Archaeologists and forensic scientists who have examined 25 skeletons unearthed in the Clerkenwell area of London a year ago believe they have uncovered the truth about the nature of the Black Death that ravaged Britain and Europe in the mid-14th century.
Analysis of the bodies and of wills registered in London at the time has cast doubt on ‘facts” that every schoolchild has learned for decades: that the epidemic was caused by a highly contagious strain spread by the fleas on rats.
Now evidence taken from the human remains found in Charterhouse Square, to the north of the City of London, during excavations carried out as part of the construction of the Crossrail train line, have suggested a different cause: only an airborne infection could have spread so fast and killed so quickly.
The Black Death arrived in Britain from central Asia in the autumn of 1348 and by late spring the following year it had killed six out of every 10 people in London. Such a rate of destruction would kill five million now. By extracting the DNA of the disease bacterium, Yersinia pestis, from the largest teeth in some of the skulls retrieved from the square, the scientists were able to […]
Eight-year-old Olivia McConnell’s idea to have the woolly mammoth become the state fossil of South Carolina is being blocked by two senators, who want to amend the proposed bill to emphasize God created all creatures.
When eight-year-old Olivia McConnell was perusing a menu at a restaurant that features all 50 of the official symbols of her home state of South Carolina, she noticed a glaring vacancy. South Carolina has a State American Folk Dance, a State Grass, a State Opera, even a State Lowcountry Handcraft, but-no offense to square dancing, Indian grass, Porgy and Bess, or sweet grass baskets intended-McConnell thought something was missing: a state fossil.
The third grader at Carolina Academy wrote a letter to her state lawmakers, Rep. Robert Ridgeway and Sen. Kevin Johnson, in a bid to give the woolly mammoth that honor. Olivia has sound reasons behind her nomination: One of the first discoveries of a fossil in North America was that of a woolly mammoth’s teeth, dug up by slaves on a South Carolina plantation in 1725; all but seven states have an official state fossil; and, most adorably, ‘Fossils tell us about our past.”
Unfortunately for McConnell’s proposal, a pair of state senators with views as […]
YOKOHAMA — Climate change has already cut into the global food supply and is fuelling wars and natural disasters, but governments are unprepared to protect those most at risk, according to a report from the UN’s climate science panel.
The report is the first update in seven years from the UN’s international panel of experts, which is charged with producing the definitive account of climate change.
In that time, climate change has ceased to be a distant threat and made an impact much closer to home, the report’s authors say. “It’s about people now,” said Virginia Burkett, the chief scientist for global change at the US geological survey and one of the report’s authors. “It’s more relevant to the man on the street. It’s more relevant to communities because the impacts are directly affecting people – not just butterflies and sea ice.”
The scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found evidence of climate change far beyond thawing Arctic permafrost and crumbling coral reefs – “on all continents and across the oceans”.
But it was the finding that climate change could threaten global food security that caught the attention of government officials from 115 countries who reviewed the report. “All aspects of […]
Wendell Potter writes in a series of posts about the poor state of dental coverage, that millions of Americans – 36 percent, according to a 2013 survey -put off visiting the dentist because of the cost of dental care. Last year, I became one of them. In pain, and in need of emergency dental care, I was shocked to find out how little my dental insurance covered.
At the age of six, I was physically assaulted by my dentist. The experience left me with dental PTSD that made my childhood dental visits terrifying. As an adult, my dental visits became rare, were usually emergencies, and required Valium.
Last fall, a toothache drove me back to the dentist’s office. I was able to get the care I needed, but my fear of being in the dentist’s chair again was nearly matched by anxiety over at how much it would cost, and anxiety over how I would pay for it.
I was fortunate.
I wasn’t one of many Americans who end up seeking dental care in the emergency room – at 10 times the cost of preventive care. The ADA Health Policy Resources Center puts the number of dental-related ER visits in 2010 at 2.1 […]
