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Silkeborg Museum

From the Silkeborg Museum, this is a recreation of the high-status woman's grave found in a Viking "death house" in Denmark.

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Construction of a new highway in Hårup, southwest Denmark, has unearthed farms and houses from the Middle Ages, including a rare Viking dødehus or "death house" dated to 950 C.E., packed with grave goods that reveal a lot about the three people buried within it. The death house was a common form of Viking tomb, but the Hårup death house has a very unusual design. It appears to have been inspired by early stave churches of Western Europe, with large wooden posts holding up heavy roof beams. Inside, archaeologists found other international influences. A ceramic vase came from the Baltic and two silver coins hail from the region now known as Afghanistan. These discoveries are testimony to how far Vikings traveled and how extensive their trade networks were.

The tomb itself is fairly roomy at 13 x 43 feet and was initially the resting place of a wealthy couple. Later, a third grave was added for another man. Though little remains of the bodies themselves, a few strands of the woman's black hair stood the test of time, as did the two keys she wore around her neck. The larger of these keys would have symbolized that she was the lady of a great house, and the other unlocked an unusual shrine. She was buried in a small wooden wagon, an honor also reserved only for noblewomen. At the woman's feet was the shrine, full of golden thread (probably used in fabric), fur, glass beads, and fine wool. Her husband was also buried in high style, with a massive Dane Axe, popular among high status men and seriously destructive on the battlefield. The third man, possibly the couple's heir, was buried with a slightly smaller Dane Axe.

(credit: Masahiro Ihara)

Nearly everyone knows you’re supposed to eat heaping helpings of fruits and vegetables every day. But that doesn’t mean that people actually follow through. In fact, in updated dietary guidelines released in January, the federal government called out nearly everyone for not eating enough produce (as well as eating way too much sugar). But now, researchers have followed up with what may be a simple fix.

In grocery stores, big emojis and arrows on the floor that direct and encourage people to head to the produce section actually got shoppers to buy more produce, researchers report Thursday in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior. Moreover, after analyzing grocery bills, the researchers found that shoppers didn’t up their overall shopping budget to accommodate the fresh additions. In other words, grocery store goers weren’t simply piling on crops to their already full carts, but, rather, they were swapping other grocery items for healthy fruits and vegetables.

The findings suggest that adding the minor signage to more stores could be an easy way to get consumers to eat healthier produce. And if so, it “could trigger a public health shift” in a general population that is largely struggling with weight and dietary problems, lead author Collin Payne, of New Mexico State University, said in a statement.

Reddit user and Guild Wars 2 fan galveyra2 breaks down exactly how a Beijing hockey team infringed upon a well-known video game's logo. (credit: galveyra2)

On Wednesday, news hit the wire that a video game's indistinguishable logo and art style had been lifted without permission, all done to advertise a wholly unrelated product. Sadly, the news brought on a real case of deja vu. As in: wait, didn't this just happen?

As it turns out, it had. Two very similar stories unfolded within 48 hours of each other, and they each speak to a pair of modern copyright issues: the ease with which images can be lifted and reappropriated by a lazy design firm, and how easy it is for such copycats to be busted by the court of public opinion.

The more recent case involved a professional hockey team from Beijing, which was announced last week as the newest team to join an upstart, highly budgeted Eurasian league known as the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL). Once the Kunlun Red Star revealed its logo, eagle-eyed hockey fans noticed that it was very nearly a beat-for-beat copy of the dragon head from MMO sensation Guild Wars 2. Eyes, nose, tongue, and general shape—it's very clearly a match, minus some weak width-stretching efforts by Kunlun's Photoshop intern. (Props to Guild Wars 2 fan galveyra2 for the specific image analysis posted above.)

(credit: NASA/EO)

When the Montreal Protocol phased out the use of chlorofluorocarbons starting in 1989, scientists expected to see improvements in the Antarctic ozone hole that was opening each spring. They weren't anticipating anything immediate—instead, improvement was expected within 20 to 30 years of the protocol’s implementation. Ozone recovery occurs through distinct stages, including a reduction in the rate of ozone decline and a leveling off of the depletion. Only once these are done should we expect to see an ozone increase, termed “ozone healing.”

Previous studies of the Antarctic ozone have provided evidence that the early phases of ozone recovery have been occurring. A new paper published in Science presents the first signs ozone healing may be occurring as well. The data shows an overall increase in the thickness and abundance of the Antarctic ozone layer in the last 15 years.

The Antarctic ozone hole fluctuates in size over the course of a year. It is largest during the spring, which occurs from September to November in the southern hemisphere. Historically, the majority of each year’s ozone hole growth occurs in late August and early September, building to a peak in October.

A still from a YouTube video of Austin Haughwout's drone, armed with a handgun. (credit: Austin Haughwout)

Austin Haughwout thought he'd be facing a legal showdown with the Federal Aviation Administration over his armed drone, but now he's got bigger legal problems.

The 19-year-old Connecticut man was arrested yesterday on child pornography charges. He also faces charges of enticing a minor and attempted sexual assault. The arrest warrant is sealed, but local police outlined the allegations against Haughwout to The Hartford Courant.

The arrest is a result of a "lengthy investigation" that has its origins in a violent incident from July 2015. That month, Haughwout went to the police department to turn himself in due to charges "stemming from a confrontation with officers at the town's library," the Courant reported. While he was being arrested, Haughwout engaged in "assaultive behavior with the officers that were taking him into custody."

Huma Abedin with Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail in 2008. Abedin was grilled about Clinton's e-mail proclivities by a Judicial Watch attorney this week. (credit: http://www.flickr.com/people/41834437@N00)

We already knew that Hillary Clinton's e-mail and mobile device issues were likely a pain for State Department employees—and even some foreign governments. But new testimony recorded on Tuesday by one of Clinton's top aides illuminates the extent of those headaches.

Huma Abedin is the vice-chair of Clinton's presidential campaign and the former deputy chief of staff and senior advisor to Clinton during her stint as Secretary of State. She was deposed on June 28 by an attorney representing the conservative action group Judicial Watch as part of discovery for a lawsuit being brought against Clinton. Judicial Watch published the transcript of that deposition yesterday, and Abedin revealed what she knew about Clinton's use of the mail server and how she was "frustrated" with the technical glitches caused by Clinton's mobile device and e-mail travails. 

Both Clinton and Abedin had accounts on the clintonemail.com server, which was originally set up at the Clinton residence by staffers of former president Bill Clinton prior to the family's arrival at the State Department. (The server would later be managed by Platte River Networks, a managed IT services firm, with security provided by Datto.) Clinton had been using a BlackBerry mail account through AT&T during the 2008 presidential campaign, and she had been having "technical issues" with the account, according to Abedin. Clinton switched to the private server when she got a new device, and Abedin was given an account on the server after she lost access to her Senate e-mail account. Abedin said she used it primarily for personal business in addition to a personal Yahoo e-mail account (where she would later forward press clippings received from a State Department clipping service, she said).