This human footprints found in Tabuk is 85,000-year-old


Tokyo: Human footprints dating back to about 85,000 years have been discovered on the banks of an ancient lake in the Nefud Desert in Tabuk region, Prince Sultan bin Salman, president of the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage (SCTH), announced in Tokyo on Thursday.

This amazing and rare discovery points to a new understanding of how our species came out of Africa en route to colonizing the world.

Prince Sultan’s announcement came on the sidelines of his visit on Thursday to the exhibition entitled “Trade routes in the Arabian Peninsula – the magnificent antiquities of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia throughout the ages.”

The exhibition, organized by the SCTH in the Japanese National Museum in Tokyo, is scheduled to end on Sunday.

A joint Saudi international team discovered traces of several adults who were scattered on a muddy land in an old lake — each heading to a different destination — in the northwest of Saudi Arabia, Prince Sultan said, according to a Saudi Press Agency (SPA) report on Friday.

The research team included the Saudi Geological Survey, the SCTH, King Saud University, the Max Planck Foundation for Human History, Oxford University, Cambridge University, Australia National, and the University of New South Wales in Australia.

Prince Sultan said the age of the footprints coincides with the fossil of the finger of an adult person recently found near the central site in the province of Taima.

The finger, whose discovery was announced last month, is considered to belong to an adult of the early migrants in recent times to the Arabian Peninsula via the Nefud Desert, which then was a green pasture replete with rivers, lakes, fresh water and abundant animals – a source of food for humans.

Prince Sultan said the SCTH is working side-by-side with archeologists at the Max Planck Institute that has started work with the commission since several years.

The objective is to study these footprints in detail. The archeological and scientific exploratory works are still going on in international laboratories. Source:  ummid.com
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3-D Printed Food with Custom Taste and Texture: Could It Change How We Eat?

Credit: Jin-Kyu Rhee, Ewha Womans University

Researchers have 3-D printed food with customized texture and body absorption characteristics. 

Imagine a home appliance that, at the push of a button, turns powdered ingredients into food that meets the individual nutrition requirements of each household member. Although it may seem like something from science fiction, new research aimed at using 3-D printing to create customized food could one day make this a reality.

A: Food materials are pulverized under ultra-low temperature close to -100 degrees Celsius. B: Micro-sized food materials are reconstructed into a porous film-shaped material by jetting bonding an agent under optimized water content and heat conditions. The process to build film-type materials is repeated layer by layer to form to a three-dimensional food block. C: The exterior of foods and internal microstructure of a food block with specific porosity is designed to give texture with controlled human body absorption while eating and ingesting.

Jin-Kyu Rhee, associate professor at Ewha Womans University in South Korea, discussed his new research and the potential of 3-D printing technology for food production at the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology annual meeting during the 2018 Experimental Biology meeting to be held April 21-25 in San Diego.

"We built a platform that uses 3-D printing to create food microstructures that allow food texture and body absorption to be customized on a personal level," said Rhee. "We think that one day, people could have cartridges that contain powdered versions of various ingredients that would be put together using 3-D printing and cooked according to the user's needs or preferences."

3-D printing of food works much like 3-D printing of other materials in that layers of raw material are deposited to build up a final product. In addition to offering customized food options, the ability to 3-D print food at home or on an industrial scale could greatly reduce food waste and the cost involved with storage and transportation. It might also help meet the rapidly increasing food needs of a growing world population.

For the new study, the researchers used a prototype 3-D printer to create food with microstructures that replicated the physical properties and nanoscale texture they observed in actual food samples. They also demonstrated that their platform and optimized methods can turn carbohydrate and protein powers into food with microstructures that can be tuned to control food texture and how the food is absorbed by the body.

"We are only in early stages, but we believe our research will move 3-D food printing to the next level," said Rhee. "We are continuing to optimize our 3-D print technology to create customized food materials and products that exhibit longer storage times and enhanced functionality in terms of body absorption."

Jin-Kyu Rhee present edthe research from 12:45-1:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 24, in Exhibit Halls A-D, San Diego Convention Center (poster B284 801.9) (abstract).

Contacts and sources: 
Anne Frances Johnson
Experimental Biology 2018

American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Experimental Biology is an annual meeting comprised of more than 14,000 scientists and exhibitors from five host societies and multiple guest societies. With a mission to share the newest scientific concepts and research findings shaping clinical advances, the meeting offers an unparalleled opportunity for exchange among scientists from across the United States and the world who represent dozens of scientific areas, from laboratory to translational to clinical research. http://www.experimentalbiology.org # Source: https://www.ineffableisland.com/
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