Nestled at the foot of Syria’s coastal mountains, an ancient citadel has been put on the tourist map by restoration and excavation that revealed mysteries of the medieval Assassins sect, once based here. Saladin, the great Muslim leader, laid siege to Masyaf castle in the 12th century. But he thought twice before launching an assault on the Assassins, who had a reputation for mounting daring operations to slay their foes
The unavailable_after
tag will allow you to tell Google when Googlebot should no longer crawl that page. This tag comes in handy when you have a limited time offer promotional page, and on this page, the promotion will expire on a specific date
Dingoes should be reintroduced into large tracts of Australian sheep grazing country to control feral animals that would otherwise threaten native fauna, a wildlife expert says. Professor Chris Dickman, of the Institute of Wildlife Research at the University of Sydney, also says it may be time to consider pulling down the dingo fence that was built in the 1880s to keep dingoes from livestock in south-east Australia. He says Australians, particularly the livestock farming community, need to rethink their attitude towards the country’s native dog
Although the idea of teleporting individuals from one place to another in order to sidestep the headache of rush hour traffic has been around for quite some time, a team of Australian physicists are busy making it work, on a smaller scale, of course. The team has developed a so-called simple way to transport atoms
, which involves bringing the atoms to almost absolute zero, beaming them with two lasers, and using fibre optics to transport them to any other place at the speed of light where they enter a second condensate
and reconstruct
The cuneiform inscription in a tablet dating from 595BC has been deciphered for the first time — revealing a reference to an official at the court of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, that proves the historical existence of a figure mentioned in the Book of Jeremiah. It is rare evidence in a non-biblical source of a real person, other than kings, featured in the Bible
University of Colorado police are investigating a series of threatening messages and documents e-mailed to and slipped under the door of evolutionary biology labs on the Boulder campus. The messages included the name of a religious-themed group and addressed the debate between evolution and creationism. There were no overt threats to anybody specifically by name,
CU Police Commander Brad Wiesley said. It basically said anybody who doesn’t believe in our religious belief is wrong and should be taken care of
You’re allowed to be Hitler, but don’t even try being Gay on social networking site Facebook. It’s been revealed that the popular web site — which boasts it has more than 30 million members from around the world — does not allow people with the common Anglo Saxon surname Gay to join, assuming it is not a legitimate name. Thousands of people across Australia share the surname
Apple has bought out CUPS, the common UNIX printing system. The name may not sound familiar, but it’s part of every Mac OS X installation. CUPS implements a cross-platform printing system based on the Internet Printing Protocol and is, according to its web page, the defacto standard printing system for Linux
The squid, the mantle or main body of which measured two metres long, was found by a walker late on Tuesday on Ocean Beach, near Strahan, on the western coast of island state Tasmania. It’s a whopper,
Tasmanian Museum senior curator Genefor Walker-Smith told local media on Wednesday. The main mantle is about one metre across and its total length is about eight metres
Scientists at Seoul National University Korea are seeking to commercially clone dogs this year — the world’s first attempt to create canine clones for money. Senior researcher Kim Min-kyu at the Seoul-based University is spearheading the efforts based on his team’s expertise in cloning dogs. As per Mr. Kim early last month, they signed a memorandum of understanding with the Korea Customs Service to clone its drug-sniffing dogs. They have already obtained somatic cells of the expensive dogs and will attempt to clone them in July or August to get puppies late this year at the earliest — via Slashdot
Environmental concerns are driving companies to rethink their data centre strategy, especially in the area of storage systems, since storage accounts for 30 to 40 percent of power used in data centres
EFF has obtained FBI documents showing years of chronic problems with its use of National Security Letters (NSLs). The issue first drew widespread attention four months ago, when the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General released a report revealing extensive misuse of NSLs in a sampling of four FBI field offices. These findings were, unfortunately, not surprising to critics of the Bureau’s NSL power. Before the USA PATRIOT Act was passed in 2001, the FBI could unilaterally issue these demands only to obtain the records of suspected terrorists or spies. Under the changes made by the controversial anti-terrorism law, however, the FBI can now use NSLs to get telephone, Internet, financial, credit, and other personal records about anybody — without any court approval — as long as it believes the information could be relevant
to an authorised terrorism or espionage investigation
Australia will create a wildlife corridor spanning the continent to allow animals and plants to flee the effects of global warming. The 2,800-kilometre climate spine
, approved by state and national governments, will link the country’s entire east coast, from the snow-capped Australian alps in the south to the tropical north — the distance from London to Romania. The creation of the corridor was agreed by state and federal governments this year amid international warnings that the country — already the world’s driest inhabited continent — is suffering from an accelerated Greenhouse effect
Researchers in Madrid are claiming that they have discovered that a type of wax found in olive skin can help to slow the spread of HIV. Their work shows that maslinic acid — a natural product extracted from dry olive-pomace oil in oil mills — inhibits serin-protease, an enzyme used by HIV to release itself from the infected cell into the extracellular environment and, consequently, to spread the infection into the whole body. These scientists from Granada determined that the use of olive-pomace oil can produce an 80% slowing down in AIDS spreading in the body
Alexander Ratushnyak compressed the first 100,000,000 bytes of Wikipedia to a record-small 16,481,655 bytes (including decompression program), thereby not only winning the second payout of The Hutter Prize for Compression of Human Knowledge, but also bringing text compression within 1% of the threshold for artificial intelligence. Achieving 1.319 bits per character, this makes the next winner of the Hutter Prize likely to reach the threshold of human performance (between 0.6 and 1.3 bits per character) estimated by the founder of information theory, Claude Shannon and confirmed by Cover and King in 1978 using text prediction gambling. When the Hutter Prize started, less than a year ago, the best performance was 1.466 bits per character — via Slashdot
Neuroscientists say a recent report indicates moderate drinking may have a positive effect on the health of a person’s brain. Some of the world’s top neuroscientists are meeting in Cairns, in far north Queensland, to discuss ground-breaking research that shows brain cells continue to grow throughout our lifetime. Queensland Brain Institute director Professor Perry Bartlett says the report shows drinking alcohol does not kill off brain cells — and that drinking up to four standard glasses of wine a night might be beneficial
Google has agreed to buy web-based security provider Postini for $US625 million ($727 million), expanding its package of online applications to compete with Microsoft Office. Privately held Postini provides security and encryption services, protecting instant messaging, email and other communications, to more than 35,000 businesses and 10 million users worldwide. The deal will help Google provide larger organisations with more web-based services similar to its Google Apps package, which includes its email service Gmail, word processor, spreadsheet and business presentation software
In the end it looks like the Swedish police dropped the Pirate Bay from the list of sites filtered for containing child porn. The update of the filter, which is scheduled for later this week, won’t contain the Swedish file-sharing giant. The police say that the reason for this change is that the torrent containing the porn has been removed. But the Pirate Bay states that no files have been removed — via Slashdot
Dell said last week that in addition to selling PCs based on Ubuntu Linux, it will also offer systems designed for the SMB market — outside the US. After some confusion over Dell’s Linux strategy, the company said it felt the need to clarify things
Its rock-hard surface can take a full-on assault from a baseball bat, yet remains flexible enough to allow you to kick, leap and roll with perfect ease. Crafted from cutting-edge science, its unique molecular structure means that while providing armoured protection against crude concrete and even barbed wire, it remains light enough to allow you to run at high speed. In a nutshell, d3o is an advanced polymer with an intelligent molecular structure that flows with you as you move but, when shocked, locks together to become rigid enough to absorb impact energy. In its simplest form, it is like an automatic knee-pad that can be sown seamlessly into a pair of jeans — via Warren Ellis
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