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Calcium tablets 'raise risk of heart attacks' By Nic Fleming, Medical Correspondent Last Updated: 2:28am GMT 16/01/2008 Calcium supplements taken by about a million women could increase their risk of suffering heart attacks and strokes, scientists said yesterday. Researchers found that women aged 55 and over who took the tablets to combat osteoporosis were almost 50 per cent more likely to have a heart attack than those given placebos. Their chances of having a stroke during the five years of the study were elevated by more than a third. Three million people in Britain suffer from osteoporosis, with one in...

Tablets tell all: ancient athletes flogged for sins Allan Hall, Berlin June 7, 2007 AN ANCIENT training manual for Roman athletes — carved in marble almost 2000 years ago — prescribes far worse punishments than a sending off or a week's docked pay if they performed badly in the Colosseum. The manual recommends a flogging to get them to perform better. And the same went if they drank too much mead or behaved disgracefully with the local maidens. The marble tablet was found in 2003 in the town of Alexandria Troas in Turkey, and deciphered only recently by academics at...

Fathers of the zodiac tracked downAstronomer shows when and where his ancient counterparts worked. Geoff Brumfiel The MUL.APIN tablets record the dates that constellations appeared in the Assyrian sky. R. D. Flavin Using modern techniques — and some rocks — a US astronomer has traced the origin of a set of ancient clay tablets to a precise date and place. The tablets show constellations thought to be precursors of the present-day zodiac. The tablets, known collectively as MUL.APIN, contain nearly 200 astronomical observations, including measurements related to several constellations. They are written in cuneiform, a Middle-Eastern script that is one...

Ancient stone tablets could shed light on Surtepe excavations Wednesday, May 31, 2006 Results are being presented this week at the 28th International Congress on Excavations, Surveys and Research in Turkey, which started on Monday in Çanakkale, a western province that is also home to the ruins of ancient Troy ANKARA - Turkish Daily News Ancient stone tablets and seals unearthed during archaeological excavations at the Surtepe tumulus, seven kilometers north of Birecik in the southeastern province of Þanlýurfa, could shed light on other ancient structures discovered in the area. A team of experts headed by project director Jesus Gil...

It's time for your tablets. . . and your chocolate By Marco Giannangeli (Filed: 10/04/2006) Heart patients at a leading hospital will be treated with chocolate if a revolutionary experiment is given approval. Roger Corder, a professor of experimental therapeutics, is so convinced of the possible benefits of consuming dark chocolate that he has asked for permission to test the theory as part of the treatment for 40 cardiovascular patients. While the notion that chocolate could be good for you is not new, this would be the first time it is has been used on heart patients. The key, scientists...

Italians find ancient Ur tabletsWritings could lead to buried library (ANSA) - Rome, March 28 - Italian archeologists working in Iraq have found a trove of ancient stone tablets from the fabled civilisation of Ur . The tablets bear around 500 engravings of a literary and historical nature, according to team leader Silvia Chiodi . "This is an an exceptional find," she said, noting that the area in question had previously only yielded prehistoric artefacts . She said the tablets, made of clay and bitumen, were discovered by chance at an archaeological site not far from the location of the...

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NEW YORK -- The suicide bombers cooked up their explosives using mundane items like hydrogen peroxide. They stored them in a fancy commercial refrigerator that was out of place in their grimy flat. And cell phones likely were used to set them off. Those details from the July 7 London bombing emerged on Wednesday at an unusually wide-ranging briefing given by the New York Police Department to city business leaders. The briefing -- based partly on information obtained by NYPD detectives who were dispatched to London to monitor the investigation -- was part of a program designed to encourage more...

Cuneiform tablets and royal stamp unearth in northeast Syria Syria, Local, 6/2/2005 The Syrian-Belgian joint excavation mission in northeast Syria has recently discovered some cuneiform tablets dating back to the neo Assyrian king in the Mesopotamia Shamshi Adad, 1800 BC, as well it unearthed the king personal stamp. Head of the Belgian team of excavations told SANA today that after the discovery of the king special stamp, the mission is doing her best to come across the full palace of the king, noting that the mission has started her excavation work this year at Shager Bazar hill in Hassaka, northeast...

Tablets that may reveal El Niño secrets are feared lost in Iraq By Ben Russell, Political Correspondent 09 June 2003 The secrets of El Niño, one of the most mysterious and destructive weather systems, could be unlocked by hundreds of thousands of ancient clay tablets now feared lost or damaged in the chaos of Iraq. Researchers believe the tablets, written using a cuneiform text, one of the earliest types of writing, form the world's oldest records of climate change and could give vital clues to understanding El Niño and global warming. Academics are demanding that ministers act to protect the...

THE scene is straight from The Maltese Falcon. A secret hotel rendezvous, and a Jewish messenger and his silent Arab accomplice waiting while the learned Israeli academic peers at a black stone tablet. Written in stone: the tablet has been carbon-dated at 2,300 years old but doubts remain about its true origins This was how it began a year and a half ago, the first sighting of what is either a state-of-the-art hoax or an ancient Hebrew inscription — more than 2,000 years old — confirming the Biblical account of Solomon’s temple. The fragment, 31cm x 24cm x 7cm of...

JERUSALEM (AP) - Israeli geologists said Monday they have examined a stone tablet detailing repair plans for the Jewish Temple of King Solomon that, if authenticated, would be a rare piece of physical evidence confirming biblical narrative. The find - whose origin is murky - is about the size of a legal pad, with a 15-line inscription in ancient Hebrew that strongly resembles descriptions in the Bible's Book of Kings. It could also strengthen Jewish claims to a disputed holy site in Jerusalem's Old City that is now home to two major mosques. Muslim clerics insist, despite overwhelming archaeological evidence,...