Friday, December 28th, 2012
CHARLES CHOI, - Live Science
Stephan: Almost all of the material in this report was covered in SR through the course of the year. However, I thought that publishing a compendium report would be a useful thing to do. It tells us, once again, that much of what we learned in school about humanity's past was wrong.
The controversial extinct human lineage known as ‘hobbits’ gained a face this year, one of many projects that shed light in 2012 on the history of modern humans and their relatives. Other discoveries include the earliest known controlled use of fire and the possibility that Neanderthals or other extinct human lineages once sailed to the Mediterranean.
Here’s a look at what we learned about ourselves through our ancestors this year.
We’re not alone
A trove of discoveries this year revealed a host of other extinct relatives of modern humans. For instance, researchers unearthed 3.4-million-year-old fossils of a hitherto unknown species that lived about the same time and place as Australopithecus afarensis, a leading candidate for the ancestor of the human lineage. In addition, fossils between 1.78 million and 1.95 million years old discovered in 2007 and 2009 in northern Kenya suggest that at least two extinct human species lived alongside Homo erectus, a direct ancestor of our species. Moreover, fossils only between 11,500 and 14,500 years old hint that a previously unknown type of human called the ‘Red Deer Cave People’ once lived in China.
Bones were not all that scientists revealed about modern humans’ extinct relatives in 2012. For instance, scientists finally […]
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Thursday, December 27th, 2012
ROBERT FRANK, Reporter & Editor - CNBC
Stephan: The Chinese are transforming themselves economically. But they are using a political system to do it that people flee when they are able. This is a very important insight to keep in mind. Ironically many of these fleeing Chinese end up in the U.S., bring their money with them.
Most countries worry about brain drain. China is worried about millionaire drain.
A new report in China shows that 150,000 Chinese – most of them wealthy – emigrated to other countries in 2011. While that number may not seem high for a country of more than a billion people, the flight of China’s richest – and the offshoring of their fortunes – could cost the country jobs and economic growth, according to the study from the Center for China and Globalization and the Beijing Institute of Technology.
‘The private economy contributes more than 60 percent of China’s GDP and it absorbs a majority of employees. So if private business owners emigrate with their capital, it would mean less investment in the domestic market, so fewer jobs would be created,’ Wang Huiyao, director of the Center for China and Globalization, told the state-run China Daily today.
The fleeing millionaires mainly made their money in real estate, foreign currency and deposits and stocks, among other fields, according to the report. They are mainly leaving Beijing, Shanghai and coastal provinces such as Zhejiang, Guangdong and Jiangsu. (Read more: BRICs Outpace U.S. in Millionaires)
The Chinese government has struggled to stem the tide of wealthy Chinese moving abroad […]
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Thursday, December 27th, 2012
MARC LALLANILLA, - Live science
Stephan: Here is the latest in the GMO trend. I think an entire marketing segment is going to appear: those who will not buy GMO foods be they vegetable, animal, poultry, or fish. But for millions of others who do not care, or can not afford that option and who eat these foods their health may or may not be at risk. Without really discussing it, we are engaged in a great animal study, and those who eat GMO are the lab rats. This is what happens when profit, and not national wellness, is the first priority.
Genetically modified Atlantic salmon – known by critics as ‘Frankenfish’ – may soon be available in your local grocer’s seafood aisle. The Food and Drug Administration has given initial approval to the biotech developers of the salmon, clearing the last big hurdle before consumers can purchase the fish.
But consumers won’t know if the salmon they’re buying is genetically engineered or not – U.S. regulations don’t require food made from a genetically modified organism (GMO) to be labeled. That fact, plus the impact the engineered salmon could have on wild salmon stocks, human health and the fishing industry, has critics raising a stink with the FDA, according to the Huffington Post.
The Atlantic salmon developed by Massachusetts-based AquaBounty was genetically modified using DNA material from a Chinook salmon and an eel-like species called an ocean pout. These genes cause the fish to grow twice as fast as wild salmon, according to the British newspaper The Telegraph, making production of the fish far more cost effective.
Though many other GMO foods are now available – from papaya engineered to resist the ringspot virus to canola plants that can withstand weed-killing herbicides – the FDA’s approval marks the first time a genetically engineered animal […]
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Thursday, December 27th, 2012
, - The Associated Press/Washington Post
Stephan: We're spending our money in Afghanistan, making their ruling elite, and ours literally pots of money. Meanwhile the Chinese are doing what....? That's right building high speed rail. Meanwhile our passenger trains, when you can find one, average a searing 59 miles an hour across tracks laid when your grandfather was a boy.
BEIJING — China on Wednesday opened the world’s longest high-speed rail line that more than halves the time required to travel from the country’s capital in the north to Guangzhou, an economic hub in southern China.
The opening of the 2,298 kilometer (1,428 mile)-line was commemorated by the 9 a.m. departure of a train from Beijing for Guangzhou. Another train left Guangzhou for Beijing an hour later.
On Wednesday, China opened the world’s longest high-speed rail line that more than halves the time required to travel from the country’s capital in the north to Guangzhou, an economic hub in southern China.
China has opened the world’s longest high-speed rail line, which runs 1,428 miles from Beijing to Guangzhou.
China has massive resources and considerable prestige invested in its showcase high-speed railways program.
But it has in recent months faced high-profile problems: part of a line collapsed in central China after heavy rains in March, while a bullet train crash in the summer of 2011 killed 40 people. The former railway minister, who spearheaded the bullet train’s construction, and the ministry’s chief engineer, were detained in an unrelated corruption investigation months before the crash.
Trains on the latest high-speed line will initially run at 300 kph (186 […]
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Thursday, December 27th, 2012
JAMES FLUERE, - Science Recorder
Stephan: One of the things about fooling with major ecosystems to satisfy some short-term profit motive is that what we think we know is never the whole story. There are always unintended consequences, and they are usually negative and unhappy, as this report describes.
The study's findings are described in detail in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Researchers at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst have uncovered evidence that suggests that Amazon deforestation is devastating microbial communities.
‘We found that after rainforest conversion to agricultural pastures, bacterial communities were significantly different from those of forest soils,
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