Geneticists Estimate Publication Date Of The 'Iliad'

"The text is Homer's "Iliad," and Homer -- if there was such a person -- probably wrote it in 762 B.C., give or take 50 years, the researchers found. The "Iliad" tells the story of the Trojan War -- if there was such a war -- with Greeks battling Trojans."

"Languages behave just extraordinarily like genes," Pagel said. "It is directly analogous. We tried to document the regularities in linguistic evolution and study Homer's vocabulary as a way of seeing if language evolves the way we think it does. If so, then we should be able to find a date for Homer."

"They took the language of the Hittites, a people that existed during the time the war may have been fought, and modern Greek, and traced the changes in the words from Hittite to Homeric to modern. It is precisely how they measure the genetic history of humans, going back and seeing how and when genes alter over time."


Source: http://www.insidescience.org/content/geneticists-estimate-publication-date-iliad/946

Average Salary for High Paying Tech Skills

"SaaS is worth almost $101,000"
"Data Warehouse is worth $101,000"
"Change Management is worth $101,000"
"Azure is worth $101,000"
 "Nginx is worth more than $101,000"
 "Unified Modeling Language (UML) is worth more than $102,000"

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/10-tech-skills-that-will-instantly-net-you-100000-salary-2013-2?op=1#ixzz2M2R67ZUG

Fortran	$103,695
SaaS	$101,000
JSP(Java Server Pages)	$98,255
Ruby	$98,072
Perl	$97,437
Python	$94,895
Assembler/Assembly	$94,642
Java/J2EE	$94,085
C++	$92,248

Source: http://marketing.dice.com/pdf/Dice_TechSalarySurvey_2013.pdf

Coffee car grinds out world speed record

The British-made Bean Machine hit 65.5mph on Tuesday to become the fastest vehicle to run on caffeine.

"Coffee chaf pellets, which are produced from the waste in coffee production, are heated in a charcoal fire, where they break down into carbon monoxide and hydrogen.

"The gas is then cooled and filtered before hydrogen is combusted to drive the engine.

"Any car can run on gasification,’ he added. ‘In fact, during the World War II, there were over 100,000 vehicles in the K that ran on gasification, including cars, buses and delivery vehicles.

"At the beginning of the 20th century, there were over 90,000 vehicles running on gasifiers across the world.’


Source: http://metro.co.uk/2013/02/20/the-bean-machine-coffee-car-grinds-out-world-speed-record-3505281/

Easter sprinkling in Hungary

 "There are a lot of interesting folk customs still alive all over Hungary. The two, most known customs of Easter are the "sprinkling" and the egg-painting. Both are very common in both urban and rural areas, among people of every age-group."

"A couple of decades ago men poured water on women in rural areas and women wore folk costumes. Boys often dragged girls to the well and poured water on them with pail. Sometimes they washed them in creek. The possible reason for this very old tradition is that people believed in the cleaning, healing and fertility effect of water."

Source: http://minnesotahungarians.com/?q=node/227

Can Water Float on Oil?

"The floatability of water on oil surface was studied. A numerical model was developed from the Young–Laplace equation on three interfaces (water/oil, water/air, and oil/air) to predict the theoretical equilibration conditions. The model was verified successfully with an oil/water system. The stability of the floating droplet depends on the combination of three interface tensions, oil density, and water droplet volume. For practical purposes, however, the equilibrium contact angle has to be greater than 5° so the water droplet can effectively float. This result has significant applications for biodegrading oil wastes."

Source: http://pubs.acs.org/stoken/presspac/presspac/full/10.1021/la204820a

Faster-than-light neutrinos could be down to bad wiring

 "In September 2011, the Opera experiment reported it had seen particles called neutrinos evidently travelling faster than the speed of light."

"A repeat of the experiment by the Opera team will now address whether the issues they have found affect the ultimate neutrino speed they measure.
The two problems the team has identified would have opposing effects on the apparent speed."

"On the one hand, the team said there is a problem in the "oscillator" that provides a ticking clock to the experiment in the intervals between the synchronisations of GPS equipment.
This is used to provide start and stop times for the measurement as well as precise distance information.
That problem would increase the measured time of the neutrinos' flight, in turn reducing the surprising faster-than-light effect."

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17139635

3500 years old ancient jokes

"The evidence of sex, politics and beer-drinking comes from a newly translated tablet, dating back more than 3,500 years, which reveals a series of riddles.

The text is fragmentary in parts and appears to have been written by an inexperienced hand, possibly a student. The researchers aren't sure where the tablet originates, though they suspect its scribe lived in the southern part of Mesopotamia, near the Persian "

He gouged out the eye:

It is not the fate of a dead man.

He cut the throat: A dead man (-Who is it?)

The answer is a governor.

In(?) your mouth and your teeth (or: your urine)

constantly stared at you

the measuring vessel of your lord (-What is it?)

The answer, it appears, is beer.

The deflowered (girl) did not become pregnant

The undeflowered (girl) became pregnant (-What is it?)

The answer, strangely enough, appears to be "auxiliary forces," a group of soldiers that tend not to be reliable.

The tower is high

it is high, but nonetheless has no shade (- What is it?)

The answer is sunlight.

Like a fish in a fish pond

Like troops before the king (-What is it?)

The answer is a broken bow.

Source: http://www.livescience.com/18147-ancient-riddles-decoded-mesopotamia.html