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 Hopes of finding a royal mummy in the Valley of the Kings got a boost this week as a small, gilded sarcophagus emerged from the mysterious chamber known as KV63. The finding will be described in "Egypt’s New Tomb Revealed," a Discovery Channel production that airs Sunday at 9 p.m. ET. The documentary will unveil the history of KV63 in what has become a true detective story. Discovered in February by a team of archaeologists from the University of Memphis, led by Otto Schaden, KV63 still holds many mysteries. Buried under 13 feet of rubble and stones just 16 feet away from King Tutankhamun's resting place, the chamber is believed to be the 63rd tomb found since the valley was first mapped in the 18th century. It is the first chamber discovered since the boy pharaoh was uncovered in 1922. So far, the chamber has yielded seven wooden sarcophagi in human shapes with colored funerary masks, surrounded by 28 meticulously sealed clay jars. Pottery and a wine label identical to one found in King Tut’s tomb indicate that the place dates from the 18th dynasty (ca. 1539-1292 B.C.), which included pharaohs such as Amenhotep I, the warrior pharaoh; Queen Hatshepsut, Egypt's only female pharaoh; Akhenaten, the "heretic" pharaoh; and Tutankhamun, the boy pharaoh. Initially, hopes were high that the team had found a royal cache on the West bank of the Nile outside Luxor. The expectation was it may have been the burial ground for many pharaohs. "It was one of the most exciting moments of my life when I first peeked inside the tomb and saw the coffins," Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, told Discovery News when the finding was announced. The excitement did not last long. No mummies were found as the coffins were opened. Dirt, fragments of broken pottery, linen and natron— the salt used for mummification— lay inside instead of human remains. "I believe that KV63 was a storage room for items used in the mummification process," Hawass told Discovery News. But new findings show KV63 wasn’t just a ordinary storage room. Strange things seem to have happened there, reported The New York Times Wednesday. The archaeologists found that several sealed jars, which already contained broken pottery, had been smashed and the bits stuffed inside the coffins. According to Schaden, it's odd that the embalmers appear to have taken filled jars, broken them and put them in coffins. The mystery deepened with the opening of a child-sized coffin. To Schaden’s amazement, the coffin did not contain a mummy, but was stuffed with pillows. Hidden under the pillows, the archaeologists found an infant-sized gold sized coffin of a quality that could suggest royalty. The finding raised new questions. What really was KV63? A royal Egyptian tomb? A supply room for ancient embalmers ... or something else? Schaden believes the final answer may come as the seal of the last coffin is broken. It is still possible that the sarcophagus contains a royal mummy. Schaden told The New York Times that if the last coffin holds a mummy, it is probably someone the embalmers wished to hide. It could be Ankhesenamun (a.k.a. Ankhesenpaaten), King Tut’s wife. One of the few pieces of writing found in KV63, on a seal, bears a faint inscription with the word "pa-aten," which is a part of her name. TAKE FROM /DISCOVERY.COM
 Locks of 3,200-year-old hair from the pharaoh Ramses II were unveiled at the Egyptian Museum on Tuesday, returned to Egypt after being stolen 30 years ago in France and put up for sale on the Internet. The small tufts of brown hair were displayed alongside pieces of linen bandages and 11 pieces of resin used in the mummification of Ramses and his son Merneptah in a glass display case. Photographers mobbed the case as Egypt's culture minister and antiquities chief showed off the returned items. The hair will eventually be put on display next to Ramses' mummy at the museum. The theft of the items was discovered when the pieces of hair were put up for sale on a Web site last November by a French postman, Jean-Michel Diebolt, who gave the hair a price tag of $2,600. Diebolt is the son of a French researcher who examined the 3,200-year-old mummy when it was brought to France in 1976 for treatment to stop the spread of a rare fungus. Diebolt is being investigated in France for allegedly possessing stolen goods. Egyptian antiquities official Ahmed Saleh traveled to Paris early last week to retrieve the stolen items. "It was wonderful mission. I felt very great when I had the lock of hair of Ramses II in my hand," said Saleh. Ramses II, who ruled from 1270 to 1213 B.C., is one of ancient Egypt's most famous pharaohs, known for building some of its grandest monuments. Some believe him to be the pharaoh at the time of Moses. Egypt's antiquities chief, Zahi Hawass, said the retrieval of the items was made possible by the strong diplomatic relations between Egypt and France. Hawass, who has pressed several countries for the return of Egyptian antiquities, said the Internet is playing an important role in the search for other stolen relics. "We open the Internet everyday, and the most important source you have are my spies," Hawass said. "I have spies all over the world, and those spies, they inform me every day of things you would not believe." Hawass has sought — without success — the return of such finds as the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum, the bust of Nefertiti at Berlin's Egyptian Museum and a pharaonic mask at the St. Louis Art Museum. But he said Egypt is awaiting the arrival of a statue coming from Spain, another artifact from Mexico and duck-shaped lamps that were stolen from Saqqara and will be retrieved from Paris. If Egypt has its way, more artifacts will follow. Saleh added: "When one country gives you back your artifact, other countries will do the same." TAKE FROM /DISCOVERY.COM
A computerized instrument that allows people to play music with the tip of their nose could give those who suffer from physical disabilities, such as cerebral palsy, the chance to experience music's positive effects.
Not only could the interface allow for musical communication, it could also be adapted for speech, giving physically challenged patients the ability to form full sentences, rather than just providing yes or no responses. "This instrument will give a voice to those who are all too often ignored, due to their physical disability," said Zane Van Dusen, a recent graduate of computer science and electronic media arts and communications at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. Van Dusen developed the interface with Pauline Oliveros, a musician and distinguished professor of the arts at Rensselaer. Cerebral Palsy is a neurological disorder that permanently reduces muscle coordination, As a result, sufferers often feel mentally imprisoned by their inability to speak or move. Music offers a way to break out of the bonds of a physical disability because it gives patients a means to express themselves. Unfortunately, current music tools are limiting. Most tools restrict input to a joystick on a wheelchair, which can be expensive to add or modify; they may require wires or cables that impede or even distract a person, and lastly, not all music therapy allows for a broad range of creativity. Van Dusen's "adaptive-use musical instrument" overcomes these challenges with an inexpensive Web camera and specialized computer software that he wrote. The patient is placed in front of the computer, where they see live video of their face through a Web camera. Motion-tracking software places a red box on the tip of the person's nose and tracks the user's movement across an onscreen keyboard. The lowest notes are located to the left and the highest notes are located to the right. The outline of a rectangle around the person's face can be widened or narrowed in order to accommodate the patient's range of motion.
In "keyboard mode," the person stays within the rectangle, touching on keys to illicit notes. In "percussive mode," the person can move outside the rectangle to set off a snare drum or cymbal sound. In a pilot study at REHAB Programs, Inc., in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., children who used the instrument paid more attention to their movements because they were motivated by the sounds they were creating. One 9-year-old child spent an hour creating a song, even though it required a lot of effort. "The added benefit of all of this is that the children are working on their head control," said Leaf Miller, a professional musician and an occupational therapist at REHAB Programs. Affordability is also an issue, she added. "The cost of the hardware and software is not going to be expensive and that makes it accessible," said Miller. "It can also be adapted for speech language pathologists to use for communication." The team will be working this summer to perfect the prototype and create additional interfaces for an organization that fosters a unique approach to music, literature, art and meditation. They hope the interface might offer a way for otherwise frusterated patients to express the song they have on the tip of their nose.
take from/discovery.com
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Computers are socially awkward. They have a hard time with informal communication and the subtleties of natural language — especially when it comes to jokes.
But now a group of researchers have equipped a computer with a sensor of humor. The technology could lead to programs that can solve problems that are informally stated, as well as to robots that are able to interact with humans more naturally. "We rely on computers more and more, yet they don't seem to handle the way we communicate," said Julia Taylor, a Ph.D. candidate for computer science and engineering at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio. "I think it would be great for computers to understand natural language the way we use it," she said. Taylor developed the program with associate professor Lawrence Mazlack, coordinator of the university's Applied Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Whether computer or human, getting a joke depends on the knowledge one has of the events mentioned in the joke. Since programming a computer to have total world knowledge is a little overwhelming, Taylor and Mazlack restricted the domain of humor to children's jokes that have similar sounding words, the way puns and knock-knock jokes often do. The program consists of two parts: a knowledge base derived from a children's dictionary and a collection of children's texts, and an algorithm that takes into account how the word sounds, how it's spelled, and what it means. The knowledge base, called an ontology, represents an innovative, and more complex approach, said Christian Hemplemann, chief scientific officer at Hakia, an Internet search engine company. Hakia conducts searches based on meaning, instead of popularity of key words or phrases. More popular approaches rely on statistics, which analyzes millions of words in a text and looks at what words occur frequently around other words. For example, "bank" can mean a financial institution or land beside a river. Words such as "teller," "check" and "account" indicate financial institution, while "fish," "rapids" and "water" indicate land beside a river. With an ontology, the researchers must build a database that includes all of the things and events in a given world — in this case, the world of children's jokes — and how they relate to each other. The relationships are categorized in a hierarchical structural from general to a more precise meaning. "Humor is a very specific form of meaning that's related to a specific emotional response in humans that occurs in specific social situations," said Hemplemann. "If you understand how to do it artificially, that may give you an idea of how it works for the real thing." To test the computer's understanding, Taylor enters text into the system and then lets the program tell her if it thinks the text is a joke or not. See what you think: Mother to boy: "Johnny, you've been working in the garden a lot this summer." Boy: "I know. My teacher told me to weed a lot." Because "weed" sounds similar to "read," the program picks up on the wordplay and flags the text as a joke. Taylor and Mazlack are currently working to build the knowledge base for the computer so that it can eventually recognize more sophisticated jokes. And one day, it may even be able to generate jokes of its own. Getting a computer to recognize whether or not a joke is funny is a whole different matter.
take from/discovery.com
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