Seaweed found at an inland settlement in Chile confirms that the village is one of the oldest inhabited sites in the Americas and demonstrates that residents had extensive contact with the coastline, 50 miles away, researchers said Friday. Radiocarbon dating of the seaweed shows that the samples are 14,100 years old, give or take 120 years. That means the site, called Monte Verde, is at least a millennium older than the so-called Clovis sites in the American Southwest, long believed to be the most ancient in the New World. The report comes just a month after researchers reported similar dates for fossilized human feces, called coprolites, found in Paisley Cave in Oregon. Together, the reports support the growing idea that the first immigrants to the Americas arrived from Asia over a land bridge across what is now the Bering Strait and made their way down the Pacific Coast as far as South America, exploiting abundant marine resources as they traveled. Monte Verde — now in a peat bog, about 500 miles south of Santiago and 10 miles from the coast — contained about a dozen huts on a minor creek, 10 miles north of a large […]
Federal lawmakers have introduced yet another network neutrality bill, but this time with a focus on fair trade issues. This week, U.S. Rep. John Conyers, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, has introduced legislation that addresses the issue by labeling it an antitrust matter. Conyers’ H.R. 5994 would ban discriminatory network management practices by amending the Clayton Act. The bill, labeled the Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act, would require carriers to promote competition and allow people to use any device they want to on the carriers’ networks. The bill makes exceptions for emergencies, criminal investigations, parental controls, marketing, and improvements to quality of service. Under the Detroit Democrat’s proposed legislation, ISPs could give preference to certain types of data, but they must give the preference regardless of the data source. It would ban ISPs from discriminating based on content, applications, or services. ‘Americans have come to expect the Internet to be open to everyone,’ Conyers said in a statement. ‘The Internet was designed without centralized control, without gatekeepers for content and services. If we allow companies with monopoly or duopoly power to control how the Internet operates, network providers could have the power to choose what […]
Working at the University of Oxford and The Open University, Dr Lynne Cox and Dr Robert Saunders say they have found a fast and effective way to investigate important aspects of human aging. Their discovery of a gene in fruit flies means they can now be used to study the effects aging has on DNA. The researchers demonstrate the value of this model in helping us to understand the critical aspects of human aging at cellular, genetic and biochemical levels. Dr Lynne Cox from the University of Oxford said: ‘We study a premature human ageing disease called Werner syndrome to help us understand normal aging. The key to this disease is that changes in a single gene (called WRN) mean that patients age very quickly. Scientists have made great progress in working out what this gene does in the test tube, but until now we haven’t been able to investigate the gene to look at its effect on development and the whole body. By working on this gene in fruit flies, we can model human aging in a powerful experimental system.’ Dr Robert Saunders from The Open University added: ‘This work shows for the first time that […]
WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration is withholding a list of Chinese heparin suppliers requested by congressional investigators looking into problems with tainted supplies of the blood thinner, saying confidentiality agreements prevent release of the companies’ names. Members of Congress also are concerned that Chinese heparin manufacturers and their raw-material suppliers didn’t fully cooperate with an FDA inspection team in February, after the heparin crisis erupted internationally, and barred the FDA from complete access to some workshops, records and workers. An FDA compliance official testified to a congressional subcommittee April 29 that the FDA could try to revisit facilities in China, but said, ‘I cannot say whether they will admit us or not, or whether they will allow us to do a full inspection.’ Tensions between congressional Democrats and the FDA over the agency’s handling of the heparin problem and its willingness to disclose information have escalated in recent weeks. ‘The FDA thinks they have it under control, but they really don’t,’ said the congressman leading the investigation, Rep. Bart Stupak (D., Mich.). The FDA’s reluctance to release the Chinese companies’ names is a red flag, he said. ‘If I was the FDA director, I’d […]
Several years into a pair of wars, the Department of Veterans Affairs is struggling to cope with a task for which it was tragically unready: the care of soldiers who left Afghanistan and Iraq with an extra burden of brain injury and psychic anguish. The last thing they need is the toxic blend of secrecy, arrogance and heedlessness that helped to send many of them into harm’s way. ‘Shh!’ said the e-mail in February from Dr. Ira Katz, head of mental health services for V.A., to a colleague. ‘Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among the veterans we see in our medical facilities. Is this something we should (carefully) address ourselves in some sort of release before someone stumbles on it?’ Dr. Katz’s hushed-up figure was nowhere near the number he gave to the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee last year; he said there had been 790 suicide attempts in all of 2007, and denied there was a suicide epidemic. The veterans affairs secretary, James Peake, apologized for Dr. Katz’s ‘unfortunate set of words’ and promised more candor and transparency. Give some credit, anyway, to Mr. Peake for realizing that there is […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
