内容摘要：Moody’s Ratings became the last of the three major ratings agencies late last week to downgrade the U.S. government’s credit rating on concerns that it may be heading toward an unsustainable amount of debt.

Moody’s Ratings became the last of the three major ratings agencies late last week to downgrade the U.S. government’s credit rating on concerns that it may be heading toward an unsustainable amount of debt.

In a new study, researchers used lasers to uncover highly intricate designs of ancient tattoos on mummies from Peru.The preserved skin of the mummies and the black tattoo ink used show a stark contrast — revealing fine details in tattoos dating to around 1250 A.D. that aren’t visible to the naked eye, said study co-author Michael Pittman, an archaeologist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

The researchers examined around 100 mummies from coastal Peru’s Chancay culture – a civilization that flourished before the Inca empire and the arrival of Europeans.All the individuals had some form of tattoos on the back of their hands, knuckles, forearms or other body parts. The study focused on four individuals with “exceptional tattoos” — designs of geometric shapes such as triangles and diamonds, said Pittman.It wasn’t clear exactly how the tattoos were created, but they are “of a quality that stands up against the really good electric tattooing of today,” said Aaron Deter-Wolf, an expert in pre-Columbian tattoos and an archaeologist at the Tennessee Division of Archaeology, who was not involved in the research.

Results were published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.Using lasers that make skin faintly glow, “we basically turn skin into a light bulb,” said co-author Tom Kaye of the nonprofit Foundation for Scientific Advancement in Sierra Vista, Arizona.

The findings were “helpful to learn about new non-destructive technologies that can help us study and document sensitive archaeological materials,” such as mummies, said Deter-Wolf.

The oldest known tattoos were found on remains of a Neolithic man who lived in the Italian Alps around 3,000 B.C. Many mummies from ancient Egypt also have tattoos, as do remains from cultures around the world.She wipes a tear as she watches a video she recorded of the destruction near San Pedro Sula. In the video, she scans each room of her once spotless home, painted a bright lime color, and now splattered in dirt. Then she stares into the camera and says: “All I have is mud and more mud and more mud.”

In this November 2020 image provided by Ana Morazan, mud from hurricanes Eta and Iota cover her home near San Pedro Sula, Honduras. (Ana Morazan via AP)In this November 2020 image provided by Ana Morazan, mud from hurricanes Eta and Iota cover her home near San Pedro Sula, Honduras. (Ana Morazan via AP)

The couple said since leaving, they have been attacked, kidnapped, and robbed, keeping them on the move. Now she and Juarez are among tens of thousands of Central Americans in Mexican border cities seeking to request asylum in the U.S., but they are blocked by a pandemic-related health order that was invoked by the Trump administration and has continued under President Joe Biden.While fear of violence keeps them from trying to return to Honduras, even if they did go back, they would have no place to live. If Eta and Iota had not hit, it would not have started a chain reaction of other things that forced them to flee.