Many of us are part caveman, according to an analysis of Neanderthal genes, which were sequenced for the first time in a recent study. The Neanderthal genome offers further evidence that this ancient hominid species mated and interbred with the ancestors of modern humans, scientists say. ‘The Neanderthals are not totally extinct,’ said study leader Svante Paabo of the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. ‘In some of us they live on a little bit.’ In fact, between 1 percent and 4 percent of some modern humans’ DNA came from Neanderthals, who lived between about 130,000 and 30,000 years ago, the researchers report today. It took the scientists years to compile this first sequence of the Neanderthal genome, which is now about 60-percent complete. Researchers extracted DNA from the 40,000-year-old bones of three female Neanderthals found in a cave in Croatia. They had to come up with novel techniques to screen out contamination from bacteria and even present-day human DNA. The feat is a major step forward in piecing together human evolutionary history, experts say. ‘Dr. Paabo’s publication of the full Neandertal genome is a watershed event, a major historical achievement,’ said […]
An Icelandic volcano which caused havoc to European aviation after erupting last month is to emit a large new ash cloud after surging back to life, meteorologists said Thursday. A plume of ash measuring up to seven kilometers (more than four miles) high had been detected at the Eyjafjoll volcano, said a statement from the Icelandic Met Office and Institute of Earth Science. ‘The eruption has changed back to an explosive eruption, lava has stopped flowing and most of the magma gets scattered due to explosions in the crater,’ said the statement in English. ‘The ash plume rises high above the crater (4-7 km) and considerable ash fall can be expected in wind direction. No signs of the eruption ending soon.’
A common spin in the right wing coverage of BP’s oil spill is a gleeful suggestion that the gulf blowout is Obama’s Katrina. In truth, culpability for the disaster can more accurately be laid at the Bush Administration’s doorstep. For eight years, George Bush’s presidency infected the oil industry’s oversight agency, the Minerals Management Service, with a septic culture of corruption from which it has yet to recover. Oil patch alumnae in the White House encouraged agency personnel to engineer weakened safeguards that directly contributed to the gulf catastrophe. The absence of an acoustical regulator — a remotely triggered dead man’s switch that might have closed off BP’s gushing pipe at its sea floor wellhead when the manual switch failed (the fire and explosion on the drilling platform may have prevented the dying workers from pushing the button) — was directly attributable to industry pandering by the Bush team. Acoustic switches are required by law for all offshore rigs off Brazil and in Norway’s North Sea operations. BP uses the devise voluntarily in Britain’s North Sea and elsewhere in the world as do other big players like Holland’s Shell and France’s Total. In 2000, the Minerals Management Service […]
Net neutrality regulations are likely to be imposed on broadband providers after all. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski plans to announce details of the plan on Thursday, a senior agency official said. The purpose is to circumvent a recent federal appeals court ruling saying the FCC had no legal authority to punish Comcast for throttling some BitTorrent transfers. Stung by the recent unanimous ruling, Genachowski will outline a ‘third way’ to implement Net neutrality regulations, the official said in a statement. ‘The chairman will seek to restore the status quo as it existed prior to the court decision in order to fulfill the previously stated agenda of extending broadband to all Americans, protecting consumers, ensuring fair competition, and preserving a free and open Internet,’ the official said. The confirmation from the FCC comes only hours after two senior Democratic politicians sent a letter to Genachowski saying that imposing Net neutrality regulations on broadband providers such as AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon is ‘essential.’ And Free Press, the liberal lobby group that’s led the fight to hand the FCC more Internet regulatory authority, hastily convened a conference call to warn that Genachowski would be leaving President Obama’s […]
The man accused of one of the juicier hacking cases of the past few years is no Internet mastermind. On June 24, a French citizen who goes by the pseudonym ‘Hacker Croll’ will face charges that he broke into Facebook pages, e-mail accounts, and the Twitter feeds of then-Sen. Barack Obama, singer Britney Spears, and other celebrities. How did he break in? Police say that he’s just a good guesser. By cruising through blogs and social-networking pages posted online by his victims, he allegedly dug up enough information to guess people’s passwords and security questions. This trick is pretty easy to pull off. Try combinations of family names, graduation dates, birthdays, favorite bands or sports teams – all information that many of us share willingly online. This isn’t a call to scrub down your FaceÂbook profile until it’s pointless. But Hacker Croll’s story is the latest of many (often-ignored) reasons to improve your online passwords. But since doing so is such a nuisance, here’s a simple, easy-to-remember way to craft secure passwords for all the websites that you visit. Before we roll out the grand plan, let’s walk through why most passwords stink. First, […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
