BETHLEHEM, West Bank – Workers renovating a house in the traditional town of Jesus’ birth accidentally discovered an untouched ancient tomb containing clay pots, plates, beads and the bones of two humans, a Palestinian antiquities official said Tuesday.

The 4,000-year-old tomb provides a glimpse of the burial customs of the area’s inhabitants during the Canaanite period, said Mohammed Ghayyada, director of the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

Workers in a house near the Church of the Nativity uncovered a hole leading to the grave, which was about one meter (yard) below ground, he said. They contacted antiquities officials, who photographed the grave intact before removing its contents.

They dated the grave to the Early Bronze Age, between 1,900 B.C. and 2,200 B.C.

Jerusalem-based archaeologist and historian Stephen Pfann called the find “an important reference to the life of the Canaanites,” adding that it could give a glimpse into life in the area before the time when the Biblical patriarchs are said to have lived.

While many artifacts exist from this period, intact graves are rare, mainly because of looting, he said.

Intact graves are more useful to scholars because they show how items were arranged.

“Every time a new tomb is found, it adds to the picture,” Pfann said.

The findings will be housed in the Bethlehem Peace Center, a cultural center not far from where the tomb was discovered.

(Agencies)

The Super Sustainable City, designed by Swedish architecture firm Kjellgren Kaminsky Architecture, proposes a green Gothenburg for 2050.

The current ecological footprint of Gothenburg is 2.5 million global hectares, or roughly the size of Västra Götaland. If all citizens in the world used as much resources we would need 3 globes to survive, explains the architecture firm. The Super Sustainable City is based on the principal of creating a sustainable ecological footprint for the growing seaside city.

Kjellgren Kaminsky Architecture estimates that the city will continue to grow with 8000 new inhabitants/year and in order to accommodate the extra people and combat urban sprawl, denser and more sustainable cities are needed.

The cutting edge vision for The Super Sustainable City in Gothenburg includes finding ways to cut, and make more efficient, transportation and travel, lower energy consumption and change energy sources to renewables, cut waste and recycle more, harvest water and grow more food.

The design includes green roofs for leisure and solar panels, passive solar design, wind turbines, a rapid transit system and cycling paths.

source:greenmuze

Found in such exotic locales as Kenya, Mexico, Canada, Australia, China and in similarly off-the-beaten path locations as California, Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, and especially Washington state, the mounds first appear to be just that: mounds of earth.

All the mounds are heaps of soil from three to six feet tall, often laid out in what appear to be evenly spaced rows.

The list of explanations is that somehow the mounds were created either by wind and rain or by geologic ups and downs.

The “natural” theory of nature being responsible for the Majorly Mysterious Mima Mounds starts to crumble upon further investigation. Sure there’s plenty of things we don’t yet understand about how our native world behaves scientists do know enough to be able to say what it can’t do – and it’s looking pretty certain it can’t be as precise, orderly, or meticulous as the mounds.

in Africa

But still more theories persist. For many who believe in ley lines, that crop circles are some form of manifestation of our collective unconscious, in ghosts being energy impressions left in stone and brick, the mounds are the same, or at least similar: the result of an interaction between forces we as yet do not understand.

Zira Zero Island is a 1,000,000m2 architectural design proposal for a carbon neutral leisure, culture and residential development in the Caspian Sea. The cutting edge sustainable design, from Danish BIG Architects and engineers Ramboll, is proposed for the crescent shaped bay of the capital city Baku in Azerbaijan.

The vision for Zira Island is to create a development that is independent of external resources – in other words, a self-contained, carbon-neutral island. It is also designed to be a showcase to the world, combining high-end living with low-end resource usage.

The buildings on the island will be heated and cooled by heat pumps connecting to the Caspian Sea. Solar heat panels integrated in the architecture create a steady supply of hot water, while photovoltaics on facades and rooftops power daytime functions such as swimming pools and aqua parks.

Waste water and storm water is collected and led to a waste water treatment plant, where it is then cleaned, processed and recycled for irrigation. The solid parts of the wastewater are processed and composted, turned into topsoil to fertilize the island. The constant irrigation and fertilizing of the island is designed to support the lush condition of a tropical island, with a minimal ecological footprint and using minimal resources.

The island will have its own CO₂-neutral power supplied by harvesting wind energy via an offshore wind farm. By locating the wind turbines on sea, it transforms the existing offshore oil industry’s platforms and foundations in Baku into a more sustainable future for wind turbine use.

Slovakian architects Tomas Zacek and Igor Zacek have come up with a unique house design that manages to combine a love of travel with environmentally sustainable design and functionality. The architects used the caravans for inspiration, but added their own modern eco-twists.

The Rolling Stone is designed to accommodate a minimum of two people or a maximum of six in an emergency. Each unit has a bedroom with a double bed, small closet, toilet, shower and sink. The main part of the unit has two separate functions. In summer, the unit can be expanded to create living room space with a kitchenette and eating area. The open area may also function as a workshop area or theatre. As with traditional caravans, when several are placed in a circle it creates a communal living space for outdoor cooking and socializing.

Each unit continues different energy system options – wind turbines or solar panels. The units also have a water reservoir and bathtub combination area on the roof and a grey water treatment facility under the floor of the caravan.

The Greenbird is a high tech combination of racing yacht, aeroplane and Formula 1 racing car design and technology. Lightweight, low friction and minimized aerodynamic drag are the secret ingredients behind the world record. The entire structure is made from carbon-fiber which has the high stiffness and strength required to transfer the wind loads on the Greenbird vertical sail, into traction forces on the ground. The suspension allows some compliance between the vehicle and the rough dry-lake surface; otherwise it would be difficult to control.

Greenbird weighs around 600kgs  but the ground pressure is around 1ton  at high speed. The forward thrust comes from the wind flow over the aerofoil section, just like an aircraft wing that creates lift, so the pressure differential over the wing creates forces that get translated into forward velocity. The Greenbird has such low drag and low rolling friction, that it uses the wind energy very efficiently, and can actually travel at speeds 3 to 5 times faster than the speed at which the wind is blowing.

Richard Jenkins and his team set a new world land speed record for wind powered land vehicles of  (202.9km/h) at Ivanpah Lake, Nevada.

Oetzi was found preserved in the ice of the Eastern Alps in 1991 and since 1998 he has been on display at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy. The examination of DNA of Oetzi has revealed that he has no match to any of the known existing races in Europe and most likely has no descendants today.

The scientists examined Oetzi’s mitochondrial DNA and found that it was unique in its structure. The mitochondrial DNA is always passed down to future generations by mothers and since no human being today carries the similar structure, it is safe to conclude that Oetzi has no descendants today.

Although he fell into a subgroup called K1, his lineage did not match any of the three known K1 ‘clusters’. This really adds another chapter to the human family tree and our understanding of evolution.

Looking like a cross between a modern Mercedes-Benz and an old fashion roadster, the Daimler AG trainees at the Sindelfingen Mercedes-Benz plant have built a good-looking vehicle using a hydrogen powered fuel cell with zero emissions.

The F-CELL Roadster  is controlled with drive-by-wire technology. A joystick takes the place of a conventional steering wheel. The vehicle is powered by the emission-free fuel cell system located at the rear. With a power rating of 1.2 kW the F-CELL Roadster reaches a top speed of 25km/h  and has an operating range of up to 350km.

World’s House Prices

HIV (distribution by countries)

Alcohol Consumption

Immigration

War Deaths

Military Spending

Toy Imports

Toy Exports

Killed by Disasters

Wealth in the year 1500

Wealth in the year 2008

They show the world how it really is – with the countries either shrunk or blown out of proportion, depending on the chosen parameter. These maps are a great tool in the modern world trends analysis.