Scientists confirm tobacco use by ancient Mayans

Mass spectrometry detects first physical evidence of nicotine in Mayan container

2012-01-13

(Press-News.org) Archaeologists examining late period Mayan containers have identified nicotine traces from a codex-style flask, revealing the first physical evidence of tobacco use by ancient Mayans. The study published in Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry reveals the flask is marked with Mayan hieroglyphics reading, "y-otoot 'u-may," ("the home of its/his/her tobacco,") making it only the second case to confirm that the text on the exterior of a Mayan vessel corresponds to its ancient use.

"Investigation of food items consumed by ancient people offers insight into the traditions and customs of a particular civilization," explains Jennifer Loughmiller-Newman from the University at Albany in New York. "Textual evidence written on pottery is often an indicator of contents or of an intended purpose, however actual usage of a container could be altered or falsely represented."

Many of the Mayan flask vessels from the Kislak collection of the Library of Congress examined in this study were filled with other substances, such as iron oxide used in burial rituals, making it difficult to detect the original content.

The most indisputable evidence of a container's usage is obtained when hieroglyphic text or pictorial illustrations on the exterior of a container is consistent with the chemical analysis of interior residues. For the current investigation, researchers analyzed samples extracted from the Late Classic Maya period (600 to 900 AD) using gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GCMS) and liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LCMS).

Nicotine—the signature alkaloid in tobacco—was identified as the major component of the extracts from one of the 150 vessels in the collection. The flask was determined to be made in southern Campeche, Mexico and dates to around 700 AD.

Prior to the current discovery, the only existing evidence showing a Mayan vessel to have the same content as indicated by hieroglyphic text was the identification of theobromine, an alkaloid found in cacao, more than 20 years ago.

"Our study provides rare evidence of the intended use of an ancient container," concludes Dr. Dmitri Zagorevski from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. "Mass spectrometry has proven to be an invaluable method of analysis of organic residues in archaeological artifacts. This discovery is not only significant to understanding Mayan hieroglyphics, but an important archaeological application of chemical detection."

INFORMATION:

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

The world's smallest magnetic data storage unit

2012-01-13

Scientists from IBM and the German Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL) have built the world's smallest magnetic data storage unit. It uses just twelve atoms per bit, the basic unit of information, and squeezes a whole byte (8 bit) into as few as 96 atoms. A modern hard drive, for comparison, still needs more than half a billion atoms per byte. The team present their work in the weekly journal Science this Friday (13 January 2012). CFEL is a joint venture of the research centre Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY in Hamburg, the Max-Planck-Society (MPG) and the ...

Don't know much about charter schools

2012-01-13

Some two decades into the grand national experiment with charter schools, how much do we really know about them? Not all that much. And not nearly as much as we easily could, say researchers from the University of California, San Diego Division of Social Sciences. Writing in the journal Science, UC San Diego educational economist JuIian Betts and Richard Atkinson, president emeritus of the University of California and former director of the National Science Foundation, find that most studies of charter schools "use unsophisticated methods that tell us little about causal ...

Researchers discover particle which could 'cool the planet'

2012-01-13

In a breakthrough paper published in Science, researchers from The University of Manchester, The University of Bristol and Sandia National Laboratories report the potentially revolutionary effects of Criegee biradicals. These invisible chemical intermediates are powerful oxidisers of pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide, produced by combustion, and can naturally clean up the atmosphere. Although these chemical intermediates were hypothesised in the 1950s, it is only now that they have been detected. Scientists now believe that, with further research, ...

A muffin makeover: Dispelling the low-fat-is-healthy myth

2012-01-13

Boston, MA — Dozens of studies, many from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers, have shown that low-fat diets are no better for health than moderate- or high-fat diets—and for many people, may be worse. To combat this "low fat is best" myth, nutrition experts at HSPH and chefs and registered dietitians at The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) have developed five new muffin recipes that incorporate healthy fats and whole grains, and use a lighter hand on the salt and sugar. Their goal? To "make over" the ubiquitous low-fat muffin, touted as a "better-for-you" ...

Viral load a major factor affecting risk of sexually transmitting HIV

2012-01-13

The level of HIV-1 in the blood of an HIV-infected partner is the single most important factor influencing risk of sexual transmission to an uninfected partner, according to a multinational study of heterosexual couples in sub-Saharan Africa. The study, published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, calculated the risk of HIV-1 transmission per act of sexual intercourse and found the average rate of infection to be about 1 per 900 coital acts. The findings also confirmed that condoms are highly protective and reduce HIV infectivity by 78 percent. James P. Hughes, PhD, ...

Cold winters caused by warmer summers, research suggests

2012-01-13

Scientists have offered up a convincing explanation for the harsh winters recently experienced in the Northern Hemisphere; increasing temperatures and melting ice in the Arctic regions creating more snowfall in the autumn months at lower latitudes. Their findings may throw light on specific weather incidents such as the extremely harsh Florida winter of 2010 which ended up killing a host of tropical creatures, as well as the chaos-causing snow that fell on the UK in December 2010. Published today, Friday 13 January, in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research ...

Titanium dioxide film enhances the sun's natural disinfection power

2012-01-13

The world population is estimated to be seven billion and all these mouths need feeding. With fears about overfishing and the sustainability of fish stocks in our seas fish farming is becoming big business. As with all farming there are issues about maintaining the health of stock and how to prevent bacterial infection. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Microbiology demonstrates that a prototype water purification reactor containing a thin film of titanium dioxide (TiO2) is able to enhance the sun's natural disinfection properties This device ...

Finding the silent killer -- a biomarker test for atherosclerosis

2012-01-13

Furring of the arteries, atherosclerosis, is a leading cause of death across the world. Atherosclerosis leads to peripheral arterial disease, coronary heart disease, stroke and heart attacks. However, atherosclerosis is a sneaky killer - most people do not realize they have it until they have cardiovascular disease (CV). New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Medical Genomics has identified a set of biomarkers which can be used to test for early stage atherosclerosis. Researchers from the University of Virginia compared biomarkers isolated ...

Study provides new insights into an ancient mechanism of mammalian evolution

2012-01-13

A team of geneticists and computational biologists in the UK today reveal how an ancient mechanism is involved in gene control and continues to drive genome evolution. The new study is published in the journal Cell. To function properly, mammalian tissues require the protein CTCF, which has several key activities including the regulation of genes and interaction with proteins in the cell's nucleus to alter gene activity. CTCF acts by binding to DNA and plays a role in diseases such as HIV infection and cancer. However, very little is known about the origin of the DNA sequences ...

Newly identified type of immune cell may be important protector against sepsis

2012-01-13

Investigators in the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Center for Systems Biology have discovered a previously unknown type of immune cell, a B cell that can produce the important growth factor GM-CSF, which stimulates many other immune cells. They also found that these novel cells may help protect against the overwhelming, life-threatening immune reaction known as sepsis. "B cells are a family of white blood cells that secrete antibodies, and GM-CSF induces the production or activation of granulocytes and macrophages, other white blood cells that have specific ...

BioCompNet: a deep learning workflow enabling automated body composition analysis toward precision management of cardiometabolic disorders

Nonlinear association between systemic immune-inflammation index and in-hospital mortality in critically ill patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and atrial fibrillation: a cross-sectio

Scientists confirm tobacco use by ancient Mayans

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: