medieval Islamic architectural tilings received substantial worldwide coverage on the front pages of a number of major newspapers, on the radio, and in magazines; the finding was identified as among the top 100 scientific discoveries of 2007 by Discover magazine. Technology in ancient Chinese art Earliest precision compound machines In 2004, Lu presented evidence in a single-author paper in Science that ancient Chinese craftsmen during the Spring and Autumn period used precision compound machines to craft spiral grooves on Chinese jade burial rings; Lu had been introduced earlier to the grooved rings by Prof. Jenny So at the Smithsonian Institution. Lu discovered that these grooves follow the exact mathematical form of the Archimedes spiral, demonstrating the ability of ancient craftsmen to interconvert two types of motion precisely, in order to fashion the jade rings. The close conformity to this mathematical form confirmed that these craftsmen must have had a precision compound machine (as opposed to a simple machine) in 550 BC, predating Archimedes by several centuries; prior to this paper, the earliest compound machines were thought to be of Greek origin (e.g., Archimedes' screw). Lu's discovery of the earliest precision compound machines was included in the Encyclopædia Britannica. Man's first use of diamond Lu continued his interdisciplinary combination of art history and physics with his discovery, with a group of collaborators, of man's first use of diamond, in neolithic China. Prior to this work, evidence for man's first use of diamond was known primarily from Indian texts dating to the latter half of the first millennium BC, and there was no reported evidence for its use in prehistoric times. In 2005, Lu and collaborators reported strong evidence that the ancient Chinese used diamonds to polish ceremonial stone burial axes as early as 2500 BC, placing the earliest known use of diamond two thousand years before the mineral is known to have been used elsewhere. These stone axes, made predominantly of the mineral corundum (sapphire and ruby in its colorful gem forms) were fashioned as early as 4000 BC, so that they represent the earliest use of the mineral corundum, as well. The finding's media coverage included a front-page article in China's largest English-language newspaper, the China Daily. Other contributions Lu's interests in geology-related phenomena also include paleontology, which led to collaboration with his college and grad-school roommate Motohiro Yogo and Prof. Charles Marshall. Leveraging vector autoregression analysis upon an established