June 27, 2008 (Friday)

• Bill Gates
  Bill Gates
  William Henry "Bill" Gates III is an American business magnate, investor, philanthropist, and author. Gates is the former CEO and current chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen...
  
   retires from Microsoft
  Microsoft
  Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
  
  . (AP)
• Mars
  Mars
  Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...
  
   soil is more hospitable to life than expected, with PH and nutrients suitable for growing asparagus
  Asparagus
  Asparagus officinalis is a spring vegetable, a flowering perennialplant species in the genus Asparagus. It was once classified in the lily family, like its Allium cousins, onions and garlic, but the Liliaceae have been split and the onion-like plants are now in the family Amaryllidaceae and...
  
  . (BBC)

June 26, 2008 (Thursday)

• Fructose
  Fructose
  Fructose, or fruit sugar, is a simple monosaccharide found in many plants. It is one of the three dietary monosaccharides, along with glucose and galactose, that are absorbed directly into the bloodstream during digestion. Fructose was discovered by French chemist Augustin-Pierre Dubrunfaut in 1847...
  
   and high-fructose corn syrup
  Corn syrup
  Corn syrup is a food syrup, which is made from the starch of maize and contains varying amounts of maltose and higher oligosaccharides, depending on the grade. Corn syrup is used in foods to soften texture, add volume, prevent crystallization of sugar, and enhance flavor...
  
   (HFCS) has been shown to increase intra-abdominal fat
  Fat
  Fats consist of a wide group of compounds that are generally soluble in organic solvents and generally insoluble in water. Chemically, fats are triglycerides, triesters of glycerol and any of several fatty acids. Fats may be either solid or liquid at room temperature, depending on their structure...
  
   which is linked to disease and reduce insulin
  Insulin
  Insulin is a hormone central to regulating carbohydrate and fat metabolism in the body. Insulin causes cells in the liver, muscle, and fat tissue to take up glucose from the blood, storing it as glycogen in the liver and muscle....
  
   sensitivity; whereas glucose
  Glucose
  Glucose is a simple sugar and an important carbohydrate in biology. Cells use it as the primary source of energy and a metabolic intermediate...
  
   simply added weight without long term effects. (NewScientist)
• A report published in the journal Nature
  Nature (journal)
  Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...
  
  says a 365 million-year-old fossil
  Fossil
  Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...
  
   of a four-legged fish found in Latvia
  Latvia
  Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...
  
   sheds new light on the process of Tetrapod
  Tetrapod
  Tetrapods are vertebrate animals having four limbs. Amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals are all tetrapods; even snakes and other limbless reptiles and amphibians are tetrapods by descent. The earliest tetrapods evolved from the lobe-finned fishes in the Devonian...
  
   evolution
  Evolution
  Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
  
  . The creature, named Ventastega curonica had a fish-like body but the head of an animal more suited to land than water. (BBC) (The Daily Telegraph) (Science News)

June 25, 2008 (Wednesday)

• New studies of Mars
  Mars
  Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...
  
   have theorized that the Northern hemisphere is lower than the South could be explained may have resulted from an impact by an Earth moon
  Moon
  The Moon is Earth's only known natural satellite,There are a number of near-Earth asteroids including 3753 Cruithne that are co-orbital with Earth: their orbits bring them close to Earth for periods of time but then alter in the long term . These are quasi-satellites and not true moons. For more...
  
   sized asteroid
  Asteroid
  Asteroids are a class of small Solar System bodies in orbit around the Sun. They have also been called planetoids, especially the larger ones...
  
  . (BBC)
• Take-Two Interactive
  Take-Two Interactive
  Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. is a major American publisher, developer, and distributor of video games and video game peripherals. Take-Two wholly owns 2K Games and Rockstar Games. The company's headquarters are in New York City, with international headquarters in Windsor, United Kingdom...
  
   is offering to pay $30,000 to settle the 2,676 filed claims in the Hot Coffee lawsuit and will donate $860,000 to charity. The offer is pending the approval of a federal judge. (NYTimes)
• Dual-display e-book
  E-book
  An electronic book is a book-length publication in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, and produced on, published through, and readable on computers or other electronic devices. Sometimes the equivalent of a conventional printed book, e-books can also be born digital...
  
  's are demonstrated, allowing book like behaviors such as flipping pages. (NewScientist)

June 24, 2008 (Tuesday)

• A Florida
  Florida
  Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
  
   obscenity
  Obscenity
  An obscenity is any statement or act which strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time, is a profanity, or is otherwise taboo, indecent, abhorrent, or disgusting, or is especially inauspicious...
  
   case will use Google Trends
  Google Trends
  Google Trends is a public web facility of Google Inc., based on Google Search, that shows how often a particular search-term is entered relative to the total search-volume across various regions of the world, and in various languages...
  
   to demonstrate "orgies" and "boobs" are searched more often than "apple pie" by the community. The Free Speech Coalition
  Free Speech Coalition
  The Free Speech Coalition is a non-profit trade association of the pornography and adult entertainment industry in the United States...
  
   hopes this will demonstrate the communities standard for what is obscene. (arsTechnica)

June 23, 2008 (Monday)

• There are now more than 1 billion computer
  Computer
  A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
  
  s operating in the world, with 2 billion expected by 2014, largely driven by growth in the developing world. (CNet)

June 21, 2008 (Saturday)

• Phoenix
  Phoenix (spacecraft)
  Phoenix was a robotic spacecraft on a space exploration mission on Mars under the Mars Scout Program. The Phoenix lander descended on Mars on May 25, 2008...
  
   confirms the presence of ice on Mars
  Mars
  Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...
  
  . (WashingtonPost)

June 20, 2008 (Friday)

• After white patches uncovered by digging from the Phoenix
  Phoenix (spacecraft)
  Phoenix was a robotic spacecraft on a space exploration mission on Mars under the Mars Scout Program. The Phoenix lander descended on Mars on May 25, 2008...
  
   lander are found to have sublimated by the lander's cameras, NASA
  NASA
  The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
  
   believes it has found water ice
  Ice
  Ice is water frozen into the solid state. Usually ice is the phase known as ice Ih, which is the most abundant of the varying solid phases on the Earth's surface. It can appear transparent or opaque bluish-white color, depending on the presence of impurities or air inclusions...
  
   on Mars
  Mars
  Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...
  
  . (NASA)
• Toshiba
  Toshiba
  is a multinational electronics and electrical equipment corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is a diversified manufacturer and marketer of electrical products, spanning information & communications equipment and systems, Internet-based solutions and services, electronic components and...
  
   unveils the next generation CT scanner
  Computed tomography
  X-ray computed tomography or Computer tomography , is a medical imaging method employing tomography created by computer processing...
  
   called Aquilion ONE. It can produce high resolution dynamic scans of organs in 0,35 seconds ; removing the need for expensive and time consuming tests for organ diagnostics. Having the ability to cover a 16 cm region of the body with only a single rotation at 0,5 mm slice thickness, Aquilion ONE is now addressed as the Dynamic Volume Scanner with the ability to decrease radiation dose significantly. (PopSci)

June 19, 2008 (Thursday)

• A US team of scientists have successfully treated cancer
  Cancer
  Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
  
   using the patients immune system
  Immune system
  An immune system is a system of biological structures and processes within an organism that protects against disease by identifying and killing pathogens and tumor cells. It detects a wide variety of agents, from viruses to parasitic worms, and needs to distinguish them from the organism's own...
  
   by collecting and incubating T helper cell
  T helper cell
  T helper cells are a sub-group of lymphocytes, a type of white blood cell, that play an important role in the immune system, particularly in the adaptive immune system. These cells have no cytotoxic or phagocytic activity; they cannot kill infected host cells or pathogens. Rather, they help other...
  
  s, then giving the patient one large dose. This triggered an aggressive immune response and the patient remains cancer free 2 years later. (NewScientist)

June 17, 2008 (Tuesday)

• Forty-five new midsize exoplanets have been discovered by astronomists, all of which orbit their stars in 50 days or less making them even closer than Mercury
  Mercury (planet)
  Mercury is the innermost and smallest planet in the Solar System, orbiting the Sun once every 87.969 Earth days. The orbit of Mercury has the highest eccentricity of all the Solar System planets, and it has the smallest axial tilt. It completes three rotations about its axis for every two orbits...
  
   to their star
  Star
  A star is a massive, luminous sphere of plasma held together by gravity. At the end of its lifetime, a star can also contain a proportion of degenerate matter. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth...
  
  s. (NYTimes)

June 16, 2008 (Monday)

• After the first analysis of Mars
  Mars
  Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...
  
   soil, Phoenix
  Phoenix (spacecraft)
  Phoenix was a robotic spacecraft on a space exploration mission on Mars under the Mars Scout Program. The Phoenix lander descended on Mars on May 25, 2008...
  
   scientists have not yet found water. It is unknown if the white substance under the soil is ice or salt. (AP)
• By adding ozone
  Ozone
  Ozone , or trioxygen, is a triatomic molecule, consisting of three oxygen atoms. It is an allotrope of oxygen that is much less stable than the diatomic allotrope...
  
   defects in carbon nanotube
  Carbon nanotube
  Carbon nanotubes are allotropes of carbon with a cylindrical nanostructure. Nanotubes have been constructed with length-to-diameter ratio of up to 132,000,000:1, significantly larger than for any other material...
  
  s researchers have created cheaper solar cell
  Solar cell
  A solar cell is a solid state electrical device that converts the energy of light directly into electricity by the photovoltaic effect....
  
   catalysts with fewer layers with better performance. (Physorg)

June 15, 2008 (Sunday)

• Space Shuttle Discovery
  Space Shuttle Discovery
  Space Shuttle Discovery is one of the retired orbiters of the Space Shuttle program of NASA, the space agency of the United States, and was operational from its maiden flight, STS-41-D on August 30, 1984, until its final landing during STS-133 on March 9, 2011...
  
   safely lands successfully completing STS-124
  STS-124
  STS-124 was a Space Shuttle mission, flown by Space Shuttle Discovery to the International Space Station. Discovery launched on 31 May 2008 at 17:02 EDT, moved from an earlier scheduled launch date of 25 May 2008, and landed safely at the Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Landing Facility, at 11:15...
  
   to install the Japanese Experiment Module
  Japanese Experiment Module
  The Japanese Experiment Module , also known with the nickname , is a Japanese science module for the International Space Station developed by JAXA. It is the largest single ISS module. The first two pieces of the module were launched on space shuttle missions STS-123 and STS-124...
  
  . (Reuters)
• Two plastics which are normally insulators when interfaced with each other create a material that conducts like metal; opening new possibilities for electronic manufacturing. (NewScientist)

June 13, 2008 (Friday)

• A new electron microscope
  Electron microscope
  An electron microscope is a type of microscope that uses a beam of electrons to illuminate the specimen and produce a magnified image. Electron microscopes have a greater resolving power than a light-powered optical microscope, because electrons have wavelengths about 100,000 times shorter than...
  
   design small enough to fit on a finger tip will use 100 times less power and has the potential to be even more precise than current microscopes. (NewScientist)

June 12, 2008 (Thursday)

• Pluto
  Pluto
  Pluto, formal designation 134340 Pluto, is the second-most-massive known dwarf planet in the Solar System and the tenth-most-massive body observed directly orbiting the Sun...
  
   has been designated a Plutoid along with Eris
  Eris (dwarf planet)
  Eris, formal designation 136199 Eris, is the most massive known dwarf planet in the Solar System and the ninth most massive body known to orbit the Sun directly...
  
  . (BBC)

June 11, 2008 (Wednesday)

• Gamma secretase
  Gamma secretase
  Gamma secretase is a multi-subunit protease complex, itself an integral membrane protein, that cleaves single-pass transmembrane proteins at residues within the transmembrane domain. Proteases of this type are known as intramembrane proteases...
  
   modulators may offer a new treatment for Alzheimer's
  Alzheimer's disease
  Alzheimer's disease also known in medical literature as Alzheimer disease is the most common form of dementia. There is no cure for the disease, which worsens as it progresses, and eventually leads to death...
  
  . (BBC)
• A small number of special retina
  Retina
  The vertebrate retina is a light-sensitive tissue lining the inner surface of the eye. The optics of the eye create an image of the visual world on the retina, which serves much the same function as the film in a camera. Light striking the retina initiates a cascade of chemical and electrical...
  
   cells appear to help in resetting the circadian rhythm
  Circadian rhythm
  A circadian rhythm, popularly referred to as body clock, is an endogenously driven , roughly 24-hour cycle in biochemical, physiological, or behavioural processes. Circadian rhythms have been widely observed in plants, animals, fungi and cyanobacteria...
  
  . (NewScientist)

June 9, 2008 (Monday)

• Apple Inc. unveils the iPhone 3G
  IPhone 3G
  The iPhone 3G is the second generation of iPhone designed and marketed by Apple Inc.. It was the successor to the original iPhone, and is succeeded by the iPhone 3GS. Introduced on June 9, 2008 at the WWDC 2008 at the Moscone Center, San Francisco...
  
   with faster internet access, longer battery life and GPS
  Global Positioning System
  The Global Positioning System is a space-based global navigation satellite system that provides location and time information in all weather, anywhere on or near the Earth, where there is an unobstructed line of sight to four or more GPS satellites...
  
   functionality. (CNet)
• The IBM Roadrunner supercomputer
  Supercomputer
  A supercomputer is a computer at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation.Supercomputers are used for highly calculation-intensive tasks such as problems including quantum physics, weather forecasting, climate research, molecular modeling A supercomputer is a...
  
   is the first to sustain one petaflop, or one thousand trillion calculations per second. (BBC News)

June 8, 2008 (Sunday)

• Research indicates two waves of increased sophistication in synapse
  Synapse
  In the nervous system, a synapse is a structure that permits a neuron to pass an electrical or chemical signal to another cell...
  
  s (nerve junctions) played a key role in brain
  Brain
  The brain is the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals—only a few primitive invertebrates such as sponges, jellyfish, sea squirts and starfishes do not have one. It is located in the head, usually close to primary sensory apparatus such as vision, hearing,...
  
   complexity prior to increased size. (Physorg)

June 7, 2008 (Saturday)

• The first attempt at analyzing Mars
  Mars
  Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...
  
   soil by the Phoenix
  Phoenix (spacecraft)
  Phoenix was a robotic spacecraft on a space exploration mission on Mars under the Mars Scout Program. The Phoenix lander descended on Mars on May 25, 2008...
  
   has encountered a problem. The soil appears to be too clumpy to fall through the 1 millimeter screen which protects against clogging. (BBC)

June 6, 2008 (Friday)

• IBM
  IBM
  International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
  
   has created a new way to cool next-generation computer chips
  Integrated circuit
  An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit is an electronic circuit manufactured by the patterned diffusion of trace elements into the surface of a thin substrate of semiconductor material...
  
   by using tiny pipes of water. (BBC)

June 4, 2008 (Wednesday)

• Low doses of resveratrol
  Resveratrol
  Resveratrol is a stilbenoid, a type of natural phenol, and a phytoalexin produced naturally by several plants when under attack by pathogens such as bacteria or fungi....
  
   mimicked the benefits of caloric restriction (extended lifespan and reduced effects of aging) in a mice study, lending support to it as an explanation for the French paradox
  French paradox
  The French Paradox is the observation that French people suffer a relatively low incidence of coronary heart disease, despite having a diet relatively rich in saturated fats...
  
  . (EurekAlert)
• A yeast
  Yeast
  Yeasts are eukaryotic micro-organisms classified in the kingdom Fungi, with 1,500 species currently described estimated to be only 1% of all fungal species. Most reproduce asexually by mitosis, and many do so by an asymmetric division process called budding...
  
   with synthetic gene
  Gene
  A gene is a molecular unit of heredity of a living organism. It is a name given to some stretches of DNA and RNA that code for a type of protein or for an RNA chain that has a function in the organism. Living beings depend on genes, as they specify all proteins and functional RNA chains...
  
  s might produce enough artemisinin
  Artemisinin
  Artemisinin , also known as Qinghaosu , and its derivatives are a group of drugs that possess the most rapid action of all current drugs against falciparum malaria. Treatments containing an artemisinin derivative are now standard treatment worldwide for falciparum malaria...
  
   (a key malaria
  Malaria
  Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...
  
   drug) for the world in as little as three years. This would replace the relatively expensive process of extracting it from the Artemisia annua
  Artemisia annua
  Artemisia annua, also known as Sweet Wormwood, Sweet Annie, Sweet Sagewort or Annual Wormwood , is a common type of wormwood that is native to temperate Asia, but naturalized throughout the world.-Characteristics:...
  
   shrub. (NewScientist)
• New research shows weight-loss drugs designed to increase serotonin
  Serotonin
  Serotonin or 5-hydroxytryptamine is a monoamine neurotransmitter. Biochemically derived from tryptophan, serotonin is primarily found in the gastrointestinal tract, platelets, and in the central nervous system of animals including humans...
  
   levels not only decrease appetite, but also increases the metabolism
  Metabolism
  Metabolism is the set of chemical reactions that happen in the cells of living organisms to sustain life. These processes allow organisms to grow and reproduce, maintain their structures, and respond to their environments. Metabolism is usually divided into two categories...
  
   and the effect varies between individuals. The findings may help to explain how people with similar diets and activity levels will have different body types. (SciAm)

June 3, 2008 (Tuesday)

• The Japanese Experiment Module
  Japanese Experiment Module
  The Japanese Experiment Module , also known with the nickname , is a Japanese science module for the International Space Station developed by JAXA. It is the largest single ISS module. The first two pieces of the module were launched on space shuttle missions STS-123 and STS-124...
  
   (Kibo) is attached to the International Space Station
  International Space Station
  The International Space Station is a habitable, artificial satellite in low Earth orbit. The ISS follows the Salyut, Almaz, Cosmos, Skylab, and Mir space stations, as the 11th space station launched, not including the Genesis I and II prototypes...
  
  . (NASA)
• The Intel Atom
  Intel Atom
  Intel Atom is the brand name for a line of ultra-low-voltage x86 and x86-64 CPUs from Intel, designed in 45 nm CMOS and used mainly in netbooks, nettops, embedded application ranging from health care to advanced robotics and Mobile Internet devices...
  
   processor officially launches at Computex. The small processor is focused on low-power, cheap netbook
  Netbook
  Netbooks are a category of small, lightweight, legacy-free, and inexpensive laptop computers.At their inception in late 2007 as smaller notebooks optimized for low weight and low cost — netbooks omitted certain features , featured smaller screens and keyboards, and offered reduced computing...
  
   computers. (Physorg)

June 2, 2008 (Monday)

• The existence of quasiparticle
  Quasiparticle
  In physics, quasiparticles are emergent phenomena that occur when a microscopically complicated system such as a solid behaves as if it contained different weakly interacting particles in free space...
  
  s has been shown for the first time. With one quarter of the charge of an electron, it may lead to powerful yet highly stable quantum computer
  Quantum computer
  A quantum computer is a device for computation that makes direct use of quantum mechanical phenomena, such as superposition and entanglement, to perform operations on data. Quantum computers are different from traditional computers based on transistors...
  
  s. (Physorg)
• University of California, Berkeley
  University of California, Berkeley
  The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
  
   scientists found slight genetic differences between people making enzymes less efficient than normal can be easily fixed with appropriate vitamin or mineral supplements. (PhysOrg)
• A planet designated MOA-2007-BLG-192Lb
  MOA-2007-BLG-192Lb
  MOA-2007-BLG-192Lb, occasionally shortened to MOA-192 b, is an extrasolar planet approximately 3,000 light-years away in the constellation of Sagittarius. The planet was discovered orbiting the brown dwarf or low-mass star MOA-2007-BLG-192L. At a mass of approximately 3.3 times Earth, it is one of...
  
   three times the size of Earth, the smallest extrasolar planet
  Extrasolar planet
  An extrasolar planet, or exoplanet, is a planet outside the Solar System. A total of such planets have been identified as of . It is now known that a substantial fraction of stars have planets, including perhaps half of all Sun-like stars...
  
   discovered yet, is found orbiting a brown dwarf. (BBC News)

June 1, 2008 (Sunday)

• Images from Phoenix
  Phoenix (spacecraft)
  Phoenix was a robotic spacecraft on a space exploration mission on Mars under the Mars Scout Program. The Phoenix lander descended on Mars on May 25, 2008...
  
   show its retrorocket
  Retrorocket
  A retrorocket is a rocket engine providing thrust opposing the motion of a spacecraft, thereby causing it to decelerate.-History:...
  
  s have uncovered what looks like ice a few inches under the surface dust of Mars
  Mars
  Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...
  
  . (eFlux)
• Research from the University of Sheffield
  University of Sheffield
  The University of Sheffield is a research university based in the city of Sheffield in South Yorkshire, England. It is one of the original 'red brick' universities and is a member of the Russell Group of leading research intensive universities...
  
   indicates Stonehenge
  Stonehenge
  Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument located in the English county of Wiltshire, about west of Amesbury and north of Salisbury. One of the most famous sites in the world, Stonehenge is composed of a circular setting of large standing stones set within earthworks...
  
  was used as a cemetery for much longer than previously thought – more than 500 years – probably for ancient royalty. (CNet)