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A team of archaeologists from the University of Southampton have used the latest in digital imaging technology to record and analyze carvings on an Easter Island statue. And those body scanners the TSA uses at the airport are having a major impact in the art world too: they are revealing what may lie underneath the surface of great works of art. For instance, researchers have used them to detect the face of an ancient Roman man hidden below the surface of a wall painting in the Louvre Museum in Paris. Scientists and art historians think he image say may be thousands of years old.
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I read a lot of fiction, and I can tell you this: Truth is stranger than any plot I’ve ever come across.

I recently read two novels that centered around art theft, and learned that famous artworks aren’t stolen for collectors, they’re used as collateral by (mainly Russian and Eastern European) criminals.

Then I read in the New York Times about an FBI raid on an art gallery located in a fancy Upper East Side Hotel. The agents were looking for artworks that had been stolen from collectors and museums.
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It’s not the alcohol, it’s the TASTE–which is a trigger (for beer drinkers, anyway) for happiness.

The taste of beer, without any effect from alcohol itself, can trigger dopamine release in the brain, which is associated with drinking and other drugs of abuse.

Using brain imaging, researchers tested 49 men with two scans, one in which they tasted beer and the second in which they tasted Gatorade. They were looking for evidence of increased levels of dopamine, the "happiness hormone." The scans showed significantly more dopamine activity following the taste of beer than the sports drink.
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