Sunday, January 30th, 2011
KATIE DUBOFF, - HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL
Stephan: Quite apart from the fundamental wrongness of the Creationist worldview, it deprives its proponents of the really extraordinary saga of how we got to be who we are today.
BOSTON, Mass. — The sequencing of the nuclear genome from an ancient finger bone found in a Siberian cave shows that the cave dwellers were neither Neandertals nor modern humans.
An international team of researchers led by Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig (Germany) has sequenced the nuclear genome from a finger bone of an extinct hominin that is at least 30,000 years old and was excavated by archaeologists from the Russian Academy of Sciences in Denisova Cave in southern Siberia, Russia, in 2008. A team at Harvard Medical School led the population-genetics analysis.
These findings are published in the December 23 issue of Nature.
Earlier this year Svante Pääbo and his colleagues showed that the mitochondrial DNA from the finger bone displayed an unusual sequence suggesting that it came from an unknown ancient hominin form. Now, using techniques the researchers developed to sequence the Neandertal genome earlier this year, they have sequenced the nuclear genome from the bone.
The researchers found that the individual was female and came from a group of hominins that shared an ancient origin with Neandertals, but subsequently diverged. They call this group of hominins Denisovans. Unlike Neandertals, Denisovans did not contribute genes […]
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Sunday, January 30th, 2011
YOLANDE KNELL, - BBC News (U.K.)
Stephan: This is a recurring pattern. The U.S. places stability ahead of democratic process, because it is more profitable in the short-term. Then, as always happens, finds itself supporting authoritarian governments, and not managing their inevitable downfall well. It has echoed across the world from Asia, to Latin America, to the Middle East. And each time it unleashes a generation of anti-American sentiment. Do you think it might be a good idea to figure out how to do this better?
I lived in Egypt for most of two years, and one learns very quickly the Egyptians do not consider themselves Arabs, and take offense at those who don't get that. Also Egypt has been a stable society for most of its multi-thousand year history, with short nasty bouts of violent social change, one of which we now seem to be entering. But Egypt is not inherently a violent culture. If the U.S. can comprehend this and support that which is life-affirming, we may get through this, and even help Egypt to become something more like Turkey, albeit more socially conservative.
CAIRO — Pro-democracy protesters have not been won over by President Mubarak’s government reshuffle
The ordered surroundings of the presidential offices where Hosni Mubarak officially appointed Omar Suleiman, his trusted intelligence chief, as his first deputy seemed a far cry from the anger and chaos that was clearly visible on nearby Cairo streets.
While he no doubt hoped his new government would assure demonstrators of his intentions to embrace political reform, as he announced on state television late on Friday, few were convinced by his efforts.
‘We are not dying so that he can just make changes to his ministers. We want a real democracy with limited presidential terms. He didn’t listen to the people,’ said Mohamed Sadiq who had joined tens of thousands of Egyptians in the crowds in central Tahrir Square.
A student, Yumla, dismissed the elderly Mr Mubarak as hopelessly out of touch with reality.
‘All people are against this president and his government and its corruption,’ said Yumla. ‘It’s rubbish. We don’t want it any more and we won’t go home until he goes.’
In recent years, pro-democracy and human rights rallies have tended to draw small numbers of the same familiar faces onto the streets, usually to be crushed with a […]
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Sunday, January 30th, 2011
Stephan: When it gets down to personal interest, I guess hypocrisy is just built into the movement's gene structure. As this report says, 'As Michael Ford of Xavier University's Center for the Study of the American Dream wrote, 'In the end, Miss Rand was a hypocrite but she could never be faulted for failing to act in her own self-interest.
Ayn Rand was not only a schlock novelist, she was also the progenitor of a sweeping ‘moral philosophy
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Saturday, January 29th, 2011
BRETT COUGHLIN, - Politico
Stephan: This is where millions of Americans are going to end up, and the profit potential can hardly be over-emphasized. This is what you get when profit and not wellbeing is the driving priority. The system is now set-up, just as the Boomers are beginning to die off, to suck the dollars out to the last breath. We aren't really humans, we're just little petcocks tapping into the money pipeline.
Data released Thursday suggest that the long-term care industry is an economic juggernaut, but an ongoing inspector general investigation is examining how nursing homes have incorporated hospice care into their business model and whether that’s good for patients or Medicare.
The data, released today the American Health Care Association, show that in 20 states, long-term care is one of the top 10 employers. In eight states - California, Florida, Illinois, Texas, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Ohio and New York - the industry provides more than 100,000 jobs.
‘In this economic engine that is the American economy, long-term care is one of the pistons, consistently firing even in the worst of hardships,
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Saturday, January 29th, 2011
, - Business Green (U.K.)
Stephan: The British have the good sense to base their policies on facts not Denier polemic bunkum. As the report says, 'Business as usual is not an option, and planning now will prevent a lot of expense down the line when the projections of climate change become a reality,' said environment minister Lord Henley. 'Businesses of all sizes need to assess how climate change could affect them.'
Flooded electricity substations and railways are two of the risks major infrastructure organisations have identified in a series of reports assessing how the UK’s roads, railways and energy supply networks will be able to cope with the effects of a changing climate.
Submissions by National Grid – for gas and electricity – the Environment Agency, Trinity Lighthouse Authority, the Highways Agency, Network Rail and Natural England were published by Defra today so the department could assess preparations for a world that could be two degrees warmer by 2050.
Network Rail, which has previously cautioned that landslides might disrupt its operations, reiterated that prediction, adding that the risk of buckling tracks and persistent flooding are also growing.
Sea levels at Dawlish in Devon, where the rails run alongside the sea, have risen 30cm since 1840, it says, and are likely to swell to 70cm by 2050 and 1.45m by 2100. This increases the risk of waves breaking over the line by 50 per cent by 2020 and three times the current figure by 2080.
It has already invested £8.5m in the past 10 years in fortifying the sea defences and establishing an early warning system to watch for rockfalls from the cliffs, but more investment […]
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