Andy Gize, Judith Seath, and Rosalie David discovered the fossil of an unusual Egyptian pillow made out of woven plant fiber encased in wax coating.
The rare artifact, which dates to 2055-1985 B.C., suggests Cleopatra and other well-known ancient Egyptians may have snoozed on relatively fluffy pillows that perhaps biodegraded over time, leaving the hard headrests for modern archaeologists to find.
Maxim magazine celebrated its 100th issue by building a 75-by-110-foot billboard featuring its cover image of Eva Longoria, billed as "TV's Sexiest Earthling." The billboard doesn't tower over a highway, however. It's flat on the ground so that it can be seen from a satellite and posted on Google Earth.
Scientists from the University of Chicago unveiled their discovery of the fossils of a "fishapod" named Tiktaalik roseae, a fish with ribcage, neck, and primitive writst and fingers - characteristics of land animals.
The fossils of the approximately 9-ft. long creature, which are, described in two Nature articles released today, were dug out of rock formations on Ellesmere Island, in the Canadian Arctic, by paleontologists from the University of Chicago and several other institutions. Its nickame, for reasons that will become clear, is "fishapod"; it's more formally called Tiktaalik ("large fish in stream," in the local Inuit language). Fishapod dates from about 383 million years ago. It had the scales, teeth and gills of a fish, but also a big, curved rib cage that suggests the creature had lungs as well. The ribs interlock, moreover, unlike a fish's, implying they were able to bear fishapod's weight—an unnecessary trait in a fish. It had a neck—most unfishlike. And, most surprising of all, its pectoral fins included bones that look like nothing less than a primitive wrist and fingers.
The newly translated text of a manuscript believed to be the Gospel of Judas, is sure to stir up controversies.
Discovered in 1970 in the Egyptian desert, the translated text purportedly describes Judas' betrayal as requested by Jesus himself.
"You will be cursed by the other generations -- and you will come to rule over them," Jesus tells Judas in the document made public Thursday.
The newly translated document's text begins: "The secret account of the revelation that Jesus spoke in conversation with Judas Iscariot."
In a key passage Jesus tells Judas, "You will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me."
This indicates that Judas would help liberate the spiritual self by helping Jesus get rid of his physical flesh, the scholars said.
"Step away from the others and I shall tell you the mysteries of the kingdom," Jesus says to Judas, singling him out for special status. "Look, you have been told everything. Lift up your eyes and look at the cloud and the light within it and the stars surrounding it. The star that leads the way is your star."
Anthony Atala and collagues from North Carolina's Wake Forest University had successfully transplanted bladders grown in a lab from the patients' own cells.
They took a bladder biopsy from each patient and isolated muscle cells and special bladder cells called urothelial cells, which they grew in the lab.
The cells were then placed onto a specially designed bladder-shaped scaffold and left to grow for seven to eight weeks.
The researchers surgically attached the engineered bladder to the patient's own bladder and followed progress for up to five years.
Cellar Image of the Day has this touching picture of Pakistani children riding a home-made ferris wheel over the heap of garbage in the slums of Karachi, Pakistan.
Karl Bushby is attempting to walk 36,000 miles around the world with unbroken footsteps. So far, he has spent nearly the last 8 years walking over 17,000 miles through South, Central, and North America.
The latest news is that Karl and a walking companion Dmitri Kieffer have successfully crossed the frozen Bering Strait from Alaska to Russia on foot!
Jeff probably has the world's second largest collection of beer cans: over 50,000 different cans from all over the world (I wonder who's got the largest collection?)
Micro-artist Jin Yin Hua has painted portraits of US presidents on a single strand of human hair no more than half an inch in length! Above are the magnified portraits of the last four presidents - I think he drew Clinton perfectly!
Link (Thanks Jin Yin Hua!) Previously on Neatorama: Jin's panda micro-art
The I/O Brush is a cool graphic tool that allows you to take color, texture, and movement of any object and draw with that characteristics - kind of like the real life version of the eyedropper tool in Photoshop!
In our current prototype, the brush houses a small CCD video camera in its tip with a ring of white LEDs around it. Force sensors are also embedded inside of the brush, measuring the pressure that is getting applied to the bristles. When the brush touches a surface, the lights around the camera briefly turn on to provide supplemental light for the camera. During that time, the system grabs the frames from the camera and stores them in the program.
This very cool brush, invented by Kimiko Ryokai, Stefan Marti, and Hiroshi Ishii of MIT, won an award at the 2005 Industrial Design Excellence Award.
http://web.media.mit.edu/%7Ekimiko/iobrush/ | Video (Thanks Sebastian Clark!)
The Web Gallery of Art has a fantastic collection of European painting and sculpture from the 12th to the mid 19th century. The website also has a very useful search feature.
A textbook used at schools in the Indian state of Rajasthan compares housewives to donkeys, and suggests the animals make better companions as they complain less and are more loyal to their "masters," The Times of India reported Tuesday.
"A donkey is like a housewife ... In fact, the donkey is a shade better, for while the housewife may sometimes complain and walk off to her parents' home, you'll never catch the donkey being disloyal to his master," the newspaper reported, quoting a Hindi-language primer meant for 14-year-olds.
The textbook was approved by the government - predictably, controversy ensued.
Bert Monroy created this photo-realistic picture of Damen Station on Chicago's Blue Line using Photoshop.
From the website, on the details of the amazing pic:
Adobe Illustrator was used for generating the majority of the basic shapes as well as all the buildings in the Chicago skyline. The rest was created in Photoshop. • The image size is 40 inches by 120 inches. • The flattened file weighs in at 1.7 Gigabytes. • It took eleven months (close to 2,000 hours) to create. • The painting is comprised of close to fifty individual Photoshop files. • Taking a cumulative total of all the files, the overall image contains over 15,000 layers. • Over 500 alpha channels were used for various effects. • Over 250,000 paths make up the multitude of shapes throughout the scene.
