Owls - rapaci notturni d'Europa

Mediante fotografie e testi, 32 pannelli descrivono la sistematica, la classificazione, la biologia, l’etologia e la conservazione degli Strigiformi. Un’attenzione particolare è rivolta alle specie viventi nel continente europeo: dal gufo delle nevi al barbagianni, dalla civetta capogrosso all’assiolo. I pannelli sono affiancati da numerosi reperti di animali tassidermizzati provenienti dalle collezioni scientifiche del Museo.

http://www.regione.piemonte.it/museoscienzenaturali/mostre/temporanee/owls.htm
mostre/temporanee/dwd/Owls_Pieghevole.pdf
Exhibition, Museo Regionale di Scienze Naturali, Torino

Human, All Too Human - 3 - Denisova

The Denisova hominin is the name given to the remains of a member of the genus Homo that may be a previously unknown species. The discover is based on the analysis of mitochondrial DNA, obtained from a bone of a juvenile that lived about 41,000 years ago. The find happened in  the Denisova Cave (Altai Krai, Russia), a region also inhabited at about the same time by Neanderthals and modern humans. From
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denisova_hominin

El sacrificio de los bosques

"La construcción de las cinco centrales hidroeléctricas contempladas en el pacto energético entre Brasil y Perú no sólo demandará una inversión millonaria sino que también implicará un gran daño ambiental. Casi 1,5 millones de hectáreas de bosques desaparecerían en 20 años, según un cálculo independiente."
http://connuestroperu.com/

The Red-Headed League

"Set in 1890, a business-man named Jabez Wilson, a man with red hair, comes to consult Holmes. He tells them that his young assistant, Vincent Spaulding, some weeks ago had shown him, and urged him to respond, to a newspaper want-ad offering work to only red-headed male applicants. The next morning, Wilson had waited in a long line of fellow red-headed men, was interviewed and was the only applicant hired, because none of the other applicants had hair to match Wilson's red locks. Wilson, whose business mainly operates in evenings, was well-paid, receiving four pounds a week for several weeks; the work was obviously useless clerical work in a bare office. Finally one morning, a sign on the locked office door inexplicably announced that "THE RED-HEADED LEAGUE IS DISSOLVED."" from Wiki

 ***

"Sherlock Holmes and I surveyed this curt announcement and the rueful face behind it, until the comical side of the affair so completely overtopped every other consideration that we both burst out into a roar of laughter.
"I cannot see that there is anything very funny,” cried our client, flushing up to the roots of his flaming head. “If you can do nothing better than laugh at me, I can go elsewhere.”
"No, no,” cried Holmes, shoving him back into the chair from which he had half risen. “I really wouldn’t miss your case for the world. It is most refreshingly unusual. But there is, if you will excuse my saying so, something just a little funny about it. Pray what steps did you take when you found the card upon the door?” 


More http://ignisart.com/camdenhouse/ or http://etext.virginia.edu/

Red-headed Neanderthals

Probably this fact is already well-known...

BBC reported that a research team  extracted DNA from the remains of two Neanderthals and retrieved part of a gene called MC1R. In modern people, a mutation in this gene causes red hair. Until this discovery, no one knew what hair colour our extinct relatives had: by analysing a version of the gene in Neanderthals, the scientists found that they were flame-haired.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7062415.stm

Human, All Too Human - 2 - DNA

Researchers compared the Neanderthal DNA to the DNA of three modern people (French, Han Chinese, Polynesian). The team found that all three had inherited between 1 and 4 percent of their DNA from Neanderthals. They also compared the Neanderthal sequence to two African individuals (Yoruba, San) and found no indication that they had inherited genes from Neanderthals, who evolved outside Africa. The research supports the idea that Neanderthals interbred with Homo sapiens between 100,000 and 80,000 years ago as our anatomically modern ancestors left Africa and spread across the globe, as we can read from http://www.archaeology.org/1101/topten/germany.html
See also http://stretchingtheboundaries.blogspot.com/2010/12/human-all-too-human.html

Graphene Transistors

Technological Review reports that IBM has created graphene transistors, quite faster that silicon ones. The prototype devices are made from atom-thick sheets of carbon and operate at 100 gigahertz, meaning that they switching on and off 100 billion times each second. As a consequence they are about 10 times as fast as the speediest transistors.

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/24482/

Aral Sea

"The expanse of water, like several others across the globe, has been reduced to worryingly sparse levels.In April the situation at the Aral Sea was described as 'one of the planet's worst environmental disasters' by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon." From
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/

This image is in the public domain because it was created by NASA. NASA copyright policy states that "NASA material is not protected by copyright unless noted".NASA, derivative work by Zafiroblue05 at en.wikipedia

Torino, L'Arsenale

Torino, Mascherone sulla cancellata di Palazzo Reale

Torino, Vittorio Emanuele I, Palazzo Madama

Isis and Harpocrates

In late Greek mythology as developed in Ptolemaic Alexandria, Harpocrates is the god of silence, adapted from the Egyptian child god Horus. To the ancient Egyptians, Horus represented the new-born Sun, rising each day at dawn. When the Greeks conquered Egypt under Alexander the Great, they transformed the Egyptian Horus into their Hellenistic god known as Harpocrates, a rendering from Egyptian Har-pa-khered or Heru-pa-khered (meaning "Har, the Child"). Horus was conceived by Isis, the mother goddess, from Osiris, the original god-king of Egypt, who had been murdered by his brother Set.  Among the Egyptians the full-grown Horus was considered the victorious god of the Sun who each day overcomes darkness. In this way Harpocrates, the child Horus, personifies the newborn sun each day, the first strength of the winter sun, and also the image of early vegetation. Egyptian statues represent the child Horus, pictured as a naked boy with his finger on his mouth, a realization of the hieroglyph for "child" , or with the mother Isis.
From Wiki

Isis and the child Harpocrates - Museo Egizio

Amun

The king and the god Amun. This sculpture represents the king's allegiance to the Theban god Amun. The sides of the throne are decorated with hieroglyphs forthe unification of Upper and Lower Egypt. Limestone, Dinasty XVIII,reign of Horemheb (1319-1292 BC), Temple of Amun, Thebes.

Hathor

"Hathor was an Ancient Egyptian goddess who personified the principles of love, beauty, music, motherhood and joy. She was one of the most important and popular deities throughout the history of Ancient Egypt. Hathor was worshipped  ... as "Mistress of the West" welcoming the dead into the next life. In other roles she was a goddess of music, dance, foreign lands and fertility who helped women in childbirth, as well as the patron goddess of miners. The cult of Hathor predates the historical period and the roots of devotion to her are, therefore, difficult to trace, though it may be a development of predynastic cults who venerated the fertility, and nature in general, represented by cows.
Hathor is commonly depicted as a cow goddess with head horns in which is set a sun disk with Uraeus."
Source: Wiki

Museo Egizio, Torino

W H Hodgson - The Haunted Jarvee

"Dinner over, Carnacki as usual passed round his smokes, snuggled himself down luxuriously in his favourite armchair and went straight to the story we knew he had invited us to hear.
'I've been on a trip in one of the real old-time sailing ships,' he said without any preliminary remarks. 'The Jarvee, owned by my old friend Captain Thompson. I went on the voyage primarily for my health, but I picked on the old Jarvee because Captain Thompson had often told me there was something queer about her. I used to ask him up here whenever he came ashore and try to get him to tell me more about it, you know; but the funny thing was he never could tell me anything definite concerning her queerness. He seemed always to know but when it came to putting his knowledge into words it was as if he found that the reality melted out of it. ....
....
Then on the eighteenth day something truly happened. I had been pacing the poop as usual with old Thompson when suddenly he stopped and looked up at the mizzen royal which had just begun to flap against the mast. He glanced at the wind-vane near him, then ruffled his hat back and stared at the sea.
'"Wind's droppin', mister. There'll be trouble tonight," he said. "D'you see yon?" And he pointed away to windward. '"What?" I asked, staring with a curious little thrill that was due to more than curiosity. "Where?"
'"Right off the beam," he said. "Comin' from under the sun." "I don't see anything," I explained after a long stare at the wide-spreading silence of the sea that was already glassing into a dead calm surface now that the wind had died. "Yon shadow fixin'" said the old man, reaching for his glasses.
He focussed them and took a long look, then passed them across to me and pointed with his finger. "Just under the sun," he repeated. "Comin' towards us at the rate o' knots." He was curiously calm and matter-of-fact and yet I felt that a certain excitement had him in the throat; so that I took the glasses eagerly and stared according to his directions.
After a minute I saw it - a vague shadow upon the still surface of the sea that seemed to move towards us as I stared. For a moment I gazed fascinated, yet ready every moment to swear that I saw nothing and in the same instant to be assured that there was truly something out there upon the water, apparently coming towards the ship.
'"It's only a shadow, captain," I said at length...."
More http://www.forgottenfutures.com/game/ff4/jarvee.htm