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On the 3,000-year-old mummy's neck, you can see two seated baboons on either side of a wadjet eye (top row), which is a symbol of protection.

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Covered in more than 30 tattoos of flowers, animals, and sacred symbols, this 3,000-year-old mummy is one of the most unusual that archaeologist Anne Austin has ever seen. Though other mummies have been found with abstract markings like dots tattooed on their skin, no one had ever seen figurative drawings like these. Austin and her colleagues were stunned. The mummy, found in a village called Deir el-Medina, was once a woman who proudly inked sacred wadjet eyes on her neck, shoulders, and back, lotus blossoms on her hips, and cows on her arm. Her village was home to artisans who worked in the nearby Valley of the Kings, where they would have carved elaborate sculptures and inscriptions for pharaohs and gods.

It's not clear what the tattoos meant nor why this particular woman had so many of them. But Austin speculates that they had religious significance, particularly the eyes and the cows, which may have been a reference to the goddess Hathor. "Any angle that you look at this woman, you see a pair of divine eyes looking back at you," she told Nature after presenting her work at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists. She first discovered the tattoos when she saw the eye and baboons clearly visible on the mummy's neck. Suspecting there might be more, she used infrared imaging to see ink that had penetrated the woman's skin but was no longer visible due to dark resins used for mummification. This is the same technique that scientists used to discover the tattoos on the body of Ötzi the Iceman, a 5,300-year-old body that was accidentally preserved in ice for thousands of years. Ötzi had more than 60 tattoos created with ash that were entirely abstract, mostly horizontal lines on parts of his body where joint swelling suggests that he would have been suffering pain.

When Austin used infrared imaging, she was able to find many tattoos that were previously hidden. The tattoos on the woman's back became visible, and Austin and her colleagues used image reconstruction software to correct distortions that were introduced when the mummy's skin shrank over time. Once the tattoos were stretched, she could clearly see the two cows on the woman's arm and many other images. Some of the tattoos, she says, were in places where it would have been extremely painful to be tattooed, especially because the process would have been very slow in ancient times. They were also clearly created by someone else, since many were on the woman's back. These facts suggest the tattoos may have had deep cultural significance. There is also evidence that some of the tattoos were faded, so the woman was probably getting new ink for many years as older tattoos faded.

(credit: US EIA)

US carbon emissions were down slightly in 2015, continuing a period in which economic growth has been accompanied by relatively flat emissions. Compared to 2005, however, the current numbers represent a 12 percent drop. The Energy Information Agency (EIA) indicates this has largely been caused by the transition from coal to natural gas.

US carbon emissions saw a significant drop during the 2008-2009 economic crisis, driven largely by falling economic activity. As the economy began to rebound in 2010, so did carbon emissions. But succeeding years have seen a series of relatively minor ups and downs—the current numbers represent a drop of about two percent compared to 2014. Notably, the emissions are also below those at the height of the economic crisis in 2009.

That's rather significant, as economic growth has been consistently in the neighborhood of two percent since 2010. This provides a strong indication that, for the moment at least, the US has decoupled economic growth from carbon emissions. Overall, the economy is up about 15 percent since 2005 when inflation is taken into account.

(credit: Organic Basics)

If the heroes of Tolkien’s books went looking for some undies to go with their mithril armor, they may have sought something similar to a new product touted by Danish fashion company, Organic Basics.

The company has designed “silvered” cotton drawers that protect the groin and bum from being invaded by stinky microbes. The light-weight shields have such potent antimicrobial powers that they can fend of funk even after being worn in battle for a week straight, the designers say.

Silver has long been known to be antimicrobial. The metal sheds ions that pierce through bacterial walls and thrash cellular components, such as DNA and critical proteins. Clothing manufacturers are already adding silver nanoparticles to hospital gowns and athletic wear.

An illustration of Dataminr's data-mining of Twitter (credit: Dataminr)

In another sign that tensions between Silicon Valley and the US government are strong, Twitter is now barring US intel agencies from a service that analyzes the micro-blogging service's entire feed.

San Francisco-based Twitter has informed business partner Dataminr to cut off access to the CIA, NSA, and other government surveillance outfits. Twitter was concerned about the "optics" of appearing too cozy with the US intel community, The Wall Street Journal first reported Monday.

In a statement to Ars, Twitter downplayed the development. "Dataminr uses public Tweets to sell breaking news alerts to media organizations such as Dow Jones and government agencies such as the World Health Organization, for non-surveillance purposes," Twitter said. "We have never authorized Dataminr or any third party to sell data to a government or intelligence agency for surveillance purposes. This is a longstanding Twitter policy, not a new development."