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According to a statement released by the University of South Florida, a mass grave containing the remains of victims of the Plague of Justinian (A.D. 541–750) has been identified at the site of Jerash in northern Jordan by a team of researchers led by Rays H.Y. Jiang of the University of South Florida. Hundreds of people were buried within several days in this mass grave dug in the city's hippodrome. "By linking biological evidence from the bodies to the archaeological setting, we can see how disease affected real people within their social and environmental context," Jiang said. Examination of the...

BRAKER hitting its target - US Army One of the biggest hitters in the conventional arsenal merged with drone technology, as the US Army tested a bunker-buster warhead combined with an expendable Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) for field testing at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama. Bunker busters are a classic example of using brute force to overcome a seemingly impossible obstacle. There is something audacious about responding to the challenge of an impregnable fortress with what amounts to the arms equivalent of “hold my beer.” The idea is to deal with a heavily armored or deeply buried target by dropping a...

According to a statement released by the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, an international team of researchers compared models for the distribution of three major mosquito complexes, paleoclimate models, and places where early humans lived in sub-Saharan Africa between 5,000 and 74,000 years ago. The resulting map indicates that people avoided or died out in areas where Plasmodium falciparum-induced malaria, a disease transmitted by mosquitoes, was likely prevalent. "The effects of these choices shaped human demography for the last 74,000 years, and likely much earlier," said Andrea Manica of the University of Cambridge. "By fragmenting human societies across the landscape,...

According to a statement released by Antiquity, analysis of skeletal remains recovered from a seventeenth-century hospital cemetery in Basel, Switzerland, suggests that young laborers were the people most likely to die during an outbreak of plague. As a trade center that drew people in from abroad, the city of Basel was vulnerable to the spread of Yersinia pestis bacteria and outbreaks of plague. The last recorded outbreak of the disease in Basel occurred between 1665 and 1670. Researchers led by osteoarchaeologist Laura Rindlisbacher of the University of Basel examined skeletal remains recovered from the hospital cemetery dated to this period,...

According to a statement released by the University of Copenhagen, analysis of the remains of 132 individuals unearthed near a megalithic tomb in northern France suggests that the site was initially used by one group of people, but that population declined around 3000 B.C. and was eventually replaced by another group. "We see a clear genetic break between the two periods," said Frederik Valeur Seersholm of the University of Copenhagen. Genetic testing revealed that the earlier group was composed of early farmers from northern France and Germany, while the later group was linked to people in southern France and the...

American attack helicopters sank six Iranian small boats in the Strait of Hormuz on Monday — as the Trump administration works to back the regime into a corner — forcing it to choose between allowing ships through the strait or attacking them and provoking a return to war. Two US-flagged cargo ships successfully passed through the strait as part of a new American initiative, “Project Freedom.” Frustrated by the lack of progress with Iranian negotiators, Trump is allegedly forcing Iran’s hand by deploying US warships directly into the Strait of Hormuz to escort neutral vessels that have been trapped in...

Live Science reports that Joachim Burger of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and his colleagues examined more than 250 sets of human remains of people who lived in what is now southern Germany, on what was the frontier of the Roman Empire, between A.D. 400 and 700. The researchers analyzed DNA samples from the bones, performed strontium isotope analysis to look for chemical signatures in the bones, and compared the results of the tests with 2,500 ancient and 379 modern genomes. The study suggests that many people engaged in monogamy, and nearly one-quarter of the children lost at least one parent...

'He was hiding in plain sight.' ANebraska middle school teacher is accused of utilizing artificial intelligence to create more than a hundred child sexual abuse images — and the teacher allegedly masturbated to the disturbing child pornography while at a school, according to multiple reports. The Nebraska State Patrol said in a statement that 47-year-old Matthew Lund was arrested at his Omaha home at approximately 6:15 a.m. April 22. Lund was booked into Douglas County Corrections and charged with possession of child sexual abuse material and distribution of child sexual abuse material. A judge set Lund's bond at $1 million...

Explanation: Why are there huge, unusual masses inside the Earth? No one is sure. By noting how earthquakes rumble through our planet's interior, humanity has discovered two deep structures that appear to have unusual temperatures and/or chemical compositions. One hypothesis holds that the superplumes are sunken debris left over from the Earth-shattering collision that created Earth's Moon about 4.5 billion years ago. A competing hypothesis is that they are graveyards for old tectonic plates that slowly slid under each other over the past few billion years. No matter their origin, the superplumes are thought to affect Earth’s surface volcanism, possibly...

Here is the unvarnished truth that has been kept secret by the choices of important people. At present population levels, there may be more than enough energy in the world for the next 100,000 years (maybe for millions of years) that is relatively easy to obtain, clean, and safe, and that would be productive of peace among men, because there would be fewer fights over resources. The fuel of the future is thorium, and it is being withheld from the world because too few people know about it to demand it—and there’s no reason for this ignorance. Why the secrecy?...

Interesting concept of solar panel system plugged directly into a household outlet for a do it yourself supplemental power supply. According to the video (and other sources) it's newly legal in Utah and several other states. It's also in wide spread use in Europe. I know there are several Freepers who have solar power of different types, I've always been interested in the subject but have never gone past solar battery charging for boats or cars or cameras.

I still remember fondly the time I got an A- on my 8th grade earth science paper. It was one of my proudest moments as a student. Meanwhile, as MIT boasts, some folks are, well, a bit beyond that. Physics is riddled with paradoxes: Think of how information leaks from supposedly inescapable black holes or how the conventional laws of physics break down at the quantum scale. Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski '13 believes that within these apparent contradictions, new discoveries await. Ah yes, "how the conventional laws of physics break down at the quantum scale." I think about that often! Well,...

Explanation: Dust pillars are like interstellar mountains. They survive because they are more dense than their surroundings, but they are slowly being eroded away by a hostile environment. Visible in the featured picture by the Hubble Space Telescope is the end of a huge gas and dust pillar in the Trifid Nebula (M20), punctuated by a smaller pillar pointing up and an unusual jet pointing to the upper left. Many of the bright dots are newly formed stars. A star near the small pillar's end is slowly being stripped of its accreting gas by radiation from a tremendously brighter star...

If everything goes to plan, Alex Bellini could become the first person to live on an iceberg, where temperatures hover between 5 to −4 degrees Fahrenheit and gale-force winds blow. The 38-year-old Italian public speaker and adventurer, who crossed two oceans alone on a row boat and ran across the U.S. in 70 days, recently spoke about his project, Adrift, a years’-long ambition to live in a survival capsule on a Greenland iceberg. Once a suitable iceberg is selected, Bellini plans to conduct research on climate change‘s affect on ice sheets and to test the limits of human endurance and...

The Times of India reports that researchers led by epigrapher K. Muniratnam Reddy from the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) have decoded a Sanskrit inscription written in Brahmi characters on a seal discovered in what is now Pakistan. The translation reads, "Devadaruvane Svami Kotesvarah," indicating that the fifth-century a.d. seal belonged to a temple dedicated to Shiva, a principal Hindu deity. Reddy and his colleagues explained that the inscription refers to a pivotal story about Shiva set in the Devandaru forest that is recorded in a sacred text called the Skanda Purana. The seal is thought to be the oldest...

When it reaches the stage when everyone in the entire country is diagnosed as having mental health problems, will we have to accept that being mentally ill represents mankind’s new norm, thus rendering the whole concept meaningless? This is not some idle philosophical hypothesis. This is a question we will one day have to ask ourselves if matters continue on their current path. According to new research from Zurich Insurance, 51 per cent of people aged between 15 and 19 now have a mental or behavioural disorder such as anxiety, depression or ADHD, and if present trends continue as they...

Leading AI chatbots have spooked experts by spitting out detailed instructions on how to build biological weapons capable of causing mass casualties, according to an alarming report Wednesday. While top AI labs like Google, OpenAI and Anthropic have taken extensive steps to ensure their AI models are safe, the New York Times obtained more than a dozen transcripts showing examples in which chatbots described how to cause harm and death in painstaking detail. In one instance, an unnamed AI firm hired David Relman, a microbiologist at Stanford University, to conduct safety tests on its chatbot before public release. Relman was...

A benchtop fusion reactor increased neutron output by packing more deuterium into palladium with electrochemistry. Tabletop fusion reactor boosts deuterium-deuterium fusion rates by 15% using electrochemical loading in palladium. (CREDIT: UBC) Nuclear fusion usually brings to mind sprawling facilities, blistering temperatures, and machines built on a scale that can swallow budgets whole. This device does something stranger. It sits on a lab bench, runs at room temperature, and still produces a measurable fusion signal. Researchers at the University of British Columbia say their compact setup, called the Thunderbird Reactor, increased fusion rates by about 15% by packing more deuterium into...

Explanation: Shrouded in a thick atmosphere, the surface of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is really hard to see. Small particles suspended in Titan's upper atmosphere cause an almost impenetrable haze, strongly scattering light at visible wavelengths and hiding surface features from prying eyes. Still, Titan's surface is better imaged at infrared wavelengths, where scattering is weaker and atmospheric absorption is reduced. Arrayed around this visible light image (center) of Titan are some of the clearest global infrared views of the tantalizing moon so far. In false color, the six panels present a consistent processing of 13 years of infrared image...

The SR-71 Blackbird was built to outrun any missile ever fired at it — a jet so fast it could cross entire countries in minutes and vanish before radar even locked on. It was supposed to be untouchable. But in 1972, one mission broke every rule — a flight so extreme that even NASA refused to believe it ever took place. What happened up there was not just dangerous. It was impossible. 27 Minute Video at link..............