SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Fiber-reinforced rocks discovered at the site of Italy's dormant Campi Flegrei volcano are similar to a wonder-material used by the ancients to construct enduring structures such as the Pantheon, and may lead to improved construction materials.
...
Once again, the drill cores provided the crucial clue. The samples showed that the deep basement of the caldera—the "wall" of the bowl-like depression—consisted of carbonate-bearing rocks similar to limestone, and that interspersed within the carbonate rocks was a needle-shaped mineral called actinolite."The actinolite was the key to understanding all of the other chemical reactions that had to take place to form the natural cement at Campi Flegrei," said Kanitpanyacharoen, who is now at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand.
...
Pozzuoli was the main commercial and military port for the Roman Empire, and it was common for ships to use pozzolana as ballast while trading grain from the eastern Mediterranean. As a result of this practice, volcanic ash from Campi Flegrei-and the use of Roman concrete-spread across the ancient world. Archeologists have recently found that piers in Alexandria, Caesarea, and Cyprus are all made from Roman concrete and have pozzolana as a primary ingredient.
Interesting stuff, and somewhat reminiscent of the discovery that Damascus steel was so strong because the process created carbon nanotubes.
Non-javascript version of the story is available at: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2015/july/concrete-roman-volcano-071015.html
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by jcross on Monday July 13 2015, @01:47AM
"the deep basement of the caldera-the "wall" of the bowl-like depression-consisted of carbonate-bearing rocks similar to limestone"
Em dashes and hyphens are not the same thing at all. Even in plain old ASCII it's nice to use two dashes to indicate the em dash.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Monday July 13 2015, @01:57AM
Yes—you are right—they are not the same. Thank-you for pointing that out--kindly and politely--as it has now been corrected.
Wit is intellect, dancing. I'm too old to act my age. Life is too important to take myself seriously.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2015, @08:20PM
I always understood the correct usage to be separating the em-dash with spaces on either side - like this - while hyphenating words in-line like-so.
(Score: 2) by gidds on Wednesday July 15 2015, @01:04PM
Me too — and I'm generally quite fussy about my typography.
I don't understand why more people don't do that. It's much clearer: it separates the words on either side, rather than joining them like a hyphen.
[sig redacted]