Posted by Alex in Art, Pictures on March 10, 2006 at 10:05 pm
This might be a lost Michelangelo’s painting representing a pietà or lamentation of Christ. It is found in a village church in a Tuscan countryside.
The inhabitants of the Chianti village have long claimed that the artwork was painted by Michelangelo in his youth. The claim was supported in the 1940 by the scholar Roberto Weiss, who attributed the Pietà to the Renaissance master.
However, the first visible evidence for the legend was found only recently, when a parishioner in his 60s confessed to the priest Father Rosario Palumbo that he had spotted a signature while scampering around behind the altar when he was a boy.
The confession prompted Father Palumbo to look behind a removable section of the altar wall. As the stone slab was lifted, a signature with the letters M, B and F intertwined appeared.
Need to learn daily arabic fast? We train troops using video game-like battleground simulation, so why not teach them Iraqi Arabic using the same technique?
Tactical Iraqi quickly teaches how to communicate effectively with Iraqis in daily situations by providing sufficient knowledge and confidence in both spoken Iraqi Arabic and cultural nuances like gestures that are vital aspects of building trust in communication. It minimizes learners’ anxiety, embarrassment and confusion by letting them learn and practice at the computer at their own pace. Its game-like design keeps learners interested and motivated even after hours of intensive practice.
Yuri Kuklachev of The Moscow Cat Theater knows the secret to training acrobatic cats:
Yuri Kuklachev has a troupe of cats who do handstands, crawl along high wires and balance on balls and he says the secret to training them is realizing that you can’t force cats to do anything.
"Each cat likes to do her own trick," said Kuklachev, whose show has not been the target of animal rights protesters. "Maruska is the only one who does the handstand. I find the cat and see what they like to do and use that in the show."
Scientists set a record of hottest temperature ever recorded of 2 billion degrees Kelvin or 3.6 billion degrees Fahrenheit using Sandia Lab’s Z Machine – and they didn’t know how they did it!
Sandia researchers still aren’t sure how the machine achieved the new record. Part of it is probably due to the replacement of the tungsten steel wires with slightly thicker steel wires, which allow the plasma ions to travel faster and thus achieve higher temperatures.
One thing that puzzles scientists is that the high temperature was achieved after the plasma’s ions should have been losing energy and cooling. Also, when the high temperature was achieved, the Z machine was releasing more energy than was originally put in, something that usually occurs only in nuclear reactions.
Laotian Rock Rat (Kha-nyou or Laonastes aenigmamus), is a squirrel-like rat (rat-like squirrel?), thought to be extinct some 11 million years ago.
Turns out that this animal is alive and well in Asia. How did we find out? It was being sold for food in the markets of Laos.
The discovery is an example of the ‘Lazarus effect’ – after the Biblical character resurrected by Jesus – in which an animal reappears in the fossil record or the flesh after it was thought to be extinct.
Scientists are excited when NASA’s Cassini spacecraft found evidence of liquid water on Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons.
“We realize that this is a radical conclusion – that we may have evidence for liquid water within a body so small and so cold,” said Dr. Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team leader at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo., and the lead author of the Science report. “However, if we are right, we have significantly broadened the diversity of solar system environments where we might possibly have conditions suitable for living organisms. It doesn’t get any more exciting than this.”
This is a picture of the central region of a group of galaxies 300 million light-year away called Stephan’s Quintet, taken by the Spitzer space telescope and a ground-based telescope in Spain.
The distant galaxy is generating a ‘sonic boom’ of cosmic proportions, astronomers have discovered, as one of the galaxies falls towards the others at high speed, ploughing through a cloud of hydrogen gas travelling at 540.6 miles per second – 100 times faster than the speed of sound.
That’s all fine and dandy – but this is the interesting part: can you find the smiley face in the picture? (That’s Petunia smiling, I think) Link
Two years ago, a 45 year old orangutan named Tondalayo lost her mate. Because of her age, she could not take another mate nor be moved to another zoo. Tonda had been depressed since, zookeepers introduced her to a stray tabby cat.
Zookeepers named the cat, T.K. — short for "Tondalayo’s Kitty."
They play together, cuddle and sleep together each night. They have been together constantly for more than a month.
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