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周末来了~~~先祝大家周末愉快~~~ 但也不能松懈哦~~~今天的任务可不少哦~~~ 嘿嘿~~~ 加油！！
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Red dot becomes 'oldest cave art'
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Red dots, hand stencils and animal figures represent the oldest examples yet found of cave art in Europe.
The symbols on the walls at 11 Spanish locations, including the World Heritage sites of Altamira, El Castillo and Tito Bustillo have long been recognised for their antiquity.
But researchers have now used refined dating techniques to get a more accurate determination of their ages.
One motif - a faint red dot - is said to be more than 40,000 years old.
"In Cantabria, [in] El Castillo, we find hand stencils that are formed by blowing paint against the hands pressed against the wall of a cave," explained Dr Alistair Pike from Bristol University, UK, and the lead author on a scholarly paper published in the journal Science.
"We find one of these to date older than 37,300 years on 'The Panel of Hands', and very nearby there is a red disc made by a very similar technique that dates to older than 40,800 years.
"This now currently is Europe's oldest dated art by at least 4,000 years," he told reporters. It is arguably also the oldest reliably dated cave art anywhere in the world.
The team arrived at the ages by examining the calcium carbonate (calcite) crusts that had formed on top of the paintings.
This material builds up in the exact same way that stalagmites and stalactites form in a cave.
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In the process, the calcite incorporates small numbers of naturally occurring radioactive uranium atoms. These atoms decay into thorium at a very precise rate through the ages, and the ratio of the two different elements in any sample can therefore be used as a kind of clock to time the moment when the calcite crust first formed.
Uranium-thorium dating has been around for decades, but the technique has now been so refined that only a tiny sample is required to get a good result.
This enabled the team to take very thin films of deposits from just above the paint pigments; and because the films were on top, the dates they gave were minimum ages - that is, the paintings had to be at least as old as the calcite deposits, and very probably quite a bit older.
The oldest dates coincide with the first known immigration into Europe of modern humans (Homo sapiens). Before about 41,000 years ago, it is their evolutionary cousins, the Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis), who dominate the continent.
Dr Pike's and colleagues' work therefore raises some intriguing questions about who might have authored the markings.
If anatomically modern humans were responsible then it means they engaged in the activity almost immediately on their arrival in Europe.
If Neanderthals were the artisans, it adds another layer to our understanding of their capabilities and sophistication.
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The Panel of Hands: Produced by blowing paint over a hand pressed against the wall
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The great antiquity of the paintings leads co-author Joao Zilhao, a research professor at ICREA, University of Barcelona, to think the Neanderthals produced the motifs. Finding even older paintings than the red dot at El Castillo might confirm that "gut feeling", he said.
"There is a strong chance that these results imply Neanderthal authorship," Prof Zilhao explained.
"But I will not say we have proven it because we haven't, and it cannot be proven at this time.
"What we have to do now is go back, sample more and find out whether we can indeed get dates older than 42, 43, 44,000.
"There is already a sampling programme going on. We have samples from more sites in Spain, from sites in Portugal and from other caves in Western Europe and so eventually we will be able to sort it out."
Tracing the origins of abstract throught and behaviours, and the rate at which they developed, are critical to understanding the human story.
The use of symbolism - the ability to let one thing represent another in the mind - is one of those traits that set our animal species apart from all others.
It is what underpins artistic endeavour and also the use of language.
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The El Castillo Cave has numerous red discs on its walls. One was dated to 40,800 years ago
Ten-year-old girl gets vein grown from her stem cells
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A 10-year-old girl has had a major blood vessel in her body replaced with one grown with her own stem cells, Swedish doctors report.
She had poor blood flow between her intestines and liver.
A vein was taken from a dead man, stripped of its own cells and then bathed in stem cells from the girl, according to a study published in the Lancet.
Surgeons said there was a "striking" improvement in her quality of life.
This is the latest in a series of body parts grown, or engineered, to match the tissue of the patient.
Last year, scientists created a synthetic windpipe and then coated it with a patient's stem cells.
Home-grown
A blockage in the major blood vessel linking the intestines and the liver can cause serious health problems including internal bleeding and even death.
In this case, other options such as using artificial grafts to bypass the blockage, had failed.
Doctors at the University of Gothenburg and Shalgrenska University Hospital tried to make a vein out of the patient's own cells.
It used a process known as "decellularisation".
It starts with a donor vein which is then effectively put through a washing machine in which repeated cycles of enzymes and detergents break down and wash away the person's cells.
It leaves behind a scaffold. This is then bathed in stem cells from the 10-year-old's bone marrow. The end product is a vein made from the girl's own cells.
The doctors said: "The new stem-cell derived graft resulted not only in good blood flow rates, but also in strikingly improved quality of life for the patient."
Profs Martin Birchall and George Hamilton, from University College London, said: "The young girl was spared the trauma of having veins harvested from the deep neck or leg with the associated risk of lower limb disorders."
They said this one-off procedure needed "to be converted into full clinical trials... if regenerative medicine solutions are to become widely used".
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China to send first woman astronaut Liu Yang into space
China has named the female astronaut who on Saturday is set to become the nation's first woman in space.
Liu Yang, 33, an air force pilot, will join two male colleagues on board the Shenzhou 9 spacecraft, state-run news agency Xinhua says.
The spacecraft will dock with the Tiangong 1 space station module, as China bids to establish a permanent space base in orbit.
Liu will work on the mission with astronauts Jing Haipeng and Liu Wang.
"From day one I have been told I am no different from the male astronauts," Ms Liu was quoted by state broadcaster CCTV as saying before her assignment was announced.
"I believe in persevering. If you persevere, success lies ahead of you," she said.
Xinhua, which describes her as a veteran pilot who enlisted in the People's Liberation Army in 1997, said she was recruited to be an astronaut in May 2010.
Space mission
The Shenzhou 9 mission, China's fourth manned space flight and its first since 2008, is expected to blast-off at 18:37 local time (10:37 GMT) from the Jiuquan launch centre in China's north-west Gansu province.
The astronauts aboard the Shenzhou 9 spacecraft will dock with the Tiangong 1 - an experimental module currently orbiting Earth - and carry out scientific experiments on board.
Last year, China completed a complicated space docking manoeuvre when an unmanned craft docked with the Tiangong 1, or Heavenly Body, by remote control.
This is China's first manned space docking mission, Xinhua says.
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How Wendy’s Finally Knocked Burger King Down A Notch
There’s a restaurant in Wichita, Kan., that now offers a Bacon Portabella Black Label Burger (with mushroom sauce and Muenster cheese), an Apple Pecan Chicken Salad, a Monterey Ranch Crispy Chicken Sandwich and an Asiago Ranch Chicken Club. Interested? No need for reservations. You can pick them all up at the Wendy’s drive-thru.
In fact, you can order most of these items at Wendy’s 6,000 restaurants worldwide.
Just a few years ago, when Americans hungered for exotic flavors or artisinal anything, they didn’t seek it at Wendy’s or any other fast-food establishment. But quick-service restaurants are redefining themselves, starting with changes to the sorts of menu items they offer. They’re placing a sharper focus on ingredients and transforming their dining rooms into Starbucks-style hangouts, largely so they can compete with the growing popularity of so-called fast-casual restaurants like Five Guys, Chipotle and Panera Bread, which don’t offer table service but do have higher-quality items than fast-food joints. (Think of them as the middle ground between McDonald’s and Applebee’s.)
“I promise you three, four, five years ago, we couldn’t pronounce ‘asiago,’” says Wendy’s Senior Vice President Denny Lynch. “We certainly wouldn’t have known it was a smoked cheese that tastes great with chicken. It’s one of our more popular chicken sandwiches now.”
(MORE: Food Fight! Stores, Producers, Consumers Battle Over High Food Prices)
Last week, food industry research firm Technomic announced that Wendy’s had edged out Burger King for the first time ever as the country’s No. 2 hamburger chain. That’s thanks in large part to Wendy’s recent moves — and a lack thereof by Burger King. BK is just now starting its own makeover, firing its bizarre King mascot last year while unveiling a new line of BK Chef’s Choice burgers.
The movement toward higher-end menu items and a more friendly physical space won’t stop with Wendy’s and Burger King. Taco Bell recently announced a new Cantina Bell menu that looks like Chipotle-lite while White Castle is testing three special menus within existing White Castles: one that offers Southern-style barbecue and beer, another Asian noodles, and one offering paninis.
But this trend didn’t start with these restaurants either, but rather with the one fast-food chain that’s still beating everybody else.
McDonald’s, Reinvented
For almost a half-century, McDonald’s only got bigger. Every single quarter from 1954 until the turn of the century was better than the last for the fast-food giant. But in 2002, McDonald’s suffered its first quarterly loss due to a combination of factors. For one, McDonald’s failed to respond to customer demands in its rush toward continual expansion. Not coincidentally, it was the same year that Eric Schlosser’s widely read book Fast Food Nation appeared, pinning much of the country’s obesity epidemic on the fast-food chain. The book not only changed minds about the industry, but also reflected changing attitudes about what we were putting in our bodies.
With consumers starting to demand more health-conscious choices while complaining about the chain’s customer service and overall cleanliness, McDonald’s decided it was time for a change. Beginning in 2003, McDonald’s began a radical transformation, slowing the number of new stores it opened so it could focus on revitalizing its menu while paying more attention to customer needs and attitudinal shifts toward premium, nutritional foods.
(MORE: Demand For Gas Has Fallen, Yet Prices Keep Rising)
That’s why today when you walk into a McDonald’s, you’ll see an Angus Mushroom & Swiss Burger, a Chipotle BBQ Snack Wrap, Fruit ‘N Yogurt Parfait, and a McCafe Iced Caramel Mocha — as well as the ever-popular Dollar Menu and Big Macs.
Since the shift, McDonald’s sales have only gone skyward. Total revenue increased from $50.8 billion in 2004 to $77.4 billion in 2010.
“To be able to sell Angus burgers at that price [about $4] and not lose anything in terms of speed and consistency is pretty shocking,” says Gloria Cox, a principal at The Cambridge Group, a growth strategy consulting firm. “McDonald’s has shown it can be done, and that may have caused others to say, ‘If they can do it, maybe we should give it a try, too.’”
The Fight Against Fast-Casual
Meanwhile, new restaurants were emerging that began chipping away at fast-food’s customer base. Places like Five Guys, Chipotle, Panera Bread and Smashburger all gave Americans another option: meals that were a bit more expensive but perceived as much better quality. Sales at Five Guys, which began with one location in 1986 and now has close to 1,000, grew by 38% from 2009 to 2010. Sales at Chipotle increased 20.7% in the same period. (McDonald’s bought a majority stake in the chain in 2001 but divested from it five years later.) Panera Bread boosted revenue 24% from 2007 to 2010, and that was at the height of the recession.
Fast-food restaurants took notice. Lynch says Wendy’s felt like it was getting squeezed between the Five Guys of the world and convenience stores like 7-11, which increasingly over a wide variety of hot food.
“What was happening was our top end was being peeled off, and our low, bottom end was being peeled off,” Lynch says. “And you don’t want to get stuck in the middle.”
So Wendy’s went to work. Around 2009, it started upgrading its menu: first salads, then French fries, then its chicken sandwiches and burgers. They visited New York City and to analyze what some successful salad-only restaurants were serving.
Now Wendy’s offers fresh strawberries and almonds on their salads. Their French fries have sea salt on them. Their patties are thicker. They use red onions instead of white. Instead of ordinary sliced dill pickles, they’re now crinkle-cut.
(MORE: McDonald’s Dollar Menu Shake-Up: No More Fries and Drinks for $1)
“We’re not doing this alone,” says Lynch. “McDonald’s has invested heavily into their menu. Burger King’s trying to elevate their product offerings. Taco Bell is trying to upgrade their offerings. The pizza chains are introducing gourmet pizzas. This isn’t just Wendy’s. I wish it was.”
Still, as Wendy’s focused largely on ingredients, Burger King focused its advertising on college-aged dudes, emphasizing its semi-creepy King mascot in its TV ads instead of focusing on refreshing its menu. So over the last five years as McDonald’s grew by 26% and Wendy’s by 9%, Burger King’s sales were flat. (The King was officially retired in August.)
“We want to be the biggest,” says Lynch. “But that’s probably never going to happen. But we can be viewed as the best, the best in quality. If you’re No. 1 in quality, your sales are going to be there.”
Fast-Food Chains as the New Hangout
It’s not just fast-food menus that are undergoing transformation. Burger and taco chains are taking cues from another unlikely competitor: Starbucks. Among restaurant chains, Starbucks is now No. 3 in sales in the U.S., and one of the biggest draws for loyal Starbucks customers is the physical space.
For years, restaurants have taken note of the Starbucks effect: People come for a cup of coffee, hang around for a few hours because they like the atmosphere, and end getting hungry and buying food. Why wouldn’t fast-food customers follow the same pattern?
While places like Five Guys and Panera Bread have much newer locations, some Wendy’s and McDonald’s restaurants are 30 to 40 years old, which is why Wendy’s is currently remodeling 50 of its stores and building 20 more using newer designs that look sleeker and less sterile, have a range of seating, and offer Wi-fi.
Similarly, White Castle is renovating 15% of its restaurants every year and redesigning them into spaces where customers feel free to hang out.
(MORE: Taco Bell, Transformed: Major Revamp of the Menu, Slogan, Restaurant Vibe)
“Fast-casual has raised the bar,” says Darren Tristano, executive vice president of the industry consulting firm Technomic. “When your competitors are doing this, you don’t want to lose relevance.”
So don’t be surprised if the Bacon Portabella Black Label Burger (with mushroom sauce and Muenster cheese) or a new dining room with Wi-fi and ample booths show up at your local Wendy’s soon.
“That’s where the tastes of the country are going,” says Lynch. “So that’s where we’ll go.”
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发表于 2012-6-15 22:42:06
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