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Tag Archives: Sophisticated
‘Sophisticated’: ancient faeces shows humans enjoyed beer and blue cheese 2,700 years ago | Anthropology
It’s no secret that beer and blue cheese go hand in hand – but a new study reveals how deep their roots run in Europe, where workers at a salt mine in Austria were gorging on both up to 2,700 years ago.
Scientists made the discovery by analysing samples of human excrement found at the heart of the Hallstatt mine in the Austrian Alps.
Frank Maixner, a microbiologist at the Eurac Research Institute in Bolzano, Italy, who was the lead author of the report, said he was surprised to learn salt miners more than two millennia ago were advanced enough to “use fermentation intentionally.”
“This is very sophisticated in my opinion,” Maixner said. “This is something I did not expect at that time.”
The finding was the earliest evidence to date of cheese ripening in Europe, according to researchers.
And while alcohol consumption is certainly well documented in older writings and archaeological evidence, the salt miners’ faeces contained the first molecular evidence of beer consumption on the continent at that time.
“It is becoming increasingly clear that not only were prehistoric culinary practices sophisticated, but also that complex processed foodstuffs as well as the technique of fermentation have held a prominent role in our early food history,” Kerstin Kowarik, of the Museum of Natural History Vienna, said.
The town of Hallstatt, a Unesco World Heritage Site, has been used for salt production for more than 3,000 years.
The community “is a very particular place, it’s located in the Alps, in the middle of nowhere,” Maixner said. “The whole community worked and lived from this mine.”
The miners spent their entire days there, working, eating and going to the bathroom in the mine.
It is thanks to the constant temperature of around 8C (46F) and the high concentration of salt at the mine that the miners’ faeces were preserved particularly well.
Researchers analysed four samples: one dating back to the bronze age, two from the iron age and one from the 18th century.
One of them, about 2,700 years old, was found to contain two fungi, Penicillium roqueforti and Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Both are known today for their use in food making.
“The Hallstatt miners seem to have intentionally applied food fermentation technologies with microorganisms which are still nowadays used in the food industry,” Maixner said.
The researchers also studied the miners’ diet, which consisted mainly of cereals, some fruit, and beans and meats as the source of protein.
“The diet was exactly what these miners needed, in my opinion,” Maixner said. “It’s clearly balanced and you have all major components you need.”
The main difference with today’s menus is the degree of food processing, which was very low at the time. The bronze and iron age miners used whole grains, suggesting the consumption of some kind of porridge. For the 18th-century miners, the grains appeared ground, indicating they ate bread or cookies.
One of the study’s other findings was the composition of the miners’ microbiota, or the set of bacteria present in their bodies.
In the four samples studied, the microbiota were very similar to that of modern non-western populations, which tend to have a more traditional lifestyle.
This suggests a “recent shift” in the microbiota of industrialised humans, “probably due to modern lifestyle, diet, or medical advances,” the study said.
However, microbiota are often linked to different modern diseases, Maixner said. According to him, determining when exactly this change occurred could help scientists understand what caused it.
The study was published in the journal Current Biology on Wednesday.
Israeli-linked tanker attacked by sophisticated Iranian drones
A ship attacked off the coast of Oman is raising tensions between Israel and Iran as Israel’s Foreign Minister slammed Iran on Friday as an exporter of terrorism, destruction, instability and a threat to the freedom of navigation. Pro-Iran social media accounts and a report at Al-Alam TV has said Iran carried out the attack on the ship in response to an airstrike in Syria that Iran blames on Israel.
New details of the attack on the 600-foot long Mercer Street tanker have revealed that drones were used to spread death and destruction. Two were killed in the attack. The New York Times reported that two officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said that “the attack appeared to have been carried out by several unmanned Iranian drones that crashed into living quarters underneath the ship’s command center, or bridge.” This looks like a serious and complex attack that is not just a major escalation, but a new use of Iran drone technology.
Iran has been increasing its drone abilities in recent years. It has a large number of militarized drones such as the Shahed, Mohajer and Ababil lines. Iran also recently showcased a new drone named after Gaza. Iran claims its drones have long ranges as they can reach more than 1,000 miles, and that some can carry missiles while others can be pre-programmed to carry out precision attacks by slamming into targets. For instance, Iranian-style kamikaze drones have been developed by Hamas in Gaza, where they are called Shehab, and by the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen, who use the Qasef drone. The Houthis have terrorized Saudi Arabia with these drones, as they carry a warhead in their body and are programmed to strike a target using some kind of gyroscope and guidance system. US and regional Gulf reports have linked drones across the region to Iranian construction and blueprints via details like gyroscopes.
Iran has a plethora of drones. Its Shahed-129 looks like an American Predator, as does its new “Gaza” drone, a Shahed-149. ,The Shahed 121 is a smaller reconnaissance drone, and the Shahed 123 tis also part of the same line of drones. Iran also makes drones called Raad, Saegeh, Sarir, Fotros, Karrar, Kian and others. Some of the Iranian drones mentioned in sources may not exist, such as the Shahed-136, which was allegedly sent to Yemen in January, in order to target Israel .
The important point is that Iran relies on drones to threaten enemies around the region, usually by transferring the drones to proxies and allies such as Hamas, the Houthis, Hezbollah and Iraqi militias. Iranian operators may fly the drones from places like the T-4 airbase in Syria, but the overall goal is that the attacks not be easily linked to Iran, when the drones are used against Israel, the US in Iraq, or Saudi Arabia, Kurdish forces and others. In some cases, parts and munitions that may be used in drones have been intercepted at sea by the US Navy as Iran has sought to move weapons to the Houthis.
THE REPORTED use of numerous drones against the Mercer Street could mark a new era in the Middle East and a major red line as drones are being used against ships. Using several drones to precisely target parts of the ship, such as the bridge or living quarters, may indicate advanced surveillance and intelligence capabilities. It is unclear if Iran’s drones can be piloted once they are launched by a ground control station. That means that an attack on a ship is complex as ships are in constant movement, and it’s unclear how Iran might program the drones to strike the ship precisely. Even at anchor, a ship will shift around with the tide or wind.
How then could the drone target specific areas, unless it was controlled up until the impact? These are key questions.
How then could the drone target specific areas, unless it was controlled up until the impact? These are key questions.
If Iran has reached a new level of precision drone strikes and is using them against shipping in deadly attacks, this is a major milestone. Iran may also be moving these drones to the Houthis or others, or basing them on ships. Iranian ships have recently sailed all the way to Russia, around Africa, and brought drones with them. Iran has also put drones on its IRGC fast boats, and has tested drones in recent naval exercises.
The Iran drone threat from bases in Syria or from Hezbollah, Hamas, or pro-Iranian militias in Iraq, was known. The Houthi drone threat was also well known. In addition, Iran’s use of drones to attack Abqaiq in Saudi Arabia in September 2019 was a major incident that some experts described as a kind of Pearl Harbor for the new technology. Air defenses have been improved against drones, but the Houthis continue to use them against Riyadh and pro-Iran militias in Iraq have showcased dozens of Iranian drones that they now have in their arsenal. It is believed that they used a drone to strike a secret CIA hangar in Erbil in Iraq’s Kurdistan region in April of this year. In addition it is believed Kataib Hezbollah used an Iranian-supplied drone to strike at Saudi Arabia in 2019. Iran also used drones to monitor attacks on ISIS and in Syria in 2017 to help fight ISIS. It also used drones flown from Kirkuk in 2018 to target Kurdish dissidents, and in July 2019 it used a new drone unit to target Kurds once again.
Iranian drones and drone technology are now a major emerging threat from Lebanon all the way through Syria and Iraq to the Persian Gulf and then to the Gulf of Oman and Yemen, stretching thousands of miles and potentially putting ships and forces from the US and many allies and partners in danger.
Iran may be signaling that it will strike using drones at sea in deadly attacks in what it claims are responses to Israeli strikes in Syria or elsewhere. A pro-Iran social media account says that Iran’s armed drone ability is increasing and that this incident showcases the new Iran policy of retaliation.Sophisticated hackers snuck sleeper malware into nearly 30,000 Macs
There’s a popular stereotype that Apple’s computers are largely immune to malware. Not only is is that incorrect, it appears that sophisticated hacker(s) might have been toying with the idea of a heist or drop nasty enough they’d have needed to cover their tracks. As Ars Technica reports, security researchers at Malwarebytes and Red Canary discovered a mysterious piece of malware hiding on nearly 30,000 Macs, one designed to deliver an as-yet-unknown payload, and with a self-destruction mechanism that might remove any trace that it ever existed. They’re calling it Silver Sparrow.
Red Canary’s own blog post goes into more detail, including how they discovered multiple versions targeting not only Intel, but also newer Macs based on Apple’s own M1 chip — which is quite the thing, given how new Apple’s M1 computers are and how few vulnerabilities have been discovered yet. It was literally just one week ago that Objective-See security researcher Patrick Wardle published a story about the first piece of malware discovered in the wild targeting Apple Silicon, and now we have two.
Thankfully, Silver Sparrow was not able to cover its tracks before being outed, there’s no indication it was used to do any damage, and Red Canary writes that Apple has already revoked the binaries (which should theoretically keep you from accidentally installing it yourself). But the idea damage could have been done isn’t theoretical: they actually found these strains of malware on Macs in the wild.
Given all of this, Silver Sparrow is uniquely positioned to deliver a potentially impactful payload at a moment’s notice, so we wanted to share everything we know with the broader infosec community sooner rather than later.
— Red Canary (@redcanary) February 19, 2021
Researchers warn that Apple’s transition from Intel to its own silicon may make it easy for other bad actors to slip malware through the cracks, too: you can read quotes from several of them in this Wired story.