Thursday Things: Booking It Edition
10 September 2020. Vol 2 No 37 By Dan McGirt. #57
Welcome to Thursday Things! This week we go back to the Moon, back to ancient Egypt, and take a supersonic ride in the sky.
What more do you need, really? Photo by Jez Timms on Unsplash
Anything that helps more people to read is good news.
Low-dose electrical stimulation helps adults with dyslexia read, study finds
Transcranial alternating current stimulation, a non-invasive procedure that delivers low-dose electricity to the brain over a period of 20 minutes, was found to improve phonological processing -- or ability to discern how words sound or are pronounced -- and reading accuracy in 15 adults with dyslexia, the researchers said.
The beneficial effect on phonological processing was most pronounced in those individuals who had poor reading skills, while a slightly disruptive effect was observed in very good readers, they said.
This could be a real boost for adult dyslexics. The underlying study is at PLOS Biology: Selective enhancement of low-gamma activity by tACS improves phonemic processing and reading accuracy in dyslexia
And if you’re looking for something to read, here is news from 2011, but still valuable: Royal Society journal archive made permanently free to access
The Royal Society has today announced that its world-famous historical journal archive – which includes the first ever peer-reviewed scientific journal – has been made permanently free to access online.
Over 8000 historical scientific papers are accessible via a fully searchable online archive, with papers published more than 70 years ago now becoming freely available. …
Treasures in the archive include Isaac Newton’s first published scientific paper, geological work by a young Charles Darwin, and Benjamin Franklin’s celebrated account of his electrical kite experiment. And nestling amongst these illustrious papers, readers willing to delve a little deeper into the archive may find some undiscovered gems from the dawn of the scientific revolution – including accounts of monstrous calves, grisly tales of students being struck by lightning, and early experiments on to how to cool drinks “without the Help of Snow, Ice, Haile, Wind or Niter, and That at Any Time of the Year.”
Dig into the Royal Society archive at https://royalsociety.org/collections/digital-resources/
If you ever find yourself in the ancient Egyptian underworld, this guidebook could come in handy. 4,000-Year-Old Guide to the Ancient Egyptian Underworld May Be Oldest Illustrated ‘Book’
In ancient Egypt, death wasn’t merciful enough to end one’s troubles. The afterlife was fraught with peril, too, and the dead had to contend with something of a spiritual obstacle course to reach Rostau, the glorious realm of Osiris, god of death.
At least two paths to Rostau existed: one by land, another by sea. Both were arduous enough to require a guidebook, the aptly named Book of Two Ways. This intricate map of the ancient Egyptian underworld may be the first illustrated “book” in history. And archaeologists have now unearthed a 4,000-year-old-copy—possibly the oldest version ever found, reports Franz Lidz for the New York Times.
A question that never occurred to me before — does dyslexia affect the reading of hieroglyphs? Or does the brain process pictographic writing differently than it does to extract meaning from the written word as we know it? I don’t know.
Something to ponder. Meanwhile, here is one more item from Egypt.
Don’t open them! Or at least wait until next year. Egyptian Authorities Have Discovered 13 Completely Sealed 2,500-Year-Old Coffins
An unusual cache of at least 13 wooden coffins dating back to 2,500 years ago has been discovered in the desert necropolis of Saqqara in Egypt.
What makes these coffins so special among the thousands interred in the tomb complex is the fact they have remained intact for millennia, and are still completely sealed - hundreds of years after their inhabitants died.
Seriously. DO NOT OPEN UNTIL 2021 at the earliest. Please.
The Moon Is Rusting, And We Don’t Know Why
New research shows the Moon has rust on its surface, which is quite odd. Rust forms when iron reacts with oxygen to form iron oxide. While rust is common on Earth, and even the surface of Mars, its presence on the Moon is unexpected.
The Moon is mostly a dry, airless rock, but it does have traces of water ice near its poles. This was discovered by the Indian Space Research Organization's Chandrayaan-1 orbiter team in 2008. The team has also located various minerals on the lunar surface, but finding hematite was a surprise. Hematite is a form of iron oxide that typically forms when the iron is exposed to oxygen and liquid water. While other processes can form hematite, these would be hindered by the presence of hydrogen. Hydrogen is present on the lunar surface due to solar wind. So how is hematite forming on the Moon?
A little WD-40 should take care of that.
Most knee cracking is normal unless it hurts, expert says. As a compulsive knee cracker (and ankle, elbow, wrist, spine, etc) I find this to be cracking good news.
"Do not allow these sounds to make you feel abnormal or mentally stressed, or limit your functional activities," Singh said. "A knee crack by itself does not indicate presence of any disease."
It's normal for knees to crack when you are active and it does not mean you have arthritis, he explained.
"Interestingly, in knee arthritis, knee joint becomes hypomobile and loses its movement to a certain degree, which may lead to no knee crack," he said. "A knee crack may mean your joint is mobile and lubricated."
Military Moves Forward with Plan to Make Air Force One Supersonic “The U.S. Air Force has taken initial steps to begin prototyping a supersonic aircraft that could someday carry the president around the world in half the time.” We absolutely need a supersonic Air Force One! Why don’t we have this already? How cool would that be? And it should have lasers! And a presidential robot butler! Perhaps a Happy Subscriber to Thursday Things will be the future First Passenger aboard supersonic Air Force One.
(U.S. Air Force Life Cycle Management Center/Facebook)
Thank you for reading Thursday Things! I’ll see you next Thursday.