Genetic research indicates that Australian Aborigines initially arrived via south Asia. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology have found telltale mutations in modern-day Indian populations that are exclusively shared by Aborigines. Dr Raghavendra Rao worked with a team of researchers from the Anthropological Survey of India to sequence 966 complete mitochondrial DNA genomes from Indian ‘relic populations’. He said, ‘Mitochondrial DNA is inherited only from the mother and so allows us to accurately trace ancestry. We found certain mutations in the DNA sequences of the Indian tribes we sampled that are specific to Australian Aborigines. This shared ancestry suggests that the Aborigine population migrated to Australia via the so-called ‘Southern Route”. The ‘Southern Route’ dispersal of modern humans suggests movement of a group of hunter-gatherers from the Horn of Africa, across the mouth of the Red Sea into Arabia and southern Asia at least 50 thousand years ago. Subsequently, the modern human populations expanded rapidly along the coastlines of southern Asia, southeastern Asia and Indonesia to arrive in Australia at least 45 thousand years ago. The genetic evidence of this dispersal from the work of Rao and his colleagues is supported by archeological evidence […]
Long-term climate records from the Arctic provide strong new evidence that human-caused global warming can override Earth’s natural heating and cooling cycles, U.S. researchers reported this week in the journal Science. For more than 2,000 years, a natural wobble in Earth’s axis has caused the Arctic region to move farther away from the sun during the region’s summer, reducing the amount of solar radiation it receives. The Arctic is now 600,000 miles farther from the sun than it was in AD 1, and temperatures there should have fallen a little more than 1 degree Fahrenheit since then. Instead, the region has warmed 2.2 degrees since 1900 alone, and the decade from 1998 to 2008 was the warmest in two millenniums, according to a team headed by climatologist Darrell S. Kaufman of Northern Arizona University. Not only was the last half-century the warmest of the last 2,000 years, ‘but it reversed the long-term, millennial-scale trend toward cooler temperatures,’ Kaufman said. The results seem to negate the primary argument of those who say the current warming of Earth is simply a natural variation, he said. The Arctic region has actually warmed about three times as much as […]
It is a sobering time for the world’s most fragile countries-virulent economic crisis, countless natural disasters, and government collapse. This year, we delve deeper than ever into just what went wrong-and who is to blame. Yemen may not yet be front-page news, but it’s being watched intently these days in capitals worldwide. A perfect storm of state failure is now brewing there: disappearing oil and water reserves; a mob of migrants, some allegedly with al Qaeda ties, flooding in from Somalia, the failed state next door; and a weak government increasingly unable to keep things running. Many worry Yemen is the next Afghanistan: a global problem wrapped in a failed state. It’s not just Yemen. The financial crisis was a near-death experience for insurgency-plagued Pakistan, which remains on imf life support. Cameroon has been rocked by economic contagion, which sparked riots, violence, and instability. Other countries dependent on the import and export of commodities-from Nigeria to Equatorial Guinea to Bangladesh-had a similarly rough go of it last year, suffering what economist Homi Kharas calls a ‘whiplash effect as prices spiked sharply and then plummeted. All indications are that 2009 will bring little to no reprieve. Instead, the […]
Lenders in Illinois, Iowa, Missouri and Arizona collapsed, pushing the number of bank failures to 89 this year amid continuing fallout from the worst economic slump since the Great Depression. Illinois lenders InBank of Oak Forest and Platinum Community Bank of Rolling Meadows; Vantus Bank of Sioux City, Iowa; First Bank of Kansas City, Missouri; and First State Bank of Flagstaff, Arizona were shut by regulators, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was named receiver, the agency said in statements yesterday. Closing the lenders, with combined assets of $1.1 billion and deposits of $982 million, will cost the deposit insurance fund about $401 million. Regulators have closed banks at the fastest pace in 17 years and more are likely as losses mount from soured real- estate debt. A total of 416 banks with combined assets of $299.8 billion failed the FDIC’s grading system for asset quality, liquidity and earnings in the second quarter, the most since June 1994, the regulator said in a report last month. Great Southern Bank of Springfield, Missouri, bought Vantus in the lender’s second FDIC-assisted acquisition this year. Vantus, the biggest of yesterday’s failures with $368 million in deposits and about $458 million […]
We’re a country obsessed with being thin, yet two thirds of American adults-and nearly one third of children and adolescents-are overweight or obese and either suffering from or at risk of serious chronic illnesses like diabetes and heart disease. Ironic, given the thriving weight-loss industry that seems to churn out a new diet book or fat-loss pill every other week. Even when dieters do succeed at slimming down, research has found that the majority end up gaining back their losses. What gives? Yes, weight loss depends largely on getting the balance right between calories consumed and calories burned. Yet, as evidenced by individuals’ struggle to control weight and also by the nation’s alarmingly increased rate of overweight and obese residents in recent decades, mastering this seemingly simple formula is no small task. Willpower alone probably won’t do the job, since several sneaky factors may be complicating the equation. Here are a few that may be working against your efforts to control your own weight. Eating very late at night. Snacking at times that are out of sync with your circadian clock might be promoting weight gain. Researchers at Northwestern University’s Center for Sleep and Circadian Biology, who just […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
