Tatu purba digunakan sebagai rawatan

VIENNA – Beberapa tatu misteri berbentuk bulat yang ditemui di atas mumia yang berasal dari Chiribaya Alta di selatan Peru awal 1990 lalu, adalah daripada tumbuhan yang dibakar yang mungkin digunakan sebagai rawatan perubatan yang berfungsi sama seperti akupunktur.

Pakar Universiti Perubatan Graz Austria, Maria Anna Pabst berkata, tatu berlambang haiwan seperti burung, beruk dan reptilia pada mumia wanita berumur 1000 tahun itu dilukis menggunakan abu atau jelaga di atas tangan, lengan dan kaki kirinya.

Menurutnya, terdapat juga tatu berbentuk bulat bertindih yang dihasilkan daripada tumbuhan yang dibakar pada leher mumia tersebut.

“Setiap lakaran tatu itu mempunyai tujuan yang tertentu,” katanya.

Pabst percaya tatu berbentuk bulat itu kemungkinan adalah sebahagian daripada proses pemulihan atau amalan ritual manakala lambang haiwan itu adalah sebagai perhiasan.

Haba komputer bimbit rosakkan kulit

CHICAGO - Meletakkan komputer bimbit di atas peha secara kerap dalam tempoh yang panjang boleh menyebabkan 'sindrom kulit hangus' iaitu keadaan kulit yang berbintik akibat pendedahan terlalu lama kepada haba, menurut laporan perubatan.

Dalam kes terbaru, seorang kanak-kanak lelaki berumur 12 tahun melaporkan keadaan kulit pada peha kirinya yang bertompok-tompok dan kehilangan warna selepas bermain permainan komputer beberapa jam setiap hari selama beberapa bulan.

Kesan buruk haba komputer bimbit terhadap kulit berlaku kerana suhu bahagian bawah komputer bimbit boleh mencecah 51 darjah Celcius.

Pengeluar komputer bimbit termasuk Apple, Hewlett Packard dan Dell memperingati pengguna supaya tidak meletakkan komputer di atas kulit yang terdedah untuk jangka masa panjang bagi mengelakkan kulit terbakar.

Maut bahana permainan seks

Lionel Webster

BARLASTON – Seorang ahli perniagaan di Britain mati dijerut kolar besi berpaku ketika dia tergantung pada bumbung bilik permainan seks di rumah sepasang suami isteri, lapor sebuah akhbar semalam.

Mangsa, Lionel Webster memakai sut gaya tahanan Teluk Guantanamo dan but kulit apabila dia sesak nafas dalam permainan seks di kediaman pasangan Colin Richardson, 75 dan isterinya yang berusia 68 tahun, Anne Richardson di sini, England.

Akhbar The Sun melaporkan bahawa inkues kes itu pada Khamis lepas mendapati Webster, 61, merupakan pelanggan tetap sesi seks sadis itu dengan bayaran £150 (RM745) bagi satu sesi.

Dia gemar meminta dirinya ‘diseksa’ seperti seorang tahanan tentera.

Selepas puting dan kemaluan Webster dikapit dan dirantai, Anne menyambungkan rantai pada kolar leherWebter dan menggantungnya.

Mereka cuba membuka kolar itu selepas mendapati dia terjerut dan lemas tetapi gagal kerana mangsa menguncinya dan menyembunyikan kunci di salah satu poket sut tahanannya.

Berdepan situasi cemas, pasangan itu yang berkahwin selama 49 tahun, membuat panggilan kecemasan.

Polis kemudian menemui sejumlah tali, cemeti, alat bantuan seks, seluar dalam kulit dan beberapa buku seks sadis di bilik berkenaan.

Pasangan itu pada awalnya ditangkap, tetapi dibebaskan selepas pihak pendakwa raya berpuas hati kes itu tiada unsur jenayah. – Agensi

Rolls-Royce Ghost Diva by Fenice Milano

There's good taste and then there's over-the-top opulence. Rolls-Royce manages to tread that fine line carefully, but Fenice Milano is here to take it over the top. Based on the Rolls-Royce Ghost, Fenice's Diva edition decks out the hood, grille, side sills, wing mirrors and more in 24-karat gold, repeating the treatment inside the cabin which is also "treated" to leather, Alcantara microsuede and teak veneer trim. All that, plus the reassurance that no one would ever accuse you of being possessed of such a gauche sense as good taste.

Classic Morgan Trikes Making a Comeback

It may be hard to remember now that Morgan is moving ahead with the retro-futuristic EvaGT, but the British sportscar company got its start way back when with trikes. In fact that's what made them famous, but while its original wood-frame cars may still be available, three-wheelers haven't been part of the company's range since 1952. But all that could change in the near future. According to reports from across the pond, Morgan is eager to take a stab at bringing the trikes that put it on the map back out from the annals of history.
Last year, a Seattle-based company called Liberty Motors secured the license from Morgan to continue building those original trikes, under the name Ace and powering them with a Harley-Davidson V-twin engine.
Apparently impressed by the results, Morgan is reportedly in the process of reviving the trike themselves, even going so far as to redesign the original JAP engines used on the original and re-acquiring the license from Liberty. Sounds promising for aficionados of the original design, but for those who can't wait to get back to the future, Liberty Motors would undoubtedly be glad to help fill the void, starting at $48,000.

Tuduhan terhadap aktivis paus

PENANGKAPAN ikan paus secara komersial diharamkan di seluruh dunia sejak tahun 1986.

DUA orang aktivis organisasi antarabangsa Greenpeace yang sedang dibicarakan di Jepun bakal berdepan dengan keputusan penghakiman ekoran tuduhan mencuri sekotak daging paus baru-baru ini. Daging paus yang dicuri itu disifatkan sebagai bukti penipuan dalam satu program penangkapan ikan paus yang dikendalikan oleh kerajaan negeri.

Junichi Sato, 33 dan Toru Suzuki, 43, mungkin berdepan dengan hukuman penjara selama 18 bulan di atas tuduhan mencuri dan menceroboh sekiranya mahkamah wilayah di Aomori mendapati mereka bersalah.

Kedua-dua aktivis tersebut mengaku mencuri sekotak daging paus masin tetapi tidak mengaku bersalah. Sato dan Suzuki tetap dengan pendirian bahawa tindakan mereka itu adalah untuk kepentingan orang ramai tentang penipuan dalam program penyelidikan dan penangkapan ikan paus di Jepun.

Penangkapan ikan paus secara komersial telah diharamkan di seluruh dunia sejak tahun 1986. Namun, sebuah badan bukan kerajaan, Institut Penyelidikan Cetacean telah ditubuhkan pada tahun berikutnya. Penubuhan institut tersebut membolehkan ratusan haiwan mamalia laut terus dibunuh atas nama sains.

Barangan peribadi

Kedua-dua aktivis tersebut berkata, mereka telah dihubungi kira-kira dua tahun lalu oleh seorang krew veteran yang bekerja untuk sebuah kapal penangkapan ikan tajaan kerajaan negeri. Lelaki yang bekerja sebagai peniup wisel itu memberitahu, dia agak kecewa dengan pembaziran dan kegiatan rasuah yang berlaku.

Menurut Greenpeace, lelaki tersebut memberitahu, krewnya menerima berkotak-kotak daging paus yang sering disalah labelkan sebagai barangan peribadi. Daging-daging paus itu ditemui selepas mereka pulang dari aktiviti pemburuan paus tahunan di Lautan Antartik.

Sato dan Suzuki telah menjejaki asal-usul barangan itu sehingga ke sebuah lokasi simpanan sebuah syarikat khidmat kurier di Aomori pada 16 April 2008. Di situ, Suzuki telah mengambil sebuah kotak seberat 23 kilogram (kg) yang berlabel kadbod dan vinyl serta berisi daging-daging paus.

Mereka kemudiannya menyerahkan kotak tersebut kepada para pendakwaraya wilayah Tokyo dan satu sidang akhbar diadakan untuk mengumumkan bukti yang ditemui itu. Para pegawai menerangkan bahawa ahli-ahli krew telah menerima berkotak-kotak paus itu sebagai cenderamata.

Pada 20 Jun lalu, pihak polis telah memberkas Sato dan Suzuki. Dalam operasi luar biasa itu, pejabat Greenpeace di Tokyo dan kediaman lima kakitangannya telah diserbu. Dalam serbuan tersebut, cakera-cakera padat komputer dan beberapa kotak dokumen turut dirampas.

PENYOKONG Greenpeace membantah penahanan dua aktivis warga Jepun yang menyiasat kegiatan rasuah penangkapan ikan paus di Jepun.

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Meskipun kes penipuan itu digugurkan sebelum hari mereka diberkas, kedua-dua orang aktivis itu telah dibawa ke Aomori dan ditahan selama 26 hari. Menurut kenyataan daripada Greenpeace, mereka turut disoal siat selama tiga kali sehari tanpa kehadiran peguam bela.

Di dalam mahkamah, para pendakwaraya berpendapat, aktivis-aktivis tersebut telah melanggar undang-undang dan berpotensi untuk melakukan perkara yang sama. Mereka juga menuduh tertuduh tidak menunjukkan rasa bersalah dan telah menyebabkan kerugian dari segi kewangan dan reputasi pekerja di syarikat khidmat kurier tersebut.

Pihak Greenpeace telah mengutuk layanan terhadap ahli-ahlinya dan menyifatkan perbicaraan tersebut bermotifkan politik. Perbicaraan itu turut mengundang protes di kalangan ahli-ahli Greenpeace yang lain di beberapa buah Kedutaan Jepun di seluruh dunia untuk memberi sokongan.

Pengarah Eksekutif Greenpeace, Kumi Naidoo yang juga seorang aktivis antiaparteid dari Afrika Selatan pula mempunyai pendapat lain terhadap kes itu.

"Layanan terhadap Sato dan Suzuki telah mengingatkan saya terhadap sistem aparteid melayan mereka yang cuba untuk menentangnya," katanya. - AFP

Soyuz rosak dibawa kereta api

GAMBAR menunjukkan sebuah kereta api menarik salah sebuah kapal angkasa Soyuz TMA-01M ke tapak pelancaran di Baikonur pada Selasa lalu.

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BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan - Ketua sebuah agensi angkasa lepas Rusia, Anatoly Perminov mengesahkan kapal angkasa Soyuz TMA-20 yang akan digunakan untuk menghantar angkasawan ke Stesen Angkasa Antarabangsa (ISS) akhir tahun ini mengalami kerosakan.

Menurutnya, kerosakan pada Soyuz TMA-20 itu berlaku semasa ia dipindahkan dengan menggunakan landasan kereta api.

Namun, ujar Perminov, pihaknya berusaha membaik pulih bagi memastikan keselamatan penerbangan.

Bagaimanapun, pelancaran ke ISS mungkin ditunda jika pakar-pakar mendapati pesawat itu perlu dihantar balik ke kilang.

Kapal angkasa Soyuz dikeluarkan di sebuah kilang di Korolyov di pinggir Moscow.

Ia dipindahkan dengan menggunakan landasan kereta api sejauh 2,000 kilometer ke pusat pelancaran di Baikonur, Kazakhstan. - AP

iPhone bantu keluar dari pagar sesat

GAMBAR dari udara yang menunjukkan Pagar Sesat Hedge di daerah Wiltshire, Britain baru-baru ini.

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TROWBRIDGE - Semakin ramai pengunjung berjaya keluar dari pagar sesat terbesar di Britain dalam masa cuma beberapa minit dengan bantuan telefon pintar iPhone, lapor sebuah akhbar semalam.

Pagar sesat merupakan panggilan untuk pagar diliputi daun yang mempunyai lorong-lorong mengelirukan, sekali gus menyebabkan seseorang itu sukar untuk menemui jalan keluar.

Sebelum ini tempoh 90 minit diperlukan sebelum seseorang itu dapat keluar dari Pagar Sesat Hedge seluas 3.2 kilometer di Taman Safari Longleat di sini, barat daya England.

Namun, semua itu berubah setelah ramai pelawat menggunakan iPhone dan BlackBerry untuk memuat turun peta pandangan dari udara pagar daun berkenaan dari laman Google Earth di Internet.

Berpandukan teknologi sistem pengesanan global (GPS), pemilik-pemilik gajet itu dapat mengesan lokasi mereka. Pengguna cuma perlu mengikuti peta dalam talian untuk mencari laluan keluar yang terpantas.

"Saya memberi masa 15 minit kepada diri saya untuk mencari jalan keluar tetapi saya putus asa dan kemudian menggunakan iPhone, ia amat berkesan," kata seorang pelancong berusia 29 tahun, Paul Roberts.

Lebih 400,000 orang sesat dalam pagar daun tersebut pada setiap tahun. - Agensi

The World’s Most Anticipated Architectures

1. Burj Khalifa – Dubai, U.A.E

The year started on a literal high, as the world’s tallest skyscraper opened for business on Jan. 4, 2010. The Burj Khalifa tower, designed by Skidmore Owings & Merrill, stands at 2,717 feet, more than 160 stories high, with an Armani hotel, offices, and homes all included in the massive structure.

The architecture industry has been reeling in recent years, walloped by everything from mortgage meltdowns to the deep-rooted global recession. As the financial crisis has hit home(s), construction has slowed on both residential and commercial projects, leaving architects and builders to come up with creative ways to keep their firms afloat. Here are some of the projects set to open their doors, break ground, or gain attention in 2010.

2. Masdar – Abu Dhabi, U.A.E

The Masdar Initiative launched in Abu Dhabi in April 2006. Run by the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company (ADFEC), with British architecture firm Foster & Partners acting as master planners, Masdar is being advertised as the world’s first zero-carbon city. Ground broke on the ambitious project in 2008 (this image shows the headquarters, designed by the Chicago architecture firm Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill). It’s unlikely to be finished in 2010, but it’s one of the many “eco cities” touted for the Middle East and China that might have any hope of completion.

3. Saadiyat Island – Abu Dhabi, U.A.E

Having bailed out Dubai earlier this year, Abu Dhabi still has cash to build what could be the world’s most ambitious cultural complexes (this artist’s rendering was released in 2007). Saadiyat Island is just 500 meters off the nation’s coast and set to contain museum designs by five winners of the Pritzker Prize (the Oscars of the architecture world.) The Jean Nouvel-designed outpost of the Louvre museum broke ground in 2009.

4. Atlantic Yards – New York, U.S.

This super controversial megadevelopment may yet rise from the dead after years of legal problems compounded by the credit crisis. Original architect Frank Gehry was canned in 2009, in favor of local architecture firm SHoP and San Francisco’s Ellerbe Becket. The $4 billion development is ultimately supposed to incorporate 336,000 square feet of offices and 6.36 million square feet of homes. The Barclays Center, the new home of the New York Nets basketball team, is due to be completed by 2012.

5. Chicago Spire – Chicago, U.S.

Work began on the Chicago Spire in 2007. But what was supposed to be the largest residential tower in America fell apart as the credit crisis hit home. Both developer Garrett Kelleher and architect Santiago Calatrava remain outwardly optimistic that the project may be resurrected. Nonetheless, the Chicago Architecture Club is running a competition for ideas to fill the big round hole in the ground that’s there now.

6. Marina Bay Sands – Singapore, Singapore

Singapore isn’t necessarily synonymous with Vegas. The city state is more sterile than high stakes. Nonetheless, the Las Vegas Sands Corp. is set to fling open the doors to an ambitious, $5.5 billion casino/convention complex later this year. Sands CEO Sheldon Adelson describes the jaw-dropping design, by Moshe Safdie, as “a catalyst for the economic future of Singapore,” not to mention the hoped-for salvation of his struggling company. Three 50-story hotel towers are linked by a two acre Sky Park.

7. Elbphilharmonie – Hamburg, Germany

The new home for the NDR Symphony has turned out to be an ironically extravagant icon for Hafencity, a $10 billion rebuilt port district designed to resist global-warming floods. The undulating tiers of seats in the concert hall, by Swiss duo Herzog and de Meuron, nestle within a brooding 1960s warehouse topped by a swooping glass tent. The cost of the project (which includes a luxe hotel and apartments) has spiraled from $313 million in 2007 to a yet-to-be-determined point north of $500 million. The opening has been delayed two years, to 2012.

8. The Shard – London, England

Construction began last year on The Shard, London’s only skyscraper to hit the 1,000-foot-tall mark. Proposed almost 20 years ago, it’s something of a miracle that this ambitious mix of offices, hotel, and apartments is rising at all, given the numerous political and economic obstacles to building in London’s historic center. Numerous design revisions by architect Renzo Piano have cost this 87-story pyramid of overlapping glass planes a considerable degree of elegance. Get used to it. Rising from London Bridge, a rail station on the south bank of Thames River, it may dominate the skyline for decades.

9. Rolex Learning Center – Lausanne, Switzerland

If Salvadori Dali had designed a Swiss student center, it would probably have looked something like this undulating, drooping building/landscape in sheer curving sheets of glass and pristine white surfaces that opened in February. SANAA, its Japanese architect, designed the 289,000-square-foot high-tech art library and a host of other resources for students and faculty at the Swiss Institute of Technology to frame a variety of views of nearby Lake Geneva. The traffic-stopper cost some 110 million Swiss francs (about $102 million). A journalist for the British Observer wrote at the opening, “if you could live inside an iPad, it would look something like this.”

10. CCTV – Beijing, China

Built to coincide with the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the sinister donut designed by Dutch architecture firm OMA was started in September 2004 and was supposed to be completed by the end of last year. OMA now says it doesn’t know when the building will open. Its intimidating form increasingly reflects the state television network’s function as China clamps down harder on dissent. One part of the complex, including the Mandarin Oriental hotel, burned down early in 2009. Ole Scheeren, lead architect on the project, is adamant that reconstruction will take place.

11. Beekman Tower – New York, U.S.

Of celebrity-architect-designed skyscrapers slated for Manhattan, only the Beekman Tower, by Frank Gehry, survived the meltdown. Topped off last year in shining crumpled metal, it almost lost half its 76 stories as its developer, Forest City Ratner, struggled to keep its massive Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn afloat.

12. Novartis Headquarters – Basel, Switzerland

Daniel Vasella, chairman of Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis, remade an obsolete manufacturing complex into a showcase of contemporary architecture and art, including an office building by SANAA that’s so minimalist it seems to consist only of white planes of floor and sheer walls of glass. The centerpiece is a lyrical composition by Frank Gehry that piles tilting curved forms on top of each other.

13. Goldman Sachs headquarters – New York, U.S.

Ground was broken on the new headquarters for Goldman Sachs back in November 2005, well before the bank became a focal point for those indignant at Wall Street excesses in the post credit-crisis era. Heavily subsidized by tax breaks, the $2.5 billion building, in downtown Manhattan, rises 43 stories and was designed by Harry Cobb of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners to house six trading floors and 2.1 million square feet of office space. As its 9,000 inhabitants finish moving in, speculation is rife about just how posh Goldman’s trappings are, but the company is not drawing attention to swank these days.

14. Maxxi, The National Museum of 21st Century Art – Rome, Italy

After 11 years of design and construction, curators at Rome’s new 130 million euro (about $175 million) contemporary art museum may now be wondering what art they’ll install—and how they’ll hang it—in Zaha Hadid’s long, tubular gallery spaces, which overlap each other as they zoom around an old army barracks site like a frenzied highway project gone awry. Early viewers can’t seem to get enough of Hadid’s gravity-defying, frozen-motion theatricality, even as pundits declare the end of the era of architectural spectacle.

New Species Found in New Guinea

Pink-Eyed Katydids

Piotr Naskrecki hunts katydids with sound. The insects are masters at blending in with their environment, especially at night when they're most active. So entomologists like Naskrecki, a researcher at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, trace the katydids through the darkness by their calls, using special equipment to translate the high-pitched chirping into sounds detectable by the human ear.

His work paid off: Naskrecki and David Rentz found at least 20 new species! This group, which is restricted to the forest’s canopy, is very difficult to collect, and thus virtually unstudied. This pink-eyed Caedicia probably feeds on flowers of the forest’s tall trees.

Tube-Nosed Fruit Bat

This is a previously seen but still undescribed species endemic to Papua New Guinea, called the tube-nosed fruit bat or Nyctimene sp. It hails from the Muller Range mountains and does not yet have a name but has been found in other parts of New Guinea. It is likely restricted (or endemic) to hill forests on the island. Fruit bats are important seed dispersers in tropical forests.

Super Tiny Frogs

Stephen Richards traced the soft scratching call of this tiny, long nosed frog into a steep muddy gully in New Guinea's remote Muller Range during a scientific expedition in September 2009. Small enough to sit comfortably on a thumb-nail and hidden from view under a tangle of roots in pouring rain this undescribed frog of the genus Choerophryne nearly eluded the RAP team altogether. Its position given away by one cricket-like call too many, this strange species subsequently turned out to be new to science.