hitler and Saddam Hussein, have been labelled the Antichrist. "The list varies according to who compiles it. Early Reformation-era Protestants had some popes on their list."

Over the centuries, however, the myth developed that the 'end times' would begin when the Antichrist came to Earth to prepare people for the coming of Satan, whom the Antichrist represented.

The number 13 also has many superstitions associated with it. Most American hotels, for example, do not have a thirteenth floor. So common are superstitions about the number 13 that psychiatrists have a term for an irrational fear of the number - tridekaphobia. There is also a term for people who have a specific fear of Friday the 13th - paraskevidekatriaphobics.

There are several theories about the origins of superstitions about the number 13, one of them being that it relates to the Last Supper, at which there were 13 guests. The Crucifixion took place the next day, which was a Friday.

New particle accelerator may detect dark matter

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC, pictured, left) is a new particle accelerator which physicists believe may detect dark matter.

The LHC has been installed in an underground tunnel, measuring 27km round, at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, and is due to be switched on next year.

The LHC is the most powerful particle accelerator to date. When switched on, it will accelerate subatomic particles to a speed approaching that of light. Collisions between these particles will recreate the conditions prevelant seconds after the Big Bang, the event that created time and space.

Some 20% of the cosmos is thought to consist of dark matter, which is known to exist because of its gravitational effects, but has never been seen or detected. Being so elusive, the nature of dark matter has not been determined.

Many physicists are of the opinion that dark matter consists of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). Because WIMPs interact only weakly with other particles, they may not be detected by the LHC. The new particle accelerator may, however, detect SuperWIMPs, which are formed by the decay of certain types of WIMPs. SuperWIMPs are charged particles and, therefore, should easily be detected by the LHC.

Physicists have long speculated that the force of gravity is carried by particles, and SuperWIMPs may take the form of gravitinos, one type of gravity particle that they have been searching for.

According to the theory of supersymmetry, every particle of matter has a super-sized partner. The gravitino would be the super-sized partner of the graviton, another gravity particle hypothesized by physicists. Supersymmetry theory provides a link between the particles of which matter consists and the particles which carry forces such as gravity.

Detecting SuperWIMPs would also enable physicists to test string theory, which is the best candidate for a "theory of everything," and which predicts the existence of multiple dimensions and parallel universes. String theory may allow for a consiliation of Einstein's general relativity and quantum mechanics. The former describes the behaviour of matter on a massive scale (stars and galaxies), while the latter describes the behaviour of subatomic particles. The two theories have yet to be united, because Einstein's rules do not apply to the small scale.

The elucidation of the nature of dark matter would, therefore, bring physics one step closer to providing a grand unifying theory.

"The discovery of dark matter in a collider [would] show us how nature works on both the largest and smallest length scales," says Jonathan Feng of the University of California, Irvine.

BBC airs footage of atrocities committed by U.S. troops

The BBC yesterday aired footage containing evidence that U.S. troops deliberately killed Iraqi civilians, within days of news of the Haditha massacre and its attemtped cover-up by the perpetrators.

The U.S. military has now stated that it plans to teach its troops ethics.