The last of the Neanderthals may have died out tens of thousands of years ago, but large stretches of their genetic code live on in people today.

Though many of us can claim only a handful of Neanderthal genes, when added together, the human population carries more than a fifth of the archaic human’s DNA, researchers found.

The finding means that scientists can study about 20% of the Neanderthal genome without having to prise the genetic material from fragile and ancient fossils.

The Neanderthal traces in our genetic makeup are the lasting legacy of sexual encounters between our direct ancestors and the Neanderthals they met when they walked out of Africa and into Eurasia about 65,000 years ago.

The populations of both groups were likely so small that interbreeding was a rare event, but the benefits of some Neanderthal genes were so great that they spread through the population and linger on in modern non-Africans today.

Benjamin Vernot and Joshua Akey at the University of Washington in Seattle sequenced the genomes of more than 600 people from Europe and eastern Asia. They then used a computer analysis to find gene variants that bore all the hallmarks of having come from Neanderthals.

To see whether the technique […]

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Despite a slowly recovering economy, the proportion of Americans who identify themselves as middle class has dropped sharply in recent years. Today, about as many Americans identify themselves as lower or lower-middle class (40%) as say they are in the middle class (44%), according to a recent Pew Research Center/USA TODAY survey.

The nationally representative survey of 1,504 adults conducted Jan. 15-19 found that the share of Americans who identify with the middle class has never been lower, dropping to 44% in the latest survey from 53% in 2008 during the first months of the Great Recession.

At the same time, the share of the public who says they are in the lower or lower-middle classes rose by 15 percentage points, from 25% in 2008 to 40% today.

As a consequence of these shifts, the difference in the proportion of Americans who say they are middle class and those who say they are in the lower classes has fallen from 28 percentage points in 2008 (53% vs. 25%) to a statistically insignificant 4 points today (44% vs. 40%).

The survey also found that the upper classes have not been immune from the changes reshaping the middle and lower classes. In 2008, about […]

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Dump your vitamin and mineral supplements? We say no. We’re still taking ours, despite some new studies bashing multivitamin benefits. We’re also ignoring headlines like “Multivitamins a Waste of Money” and “Your Multivitamins aren’t Doing a D**n Thing” — and we think you should, too.

We’re convinced that some vitamin supplements have plenty of health-protecting benefits — especially if you’re over 50, eat a less-than-perfect diet, are a woman of reproductive age or are among the tens of millions of Americans who take nutrient-zapping drugs for high blood pressure, diabetes or to tame stomach acid. That’s a lot of folks. So why the opposition to multivitamins?

One metastudy conducted for the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force looked at 27 supplement studies involving more than 400,000 people. It found no benefit for longevity, cancer prevention or heart health in people without nutrient deficiencies.

The second followed 5,947 guys for 12 years and found that multivitamins didn’t sharpen thinking or memory in men who ate healthy diets.

The third tracked more than 1,700 heart-attack survivors and, again, found no heart-health benefits for those who took a multivitamin, but plenty of people dropped out of that study. All three studies appeared in the same issue of the […]

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One October evening, in the midst of the 2013 government shutdown, I watched Bill O’Reilly work himself into something of a state. He sat at his desk, his hands palms upward, fingers slightly curved, as if cupping something in them. ‘I want Hagel.” he said, staring into the camera. ‘I want Hagel. I want him.” A casual observer might interpret this moment as O’Reilly expressing his fierce but tender desire for Chuck Hagel, the Secretary of Defense. More experienced O’Reilly viewers, however, will recognize it as a signal that the unfortunate Hagel had plummeted downward in O’Reilly’s estimation from pinhead to evildoer. (There are only three kinds of people in Bill O’Reilly’s world: good hardworking Americans, pinheads-people who are not actually malevolent but who are too stupid to understand the way the world really works-and evildoers.)

I know these things about O’Reilly because, for the entire month of October, I watched Fox News for approximately three hours every day, while at the same time strictly abstaining from any other sources of information about current events. The reason I engaged in this self-induced Fox News torture was that it had become clear that the right-wing media in general, and Fox News in […]

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A retired Army general and Fox News analyst told a Tea Party group that he would lead a military coup against the U.S. government, if only reluctantly.

Paul Vallely, a retired major general and senior military analyst for the conservative news channel, told the Surprise, Arizona, Tea Party Patriots during a Dec. 3 speech that other retired military personnel and veterans groups had contacted him about the possibility.

‘I had a call this afternoon from Idaho, the gentleman said, “If I give you 250,000 Marines to go to Washington, will you lead them?’” Vallely said as the group laughed and gasped. ‘I said, “Yes, I will, I’ll surround the White House and I’ll surround the Capitol building, but it’s going to take physical presence to do things.”

Vallely, who has suggested a variety of extra-constitutional remedies to remove President Barack Obama from office, said extraordinary means were necessary to achieve the legislative results he wanted.

‘Writing letters to these senators and congressmen, I am so frustrated because nothing happens,” Vallely said. ‘I’m not inciting a revolution, but we’ve got to get more physical and stand up and protest.

He said such a protest would be a continuation of Tea Party activism.

‘The great things the Tea […]

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