Archeologists Unearth Alien-Like Skulls In A Mexico Cemetery
Image Caption: 300 Meters from the village of Onavas,
archaeologists discovered a site with 25 human burials, 13 of whom have cranial
deformation. This image shows cranial deformation in one of the human skulls.
Credit: Cristina Garcia / INAH
[Watch Video: Alien-Like Skulls Unearthed In Mexican Cemetery]
Archeologists have unearthed what looks like a cone-shaped alien skull from 1,000 years ago in Mexico.
The skull, which dates from 945 A.D. to 1308 A.D., was discovered accidentally while digging an irrigation system in the northwest state of Sonora in Mexico.
Cristina Garcia Moreno, who worked on the project with Arizona State University, explained that 13 of the 25 skulls found in the Hispanic cemetery had these deformed heads.
“We don’t know why this population specifically deformed their heads,” Moreno told ABC News.
The site, known as El Cementerio, was discovered in 1999, but the team just completed their analysis of the skeletal remains last month. They plan to continue their research during the next field season. Archaeologists also discovered artifacts on the site, like pendants, nose rings and jewelry.
They said the deformation of human skulls was part of an ancient ritual that took place 1,000 years ago. The deformation was achieved by binding a person’s head between two blocks of wood to apply pressure on the skull by wrapping the wood with bands.
“Cranial deformation has been used by different societies in the world as a ritual practice, or for distinction of status within a group or to distinguish between social groups,” Moreno told ABC News. “The reason why these individuals at El Cementerio deformed their skulls is still unknown.”
The team said that many of the bones unearthed were the remains of children, leading them to believe the practice of deforming skulls “may have been inlet and dangerous.”
The Chinook of the U.S. Northwest and the Choctaw of the U.S. Southeast both were known for practicing skull deformation as well.
Moreno told ABC that people deformed their heads in Mexico because they wanted to distinguish important people, or they wanted to distinguish people from one group from another.
Archeologists have unearthed what looks like a cone-shaped alien skull from 1,000 years ago in Mexico.
The skull, which dates from 945 A.D. to 1308 A.D., was discovered accidentally while digging an irrigation system in the northwest state of Sonora in Mexico.
Cristina Garcia Moreno, who worked on the project with Arizona State University, explained that 13 of the 25 skulls found in the Hispanic cemetery had these deformed heads.
“We don’t know why this population specifically deformed their heads,” Moreno told ABC News.
The site, known as El Cementerio, was discovered in 1999, but the team just completed their analysis of the skeletal remains last month. They plan to continue their research during the next field season. Archaeologists also discovered artifacts on the site, like pendants, nose rings and jewelry.
They said the deformation of human skulls was part of an ancient ritual that took place 1,000 years ago. The deformation was achieved by binding a person’s head between two blocks of wood to apply pressure on the skull by wrapping the wood with bands.
“Cranial deformation has been used by different societies in the world as a ritual practice, or for distinction of status within a group or to distinguish between social groups,” Moreno told ABC News. “The reason why these individuals at El Cementerio deformed their skulls is still unknown.”
The team said that many of the bones unearthed were the remains of children, leading them to believe the practice of deforming skulls “may have been inlet and dangerous.”
The Chinook of the U.S. Northwest and the Choctaw of the U.S. Southeast both were known for practicing skull deformation as well.
Moreno told ABC that people deformed their heads in Mexico because they wanted to distinguish important people, or they wanted to distinguish people from one group from another.
A Brain-to-Brain Interface for Rats
Researchers have electronically linked the brains of pairs of rats, enabling the animals to communicate directly via implanted microelectrode arrays to solve simple behavioral problems, according to a study published today (February 28) in Scientific Reports.
The authors of the study claim the achievement is the first of its kind, and could lead to the linking of multiple animal brains to form the first “organic computer” through which multiple animals could exchange, store, and process sensory and motor information.
But neuroscientists in the field of brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) told The Scientist that the study is actually a combination two methods demonstrated several times before—namely, recording and decoding information from neural networks and using extracted neural firing patterns to stimulate external devices or muscles of the body.
Critics also pointed out several methodological flaws, including the lack of adequate controls, and cautioned that claims about enabling “organic computing” are far-fetched at best.
“[The researchers] have made numerous important contributions to the field of neural interfaces,” said Lee Miller, a neuroscientist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, who was not involved in the study, in an email to The Scientist. The group, led by Duke University neuroengineer Miguel Nicolelis, has made critical advancements in the development of BMIs that extract motor signals from an animal’s brain and/or provide it with somatosensory feedback, Miller added. “However, I'm afraid one would have to be forgiven, on reading the current account, with its references to, a ‘grid of multiple reciprocally interconnected brains . . . solving heuristic problems deemed non-computable by a general Turing-machine,’ for mistaking it for a poor Hollywood science fiction script. It is not clear to what end the effort is really being made.”
Several studies in the past few years have demonstrated that brain-derived motor signals, recorded through implanted microelectrodes, can be decoded and utilized to control the movement of mechanical or electrical devices. Some groups have also shown that behaviorally relevant information can be extracted in real-time and fed back into the same brain. Building on that research, Nicolelis and his colleagues wanted to see if a brain could assimilate and use electrical stimulation patterns transferred directly from sensory and motor neural networks of a different brain. In other words, they wanted to build a brain-to-brain interface (BTBI).
To test the idea, the researchers conducted experiments with rats containing brain microelectrode implants capable both of recording electrical activity from neural networks and stimulating neurons. Simply put, patterns of cortical signals were recorded in one rat—the encoder—and transmitted directly into the brains of another rat—the decoder.
In the first experiment, the researchers trained pairs of rats to press one of two levers, with the correct one indicated by a flashing light above, to get a drink of water. When the encoder rat pressed the right lever and got its reward, a sample of the brain activity that coded for that behavior was translated into a pattern of electrical stimulation and delivered directly to the brain of the decoder rat. The decoder faced the same lever setup, but got no visual clues, so had to rely on cues transmitted from the encoder to guide it to the correct lever and the reward.
In trials, the decoder rats picked the right lever 70 percent of the time, a performance significantly better than chance, suggesting that the information was successfully transferred and understood.
The rats performed similarly well on a comparable test using tactile information—distinguishing between a narrow and wide opening using their whiskers. In these trials, the decoder followed the actions of the encoder 65 percent of the time; again, with accuracy better than chance.
The findings demonstrate that implanted microelectrodes and decoding methods can be used to directly channel behavioral information between two animal brains. This, the authors speculate, indicates that brain networks could allow multiple animals to synchronize their behaviors in response to directly transferred electrical cues. “So basically, we are creating what I call an organic computer,” Nicolelis said in a press release. “Such a computer solves a puzzle in a ‘non-Turing’ way.”
The researchers also attempted to train the encoder rats to give better signals to improve the performance of the decoder rats. By providing the encoder with an extra reward every time the decoder performed a trial correctly, the encoder appeared to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of its brain activity that represented the decision, making the information easier for the decoder rat to detect.
Nicolelis also said that, in theory, BTBIs could be used be used to link a network of brains. “We cannot even predict what kinds of emergent properties would appear when animals begin interacting as part of a brain-net. In theory, you could imagine that a combination of brains could provide solutions that individual brains cannot achieve by themselves.”
“It’s possible, or at least plausible, that two brains work better than one, or at least differently,” agreed Kevin Otto, a neuroengineer at Purdue University in Indiana. “They may be able to interact to change behaviors in ways that we can’t envisage in a natural environment, and this could be a step toward understanding that.”
And though Otto cited “limitations in the design and execution of the experiments,” he praised the paper for drawing attention to BTBIs as a way of exploring how neural systems work to govern behaviors that are rewarded. “The study helps to promote the role of BMIs not only in prosthetic applications, but also as scientific tools. It’s a contribution to that.”
- See more at: http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/34547/title/A-Brain-to-Brain-Interface-for-Rats/#sthash.KF9WB3HI.dpufFamily Cleans House, Finds Pet Tortoise Missing Since 1982
Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0
It's no secret that tortoises are among the most resilient animals on Earth, perfectly adapted for life in natural environments that others would find inhospitable. But for one particularly tenacious pet tortoise, that hardy sense of survival allowed it to endure for decades in the most unnatural of places.
Back in 1982, the Almeida Family was saddened to learn that their beloved pet, Manuela, a young red-footed tortoise, had gone missing. Their house was under renovation at the time, so the family just assumed that the slow-moving animal had slipped out through a gate left open by the construction crew -- disappearing into the forest near their home in Realengo, Brazil. But they couldn't have been more wrong.
The true fate of their lost pet remained a mystery for the next 30 years, that is, until recently.
Earlier last month, after their father Leonel passed away, the Almeida children returned to help clean out his cluttered storage room upstairs. As it turns out, Leonel was somewhat of a horder, so the room was jam-packed with things that he had found on the street, like broken televisions and furniture. Deciding it was mostly junk, the family set about moving it to the trash out front.
But while son Leandro Almeida was making a trip to the dumpster with a box of broken records, a neighbor asked him if he was intending to throw out the tortoise that was holed up inside.
"At that moment I was white and did not believe,
Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0
That's when the Almeidas learned that, amazingly, the hardy turtle had managed to survive three decades in storage.
The family suspects she had been able to sustain herself grubbing on termites which, thanks to all that unwanted furniture, was likely in abundance. And although she seemed to be surviving just fine in the dank confines of the storage room, Manuela is no doubt pleased (in her own tortoisey way) to be reunited with the family that had so long thought her gone forever.
But in the end, it's hard not to be impressed with the resiliency of life and the slow-and-steady approach to survival taken by tortoises -- both in living with us, and perhaps sometimes in spite of it.
Please note, the photos show a red-footed tortoise, though not the actual one from the story, as that image was not available to us.
Hoax article on India-Portugal clash fools Wikipedia for 5 years
A red-faced Wikipedia
has removed an article from its site detailing the 17th century
"Bicholim Conflict" — a clash between Portugal and India's Maratha
Empire — after it emerged that such a war never occurred, and the piece
and references included were entirely fictional.
After five years of featuring the piece, which tells the story of "how colonial Portugal clashed with India's massive Maratha Empire" in Goa, Wikipedia has admitted the entire conflict and books cited as sources for the piece are fictional, the 'Daily Mail' reported.
The article was labelled a "good article" by Wikipedia editors just two months after its creation in July 2007. It was also nominated for a featured article — Wikipedia's gold star for research.
The meticulous 4,500 word article was written by an unidentified Wikipedia user.
"From 1640 to 1641 the might of colonial Portugal clashed with India's massive Maratha Empire in an undeclared war that would later be known as the Bicholim Conflict," the article read.
"Named after the northern Indian region where most of the fighting took place, the conflict ended with a peace treaty that would later help cement Goa as an independent Indian state," it said.
The piece continues, in precise detail, to explore what happened in the fictional war and lists some 17 references, as well as three suggestions for further reading — which all appear to be a work of the writer's imagination, the paper quoted Daily Dot as reporting.
"The conflict was fairly brief and its impact in terms of casualties and damage was minimal. For this reason, it has not become much of a talking point amongst filmmakers and bookwriters," the article concluded.
The hoax was only uncovered when another user from Missouri, known as ShelfSkewed, finally realised the deception and nominated the article for removal.
"An online search for "Bicholim conflict" or for many of the article's purported sources produces only results that can be traced back to the article itself," the user said.
Wikipedia acted on his warning and promptly removed the piece.
"Unfortunately, hoaxes on Wikipedia are nothing new, and the craftier they are, the more difficult it is to catch them," William Beutler, president of Beutler Wiki Relations, a Wikipedia consulting firm, told Yahoo News.
"Anyone who's clever enough to make up convincing sources and motivated enough to spend the time and skilled enough to write a plausible article can deceive whole internet, at least for awhile," Beutler said.
After five years of featuring the piece, which tells the story of "how colonial Portugal clashed with India's massive Maratha Empire" in Goa, Wikipedia has admitted the entire conflict and books cited as sources for the piece are fictional, the 'Daily Mail' reported.
The article was labelled a "good article" by Wikipedia editors just two months after its creation in July 2007. It was also nominated for a featured article — Wikipedia's gold star for research.
The meticulous 4,500 word article was written by an unidentified Wikipedia user.
"From 1640 to 1641 the might of colonial Portugal clashed with India's massive Maratha Empire in an undeclared war that would later be known as the Bicholim Conflict," the article read.
"Named after the northern Indian region where most of the fighting took place, the conflict ended with a peace treaty that would later help cement Goa as an independent Indian state," it said.
The piece continues, in precise detail, to explore what happened in the fictional war and lists some 17 references, as well as three suggestions for further reading — which all appear to be a work of the writer's imagination, the paper quoted Daily Dot as reporting.
"The conflict was fairly brief and its impact in terms of casualties and damage was minimal. For this reason, it has not become much of a talking point amongst filmmakers and bookwriters," the article concluded.
The hoax was only uncovered when another user from Missouri, known as ShelfSkewed, finally realised the deception and nominated the article for removal.
"An online search for "Bicholim conflict" or for many of the article's purported sources produces only results that can be traced back to the article itself," the user said.
Wikipedia acted on his warning and promptly removed the piece.
"Unfortunately, hoaxes on Wikipedia are nothing new, and the craftier they are, the more difficult it is to catch them," William Beutler, president of Beutler Wiki Relations, a Wikipedia consulting firm, told Yahoo News.
"Anyone who's clever enough to make up convincing sources and motivated enough to spend the time and skilled enough to write a plausible article can deceive whole internet, at least for awhile," Beutler said.
Hierarchy of Needs Theory
It was in 1943 a Psychologist Mr. Abraham Harold Maslow suggested his Theory of Human Motivation.
The Maslow's Pyramid of Human Needs is explained below :-
Physiological Needs : Physiological needs are the basic needs for sustaining human life. These needs include food, shelter, clothing, rest, air, water, sleep and sexual satisfaction. These basic human needs (also called biological needs) lie at the lowest level in the hierarchy of needs as they have priority over all other needs. These needs cannot be postponed for long. Unless and until these basic physiological needs are satisfied to the required extent, other needs do not motivate an employee. A hungry person, for example, is just not in a position to think of anything else except his hunger or food. According to Maslow, 'man lives by bread alone,' when there is no bread. The management attempts to meet such physiological needs through fair wages.
Security / Safety Needs : These are the needs connected with the psychological fear of loss of job, property, natural calamities or hazards, etc. An employee wants protection from such types of fear. He prefers adequate safety or security in this regard i.e. protection from physical danger, security of job, pension for old age, insurance cover for life, etc. The safety needs come after meeting the physiological needs. Such physiological needs lose their motivational potential when they are satisfied. As a result, safety needs replace them. They begin to manifest themselves and dominate human behavior. Safety needs act as motivational forces only if they are unsatisfied.
Social Needs : An employee is a human being is rightly treated as a social animal. He desires to stay in group. He feels that he should belong to one or the other group and the member of the group should accept him with love and affection. Every person desires to be affiliated to such groups. This is treated as basic social need of an individual. He also feels that he should be loved by the other members. He needs friends and interaction with his friends and superiors of the group such as fellow employees or superiors. Social needs occupy third position in the hierarchy of needs.
Esteem Needs : This category of needs include the need to be respected by others, need to be appreciated by others, need to have power and finally prestigious position. Once the previous needs are satisfied, a person feels to be held in esteem both by himself and also by others. Thus, esteem needs are two fold in nature. Self esteem needs include those for self confidence, self-respect, competence, etc. The second groups of esteem needs are those related to one's status, reputation, recognition and appreciation by others. This is a type of personal ego which needs to be satisfied. The Organisation can satisfy this need (ego) by giving recognition to the good work of employees. Esteem needs do not assume the motivational properties unless the previous needs are satisfied.
Self-actualisation Needs : Self actualisation is the desire to become what one is capable of becoming. It is a 'growth' need. A worker must work efficiently if he is to be ultimately happy. Here, a person feels that he should accomplish something in his fife. He want to utilise his potentials to the maximum extent and desires to become what one is capable of becoming. A person desires to have challenges and achieves something special in his life or in the area of his specialization. Though every one is capable of self-actualization, many do not reach this stage. This need is fully satisfied rarely.
The Maslow's Pyramid of Human Needs is explained below :-Physiological Needs : Physiological needs are the basic needs for sustaining human life. These needs include food, shelter, clothing, rest, air, water, sleep and sexual satisfaction. These basic human needs (also called biological needs) lie at the lowest level in the hierarchy of needs as they have priority over all other needs. These needs cannot be postponed for long. Unless and until these basic physiological needs are satisfied to the required extent, other needs do not motivate an employee. A hungry person, for example, is just not in a position to think of anything else except his hunger or food. According to Maslow, 'man lives by bread alone,' when there is no bread. The management attempts to meet such physiological needs through fair wages.
Security / Safety Needs : These are the needs connected with the psychological fear of loss of job, property, natural calamities or hazards, etc. An employee wants protection from such types of fear. He prefers adequate safety or security in this regard i.e. protection from physical danger, security of job, pension for old age, insurance cover for life, etc. The safety needs come after meeting the physiological needs. Such physiological needs lose their motivational potential when they are satisfied. As a result, safety needs replace them. They begin to manifest themselves and dominate human behavior. Safety needs act as motivational forces only if they are unsatisfied.
Social Needs : An employee is a human being is rightly treated as a social animal. He desires to stay in group. He feels that he should belong to one or the other group and the member of the group should accept him with love and affection. Every person desires to be affiliated to such groups. This is treated as basic social need of an individual. He also feels that he should be loved by the other members. He needs friends and interaction with his friends and superiors of the group such as fellow employees or superiors. Social needs occupy third position in the hierarchy of needs.
Esteem Needs : This category of needs include the need to be respected by others, need to be appreciated by others, need to have power and finally prestigious position. Once the previous needs are satisfied, a person feels to be held in esteem both by himself and also by others. Thus, esteem needs are two fold in nature. Self esteem needs include those for self confidence, self-respect, competence, etc. The second groups of esteem needs are those related to one's status, reputation, recognition and appreciation by others. This is a type of personal ego which needs to be satisfied. The Organisation can satisfy this need (ego) by giving recognition to the good work of employees. Esteem needs do not assume the motivational properties unless the previous needs are satisfied.
Self-actualisation Needs : Self actualisation is the desire to become what one is capable of becoming. It is a 'growth' need. A worker must work efficiently if he is to be ultimately happy. Here, a person feels that he should accomplish something in his fife. He want to utilise his potentials to the maximum extent and desires to become what one is capable of becoming. A person desires to have challenges and achieves something special in his life or in the area of his specialization. Though every one is capable of self-actualization, many do not reach this stage. This need is fully satisfied rarely.
Robotic metal band ...
Did you ever wonder what Danny Carey would sound like if he had 4 arms?
How about if Angus Young had 78 fingers? Imagine what Robert Trujillo would sound like if he was actually made of metal?
Well, wonder no more, meatbags.
Compressorhead is the worlds heaviest metal band.
Stickboy, fingers, and bones are guaranteed to shake and rattle the world of meatbag music.
Stickboy (drums) was created to exacting specifications. 4 arms, 2 legs, 1 head, no brain. he plays a Pearl 14 piece kit with double kick. stickboy junior, the bastard child of an unknown mother takes control of the hihat shuffle. inception date 2007
Fingers (guitar) joined stickboy in 2009 and brings 78 purpose built fingers, enough to play the entire fret board and pluck.
Bones (bass) is the highest precision bass player in known existence, and the youngest member of the band. inception date 2012.
Standaside meatbags. Oil is thicker than blood.
How We Will Terraform Mars
NASA's latest Mars rover, Curiosity, is currently its way to Mars, on a mission to explore whether life could exist there. If we're going to colonize Mars — and some scientists say we must — it's likely that we'll start by terraforming. Terraforming, or planetary engineering, is the process of altering the climate of a planet to be more hospitable to life and human exploration. Of all the bodies in the solar system, Mars is by far the best candidate. Here's how that would work.
Once A Wet, Warm Planet
To understand how Mars might have a habitable future, it's important to understand a bit about Mars' past.
Mars' geological history is divided into three ages, which are from oldest to youngest the Noachian, the Hesperian and the Amazonian. The Noachian epoch, ranging from about 4.1 to about 3.7 billion years ago, is characterized by heavy asteroid bombardment and abundant surface water. This is the so-called "warm, wet" period. The Hesperian, ranging from 3.7 to somewhere between 1.7 and 3.0 billion years ago, is characterized by heavy volcanic activity and massive water flow. The Hesperian was an intermediate age between the warm wet Noachian and the the cold, dry Amazonian, which is the Mars we know today as being not the kind of place to raise a kid.
It is this unique history that makes Mars such an attractive candidate for terraforming. Unlike the other bodies in the solar system, Mars has a history (ancient though it may be) of being far more Earthlike than anywhere else in the solar system short of Earth itself. The proposals for terraforming the other bodies in the solar system are all highly theoretical, involving massive energy flux and near magical technology like changing planetary orbits, speeding up planetary rotation, sequestering hundreds of bars of atmosphere (1 bar = atmospheric pressure at sea level on Earth) or constructing planet-wrapping Dyson spheres to prevent atmospheric escape.
By contrast, Mars, with its 24 hr 37 minute day, relatively abundant water ice and history of warmer wetter conditions seems more within the grasp of near future human civilization to terraform. Add to this the fact that not-too-crazily-optimistic estimates of Mars' current conditions suggest that increasing the atmospheric pressure and temperature to more life friendly conditions may be more a matter of a nudge than a shove and it's easy to see why this world holds such fascination for would-be planetary engineers.
Why Did Mars Die?So, what happened on Mars? Why did this once warm and inviting place, with enough atmospheric pressure and a high enough temperature to support liquid water, become a frozen rock with an atmosphere too thin to support even water ice? The answer boils down to...or rather, freezes out to...volcanism and bombardment.
In the Noachian period, Mars experienced a high frequency of asteroid impacts. The energy and volatile gas introduced into the Martian environment by the Noachian bombardment helped maintain the warm, wet climate and the thick atmosphere.
