 | Scientists Capture Giant Antarctic Sea Creatures Would like to see some more ? Bigger ? watch this : http://youtube.com/watch?v=xDcsByYGzSE CHAN: Scientists studying Antarctic waters have filmed and captured giant sea creatures never seen before. They saw sea spiders the size of dinner plates and jelly fish with six meter long tentacles. They also filmed other unknown species of sea life. Here's more. STORY: A fleet of three Antarctic marine research ships returned to Australia this week ending a summer expedition to the Southern Ocean where they carried out a census of life in the icy ocean and on its floor more than one kilometer below the surface. [Martin Riddle, Marine Scientist Doctor]: "A huge diversity of life, very colorful, very rich, far exceeding any of our expectations." The three ships, the Aurora Australia, France's L'Astrolabe and Japan's Umitaka Maru all docked in Hobart on Australia's southern island state of Tasmania. Their decks are full of an array of sea life including unknown species of sea creatures collected near the eastern Antarctic land mass. [Martin Riddle, Marine Scientist Doctor]: "There are forces happening in the world, in the atmosphere and in the ocean that are going to change even this the Antarctic and the southern ocean, so it is really important now to have baseline so that we know what we have got now, so that we can identify whether it is changing and put in place measures to protect it before it is lost." The Australian Antarctic Division expedition will help scientists monitor the impact of environmental change in Antarctic waters. |
 | Chinese Civilization for Five Thousand Years6-3Buddhism Dunhuang (Chinese: 敦煌, also written as 燉煌 till early Qing Dynasty; pinyin: Dūnhuáng) is a city in Jiuquan, Gansu province, China. It is sited in an oasis. It has a population of 100,000. Dunhuang敦煌 was made a prefecture in 117 BCE by Emperor Han Wudi, and was a major point of interchange between China and the outside world during the Han and Tang dynasties. Located near the historic junction of the Northern and Southern Silk Roads, it was a town of military importance. Early buddhist monks accessed Dunhuang via the ancient Northern Silk Road, the northernmost route of about 2600 kilometres in length, which connected the ancient Chinese capital of Xian to the west over the Wushao Ling Pass to Wuwei and emerging in Kashgar.For centuries Buddhist monks at Dunhuang collected scriptures from the west, and many pilgrims passed through the area, painting murals inside the Mogao Caves or "Caves of a Thousand Buddhas."A small number of Christian artifacts have also been found in the caves (see Jesus Sutras), testimony to the wide variety of people who made their way along the silk road. Today, the site is an important tourist attraction and the subject of an ongoing archaeological project. A large number of manuscripts and artifacts retrieved at Dunhuang。 The Yungang Grottoes (simplified Chinese: 云冈石窟; traditional Chinese: 雲崗石窟; pinyin: Yúngāng Shíkū) are ancient Buddhist temple grottoes near the city of Datong in the Chinese province of Shanxi. They are excellent examples of rock-cut architecture and one of the three most famous ancient sculptural sites of China. The others are Longmen and Mogao. The site is located about 16 km south-west of the city, in the valley of the Shi Li river at the base of the Wuzhou Shan mountains. The grottoes were mainly constructed in the period between 460-525 AD during the Northern Wei dynasty. They are an outstanding example of the Chinese stone carvings from the 5th and 6th centuries. All together the site is composed of 252 grottoes with more than 51,000 Buddha statues and statuettes. In 2001, the Yungang Grottoes were made a UNESCO World Heritage Site The Yungang Grottoes is considered by UNESCO a "masterpiece of early Chinese Buddhist cave art... [and] ...represent the successful fusion of Buddhist religious symbolic art from south and central Asia with Chinese cultural traditions, starting in the 5th century CE under Imperial auspices." －－－－－－－－－－－－－ （6-2)Note: (Silk Road)Technological transfer to the West The period of the High Middle Ages in Europe saw major technological advances, including the adoption through the Silk Road of printing, gunpowder, the astrolabe, and the compass. Korean maps such as the Kangnido and Islamic mapmaking seem to have influenced the emergence of the first practical world maps, such as those of De Virga or Fra Mauro. Ramusio, a contemporary, states that Fra Mauro's map is "an improved copy of the one brought from Cathay by Marco Polo". Large Chinese junks were also observed by these travelers and may have provided impetus to develop larger ships in Europe. "The ships, called junks, that navigate these seas carry four masts or more, some of which can be raised or lowered, and have 40 to 60 cabins for the merchants and only one tiller." (Text from the Fra Mauro map, 09-P25) "A ship carries a complement of a thousand men, six hundred of whom are sailors and four hundred men-at-arms, including archers, men with shields and crossbows, who throw naphtha... These vessels are built in the towns of Zaytun (a.k.a Zaitun, today's Quanzhou; 刺桐) and Sin-Kalan. The vessel has four decks and contains rooms, cabins, and saloons for merchants; a cabin has chambers and a lavatory, and can be locked by its occupants." (Ibn Battuta). |
 | El rei sabi (El rey sabio - The sage king) Els àrabs i un rei de Castella van preservar els coneixements astronòmics antics (un capítol de la sèrie Nostra nau -una mirada diària als astres-) Los árabes y un rey de Castilla preservaron los conocimientos astronómicos antiguos (un capítulo de la serie Nostra nau (Nuestra nave) -una mirada diaria a los astros-) The arabs and a king from Castilla preserved the ancient astronomical knowledge (a chapter of the series Nostra nau (Our ship) -a daily glance to stars-) |
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