A solar-powered airplane finished crossing the United States on Saturday, landing in New York City after flying over the Statue of Liberty during its historic bid to circle the globe, the project team said. The spindly, single-seat experimental aircraft, dubbed Solar Impulse 2, arrived at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport at about 4 a.m. local time after it took off about five hours beforehand at Lehigh Valley International Airport in Pennsylvania, the team reported on the airplane's website. Such a pleasure to land in New York! For the 14th time we celebrate sustainability," said the project's co-founder Andre Borschberg on Twitter after flying over the city and the Statue of Liberty during the 14th leg of the trip around the globe. The Swiss team flying the aircraft in a campaign to build support for clean energy technologies hopes eventually to complete its circumnavigation in Abu Dhabi, where the journey began in March 2015. The solar cr...
The three skeletons unearthed at Nimes show indications of Islamic burial rites and are thought to date to the eighth century AD. A team used DNA, radiocarbon dating and archaeological analysis to show the individuals may have been North African soldiers from a brief occupation of southern France by an Islamic army. Details of the analysis are published in the journal Plos One. In each of the three graves, the bodies were placed on their right-hand sides facing south-east - in the direction of Mecca. The way the burial pit was dug, with a lateral niche closed off by slabs or stones also corresponds to a traditional Islamic burial practice. Analysis of the skeletons reveals that two of the three males were in their late twenties or early thirties, while the other was about 50 years of age. Radiocarbon dating of all three burials gave age ranges within the 7th and 8th centuries. The scientists also carried out genetic analysis on the remains. They ...