Attack of the moths!

HORSHAM museum has been put on high alert after it was hit by an infestation of moths that have eaten through an invaluable collection of historic clothes containing garments over 300 years old.

Museum curator Jeremy Knight said: "The creature multiplies rapidly and it is chewing away and destroying virtually everything in its path.

Story here. I've had my own battles with moths, both in the kitchen and in the closet, but museums have a rather more difficult time of it. Nowadays insecticides and mothballs are considered too risky for delicate old fabrics, so instead you have to do this:

"We rely on teams of highly dedicated, skilled people working to dissect the damaged and torn material and extract the creatures. As each item is reviewed, the moths will be removed by hand whilst gentle vacuum cleaners will suck out the eggs and frith from the discarded casings that other moths can feed on. Any infested costume or textile will be kept isolated for up to a month because, like some diseases, the moths can reappear after you think you have the all clear."

Dodo hunt

For such an iconic animal, it seems strange that we know next to nothing about the dodo - except, of course, that it is dead. We don't know how it lived, what it ate, how many eggs it sat on or even whether it was fat or thin.

But that could all change with a scientific expedition just begun in Mauritius, the remote island in the Indian Ocean where the dodo lived for millions of years before being driven to extinction in the late 17th century, just 80 years after it was sighted by European sailors.

British and Dutch scientists have joined forces to excavate a unique dodo burial ground where the bones of hundreds and possibly thousands of birds have been preserved in marshland for more than 10,000 years. . .

The Mare aux Songes area of Mauritius was once a dry coastal forest which later became marshland. Last year scientists said they thought the site contained a mass of bones from a rich variety of animals - giant tortoises, dodos and other extinct birds and reptiles - all of which long pre-date the arrival of the first humans to inhabit Mauritius in 1598.

Meanwhile, DNA analysis indicates dodos were a variety of giant pigeon. Read all about it in the Independent.

Darwin collection to the Natural History Museum

The world's largest Charles Darwin book collection has been bought by the Natural History Museum for nearly £1m.

The Kohler Darwin Collection includes almost everything the naturalist published from 1829 onwards.

Antiquarians Chris and Michele Kohler amassed about 3,500 items, filling four rooms in their house, over 20 years.

From the BBC.

Neanderthal DNA extracted

Scientists have recovered DNA from a Neanderthal that lived 100,000 years ago - the oldest human-type DNA so far. . .

The study, reported in Current Biology, suggests our distant cousins were more genetically diverse than once thought.

Their diversity had declined, perhaps because of climate change or disease, by the time early humans arrived in Europe about 35,000 years ago.

From the BBC.

Ely Cathedral dendrochronology

The study of timber tree rings, known as dendrochronology, has revealed that repairs were carried out in the south transept in 1425/26, with the cause of damage likely to have been a documented, yet previously undated, earthquake which destroyed part of the cathedral.

The research by experts from Nottingham University also revealed that the oldest known timbers in the “Ship of the Fens”, in the west tower turrets, date back almost 1000 years to 1043-1068.

The team has been collecting samples of oak timbers from the cathedral and monastic buildings on the site for nearly two decades.

Full article here.

Oldest condom on display

The reusable condom dates back to 1640 and is completely intact, as is its original users' manual, written in Latin.

The manual suggests that users immerse the condom in warm milk prior to its use to avoid diseases.

From Ananova (with picture).

Oldest fossils

And these are really small:

Odd-shaped mounds of dirt in Australia turn out to be fossils of the oldest life on Earth, created by billions of microbes more than three billion years ago, scientists say in a new report.

And these mounds are exactly the type of life astrobiologists are looking for on Mars and elsewhere.

A study published Thursday in the journal Nature gives the strongest evidence yet that the mounds dotting a large swath of western Australia are Earth's oldest fossils.

Read more here.

Dwarf dinosaurs

Not exactly pocket-sized, however:

German scientists say they've discovered a species that evolved into a dwarf, ending up only about one-third the size of its closest known relatives.

The fossils were of a four-legged plant-eater that was no lap dog: It measured about 20 feet from its snout to the tip of its long tail and it weighed about a ton.

But next to its close evolutionary cousin Camarasaurus, a well-known beast that stretched some 59 feet long, this guy was a runt.

From Discovery News.

Support local business -- pay cash

How would you like to give your community a boost, to the tune of 3%?
A one percent sales tax can raise an awful lot of money, so why not put two to three percent back into your local economy when you can do so at no cost whatsoever?

How? Save those credit cards for mail order and online purchases, and pay for your local purchases with checks or cash. Merchants typically pay a commission of around 3% on credit card purchases; that's 3% of the gross, mind you, so on a narrow-margin business those credit card fees take a serious bite.

To be sure, there are cases where you will want to be able to take advantage of the consumer protections and benefits offered by many cards, most notably the ability to refuse payment for defective merchandise and services improperly performed. But do you really need those protections when buying groceries, or picking up Chinese takeout? And how much do those payback schemes really give you, whether in cash or in increasingly unusable airline miles? One percent perhaps, if you are lucky -- though it's proven sufficient to enlist consumers as enthusiastic tax collectors for the credit card companies, imposing a levy on their own communities that is more regressive than anything imposed by their government (even sales taxes normally exempt food, and sometimes clothing).

So don't just buy local -- pay in cash. Think of it as a 3% tip which costs only 1%. And rest assured, in small shops and restaurants, payment in cash (or by check) will be noted, appreciated, and likely eventually rewarded.

Downcity Diner fire

Anyone who's spent any time in Providence is likely to have eaten at least once at the Downcity Diner, so though the news is a couple of weeks old here, there are probably many Brown grads and other former Providence residents who didn't hear about the fire that destroyed the restaurant and the historic downtown building it occupied ("Built as a church and used as the state's first teachers' school, 151 Weybosset St. was one of the oldest buildings downtown").

The various articles are still up, behind registration, at the ProJo website (here, here, here, and here); it now seems clear that it was grease buildup in the kitchen ductwork that set the whole thing off, which leads me to wonder if there could and should be a higher standard for such ductwork's ability to contain such a flareup. It's just anecdotal, but it seems as if I've heard of an awful lot of restaurant flue fires over the years, and not just here in Providence. Would a stricter inspection protocol be enough, or should the pipes be better sealed and insulated?

The other thing that struck me was the difficulties faced by the firemen in dealing with old construction:

Costa said the restaurant's sprinkler system had activated and the chef had discharged the oven's fire-suppression system. Both systems failed to stop the fire. The fire burned in the void between the first and second floors, out of reach of the sprinklers, he said.

Firefighters tried to break through the ceiling, but encountered a layer of tin, wire lathe and plaster as strong as concrete. . . .

I can well believe it, as neighbors recently had a bathroom renovated in their c. 1900 house. The interior demolition work ended up taking days and days, as it turned out the old walls were not only wire-reinforced lath and plaster but double-thickness to boot -- resilient and virtually indestructable. Yet another reason not to use any of the fireplaces in my house, especially given that the central placement of the chimneys: if there should be a leak that ignites anything alongside (which happened to friends with a chimney along the outer wall, which the firemen cut through to get at the fire), it would be impossible to gain access without drastic damage to the structure, and even then access could not be counted on. The long-term plan is to convert the fireplaces to gas . . . .

Cockroach Pied Piper?

No joke -- miniature robots that mix and manipulate. Roaches, watch out!

Antikythera mechanism news

The "Antikythera Mechanism" was discovered damaged and fragmented on the wreck of a cargo ship off the tiny Greek island of Antikythera in 1900.

Now, a joint British-Greek research team has found a hidden ancient Greek inscription on the device, which it thinks could unlock the mystery.

The team believes the Antikythera Mechanism may be the world's oldest computer, used by the Greeks to predict the motion of the planets.

The device may have been based upon a heliocentric model, as well. From the Scotsman. More information on the tomography system being used here. Antikythera links here.

That's one expensive watercolor

A painting by JMW Turner has sold at auction for £5.832m - a record for a British watercolour.

The Blue Rigi was sold to an anonymous telephone bidder after a 10-minute bidding battle at Christie's in London.

The work, which Christie's described as "the most important watercolour to appear at auction for over 50 years", had been expected to fetch about £2m.

From the BBC.

ADDENDUM: You can still get a great Turner watercolor for a lot less, it seems:

The largest of 10 known watercolours of Hastings by JMW Turner has been bought by the town's museum.

"Hastings: Fish Market on the Sands, Early Morning" was acquired at a Sotheby's auction for £210,000.

Read the rest at the BBC, with another writeup at the 24 Hour Museum.

V & A: Che OK, Adams no

Gerry Adams has been a guest at No 10 and the White House but the Sinn Fein president is definitely not welcome at the V&A museum, it seems.

Staff have removed his name from the guest list for the opening of its "Che Guevara: Revolutionary and Icon" exhibition next week.

From the Telegraph. Adams would appear to be a bit of a Che fan:

Mr Adams said: "I think [the V & A's] stance is especially absurd given that this particular exhibition is about an iconic revolutionary figure, with family connections to Ireland, who fought against injustice and oppression both in Cuba and in South America."

The Guardian further notes:

Among items for sale during the exhibition will be a Che finger puppet, Che chocolate cigar, Che doll and Che cigar box as well as T-shirts, stickers, neon signs and badges.

Ancient underground ecosystem

Israeli scientists have discovered an ancient ecosystem containing eight previously unknown species in a lake inside a cave, where the creatures were completely sheltered from the outside world for millions of years.

The newly discovered— all invertebrates— were found last month in a cave near the city of Ramle in central Israel . . .

The cave, located 328 feet below ground in a limestone quarry, includes tunnels that extend about a mile and a half. Inside lies the large underground lake where the species, some similar to scorpions and shrimp, were found.

Full story here.