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Hits Parade — AlphaGalileo Top 5
Our hit parade compiles the press releases with bigger number of visits in April 2012.
1. Marco Polo was not a swindler – he really did go to Chinas — Universitaet Tübingen — 16/04/2012
It has been said that Marco Polo did not really go to China; that he merely cobbled together his information about it from journeys to the Black Sea, Constantinople and Persia and from talking to merchants and reading now-lost Persian books. But in Marco Polo was in China: New Evidence from Currencies, Salts and Revenues, (Brill Verlag) Hans Ulrich Vogel, Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Tübingen, puts paid to such rumors.
He begins with a comprehensive review of the arguments for and against, and follows it up with evidence from relevant Chinese, Japanese, Italian, French, German and Spanish literature. The result is compelling: despite a few, well-known problems with Marco Polo’s writings, they are supported by an overwhelming number of verified accounts about China containing unique information given over centuries.
Yuan-era representation of salt production. (Source: Yoshida Tora (author) and Hans Ulrich Vogel (transl.), Salt Production Techniques in Ancient China: The Aobotu, Leiden: Brill (SinicaLeidensia 27), 1993, p. 246.)
2.People, population and diseases in the Middle Ages Christian — Albrechts-Universitaet zu Kiel — 16/04/2012
The Interreg-project “Bones4Cultures” has just been started. Its aim is to analyze population, life, health and culture of the people that lived in the German-Danish border land during the Middle Ages (AD 1050 – 1536). Researchers from Denmark and Germany will examine skeletons of people, who used to live in the city of Schleswig and in other parts of Germany and Denmark during this period. Approximately 1000 human skeletons will be analysed during the three year project period. Samples will be taken from 350 skeletons for a more detailed chemical and physical analysis.
The cross-national research project Bones4Culture discloses the secrets of the history of the German-Danish population. Copyright/ Photo: pur.pur
3. Physicists observe the splitting of an electron inside a solid — Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) — 18/04/2012
An electron has been observed to decay into two separate parts, each carrying a particular property of the electron: a spinon carrying its spin - the property making the electron behave as a tiny compass needle - and an orbiton carrying its orbital moment - which arises from the electron's motion around the nucleus. These newly created particles, however, cannot leave the material in which they have been produced. This result is reported in a paper published in Nature by an international team of researchers led by experimental physicists from the Paul Scherrer Institute (Switzerland) and theoretical physicists from the IFW Dresden (Germany).
Jeroen van den Brink (left) und Krzysztof Wohlfeld (centre), both from the IFW Dresden, discussing the theoretical description of the experimental results with PSI researcher Thorsten Schmitt. (Photo: Philip Dera)
4. Study Confirms Anatomic Existence of the Elusive G-Spot — Wiley-Blackwell — 19/04/2012
For centuries, women have been reporting engorgement of the upper, anterior part of the vagina during the stage of sexual excitement, despite the fact the structure of this phenomenon had not been anatomically determined. A new study published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine documents that this elusive structure does exist anatomically. .
5. Dino eggs shape Easter eggs says new study — University of Leicester — 04/04/2012
Research by palaeontologists in Spain and the UK suggests that not all Easter eggs come from the same “parent” species; some could be from dinosaurs, including a new species from the Pyrenees.
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