SAQQARA, Egypt – Egypt’s chief archaeologist has announced the discovery of a 4,300-year-old pyramid in Saqqara, the sprawling necropolis and burial site of the rulers of ancient Memphis.

The pyramid is said to belong to Queen Sesheshet, the mother of King Teti who was the founder of the 6th Dynasty of Egypt’s Old Kingdom.

Egypt’s antiquities chief Zahi Hawass made the announcement Tuesday at the site in Saqqara, about 12 miles south of Cairo.

Hawass’ team has been excavating the site for two years. He says the discovery was only made two months ago when it became clear that the 16-foot-tall structure uncovered from the s

ROTTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) — It’s not easy to keep a banana yellow.

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An employee of AgroFair, a fruit-processing firm, checks the quality of bananas arriving in Ridderkerk, Netherlands. Bananas’ bright yellow color, after the green but before the brown sugar spots appear, lasts only a couple of days.

To get it to market ripe but unblemished by brown sugar spots takes careful timing, a slight fiddling with nature’s rhythms and a delivery system that is increasingly computer-driven and technical.

The perfect banana used to be a rare and precious find, but technology is changing that. From the tree in the sweltering tropics to the grocery rack in the frigid north, scientists are seeking new ways to strengthen the food chain and extend the shelf life of perishables so they reach distant consumers as if freshly picked.

Commercially, the goal is to satisfy a demand for quality food anywhere, any time and at maximum profit.

But the implications go further: As the world’s population expands to 9 billion by midcentury, food security will become critical. The wild rise in food prices that peaked in July, with staples doubling or tripling in cost over three years, underscored the consequences of shortages, real or perceived.

As cities grow and wealth expands, more people eat meat, dairy and fresh products.

“That requires a totally different way of approaching agriculture. You have chains of total food systems,” said Rudy Rabbinge, chairman of the Science Council Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, an alliance of agricultural bodies worldwide.

Suppliers need to move these foods longer distances, reduce spoilage and waste, and curb climate-changing carbon emissions.

It is less challenging for dry goods such as grains and rice — survival foods for much of the world’s poor.

But in developing countries with poor infrastructure, as much as half of harvested fruits and vegetables rot in transit before they can be eaten, said food scientist Henry Boerrigter.

Even in industrial countries, 10 percent to 20 percent is lost, much of it tossed by restaurants, groceries or consumers, but the waste often starts close to the farm, and worsens as the produce travels.

Perfotec, a Dutch company, produces laser machines that make microscopic perforations in plastic wrapping film, allowing packaged food to breathe at a reduced rate. That slows ripening by up to five days.

It is just one technique for prolonging the shelf life long enough to open markets to farmers in Africa, Latin America or Asia.

Goods can move by sea rather than by air — in greater bulk, at lower costs and in more controlled conditions. Sea freight also produces 25 times less carbon emissions per box of fruit, according to Maersk Lines, the world’s largest container shipping operator.

As food becomes more mobile, the marketplace shifts. Mega-buyers such as Wal-Mart look for the cheapest supplier of quality goods, said Boerrigter, a post-harvest technologist at Wageningen University and Research Center in the Netherlands.

“Where labor is cheap, high-scale production farms come up,” he said. As one example, Spain has begun importing Egyptian strawberries even though it also is a major producer.

Refrigerated transportation has been in use since the 1870s when Chicago’s stockyards began shipping meat to the East Coast by dripping ice through the roof of railway cars — with frequent stops to replenish the ice.

Today, 40-foot containers circulate cool air around pallets piled high with specially designed packing boxes. If necessary, nitrogen is pumped into the sealed container to lower the oxygen level.

“We used to think avocados were exotic. Now you can get them every day, everywhere,” said Henrik Lindhardt, a senior general manager of Maersk.

A U.S. innovation that won safety approval by the European Union in 2005 virtually puts fruit to sleep. Marketed as SmartFresh, the active ingredient 1-MCP inhibits the effect of ethylene, the chemical agent that causes ripening.

A tablespoon of the white powder dissolved in tap water inside a storage room or sealed refrigerator can keep 3 million apples crisp and fresh for up to two weeks, said Yvonne Harz-Pitre, the European communications manager for AgroFresh Inc., which makes the product.

Dutch flower growers have begun shipping some hardy varieties by sea to New York, kept fresh in containers with “controlled atmosphere,” said Lindhardt. Shellfish are being shipped live in vats of water from Canada to Europe in 30 days rather than being frozen and airfreighted. Tuna and other sushi specialties are being sent to Japan in super-freezers reaching minus 75 Fahrenheit.

Lindhardt was watching bananas from the Dominican Republic being unloaded at a Rotterdam warehouse.

Cell-phone-size monitoring units were clipped to some fruit boxes to record the conditions of the 15-day journey. The data were downloaded to a computer, and within an hour the fruit was moved into a cold storage room, where the temperature was adjusted according to the delivery schedule.

“These bananas are still alive,” said Lindhardt. They breathe, they generate heat and they mature. “What we do is slow the process, not stop it.”

Since headlines began trumpeting the antiaging effects of red wine a
couple of years ago, the traditional toast to good health has become
more meaningful. But students at Rice University, in Texas, think that
beer drinkers shouldn’t be left out. They’re trying to engineer a yeast
that produces the antiaging chemical found in red
wine–resveratrol–and use it to brew “BioBeer” with a health boost.

Biobeer

Students at Rice University, in Texas, are trying to brew “BioBeer” with a health boost.

(Taylor Stevenson/Rice University)

“It’s not going
to prevent you from getting a beer gut from drinking too much beer, or
from getting cirrhosis of the liver,” says Taylor Stevenson, one of six
undergraduates working on the project. “But people are already drinking
beer, so why not make the activity a little healthier?”

Resveratrol was discovered in red wine in the 1990s, prompting
scientists to wonder if it might explain the “French paradox”–the fact
that the French have a relatively low death rate from heart disease,
despite a diet relatively high in saturated fat. Resveratrol is now
known to extend life span in various organisms, including fish, flies,
and yeast, and aging mice fed high doses of the chemical are healthier
in their old age. It’s not known whether resveratrol has the same
effects in humans.

MEXICO CITY—- Authorities say three tigers that escaped from a Mexican circus truck were recaptured after police distracted them by throwing them chickens. The local newspaper Cambio de Michoacan says the escaped felines holed up in house in the western city of Zitacuaro. When the tigers started breaking down the home’s fence, police lobbed them chickens to eat until a dogcatcher and the animals’ trainer arrived.

An officer at the state police office in Zitacuaro says the tigers were loose for less than an hour. The officer was not authorized to be quoted by name.

The big cats were recaptured Wednesday and taken to a local police station where they were held until their owner agreed to pay for the chickens and damage to the fence.

During the next few weeks on some clear moonless early morning, if you are fortunate to be far from any haze and bright lights, keep a close watch on the eastern horizon about two hours before sunrise. If you’re lucky you might catch a glimpse of a ghostly column of light extending upward into the sky. 

Many have been fooled into thinking that it’s beginning of morning twilight and indeed the Persian astronomer, mathematician and poet Omar Khayyam (1050? -1123?) referred to this ghostly glow as the “false dawn” in his poem, The Rubaiyat. 

That faint ghostly glow was once thought to be solely an atmospheric phenomenon: perhaps reflected sunlight shining on the highest layers of Earth’s atmosphere.  We know now that while it is indeed reflected sunlight, it is being reflected not off our atmosphere, but rather off of a non-uniform distribution of interplanetary material; debris left over from the formation of our solar system. 

These countless millions, if not billions of particles – ranging in size from meter-sized mini-asteroids to micron-sized dust grains — seem densest around the immediate vicinity of the sun, but extend outward, beyond the orbit of Mars and are spread out along the plane of the ecliptic (the path the sun follows throughout the year).  Hence the reason for the name Zodiacal Light is because it is seen projected against the zodiacal constellations. 

Before the break of dawn

The best time to see the Zodiacal Light is when the ecliptic appears most nearly vertical to the horizon.  For those in the Northern Hemisphere, the best morning views in the eastern sky will come during the next few weeks without the interference of bright moonlight. Conversely, for those who live in the Southern Hemisphere, the best views now are in the western evening sky right after sunset. 

Those who live in the tropics or at the equator are luckiest of all since the Zodiacal Light is always very conspicuous from these regions.  This is probably because from these locations the ecliptic is always favorably oriented allowing views of the Zodiacal Light both in the western evening sky and eastern morning sky all year long. 

For northerners at this particular time of the year, it is just before morning twilight begins (about 90 minutes before sunrise), that the Zodiacal Light should appear at its brightest and most conspicuous. 

PARIS: Scientists in Japan have identified a genetic mutation linked to narcolepsy, a disease that can cause someone to doze off in mid-sentence or behind the wheel of a car, a latest study says. Other symptoms of the condition, which shows up in late adolescence, include excessive daytime drowsiness, vivid hallucinations on the threshold of sleep, and the sudden, temporary loss of muscle control, often triggered by emotional shock. A team of researchers led by Katsushi Tokunaga at the University of Tokyo compared the genetic profiles of people with and without the sleep-inducing disease.

Across four different ethnic groups, patients with narcolepsy were far more likely to carry a specific mutation of
DNA located between two genes, one of which has been associated with sleep regulation and the other with the sleep-wake cycle.

The statistical link was strongest among Japanese, but remained significant among Europeans and persons of African descent as well.

The study also showed that the suspect genetic variant - known as rs57770917 - is common among Koreans.

The prevalence of the disease varies widely in different countries. In Europe and the US, narcolepsy is roughly as common as Parkinson’s disease or multiple sclerosis, affecting on average one in every 2,500 people. But in Japan the frequency is four times higher, while in Israel only one in half-a-million people have the condition.

There is no known cure for narcolepsy, which is often treated with stimulants to combat daytime fatigue.

Previous studies had already pointed to genetic factors as playing a role. An immediate family member with narcolepsy increases one’s chances of having the disease by 10 to 40 times.

It was found that all Japanese suffering from the disease carried another genetic variant. But 10% of the Japanese population shared that same mutation, so researchers suspected the existence of additional genetic drivers as well.

BARCELONA, Spain (Reuters) - A “deadly dozen” diseases ranging from avian flu to yellow fever are likely to spread more because of climate change, the Wildlife Conservation Society said on Tuesday.The society, based in the Bronx Zoo in the United States and which works in 60 nations, urged better monitoring of wildlife health to help give an early warning of how pathogens might spread with global warming.

It listed the “deadly dozen” as avian flu, tick-borne babesia, cholera, ebola, parasites, plague, lyme disease, red tides of algal blooms, Rift Valley fever, sleeping sickness, tuberculosis and yellow fever.

“Even minor disturbances can have far reaching consequences on what diseases (wild animals) might encounter and transmit as climate changes,” said Steven Sanderson, head of the society.

“The term ‘climate change’ conjures images of melting ice caps and rising sea levels that threaten coastal cities and nations, but just as important is how increasing temperatures and fluctuating precipitation levels will change the distribution of dangerous pathogens,” he said.

“Monitoring wildlife health will help us predict where those trouble spots will occur and plan how to prepare,” he said in a statement.

The U.N. Climate Panel says that greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from human use of fossil fuels, are raising temperatures and will disrupt rainfall patterns and have impacts ranging from heatwaves to melting glaciers.

“For thousands of years people have known of a relationship between health and climate,” William Karesh of the society told a news conference in Barcelona to launch the report at an International Union for Conservation of Nature congress.

Among phrases, people said they were “under the weather” when ill, he noted.

He said that the report was not an exhaustive list but an illustration of the range of infectious diseases that may threaten humans and animals

A quarter of the world’s mammals are threatened with extinction, an international survey showed, and the destruction of habitats and hunting are the major causes. The report, the most comprehensive to date by 1,700 researchers, showed populations of half of all 5,487 species of mammals were in decline.Mammals range in size from blue whales to Thailand’s insect-sized bumblebee bat.
“Mammals are declining faster than we thought - one in four species is threatened with extinction worldwide,” Jan Schipper, who led the team, said of the report issued in Barcelona as part of a Red List of threatened species.

He said threats were worst for land mammals in Asia, where creatures such as orang utans are suffering from deforestation.

Almost 80% of primates in the region were under threat.

Of the 4,651 mammals for which scientists have data, 1,139 species were under threat of extinction.

Schipper said the data was far broader than the previous review of mammals in 1996.

Threats to species including the Tasmanian Devil, an Australian marsupial, the Caspian seal or the fishing cat, found in Asia, were among those to have worsened. At least 76 mammals have gone extinct since 1500.

“Within our lifetime hundreds of species could be lost as a result of our own actions,” said Julia Marton-Lefevre, director general of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which compiles the Red List and is meeting in Spain.

Iberian Lynx

Of the 2008 total, 188 were listed as critically endangered, the worst category before extinction, including the Iberian lynx of which there are just 84-143 adults left.

Cuba’s rat-like little earth hutia has not been seen in 40 years.

Habitat loss and hunting - for everything from food to medicines - are by far the main threats to mammals, Schipper and his team wrote in the journal Science.

“The population of one in two is declining,” they said.

Among other threats, global warming blamed by the UN Climate Panel on human use of fossil fuels, was hitting species dependent on Arctic sea ice such as the polar bear.

But the report, issued during an October 5-14 IUCN congress, was not all gloom.

Five percent of species were recovering because of conservation efforts, including the European bison and the black-footed ferret, found in North America.

The African elephant was also moved down one notch of risk, to near threatened from vulnerable, because of rising populations in southern and eastern Africa.

And a total of 349 species have been found since 1992, such as the elephant shrew in Tanzania, it said.

Schipper said some species may be vanishing before they are even described.

The report focused on mammals but the situation for some other types of animals and plants is even worse, according to the IUCN, comprising governments and conservation organisations.

An updated “Red List” said that 16,928 species, or 38%, were threatened out of a total of 44,838.

Among animals most at risk are amphibians, such as frogs and toads.

Schipper said governments urgently needed to work out ways to protect life on earth. “Conservation action backed by research is a clear priority,” he said.