Out-puzzling the Stasi

German scientists are piloting new software to try to reassemble secret documents shredded by East Germany's secret police before reunification.

Some 16,250 sacks containing pieces of 45m documents were found and confiscated by authorities after the fall of the Berlin Wall in late 1989.

Correspondents say the haul contained classified and compromising documents about Stasi informers and victims. . .

Reconstruction work began on the paper fragments 12 years ago. In that time 24 people have only been able to reassemble the contents of 323 sacks.

And now the expectation is that all of the fragments will be reconstructed within four or five years. From the BBC.

Ancient fabric found in Greece

Archaeologists in Greece have discovered a rare 2,700-year-old piece of fabric inside a copper urn from a burial they speculated imitated the elaborate cremation of soldiers described in Homer's "Iliad."

The yellowed, brittle material was found in the urn during excavation in the southern town of Argos, a Culture Ministry announcement said Wednesday. . .

The burial was the only cremation among a half-dozen closely grouped graves found on the plot, which was scheduled for development.

From Discovery News.

Herod's tomb found

Spotted the story at the BBC. Unfortunately, PaleoJudaica is on hiatus at the moment, but there's a roundup at NT Gateway, including a link to this press release:

The long search for Herod the Great’s tomb has ended with the exposure of the remains of his grave, sarcophagus and mausoleum on Mount Herodium’s northeastern slope, Prof. Ehud Netzer of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Institute of Archaeology announced today.

Herod was the Roman-appointed king of Judea from 37 to 4 BCE, who was renowned for his many monumental building projects, including the reconstruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, the palace at Masada, as well as the complex at Herodium, 15 kilometers south of Jerusalem.

Herodium is the most outstanding among King Herod’s building projects. This is the only site that carries his name and the site where he chose to be buried and to memorialize himself -- all of this with the integration of a huge, unique palace at the fringe of the desert, said Prof. Netzer. Therefore, he said, the exposure of his tomb becomes the climax of this site’s research.

Death by popcorn

The Washington Post reports on

. . . a group of California food-flavoring workers recently diagnosed with bronchiolitis obliterans, a rare and life-threatening form of fixed obstructive lung disease. Also known as popcorn workers lung, because it has turned up in workers at microwave-popcorn factories, the disease destroys the lungs. A transplant is the only cure.

Since 2001, academic studies have shown links between the disease and a chemical used in artificial butter flavor called diacetyl. Flavoring manufacturers have paid out more than $100 million as a result of lawsuits by people sick with popcorn workers lung over the past five years. One death from the disease has been confirmed.

But no federal laws regulate the chemical's use.

And here's the kicker:

Even less is known about the health effects of eating diacetyl in butter-flavored popcorn, or breathing the fumes after the bag is microwaved. The Environmental Protection Agency has studied the fumes but is waiting for the industry to review the study before releasing it. The Food and Drug Administration has diacetyl on its list of substances "generally recognized as safe" but has not studied it.

The Wikipedia entry on diacetyl notes that it is a natural byproduct of fermentation, present in beers and wines and much else. The problem would seem to be when the stuff is heated and inhaled.

Nepal cave paintings discovery

A shepherd in a remote region of Nepal bordering Tibet has been instrumental in the discovery of an extraordinary art treasure that lay hidden for centuries: a collection of 55 exquisite cave paintings depicting the life of the Buddha.

The 12th-century paintings - a large central mural flanked by smaller panels - were found last month in a partly collapsed cave last month in Mustang, a kingdom long forbidden to foreigners in the high Himalayas, 150 miles north-west of Kathmandu. "Finding the cave was almost like a miracle," said Italian art conservator Luigi Fieni, a member of the team of Italian, American and Nepalese art conservators, conservation architects and archaeologists. They used ice axes to cut their way to the cave, at 3,400 metres.

Foreigners were permitted to enter Mustang only in 1992, and Mr Fieni's team began work there nine years ago, restoring spectacular wall paintings in a crumbling 15th-century Tibetan monastery. It was when they asked about other art treasures in the region that a villager remembered having seen, as a boy, a cave full of colourful paintings. . .

Mustang is of significance to Buddhist scholars as perhaps the only region where Tibetan culture and religion have survived virtually untouched by time or the depredations of modern Chinese colonisation - although a road was recently opened to the capital, Lo Manthang.

From the Guardian.

Still no European unification for mobile phones

But it looks like it is coming soon, and about time:

EU efforts to cut mobile roaming costs by summer have been thrown into doubt because MEPs and European governments cannot agree on the details.

Attempts to reach a compromise before a vote originally scheduled to be held in parliament next week have collapsed.

The BBC article notes some of the rates being wrangled over, but what is notable is that in all cases the result is bound to be a fraction of the present norm. It would be still better if the accords included North American carriers as well, but as is I'll be happy to be able to rely on just one European SIM card, instead of one for each country I typically visit -- with all the attendant hassle of keeping each one live in case I don't use it often enough.