Providing the strongest evidence yet that humans are still evolving, researchers have detected some 700 regions of the human genome where genes appear to have been reshaped by natural selection, a principal force of evolution, within the last 5,000 to 15,000 years. The genes that show this evolutionary change include some responsible for the senses of taste and smell, digestion, bone structure, skin color and brain function. Many of these instances of selection may reflect the pressures that came to bear as people abandoned their hunting and gathering way of life for settlement and agriculture, a transition well under way in Europe and East Asia some 5,000 years ago. Under natural selection, beneficial genes become more common in a population as their owners have more progeny. Three populations were studied, Africans, East Asians and Europeans. In each, a mostly different set of genes had been favored by natural selection. The selected genes, which affect skin color, hair texture and bone structure, may underlie the present-day differences in racial appearance. The study of selected genes may help reconstruct many crucial events in the human past. It may also help physical anthropologists explain why people over the […]
When the Gospel of Judas first surfaced in Geneva in 1983, scholars wondered if the mysterious text could trigger a reappraisal of history’s most infamous traitor. They never found out, however, because they couldn’t afford the $3 million price tag on this second-century gnostic tale. Instead, the fragile pages vanished into private hands and set off on a 23-year, intercontinental journey through fist-pounding negotiations and even periods, reportedly, stuffed inside a Greek beauty’s purse. Now, at long last, the world is about to see the contents. The National Geographic Society last week reported it will publish a translation this spring, when “The Da Vinci Code” film is sure to rekindle interest in gnostic artifacts. But the saga may be just beginning. That’s because thieves apparently lifted the manuscript from the Egyptian desert, kicking off decades of illicit trafficking – and an ethical dilemma: Is it right to pay for and publish stolen documents for the purpose of spreading knowledge? “The present owners can’t sell it because they don’t have, in international law, a legal title to something that was stolen,” says James Robinson, one of the world’s foremost experts on gnostic texts and author of a […]
Ministers are trying to scrap an international agreement banning the world’s most controversial genetic modification of crops, grimly nicknamed “terminator technology”, a move which threatens to increase hunger in the Third World. Their plans, unveiled in a new official document buried in a government website, will cause outrage among environmentalists and hunger campaigners. Michael Meacher, who took a lead as environment minister in negotiating the ban six years ago, has written Margaret Beckett, the Secretary of State for the Environment, to object. The Government is to push for terminator crops to be considered for approval on a “case-by-case basis” at two meetings this month; its position closely mirrors the stance of the United States and other GM-promoting countries. Terminator technology, so abominated even Monsanto will not develop it, would stop hundreds of millions of poor farmers from saving seeds from their crops for resowing for the following harvest, forcing them to buy new ones from biotech companies every year. More than 1.4 billion poor Third World farmers and their families pursue the age-old practice. The technique is officially known as genetic use restriction technology (Gurt), making crops produce sterile seeds. It could be applied to any […]
President Bush’s approval ratings are near record lows, as are Vice President Dick Cheney’s following a hunting accident that not only renewed charges of White House secrecy but also made him a ripe target for latenight comics. So what are conservative talk and cable hosts to do? Hey, how ’bout them Oscars? Talk hosts always tackle a wide variety of subjects, but with the Bush team increasingly looking like the gang that couldn’t shoot straight — literally, in Cheney’s case — there’s a certain value for right-leaning talent in changing the subject. Recent Republican travails would seem to weigh heavily on the high-profile talk hosts at Fox News Channel, which, even in its news coverage, occasionally blunts rough edges when covering the current White House. Although Fox rejects the conservative label, when other nets last week pounced on newly released video showing Bush being warned of possible disaster in New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina, the channel downplayed the most damaging video snippet along with Bush’s statement days after the storm that “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.” At the same time, a few conservative hosts are joining in the chorus of Bush […]
Berkshire Hathaway, the investment group run by Warren Buffett, is pushing up the price of hurricane insurance as a precaution against the possible impact of climate change. Mr Buffett said it remained an open question whether “atmospheric, oceanic or other causal factors have dramatically changed the frequency or intensity of hurricanes” but after the worst quarterly losses in industry history it was prudent to limit exposure. Berkshire’s insurance subsidiaries lost $3.4bn from the 2005 US hurricane season – a significant drag on otherwise-healthy annual results published on Saturday. “Our ignorance means we must follow the course prescribed by Pascal in his famous wager about the existence of God,” Mr Buffett wrote to shareholders. “Since he didn’t know the answer, his personal gain/loss ratio dictated an affirmative conclusion.” Berkshire is one of the world’s largest providers of cover against very large catastrophes, partly by reinsuring companies offering home and property insurance. “We’ve concluded that we should now write mega-cat policies only at prices far higher than prevailed last year – and then only with an aggregate exposure that would not cause us distress if shifts in some important variable produce far more costly storms in the […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
