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Daily Mirror
7 hours ago
- Science
- Daily Mirror
Archaeologists baffled as they uncover 'mystery' Pharaoh's tomb in Egypt
The tomb of an unknown pharaoh has been discovered by archaeologists in Egypt - but the king's name has been lost to the ages, with researchers now scrambling to find out who he was Archaeologists were left scratching their heads after unearthing the tomb of an unknown Egyptian pharaoh seven metres under the surface, with the identity of the mummified sovereign perplexing experts. The newfound tomb, nestled in the ancient Mount Anubis region of Abydos, is casting fresh light on regal burials within the necropolis. Amidst the continuing mysteries, faded carvings depicting the deities Isis and Nephthys were spotted alongside the entryway to the burial chamber, yet another puzzle for archaeologists. Researchers noted another extraordinary find - a set of yellow bands, which they believe would have once displayed the ruler's name in hieroglyphics. Similarities between the unearthed adornments and glyphs with those found at King Senebkay's grave have caught the attention of scholars, reports the Express. "The king's name was originally recorded in painted scenes on plastered brickwork that decorated the underground entrance to the limestone burial chamber," said Josef Wegner, an Egyptologist from the University of Pennsylvania who oversaw the dig, in his discussion with Live Science. "However, the hieroglyphic texts were damaged by ancient tomb robbers, and not enough survives to read the king's name." According to the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, this crypt is speculated to be over 3,600 years old and connected to a monarch from an era marked by conflict and turmoil. During this period, the Hyksos dynasty held sway over lower Egypt. The Hyksos, a name translating to "rulers of foreign lands," were a people from western Asia who introduced pivotal technologies, including the horse and chariot. The tomb itself was constructed from a limestone burial chamber overlaid with mud brick vaults, reaching an impressive height of approximately 5m. Mohamed Abdel Badie, Head of the Egyptian Antiquities Sector, noted that the newly unearthed tomb appears significantly larger than other mausoleums from the Abydos Dynasty discovered to date. The identity of the tomb's occupant remains a mystery, but it is believed to belong to one of the kings who ruled prior to Senebkay, according to Badie. This groundbreaking discovery follows closely on the heels of another major archaeological find – the Royal burial site of Egyptian pharaoh Thutmose II. The same excavation also revealed a pottery workshop dating back to the Roman era in the village of Banawit, located north of Abydos. Abydos is one of the most ancient cities in Egypt, with its history stretching back to the Abydos Dynasty, a succession of kings who governed Upper Egypt between 1700 and 1600 BC. Anna-Latifa Mourad-Cizek, an archaeologist at the University of Chicago, underscored the potential of this find to reshape our understanding of a relatively obscure period in ancient history. She pointed out that there is currently "a very limited body of evidence" regarding this region and its rulers, rendering the discovery of the tomb "highly significant." However, much work remains to be done to fully unravel the secrets of this ancient site.
Japan Today
17 hours ago
- Science
- Japan Today
Study finds planetary waves linked to wild summer weather have tripled since 1950
By SETH BORENSTEIN Climate change has tripled the frequency of atmospheric wave events linked to extreme summer weather in the last 75 years and that may explain why long-range computer forecasts keep underestimating the surge in killer heat waves, droughts and floods, a new study says. In the 1950s, Earth averaged about one extreme weather-inducing planetary wave event a summer, but now it is getting about three per summer, according to a study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Planetary waves are connected to 2021's deadly and unprecedented Pacific Northwest heat wave, the 2010 Russian heatwave and Pakistan flooding and the 2003 killer European heatwave, the study said. 'If you're trying to visualize the planetary waves in the northern hemisphere, the easiest way to visualize them is on the weather map to look at the waviness in the jet stream as depicted on the weather map,' said study co-author Michael Mann, a University of Pennsylvania climate scientist. Planetary waves flow across Earth all the time, but sometimes they get amplified, becoming stronger, and the jet stream gets wavier with bigger hills and valleys, Mann said. It's called quasi-resonant amplification or QRA. This essentially means the wave gets stuck for weeks on end, locked in place. As a result, some places get seemingly endless rain while others endure oppressive heat with no relief. 'A classic pattern would be like a high pressure out west (in the United States) and a low pressure back East and in summer 2018, that's exactly what we had,' Mann said. 'We had that configuration locked in place for like a month. So they (in the West) got the heat, the drought and the wildfires. We (in the East) got the excessive rainfall.' 'It's deep and it's persistent,' Mann said. 'You accumulate the rain for days on end or the ground is getting baked for days on end.' The study finds this is happening more often because of human-caused climate change, mostly from the burning of fossil fuels, specifically because the Arctic warms three to four times faster than the rest of the world. That means the temperature difference between the tropics and the Arctic is now much smaller than it used to be and that weakens the jet streams and the waves, making them more likely to get locked in place, Mann said. 'This study shines a light on yet another way human activities are disrupting the climate system that will come back to bite us all with more unprecedented and destructive summer weather events,' said Jennifer Francis, a climate scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center who wasn't involved in the research. 'Wave resonance does appear to be one reason for worsening summer extremes. On top of general warming and increased evaporation, it piles on an intermittent fluctuation in the jet stream that keeps weather systems from moving eastward as they normally would, making persistent heat, drought, and heavy rains more likely,' Francis said. This is different than Francis' research on the jet stream and the polar vortex that induces winter extremes, said Mann. There's also a natural connection. After an El Nino, a natural warming of the central Pacific that alters weather patterns worldwide, the next summer tends to be prone to more of these amplified QRA waves that become locked in place, Mann said. And since the summer of 2024 featured an El Nino, this summer will likely be more prone to this type of stuck jet stream, according to Mann. While scientists have long predicted that as the world warms there will be more extremes, the increase has been much higher than what was expected, especially by computer model simulations, Mann and Francis said. That's because the models 'are not capturing this one vital mechanism,' Mann said. Unless society stops pumping more greenhouse gases in the air, 'we can expect multiple factors to worsen summer extremes,' Francis said. 'Heat waves will last longer, grow larger and get hotter. Worsening droughts will destroy more agriculture.' © Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
When Baboon Dads Stick Around, Their Daughters Live Longer
The mammal world is sorely lacking in good dads—at least by human standards. In most mammalian species, males saddle the mother with their offspring while they continue to galavant around and sire more. That's how male baboons typically operate. But although these primate patriarchs don't nurse young or gather food (or provide any other essential care), a new study suggests their presence does have a beneficial impact. In a paper published on Tuesday in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, researchers report that female baboons who have strong relationships with their father—as measured by the amount of time a father-daughter pair spent grooming each other and living together—tend to outlive those who don't. Of the 216 females in the study (all from Kenya's Amboseli ecosystem, where the Amboseli Baboon Research Project has been running since 1971), those with an engaged father enjoyed an extra two to four years of life. This doesn't necessarily show that father-daughter bonding improves longevity; it may be that healthy young females, already destined for long lives, are more likely to bond with their father. But the paper's senior author Beth Archie, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Notre Dame, says her instinct is that baboon 'dads are more important than they seem at first glance.' [Sign up for Today in Science, a free daily newsletter] One possible explanation for these results is that fathers create a 'zone of safety' around their daughters, intervening to protect them in conflicts. Alternatively, fathers may serve as a gateway to baboon society, allowing young females to establish connections that will benefit them for a lifetime. Whatever the baboon dads are doing, 'it does seem to make a difference,' says Robert Seyfarth, a primatologist and emeritus professor at the University of Pennsylvania, who was not involved in the study. The effect is probably similar for sons, Archie says, but they're harder to study because male baboons typically leave the group they were born into when they reach maturity. Researchers have tried to track their lifespan by putting radio collars on them, she adds, 'but the batteries died before the males did.' Why are some baboon fathers more involved in their daughters' lives than others? The answer may be linked to the studied species' promiscuous practices: in the Amboseli population, both sexes have multiple mating partners, so paternity isn't always clear-cut. As expected, the researchers found that males spent more time grooming young females when they were confident they were in fact the father. (That's a call male baboons can realistically make: females' genitals swell and turn red during ovulation, so if a male mates with one and fends off competitors until that sign of fertility disappears, he can be reasonably sure that any resulting offspring is his.) In the study, the males also seemed to play a more active parenting role when mating opportunities trailed off. Once you're too old to compete with the swaggering young bucks for mates, Archie says, 'the best strategy is to invest more in your offspring.' This 'dad mode,' as she calls it, is a powerful thing. Its significance in baboons resonates with our intuitions about the value of paternal care in our own species. Indeed, Archie thinks these findings from an evolutionary cousin may reveal something about the roots of human parenting. The big message, she says, is that 'having a strong relationship with your parents is important for leading a long, healthy life. That seems to be a primate universal.'
Scientific American
2 days ago
- Science
- Scientific American
When Baboon Dads Stick Around, Their Daughters Live Longer
The mammal world is sorely lacking in good dads —at least by human standards. In most mammalian species, males saddle the mother with their offspring while they continue to galavant around and sire more. That's how male baboons typically operate. But although these primate patriarchs don't nurse young or gather food (or provide any other essential care), a new study suggests their presence does have a beneficial impact. In a paper published on Tuesday in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, researchers report that female baboons who have strong relationships with their father—as measured by the amount of time a father-daughter pair spent grooming each other and living together—tend to outlive those who don't. Of the 216 females in the study (all from Kenya's Amboseli ecosystem, where the Amboseli Baboon Research Project has been running since 1971), those with an engaged father enjoyed an extra two to four years of life. This doesn't necessarily show that father-daughter bonding improves longevity; it may be that healthy young females, already destined for long lives, are more likely to bond with their father. But the paper's senior author Beth Archie, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Notre Dame, says her instinct is that baboon 'dads are more important than they seem at first glance.' On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. One possible explanation for these results is that fathers create a 'zone of safety' around their daughters, intervening to protect them in conflicts. Alternatively, fathers may serve as a gateway to baboon society, allowing young females to establish connections that will benefit them for a lifetime. Whatever the baboon dads are doing, 'it does seem to make a difference,' says Robert Seyfarth, a primatologist and emeritus professor at the University of Pennsylvania, who was not involved in the study. The effect is probably similar for sons, Archie says, but they're harder to study because male baboons typically leave the group they were born into when they reach maturity. Researchers have tried to track their lifespan by putting radio collars on them, she adds, 'but the batteries died before the males did.' Why are some baboon fathers more involved in their daughters' lives than others? The answer may be linked to the studied species' promiscuous practices: in the Amboseli population, both sexes have multiple mating partners, so paternity isn't always clear-cut. As expected, the researchers found that males spent more time grooming young females when they were confident they were in fact the father. (That's a call male baboons can realistically make: females' genitals swell and turn red during ovulation, so if a male mates with one and fends off competitors until that sign of fertility disappears, he can be reasonably sure that any resulting offspring is his.) In the study, the males also seemed to play a more active parenting role when mating opportunities trailed off. Once you're too old to compete with the swaggering young bucks for mates, Archie says, 'the best strategy is to invest more in your offspring.' This 'dad mode,' as she calls it, is a powerful thing. Its significance in baboons resonates with our intuitions about the value of paternal care in our own species. Indeed, Archie thinks these findings from an evolutionary cousin may reveal something about the roots of human parenting. The big message, she says, is that 'having a strong relationship with your parents is important for leading a long, healthy life. That seems to be a primate universal.'
Time of India
2 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
Meet Vidhi Shanghvi, daughter of India's richest pharma tycoon, steering a Rs 3.95 lakh crore company
Vidhi Shanghvi, daughter of India's pharma tycoon Dilip Shanghvi, is making headlines for her impressive role in Sun Pharma, one of India's biggest pharmaceutical companies. With a net worth of $25 billion, Dilip Shanghvi is India's richest pharma billionaire and among the top 100 richest people in the world. But now, all eyes are on his daughter Vidhi Shanghvi, who is slowly stepping into the limelight with her strong leadership and modern approach to business. Who is Vidhi Shanghvi? Vidhi Shanghvi is currently the Executive Director at Sun Pharma, a company founded by her father, Dilip Shanghvi in 1983. Sun Pharma started as a maker of psychiatric drugs and has grown to become India's most valuable pharma company, with a market capitalisation of ₹3.95 lakh crore. Vidhi was recently appointed as Whole-time Director for a five-year term, showing her growing influence within the company. Educational Background of Vidhi Shanghvi Following the footsteps of many billionaire heirs, Vidhi Shanghvi studied abroad to gain global exposure. She graduated from the prestigious Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, a top business school in the world. Her academic background has helped her bring fresh and innovative ideas to Sun Pharma, especially in areas like marketing and consumer healthcare. Career Journey at Sun Pharma Vidhi Shanghvi began her career at Sun Pharma in 2012 as a Brand Manager in the India Business division. Over the years, she has held several leadership positions. In 2014, she became the Marketing Head for one of the company's Cardiovascular Business Units. She led many successful marketing campaigns and was instrumental in improving business operations and initiating digital transformation projects. Leading Sun Pharma's Consumer Healthcare and Distribution In 2015, after the merger of Ranbaxy with Sun Pharma, Vidhi Shanghvi was made the Business Head of the company's Consumer Healthcare Division. Under her leadership, this division has grown rapidly. She has played a key role in boosting the presence of popular products like Revital H and Volini across retail stores, pharmacies, and online platforms in India. Apart from Consumer Healthcare, Vidhi Shanghvi also leads India Distribution – a crucial part of Sun Pharma's value chain. Her efforts have helped improve supply efficiency and expand reach across the country. Over 13 Years of Experience in Pharma Sector With more than 13 years of professional experience, Vidhi Shanghvi has built expertise in various fields, including marketing, brand building, project and alliance management, and distribution. Her dynamic leadership style and strategic thinking have earned her recognition within the industry. Vidhi Shanghvi's Passion for Mental Health Beyond her corporate role at Sun Pharma, Vidhi Shanghvi is also deeply committed to mental health. She is the founder of Mann Talks, a not-for-profit mental health initiative. This platform provides free, holistic mental health solutions and encourages individuals to take charge of their mental well-being. What is Dilip Shanghvi's Net Worth? Dilip Shanghvi, founder of Sun Pharma, has an estimated net worth of $25.8 billion, according to Forbes. As of today, June 18, he is the 77th richest person in the world and remains one of the most successful entrepreneurs in India. His vision and leadership have shaped Sun Pharma into a global pharmaceutical giant. Vidhi Shanghvi's Brother Also Plays a Key Role Vidhi Shanghvi's brother, Aalok Shanghvi, is also part of the leadership at Sun Pharma. A few months ago, he was promoted to the position of Chief Operating Officer (COO), making it a truly family-led business. Vidhi Shanghvi is clearly following in the footsteps of her father Dilip Shanghvi, but she is also building her own legacy at Sun Pharma. With a strong academic background, diverse industry experience, and a clear passion for healthcare and innovation, Vidhi Shanghvi is emerging as a powerful new-age leader in the Indian pharmaceutical sector.
