Off Topic The "That's interesting"/geek thread

A very interesting read.

Thanks for posting!

 

I completed the LDWA (Long Distance Walking Assn) Virtual 100 on the last bank holiday weekend in May. 100 Miles on the Dartmoor Way circumnavigating the National Park in 41.5 hours straight off. It's strange how the body reacts to going into the night (twice in my case) with only 2, 2 to 3 minute power naps to keep me going. Great experience but nothing like the Ultra events posted above.
Need to do the organised event now.... Peak District next year!

 

i used to lay tactile paving back in the day

 

Jerusalem Post World News
Did archaeologists find the Trojan Horse?
By JERUSALEM POST STAFF AUGUST 10, 2021 17:22
Depiction of the story of the Trojan horse in the art of Gandhara. British Museum. (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Depiction of the story of the Trojan horse in the art of Gandhara. British Museum.
(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Turkish archaeologists excavating the site of the city of Troy on the hills of Hisarlik have discovered a large wooden structure that they believe are the remains of the famous Trojan Horse.

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Archaeologists who claimed they had unearthed remnants of the legendary Trojan Horse in Turkey have now found significant evidence that further supports their claim, according to an article by the Greek Reporter.

Turkish archaeologists excavating the site of the city of Troy on the hills of Hisarlik have discovered a large wooden structure that they believe are the remains of the Trojan Horse. These excavations include dozens of fir planks and beams up to 15 meters (49 feet) long, assembled in a strange form.
The wooden structure was found inside the walls of the ancient city of Troy.
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Now, Boston University professors Christine Morris and Chris Wilson believe that "the carbon dating tests and other analyses have all suggested that the wooden pieces and other artifacts date from the 12th or 11th centuries BC."
Morris and Wilson believe with a "high level of confidence" that the structure is linked to the iconic horse. They say that tests have only confirmed their theory.
“This matches the dates cited for the Trojan War, by many ancient historians like Eratosthenes or Proclus. The assembly of the work also matches the description made by many sources. I don’t want to sound overconfident, but I’m pretty certain that we found the real thing!”
The Trojan Horse is associated with the Trojan War, written about by Homer in his epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Iliad closes right before the war ends, so it does not feature the legendary horse.
The Trojan Horse was used to seize Troy and win the war. The story was prominently featured in the Aeneid by Virgil. Historians have suggested that the horse was an analogy for a war machine or natural disaster.
Archaeologists also discovered a damaged bronze plate with the inscription, “For their return home, the Greeks dedicate this offering to Athena.” Quintus Smyrnaeus refers to this plate in his epis poem "Posthomerica."

 

Very interesting but heavy on theoretical physics.

https://www.labroots.com/trending/c...XdJwgqklViUHQEq2EwtXkGq79xRJwkLaDw-vUKP6etyCU

 

SCIENTISTS WORKING ON TOILET THAT IDENTIFIES YOU BY YOUR BUTTHOLE
MANY USERS "WOULDN’T, FOR VERY GOOD REASONS, LIKE CAMERAS POINTING UP THEIR BOTTOMS."

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DEVICES
Researchers want to give the toilet a smart makeover — but we’re not talking about heated seats or bidet attachments.

Take the Stanford School of Medicine, where The Wall Street Journal reports that researchers are developing a scanner that can recognize the user’s unique “anal print,” or “distinctive features of their anoderm,” meaning the skin of the anal canal.

To pull it off, they installed a camera inside a toilet bowl and used machine learning algorithms to match stool samples to specific, uh, users. The system could even calculate “the flow rate and volume of urine using computer vision as a uroflowmeter,” according to the researchers’ 2020 paper.

If you have any privacy concerns about all this, the scientists say the butthole data is all “stored and analyzed in an encrypted cloud server.”

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All told, smart toilets are having a bit of a moment right now.

Sonia Grego, the co-founder of Coprata, a Duke University-affiliated physiological monitoring startup, wants to revolutionize the way we do our business by scanning samples of your poop and urine for health indicators, including chronic diseases and even cancer, The Guardian reports.

Another company, called Toi Labs, took that idea a step further with its TrueLoo smart toilet seat, which collects an even broader selection of biometrics.

“What do they weigh? How are they sitting on the seat?” founder Vik Kashyap told The Guardian. The seat can then analyze stool samples “using optical methods, looking at things like the volume, clarity, consistency, color.”

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The products are mostly aimed at older folks.

“It’s essentially understanding when someone has abnormal patterns and then it’s capable of documenting those patterns and providing reports that can be used by physicians to help in the treatment of a variety of conditions,” Kashyap told The Guardian.

But, as most Internet of Things devices, a major question looms: where does the data go? Many users “wouldn’t, for very good reasons, like cameras pointing up their bottoms,” Phil Booth, the coordinator of MedConfidential, told The Guardian.

Collecting data on stool and urine samples gives out a lot of personal information, down to drug use — illicit or prescribed — and intimate health cetails.

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One worrisome scenario is that insurance companies could get hold of that data and start offering preferred treatment to those who are otherwise healthy.

“Once you start to measure something that is of the body, the privacy line is stepped over,” Booth told The Guardian.

 

The wonders of modern science never cease to amaze!

 

I wonder who sphincter this stuff in the first place…?

 

Ever had an Amazon parcel swiped? Here's your revenge...

 

Endurance: Shackleton's lost ship is found in Antarctic

Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent
@BBCAmoson Twitter
Scientists have found and filmed one of the greatest ever undiscovered shipwrecks 107 years after it sank.

The Endurance, the lost vessel of Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, was found at the weekend at the bottom of the Weddell Sea.

The ship was crushed by sea-ice and sank in 1915, forcing Shackleton and his men to make an astonishing escape on foot and in small boats.

Video of the remains show Endurance to be in remarkable condition.

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Even though it has been sitting in 3km (10,000ft) of water for over a century, it looks just like it did on the November day it went down.

Its timbers, although disrupted, are still very much together, and the name - Endurance - is clearly visible on the stern.

"Without any exaggeration this is the finest wooden shipwreck I have ever seen - by far," said marine archaeologist Mensun Bound, who is on the discovery expedition and has now fulfilled a dream ambition in his near 50-year career.

"It is upright, well proud of the seabed, intact, and in a brilliant state of preservation," he told BBC News.

The project to find the lost ship was mounted by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust (FMHT), using a South African icebreaker, Agulhas II, and equipped with remotely operated submersibles.

The mission's leader, the veteran polar geographer Dr John Shears, described the moment cameras landed on the ship's name as "jaw-dropping".

"The discovery of the wreck is an incredible achievement," he added.

"We have successfully completed the world's most difficult shipwreck search, battling constantly shifting sea-ice, blizzards, and temperatures dropping down to -18C. We have achieved what many people said was impossible."

Agulhas
IMAGE SOURCE,FMHT AND NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
Image caption,
The Agulhas had favourable ice conditions in what was still a hostile environment
Modern star maps hint at famous wreck's location
The impossible search for the greatest shipwreck
Where was the ship found?
Endurance was spotted in the Weddell Sea at a depth of 3,008m.

For over two weeks, the subs had combed a predefined search area, investigating various interesting targets, before finally uncovering the wreck site on Saturday - the 100th anniversary of Shackleton's funeral. The days since the discovery have been spent making a detailed photographic record of the timbers and surrounding debris field.

The wreck itself is a designated monument under the international Antarctic Treaty and must not be disturbed in any way. No physical artefacts have therefore been brought to the surface.

Map path

Media caption,
Mensun Bound: "She's sitting upright" on the seafloor
What could the subs see?
The ship looks much the same as when photographed for the last time by Shackleton's filmmaker, Frank Hurley, in 1915. The masts are down, the rigging is in a tangle, but the hull is broadly coherent. Some damage is evident at the bow, presumably where the descending ship hit the seabed. The anchors are present. The subs even spied some boots and crockery.

"You can even see the ship's name - E N D U R A N C E - arced across its stern directly below the taffrail (a hand rail near the stern). And beneath, as bold as brass, is Polaris, the five-pointed star, after which the ship was originally named," said Mensun Bound.

"I tell you, you would have to be made of stone not to feel a bit squishy at the sight of that star and the name above," he added.

"You can see a porthole that is Shackleton's cabin. At that moment, you really do feel the breath of the great man upon the back of your neck."

Read more of the marine archaeologist's account here.

Wheel
IMAGE SOURCE,FMHT/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
Image caption,
Filter feeders have colonised the wreck but there are no wood-eating worms
What life had attached to the ship?
Interestingly, the wreck has been colonised by an abundance of life - but not of the type that would consume it.

"It would appear that there is little wood deterioration, inferring that the wood-munching animals found in other areas of our ocean are, perhaps unsurprisingly, not in the forest-free Antarctic region," commented deep-sea polar biologist Dr Michelle Taylor from Essex University.

"The Endurance, looking like a ghost ship, is sprinkled with an impressive diversity of deep-sea marine life - stalked sea squirts, anemones, sponges of various forms, brittlestars, and crinoids (related to urchins and sea stars), all filter feeding nutrition from the cool deep waters of the Weddell Sea."

Wreck
IMAGE SOURCE,SPRI/UNI OF CAMBRIDGE
Image caption,
Shackleton (R) looks over the broken remains of his ship just before it went to the deep
Why was this ship so prized?
Two reasons. The first is the story of Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. It set out to make the first land crossing of Antarctica, but had to abandon the quest when the expedition ship, the Endurance, was trapped and then holed by sea-ice. From then on it was all about survival. Shackleton somehow managed to get his men to safety, an escape that saw the Anglo-Irish explorer himself take a small lifeboat across ferocious seas to get help.

The other reason was the challenge itself of finding the ship. The Weddell Sea is pretty much permanently covered in thick sea-ice, the same sea-ice that ruptured the hull of Endurance. Getting near the presumed sinking location is hard enough, never mind being able to conduct a search. But herein also lies part of the success of the FMHT project. This past month has seen the lowest extent of Antarctic sea-ice ever recorded during the satellite era, which stretches back to the 1970s. The conditions were unexpectedly favourable.

The Agulhas wrapped up the survey of the wreck and departed the search site on Tuesday. The icebreaker is heading for its home port of Cape Town. But the intention is to call into the British Overseas Territory of South Georgia where Shackleton is buried.

"We will pay our respects to 'The Boss'," said Dr Shears, using the nickname the Endurance crew had for their leader.

 

I’ve been following the expedition on FB’s ‘History Hit’ site - highly recommended - so quite excited by this.

Very few long-lost forgotten sunken wrecks left to discover now. Maybe I’ll start an expedition to find the remains of the Tory Credibility.

 

Doubt you'll find any backers

 

Plenty of dodgy Ruskies will chuck their Roubles at that - not that their money is worth anything anymore

 

Amazing to think it's been there over 100 years and isn't in pieces...

 

Apparently the submarine critters that like munching wood don’t fancy the cold water down there. So the Endurance is a home rather than a meal.

 

what could go wrong