Scientists have decoded the DNA of the Western honeybee, a feat that researchers say could help illuminate the genetic underpinnings of social behavior. An international team of nearly 200 scientists reported today that they had identified 10,157 genes. That’s fewer than those in the genomes of the fruit fly, mosquito or silkworm, but sufficient to produce the only non-primate species that communicates through a symbolic language. The genome of Apis mellifera was published in the journal Nature, along with a series of accompanying articles in Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and other scholarly journals. ‘Honeybees are important models to study the regulation and evolution of life in a society, especially social behavior itself,’ said team co-leader Gene Robinson, director of the neuroscience program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. ‘We hope to extrapolate the biology to humans,’ added Saurabh Sinha, a computer science professor at Urbana-Champaign who led one of the companion studies about genes involved in social behavior. A typical honeybee begins its career in the hive, caring for eggs and larvae. After about two or three weeks, environmental cues from the colony turn on thousands of dormant brain genes […]
NEW YORK — The widening waistlines of Americans have increased the consumption of gasoline since 1960 according to researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Virginia Commonwealth University. A report by Laura A. McLay of VCU, concludes that Americans now pump 938 million gallons of fuel more on a yearly basis than they were in 1960 because of their increasing weight. obesity_fat.03.jpg As American’s waistlines continue to grow, so does their consumption of gasoline. ‘Although the amount of fuel consumed as a result of the rising prevalence of obesity is small compared to the increase in the amount of fuel consumed stemming from other factors such as increased car reliance and an increase in the number of drivers,’ the report stated, ‘it still represents a large amount of fuel, and will become even more significant as the rate of obesity increases.’ Americans’ reliance on cars for private transportation has increased as low rise construction, single-family homes and highways associated with suburbs have grown since the end of World War II. McLay began the study as a doctoral student of Sheldon H. Jacobson, a professor of computer science and director of the simulation and optimization […]
NEW YORK — Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) (XOM) on Thursday said its profit rose to $10.49 billion in the third quarter, making it the second-largest quarterly profit ever recorded by a publicly traded U.S. company. The world’s biggest oil company said its net income amounted to $1.77 per share for the July-September period, up from $9.92 billion, or $1.58 per share, a year ago. The results surpassed the expectations of Wall Street analysts. On average, analysts expected the company to earn $1.59 per share in the quarter. Revenue fell to $99.59 billion from $100.72 billion from a year ago, which saw then-record oil prices because of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The largest quarterly profit ever was Exxon’s $10.71 billion profit in the fourth quarter of 2005.
A Danish court has thrown out a defamation case against the newspaper that first published controversial cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. * The City Court in Aarhus today rejected a lawsuit brought by seven Danish Muslim groups claiming that the 12 drawings printed in Jyllands-Posten were intended to insult the prophet and make a mockery of Islam. While the cartoons may have offended some Muslims, there was no basis for claiming that the newspaper sought to belittle their faith, the court said. Carsten Juste, Jyllands-Posten’s editor-in-chief, hailed the decision as a victory for free speech. ‘Anything but a pure acquittal would have been a disaster for press freedom and the media’s possibility to fulfil its duties in a democratic society,’ he said. The Muslim groups behind the lawsuit said they would appeal. Jyllands-Posten published the cartoons on September 30, 2005 with an accompanying text saying it was challenging a perceived self-censorship among artists afraid to offend Islam. One of the cartoons showed Muhammad wearing a turban shaped like a bomb with a burning fuse. Another portrayed him holding a sword and a third pictured a middle-aged prophet standing in the desert with a walking […]
Australia’s most senior Muslim cleric has suggested that women who do not wear headscarves are to blame for sexual assaults, comparing them to uncovered pieces of meat. Sheikh Taj El-Din Hamid Hilaly, the mufti of Sydney’s biggest mosque, said in a sermon that sexual assaults might not happen if women wore a hijab and stayed at home. ‘If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the back yard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it … whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat? The uncovered meat is the problem,’ Hilaly said during a Ramadan sermon, according to a newspaper translation. Keysar Trad, Hilaly’s spokesman, said the Egyptian-born cleric had been lecturing about 500 followers on the sin of adultery. ‘He’s talking about those people who prey on others, whether men or women, who seek to engage in sexual conduct outside of marriage, and do so through alluring types of attire,’ he said. The meat comments, Trad said, referred to prostitutes. Strained relations Australia’s Sex Discrimination Commission […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
