Archive for July 26, 2013
The day after effect of brain activation: The brain image at the back presents spontaneous (resting state) patterns before an fMRI-based neurofeedback training session. The front brain image presents spontaneous (resting state) patterns a day after the training session, illustrating the long-term trace of the training.
Scientists have recently discovered that the human brain bears the imprint of earlier events for at least 24 hours after the experience has taken place.
That means that scientists could one day be able to uncover your personal history just by looking at your brain. And your unique brain wave pattern could also offer up some clues as to what makes you different from everybody else.
The new research stems from earlier research in the Weizmann Institute’s neurobiology department regarding the constant activity of the human brain. Even when you are sleeping, you’re brain is not.
When your eyes are open and processing visual information, your brain experiences bursts of nerve cell activity. When your eyes are closed, these bursts are replaced by super-slow brainwaves, known as “spontaneous” or “resting” brainwaves.
Spontaneous brainwaves are easy to spot. They’re complex, but highly organized and symmetrical, and they always travel through the same part of the brain- the outer layer, or cortex.
Weizmann researchers believed that the patterns of these resting waves might provide some insight into what makes each person unique. Their idea was that the waves’ patterns constitute “archives” for earlier experiences.
This hypothesis was supported by the fact that our brains do have the ability to change over the long term. As we add new experiences, the links between brain cells change, a facility known as plasticity.
Plasticity plays a key part in helping us anticipate what the result of a particular action will be before we perform it.
By examining these plasticity links, the researchers thought they could determine if an individual’s recent experiences show up in the brain’s spontaneously emerging brainwave patterns.
To test their hypothesis, researchers had volunteers undergo a training exercise that strongly activated a well-defined network of nerve cells in the cortex.
The subjects’ brain activity was monitored using a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner (fMRI) before, immediately following and 24 hours after the training exercise to see if the activity in any way affected the pattern of resting brainwaves.
The researchers were surprised to find that the experience of undergoing the training activity not only changed the resting brainwave patterns right after it occurred, it actually strengthened new links between brain cells, even 24 hours later.
The finding has implications for understanding human individuality, scientists say. A person’s spontaneous brainwave patterns could display not only information about recent events but, if monitored over time,could also reveal a sort of personal profile of that person’s brain. For example, what connections does your brain make easily? Which is it bad at making?
The things you’ve only ever suspected about yourself could be proven true or false by a “brain map” displaying your unique abilities, shortcomings, biases and learning skills.
“Today, we are discovering more and more of the common principles of brain activity, but we have not been able to account for the differences between individuals,” said Rafi Malach, a professor in Weizmann Institute’s Neurobiology Department and one of the researchers conducting the study.
“In the future, spontaneous brain patterns could be the key to obtaining unbiased individual profiles.”
Researchers believe that such profiles would be especially useful in diagnosing or learning the brain pathologies associated with a wide array of cognitive disabilities.
The idea that consciousness arises from quantum mechanical phenomena in the brain is intriguing, yet lacks evidence, scientists say.
Physicist Roger Penrose, of the University of Oxford, and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff, of the University of Arizona, propose that the brain acts as a quantum computer — a computational machine that makes use of quantum mechanical phenomena (like the ability of particles to be in two places at once) to perform complex calculations. In the brain, fibers inside neurons could form the basic units of quantum computation, Penrose and Hameroff explained at the Global Future 2045 International Congress, a futuristic conference held here June 15-16.
The idea is appealing, because neuroscience, so far, has no satisfactory explanation for consciousness — the state of being self-aware and having sensory experiences and thoughts. But many scientists are skeptical, citing a lack of experimental evidence for the idea. [Consciousness to Sleep: Top 10 Mysteries of the Mind]
The Orch OR model
Penrose and Hameroff developed their ideas independently, but collaborated in the early 1990s to develop what they call the Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch OR) model.
Penrose’s work rests on an interpretation of the mathematician Kurt Godel’s incompleteness theorem, which states that certain results cannot be proven by a computer algorithm. Penrose argues that human mathematicians are capable of proving so-called “Godel-unprovable” results, and therefore human brains cannot be described as typical computers. Instead, he says, to achieve these higher abilities, brain processes must rely on quantum mechanics.
But Penrose’s theory didn’t explain how this quantum computing occurred inside actual brains, just that the phenomenon would be needed to solve certain mathematical equations. Hameroff read Penrose’s work and suggested small fibrous structures that give cells their structural support — known as microtubules — might be capable of carrying out quantum computations.
Microtubules are made up of units of the protein tubulin, which contains regions where electrons are swirling around very close to each other. Hameroff proposed that these electrons could become “quantum entangled,” a state in which two particles retain a connection, and an action performed on one affects the other, even when the two are separated by a distance.
In the Orch OR model, the mathematical probabilities that describe the quantum states of these entangled electrons in microtubules become unstable in space-time. These mathematical probabilities are called wave functions, and in this scenario they collapse, moving from a state of probability to a specific actuality. In this state, the microtubules in one neuron could be linked to those in other neurons via electrical connections known as gap junctions. These junctions would allow the electrons to “tunnel” to other regions of the brain, resulting in waves of neural activity that are perceived as conscious experience.
“Penrose had a mechanism for consciousness, and I had a structure,” Hameroff told LiveScience.
Problems with the model
Interesting as it sounds, the Orch OR model has not been tested experimentally, and many scientists reject it.
Quantum computers — computers that take advantage of quantum mechanical effects to achieve extremely speedy calculations — have been theorized, but only one (built by the company D-Wave) is commercially available, and whether it’s a true quantum computer is debated. Such computers would be extremely sensitive to perturbations in a system, which scientists refer to as “noise.” In order to minimize noise, it’s important to isolate the system and keep it very cold (because heat causes particles to speed up and generate noise).
Building quantum computers is challenging even under carefully controlled conditions. “This paints a desolate picture for quantum computation inside the wet and warm brain,” Christof Koch and Klaus Hepp, of the University of Zurich, Switzerland, wrote in an essay published in 2006 in the journal Nature.
Another problem with the model has to do with the timescales involved in the quantum computation. MIT physicist Max Tegmark has done calculations of quantum effects in the brain, finding that quantum states in the brain last far too short a time to lead to meaningful brain processing. Tegmark called the Orch OR model vague, saying the only numbers he’s seen for more concrete models are way off.
“Many people seem to feel that consciousness is a mystery and quantum mechanics is a mystery, so they must be related,” Tegmark told LiveScience.
The Orch OR model draws criticism from neuroscientists as well. The model holds that quantum fluctuations inside microtubules produce consciousness. But microtubules are also found in plant cells, said theoretical neuroscientist Bernard Baars, CEO of the nonprofit Society for Mind-Brain Sciences in Falls Church, VA., who added, “plants, to the best of our knowledge, are not conscious.”
These criticisms do not rule out quantum consciousness in principle, but without experimental evidence, many scientists remain unconvinced.
“If somebody comes up with just one single experiment,” to demonstrate quantum consciousness, Baars said, “I will drop all my skepticism.”
Researchers See Through Walls With ‘Wi-Vi’
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Want Xray vision like the man of steel? A technology that lets you see behind walls could soon be built in to your cell phone.
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MIT professor Dina Katabi and graduate student Fadel Adib have announced WiVi, a demonstration of a technology that uses WiFi to allow a viewer to “see” a person moving behind a wall. (WiVi stands for “WiFi” and “vision.”)
Previous work demonstrated that the subtle reflections of wireless inter signals bouncing off a human could be used to track that person’s movements, but those previous experiments either required that awireless router was already in the room of the person being tracked, or “a whole truck just to carry the radio,” said Katabi.
The new device uses the same wireless antenna as is found in a cell phone or laptop and could in theory one day be embedded in a phone.
The trick is canceling out all interfering signals – Wi-Fi doesn’t just bounce off humans, but also walls, floors, and furniture. And those signals are 10,000 to 100,000 times more powerful than the reflections off a human body.
Katabi’s wivi sends out two wireless signals, one of which is the inverse of the other. In what Katabi calls “interference nulling,” the two signals cancel each other out unless they hit a moving target – such as a human.
“To silence the noise, we change the structure of the Wi-Fi signal so all the undesired reflections cancel,” she said.
The device is meant to be portable so, for example, a person worried that someone was hiding in the bushes could do a quick scan for her personal safety.
WiVi could also serve as a high tech baby monitor or help Superman – or just cops – catch baddies.
How New Military Medical Advancements Save Lives (Infographic)
New developments in artificial limbs, blood clotting and wound repair are helping soldiers survive and recover from devastating injuries.
Head wound:
• Memory pill: Research is under way to develop a pill that reduces physiological responses to experiences associated with post-traumatic stress disorder.
• Injected goop to repair damaged faces: A synthetic-organic material is injected just under the skin to help restore missing and damaged portions of the face.
• Face transplants: Research is under way to develop a procedure to help soldiers with severe facial wounds.
Torso/body:
• The Asherman Chest Seal is standard in medic kits, it was designed by a Navy SEAL medic to treat open chest injuries.
Blood loss:
• QuikClot/Combat Gauze version was named one of Army’s top ten inventions of 2008.
• Thawed Plasma and Massive Transfusions programs: The greatly increase the survival rate of severely bleeding casualties.
• HemCon bandage & Chitoflex: Bandage provides a patient with the time needed to reach care or the critical time to clot.
• Dried plasma: Using this ‘portable’ plasma in the field improves the survival of patients.
Limbs:
• Prosthetics: Lighter and stronger materials enable the fabrication of limbs in different shapes for different purposes, such as the robotic, “Luke Arm.”
• Intrepid Dynamic Exoskeletal Orthosis: Helps wounded soldiers return to duty faster, resembles prosthetic for existing limb.
Other:
• Suspended animation: Research on lifesaving method involves bringing patients” bodies down to hypothermic temperatures.
• Freezing to save brains: Research is under way to develop a therapeutic hypothermia device to prevent traumatic brain injuries. Cooling the brain after trauma might prevent long-term harm to cognitive and motor skills.
Medical science is only beginning to understand the ways in which the mind influences the body. The placebo effect, for example, demonstrates that people can at times cause a relief in medical symptoms or suffering by believing the cures to be effective — whether they actually are or not. Using processes only poorly understood, the body’s ability to heal itself is far more amazing than anything modern medicine could create.
Psychic powers and ESP
powers and extra-sensory perception (ESP) rank among the top ten unexplained phenomena if for no other reason than that belief in them is so widespread. Many people believe that intuition is a form of psychic power, a way of accessing arcane or special knowledge about the world or the future. Researchers have tested people who claim to have psychic powers, though the results under controlled scientific conditions have so far been negative or ambiguous. Some have argued that psychic powers cannot be tested, or for some reason diminish in the presence of skeptics or scientists. If this is true, science will never be able to prove or disprove the existence of psychic powers.
Near-Death Experiences and Life After Death
People who were once near death have sometimes reported various mystical experiences (such as going into a tunnel and emerging in a light, being reunited with loved ones, a sense of peace, etc.) that may suggest an existence beyond the grave. While such experiences are profound, no one has returned with proof or verifiable information from “beyond the grave.” Skeptics suggest that the experiences are explainable as natural and predictable hallucinations of a traumatized brain, yet there is no way to know with certainty what causes near-death experiences, or if they truly are visions of “the other side.”
UFOs
There is no doubt that UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects) exist — many people see things in the skies that they cannot identify, ranging from aircraft to meteors. Whether or not any of those objects and lights are alien spacecraft is another matter entirely; given the fantastic distances and effort involved in just getting to Earth from across the universe, such a scenario seems unlikely. Still, while careful investigation has revealed known causes for most sighting reports, some UFO incidents will always remain unexplained.
Deja vu
Deja vu is a French phrase meaning ‘already seen,’ referring to the distinct, puzzling, and mysterious feeling of having experienced a specific set of circumstances before. A woman might walk into a building, for example, in a foreign country she’d never visited, and sense that the setting is eerily and intimately familiar. Some attribute deja vu to psychic experiences or unbidden glimpses of previous lives. As with intuition (see #3), research into ,human psychology can offer more naturalistic explanations, but ultimately the cause and nature of the phenomenon itself remains a mystery.
Ghosts
From the Shakespeare play “MacBeth” to the NBC show “Medium,” spirits of the dead have long made an appearance in our culture and folklore. Many people have reported seeing apparitions of both shadowy strangers and departed loved ones. Though definitive proof for the existence of ghosts remains elusive, sincere eyewitnesses continue to report seeing, photographing, and even communicating with ghosts. Ghost investigators hope to one day prove that the dead can contact the living, providing a final answer to the mystery.
Mysterious Disappearances
People disappear for various reasons. Most are runaways, some succumb to accident, a few are abducted or killed, but most are eventually found. Not so with the truly mysterious disappearances. From the crew of the Marie Celeste to Jimmy Hoffa, Amelia Earhart, and Natalee Holloway, some people seem to have vanished without a trace. When missing persons are found, it is always through police work, confession, or accident never by ‘psychic detectives’). But when the evidence is lacking and leads are lost, even police and forensic science can’t always solve the crime.
Whether we call it gut feelings, a ‘sixth sense,’ or something else, we have all experienced intuition at one time or another. Of course, gut feelings are often wrong (how many times during aircraft turbulence have you been sure your plane was going down?), but they do seem to be right much of the time. Psychologists note that people subconsciously pick up information about the world around us, leading us to seemingly sense or know information without knowing exactly how or why we know it. But cases of intuition are difficult to prove or study, and psychology may only be part of the answer.
Bigfoot
For decades, large, hairy, manlike beasts called Bigfoot have occasionally been reported by eyewitnesses across America. Despite the thousands of Bigfoot that must exist for a breeding population, not a single body has been found. Not one has been killed by a hunter, struck dead by a speeding car, or even died of natural causes. In the absence of hard evidence like teeth or bones, support comes down to eyewitness sightings and ambiguous photos and films. Since it is logically impossible to prove a universal negative, science will never be able to prove that creatures like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster do not exist, and it is possible that these mysterious beasts lurk far from prying eyes.
The Taos Hum
Some residents and visitors in the small city of Taos, New Mexico, have for years been annoyed and puzzled by a mysterious and faint low-frequency hum in the desert air. Oddly, only about 2 percent of Taos residents report hearing the sound. Some believe it is caused by unusual acoustics; others suspect mass hysteria or some secret, sinister purpose. Whether described as a whir, hum, or buzz and whether psychological, natural, or supernatural no one has yet been able to locate the sound’s origin.
Mysterious Hum Driving People Crazy Around the World
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| The Hum, a mysterious droning sound, has been heard in places like Bristol, England, Bondi, Australia and Taos |
It creeps in slowly in the dark of night, and once inside, it almost never goes away.
It’s known as the Hum, a steady, droning sound that’s heard in places as disparate as Taos, N.M.; Bristol, England; and Largs, Scotland.
But what causes the Hum, and why it only affects a small percentage of the population in certain areas, remain a mystery, despite a number of scientific investigations.
Reports started trickling in during the 1950s from people who had never heard anything unusual before; suddenly, they were bedeviled by an annoying, low-frequency humming, throbbing or rumbling sound.
The cases seem to have several factors in common: Generally, the Hum is only heard indoors, and it’s louder at night than during the day. It’s also more common in rural or suburban environments; reports of a hum are rare in urban areas, probably because of the steady background noise in crowded cities.
Who hears the Hum?
Only about 2 percent of the people living in any given Hum-prone area can hear the sound, and most of them are ages 55 to 70, according to a 2003 study by acoustical consultant Geoff Leventhall of Surrey, England.
Most of the people who hear the Hum (sometimes referred to as “hearers” or “hummers”) describe the sound as similar to a diesel engine idling nearby. And the Hum has driven virtually every one of them to the point of despair. [Video: Listen to 6 Spooky Sounds]
“It’s a kind of torture; sometimes, you just want to scream,” retiree Katie Jacques of Leeds. Leeds is one of several places in Great Britain where the Hum has recently appeared.
“It’s worst at night,” Jacques said. “It’s hard to get off to sleep because I hear this throbbing sound in the background … You’re tossing and turning, and you get more and more agitated about it.”
Being dismissed as crackpots or whiners only exacerbates the distress for these complainants, most of whom have perfectly normal hearing. Sufferers complain of headaches, nausea, dizziness, nosebleeds andsleep disturbances. At least one suicide in the United Kingdom has been blamed on the Hum.
The Hum zones
Bristol, England, was one of the first places on Earth where the Hum was reported. In the 1970s, about 800 people in the coastal city reported hearing a steady thrumming sound, which was eventually blamed on vehicular traffic and local factories working 24-hour shifts.
Another famous hum occurs near Taos, N.M. Starting in spring 1991, residents of the area complained of a low-level rumbling noise. A team of researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory, the University of New Mexico, Sandia National Laboratories and other regional experts were unable to identify the source of the sound.
Windsor, Ontario, is another Hum hotspot. Researchers from the University of Windsor and Western University in London, Ontario, were recently given a grant to analyze the Windsor Hum and determine its cause.
Researchers also have been investigating the Hum in Bondi, a seaside area of Sydney, Australia, for several years, to no avail. “It sends people around here crazy — all you can do is put music on to block it out. Some people leave fans on,” one resident told the Daily Telegraph.
Back in the United States, the Kokomo Hum was isolated in a 2003 study financed by the Indiana city’s municipal government. The investigation revealed that two industrial sites — one a Daimler Chrysler plant — were producing noise at specific frequencies. Despite noise-abatement measures, some residents continue to complain of the Hum.
What causes the Hum?
Most researchers investigating the Hum express some confidence that the phenomenon is real, and not the result of mass hysteria or hearers’ hypochondria (or extraterrestrials beaming signals to Earth from their spaceships).
As in the case of the Kokomo Hum, industrial equipment is usually the first suspected source of the Hum. In one instance, Leventhall was able to trace the noise to a neighboring building’s central heating unit.
Other suspected sources include high-pressure gas lines, electrical power lines, wireless communication devices or other sources. But only in a few cases has a Hum been linked to a mechanical or electrical source.
There’s some speculation that the Hum could be the result of low-frequency electromagnetic radiation, audible only to some people. And there are verified cases in which individuals have particular sensitivities to signals outside the normal range of human hearing.
Medical experts are quick to point out that tinnitus (the perception of sound when no external noise is present) is a likely cause, but repeated testing has found that many hearers have normal hearing and no occurrences of tinnitus.
Environmental factors have also been blamed, including seismic activity such as microseisms — very faint, low-frequency earth tremors that can be generated by the action of ocean waves.
Other hypotheses, including military experiments and submarine communications, have yet to bear any fruit. For now, hearers of the Hum have to resort to white-noise machines and other devices to reduce or eliminate the annoying noise.
Leventhall, who recommends that some hearers turn to cognitive-behavioral therapy to relieve the symptoms caused by the Hum, isn’t confident that the puzzle will be solved anytime soon.
By Marc Lallanilla.
Frightening Fangtooth
Named for its long, vampire-like teeth the fangtooth fish inhabits the extreme deep waters of the ocean. In proportion to its body size, it has some of the largest teeth of any fish. Although it may look scary, the endangered fangtooth only grows to about 6 inches (16 cm) in length.
Vampire Squid
Despite its terrifying name, the vampire squid is relatively tiny, reaching a maximum of 6 inches (15.4 cm) in length. It gets its name from its red coloring, glowing, bioluminescent eyes and the cloak-like webbing that connects its eight arms. Although it has similarities with both squid and octopuses, it is actually not a squid but in its own separate family, of which it is the last remaining member; as such, the animal is referred to as a “living fossil.” Its scientific name, Vampyroteuthis infernalis, literally translates to “vampire squid from hell.
Skeletal Jellyfish
The deep-sea Aequorea, or crystal jellyfish, has a translucent body and long tentacles that give it a ghostly appearance. A jellyfish’s tentacles, which trail after its body, can be less than an inch to120 feet (30.48 meters) long.
Crimson Jellyfish
A deep-sea jellyfish, the blood-red Atolla wyvillei emits a spooky blue light when it is threatened by a predator. Its bioluminescent light flashes in a hypnotic, rotating pinwheel pattern around its body.
Shocking Spotted Handfish
The spotted handfish, Brachionichthys hirsutus, is a rare, endangered Australian deepwater fish. Its pectoral fins look like short arms with hands. Using these extremities, the handfish can swim as well as “walk” on the seafloor, and it often prefers to walk.
Neon Eel
This close-up view of the Gymnothorax undulates species of moray eelshows its distinctive pattern of light, lime-green speckles on a dark olive background.
Malevolent Moray Eel
The toothy, scary-looking creature pictured above is a moray eel. Most moray eels, including the Gymnothorax bathyphilus, a deepwater moray eel found in the South Pacific Ocean, have short, serrate teeth, though some species have longer, fang-like teeth.
The Blackdragon Fish
Another bottom-dwelling bioluminescent creature, the blackdragon fish has light-emitting organs arranged all along its belly to fool predators by changing its silhouette. The spooky fish also has bioluminescencant “flashlights” next to each eye that it can flash on while on the look-out for prey or to signal potential mates. As you can see in the above photo, the blackdragon fish is so toothy that even its tongue has razor-sharp teeth.
Halloween Holothurians
Not all species of sea cucumbers (Holothurians) look like, well, cucumbers. Some species, which have swaying branch-like tentacles on one end of their long bodies, more closely resemble a chubby stalk of broccoli. Above is a colorful shot of a purple and orange-colored sea cucumber with its tentacles spread out.
Spiky Sea Urchin
Small, spiny and round, sea urchins often have sharp spindles surrounding their bodies to protect them from predators. Their coloring can be black, brown, purple, red or olive green. The California purple sea urchin (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus) in the above photo is a needle-y species that is a deep plum color.
Saber-Toothed Viperfish
The fittingly named viperfish has long, needle-like teeth and hinged lower jaws. This deepwater monster prefers warm tropical waters, where it sinks its fang-like teeth into prey, immobilizing them.
Eerie Anglerfish
The terrifyingly toothy anglerfish became a common occurrence in little kids’ nightmares ever since it chased Nemo and Dory in Pixar’s “Finding Nemo.” To attract prey, the scary-looking fish uses a bioluminescent “fishing pole” that hangs just above and in front of its toothy face. The lure is actually a piece of dorsal spine packed with millions of glow-in-the-dark bacteria.
Four men blow into long horns at the entranceway into a 1,500-year-old tomb chamber, located on the south wall. The mural tomb likely held a military commander and his wife in what is now Shuozhou City, China.
A colorful, well-preserved “mural tomb,” where a military commander and his wife were likely buried nearly 1,500 years ago, has been uncovered in China.
The domed tomb’s murals, whose original colors are largely preserved, was discovered in Shuozhou City, about 200 miles (330 kilometers) southwest of Beijing. Researchers estimate that the murals cover an area of about 860 square feet (80 square meters), almost the same area as a modern-day bowling lane.
Most of the grave’s goods have been looted, and the bodies are gone, but the murals, drawn on plaster, are still there. In a passageway leading into the tomb, a door guard leans on his long sword watching warily. Across from him, also in the passageway, is a guard of honor, supported by men on horses, their red-and-blue uniforms still vivid despite the passing of so many centuries. [See Pictures of the Ancient Mural Tomb]
Inside the tomb itself, the man and woman who had been interned are depicted enjoying a banquet while sitting under a canopy. A man plays a tall harp while two other musicians hold windpipe instruments. At the tomb’s entrance way, another mural shows four men blowing into long horns.
In addition to the commander’s wife there are a number of females depicted in the tomb. Some of them are attendants and a few appear to be musicians (one of them carrying a windpipe instrument). The archaeologists note that all the females, including the wife, are depicted with their hair in the shape of a “flying bird.”
A close-up of four of the female attendants under a parasol. Notice the detail of their “flying bird” hairstyles.
Another scene features a tall red horse ready to be mounted. In another scene is a carriage pulled by a tan ox and driven by two men, each with black hair and curly beards (possibly foreigners).
And then there is the dome itself, which shows how the ancient Chinese viewed the heavens.
“The domed ceiling is painted uniformly in dark gray color to signify the infinite space of the sky. The Silver River (representing the Milky Way) flows across the sky from the southwest to the northeast, and inside the river are fine fish-scale patterns representing waves in the water,” wrote archaeologist Liu Yan, who reported the discovery, in translated English, in the most recent edition of the journal Chinese Archaeology. A longer version of the article, written in Chinese, was published earlier in the journal Wenwu.
The dome ceiling of the 1,500-year-old tomb, which was discovered in Shuozhou City, China, is painted dark gray to “signify the infinite space of the sky.” A silver river, with waves, weaves across the sky representing the Milky Way galaxy. Stars can be seen and the sun is represented at center-right and the moon at center-left.
Yan notes that, on either side of this Silver River, white dots represent the stars, alongside representations of the moon and sun, with the sun bearing a “gold crow” at its center. Supernatural beings and
zodiac animals are depicted below this sky map.
Tomb raiders
The tomb was uncovered in a salvage excavation in 2008. Yan said that the tomb had been robbed three times before he got to it, and most of the grave goods, including the bodies, were gone. In fact, the thieves were making preparations to steal the murals, too, but the authorities arrived just in time to stop the theft.
“Tomb robbers had already made preparations for removing the murals. The blue lines that were drawn to divide the murals into sections for cutting and the gauze fabric used for reinforcing the murals before detachment still remain on the surface of the walls,” Yan wrote. [Maya Murals: Stunning Images of King]
When authorities discovered the tomb, a team of scholars from several Chinese antiquities institutions began excavating the site and conserving the murals. Based on these murals and the tomb design, along with a few remaining grave goods, the scientists determined the tomb dates back nearly 1,500 years, to the Northern Qi Dynasty.
A military commander
Archaeologists believe the couple buried at the site consisted of a military commander, in charge of the Shuozhou City area, and his wife. This makes sense given the date of the tomb.
Historians know that at the time this couple lived, three rival dynasties battled for control of China. The buried commander served the Northern Qi, a short-lived dynasty that lasted between A.D. 550 and 577, when it was conquered by another group of rulers known as the “Northern Zhou.”
Needless to say, military leaders were in high demand at this time, and military experience was the key to obtaining power.
“The Zhou and Qi states both exemplified military dynasticism,” Stanford University professor Mark Edward Lewis wrote in his book “China Between Empires: The Northern and Southern Dynasties” (Harvard University Press, 2009). “Their rulers had risen through military service and based their powers on a central army,” he writes.
In such an environment, it appears, a local military commander could afford a finely decorated tomb for the afterlife.
Dolphins and fishermen work together in Laguna, Brazil, to catch groups of mullet. 
In Laguna Brazil, the local bottlenose dolphin will help the fishermen to fish. Why is it so helpful, it is still a mystery
Bottlenose dolphin is like a shepherd, to rush the mullet to fishermen
The fishermen stand in line, waiting for the dolphins to catch mullet over
The fishermen cast net fishing when mullet getting closer.
After providing help to fishermen, dolphins swim back to the sea, do not ask for any reward
According to foreign media reports, In Laguna Brazil, local bottlenose dolphins and fishermen, the formation of a surprising partnership – to help the fishermen. They will be mullet fish catch to fishermen, and then shaking his head and tail flapping, splashing in the sea, to notify fishermen to throw nets.
Local fishermen said that this behavior of bottlenose dolphins has been a long history. Over the past two years, the researchers of this behavior observed bottlenose dolphins to try to understand why they want to do this. Research papers, they said: bottlenose dolphin community with the local traditional fishermen formed a unique collaboration. “
The researchers found that in a community of 150 dolphins, which has 50 to help the fishermen, the remainders just “stand by”. 50 dolphins play the role of the shepherd, silver fish mullet catch to fishermen, and then shaking his head and tail flapping, splashing in the sea, notify fishermen to throw nets. The researchers noted that 50 dolphins may be the highest members of the groups in the level of socialization, they keep in close contact in the water swimming. In addition, researchers also want to know how to train a young dolphin to become a good helper for the fishermen.
Why bottlenose dolphins help fishermen, it is still a mystery. Throughout the process, they do not get any food as a reward from the fishermen there. Whether they always stand in the side of the fishermen? Whether this is the beginning of a new human – dolphin alliance? Or is it a Trojan horse into the human internal first, and then hostile to human? Perhaps, because the bottlenose dolphin only found that fishermen’s life is not easy so that they lend a helping hand, like the Samaritans did.
The Highlanders 