Global Warming New York | Search results for "genetic"

For the past three years, botanist Vicki Funk of the Smithsonian Institution has been trying, unsuccessfully, to transfer select leaf specimens from Brazil to the U.S. National Herbarium for identification. Comparing closely related plants “is the bread and butter of systematics,” she explains. “We need stuff from other places.” But as biodiversity becomes a valuable commodity, developing countries have complicated efforts to collect and analyze biological samples, Funk says: “It doesn’t matter if you’re an academic, not a drug company. You’re treated the same.” In 1992 the twin goals of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, signed by more than 150 countries, were to preserve biodiversity and to ensure tropical nations were compensated for any “genetic resources” leading to drug discoveries for developed nations. But even as those goals were reaffirmed at a conference held this past spring in Bonn, Germany, scientists continue to criticize policies stemming from the convention. The claim is that the international agreement, which gave countries ownership of plants and animals inside their borders, is hindering tropical research and conservation, not facilitating them. [More] Genetically Modified Hawaii Just beyond the defunct Koloa Sugar Mill on the Hawaiian island of Kauai's south shore are acres of cornfields that have sprouted over the past decade in a state made famous by its pineapples, bananas and sugarcane crops. Slightly out of place in the Aloha State, they otherwise look quite conventional, although in fact they are not: The crop is among a bounty of others in the state that are grown from seeds that have been genetically engineered or modified (GM) to produce sturdier plants able to withstand weather and disease as well as thrive in the face of insects and chemicals sprayed on them to kill destructive weeds. In front of one plot of corn stalks is a red and white sign warning, "Danger: pesticides. Keep out." Tacked to it is a list containing 15 chemicals that may have been applied to the crop. In this case, the chemicals circled are the herbicides pendimethalin (brand name: Prowl), dicamba (Banvel) and atrazine, the latter of which is banned in the European Union (E.U.) because of its link to birth defects in frogs that live in groundwater contaminated with it. [More]

Tags: crop, countries, chemicals, nations, state

Bats are the only mammals that can fly. Scientists have therefore been eager to learn how they evolved from their terrestrial ancestors. Until recently, however, even the oldest fossil bats still looked essentially like modern bats. New fossils have revealed a species that is helping to connect the dots between bats and their nonflying forebears. Findings from genetics and developmental biology have further illuminated bat origins, elucidating their place in the mammal family tree and the process by which the bat wing may have evolved. [More] 100 Years Ago: Engineering a City--New York City's Bridges DECEMBER 1958EVOLUTION OF BEHAVIOR-- “But is it not possible that beneath all the variations of individual behavior there lies an inner structure of inherited behavior which characterizes all the members of a given species, genus or larger taxonomic group--just as the skeleton of a primordial ancestor characterizes the form and structure of all mammals today? Yes, it is possible! Let me give an example which, while seemingly trivial, has a bearing on this question. Anyone who has watched a dog scratch its jaw or a bird preen its head feathers can attest to the fact that they do so in the same way. A bird also scratches with a hind limb (that is, its claw), and in doing so it lowers its wing and reaches its claw forward in front of its shoulder. One might think that it would be simpler for the bird to move its claw directly to its head without moving its wing, which lies folded out of the way on its back. I do not see how to explain this clumsy action unless we admit that it is inborn. --Konrad Z. Lorenz” [More]

Tags: bat, behavior, wing, claw, bird

Bats are the only mammals that can fly. Scientists have therefore been eager to learn how they evolved from their terrestrial ancestors. Until recently, however, even the oldest fossil bats still looked essentially like modern bats. New fossils have revealed a species that is helping to connect the dots between bats and their nonflying forebears. Findings from genetics and developmental biology have further illuminated bat origins, elucidating their place in the mammal family tree and the process by which the bat wing may have evolved. [More] 100 Years Ago: Engineering a City--New York City's Bridges DECEMBER 1958EVOLUTION OF BEHAVIOR-- “But is it not possible that beneath all the variations of individual behavior there lies an inner structure of inherited behavior which characterizes all the members of a given species, genus or larger taxonomic group--just as the skeleton of a primordial ancestor characterizes the form and structure of all mammals today? Yes, it is possible! Let me give an example which, while seemingly trivial, has a bearing on this question. Anyone who has watched a dog scratch its jaw or a bird preen its head feathers can attest to the fact that they do so in the same way. A bird also scratches with a hind limb (that is, its claw), and in doing so it lowers its wing and reaches its claw forward in front of its shoulder. One might think that it would be simpler for the bird to move its claw directly to its head without moving its wing, which lies folded out of the way on its back. I do not see how to explain this clumsy action unless we admit that it is inborn. --Konrad Z. Lorenz” [More]

Tags: bat, behavior, wing, claw, bird

Editor's note: This story will appear in our January issue but is being posted early because of a publication in today's Nature. Thousands of years after the last woolly mammoth lumbered across the tundra, scientists have sequenced a whopping 50 percent of the beast’s nuclear genome,  they report in a new study. Earlier attempts to sequence the DNA of these icons of the Ice Age produced only tiny quantities of code. The new work marks the first time that so much of the genetic material of an extinct creature has been retrieved. Not only has the feat provided insight into the evolutionary history of mammoths, but it is a step toward realizing the science-fiction dream of being able to resurrect a long-gone animal. [More] (Don't) Pump up the Volume: Sound Waves Silence Whales' Song The noise in the Pacific off the southern California coast has become 10 times louder over the past five decades because of the rumbling of commercial shipping vessels, the clicking of oceanographic research equipment, and the din of Navy operations and sonar systems--all of which are threatening whales that use the same frequency range to communicate. [More]

Tags: mammoth, genome, whales, scientists, time

Editor's note: This story will appear in our January issue but is being posted early because of a publication in today's Nature. Thousands of years after the last woolly mammoth lumbered across the tundra, scientists have sequenced a whopping 50 percent of the beast’s nuclear genome,  they report in a new study. Earlier attempts to sequence the DNA of these icons of the Ice Age produced only tiny quantities of code. The new work marks the first time that so much of the genetic material of an extinct creature has been retrieved. Not only has the feat provided insight into the evolutionary history of mammoths, but it is a step toward realizing the science-fiction dream of being able to resurrect a long-gone animal. [More] (Don't) Pump up the Volume: Sound Waves Silence Whales' Song The noise in the Pacific off the southern California coast has become 10 times louder over the past five decades because of the rumbling of commercial shipping vessels, the clicking of oceanographic research equipment, and the din of Navy operations and sonar systems--all of which are threatening whales that use the same frequency range to communicate. [More]

Tags: mammoth, genome, whales, scientists, time

Editor's note: This story will appear in our January issue but is being posted early because of a publication in today's Nature. Thousands of years after the last woolly mammoth lumbered across the tundra, scientists have sequenced a whopping 50 percent of the beast’s nuclear genome,  they report in a new study. Earlier attempts to sequence the DNA of these icons of the Ice Age produced only tiny quantities of code. The new work marks the first time that so much of the genetic material of an extinct creature has been retrieved. Not only has the feat provided insight into the evolutionary history of mammoths, but it is a step toward realizing the science-fiction dream of being able to resurrect a long-gone animal. [More] (Don't) Pump up the Volume: Sound Waves Silence Whales' Song The noise in the Pacific off the southern California coast has become 10 times louder over the past five decades because of the rumbling of commercial shipping vessels, the clicking of oceanographic research equipment, and the din of Navy operations and sonar systems--all of which are threatening whales that use the same frequency range to communicate. [More]

Tags: mammoth, genome, whales, scientists, time

Wandering the aisles of a supermarket several years ago, one of us (Hebert) marveled at how the store could keep track of the array of merchandise simply by examining the varying order of thick and thin lines that make up a product’s barcode. Why, he mused, couldn’t the unique ordering of the four nucleic acids in a short strand of DNA be mined in a similar way to identify the legions of species on earth? Ever since Carl Linnaeus began systematically classifying all living things 250 years ago, biologists have looked at various features--color, shape, even behavior--to identify animals and plants. In the past few decades, researchers have begun to apply the genetic information in DNA to the task. But both classical and modern genetic methods demand great expertise and eat up huge amounts of time. Using just a small section of the DNA--something more akin to the 12-digit barcode on products--would require far less time and skill. [More] The X Chromosome and the Case against Monogamy Researchers report genetic evidence bolstering the socially contentious idea that polygyny--the mating practice where some males dominate reproduction by fathering children with several women--was the norm for sexual behavior throughout human history and prehistory. Because polygyny means other men father few or no children, the study, published today in PLoS Genetics, also shows that, on average, women bequeath more genes to their offspring than men do.  [More]

Tags: dna, genetic, behavior, identify, barcode

“Wasteland” conjures up visions of dusty desolation where life is fleeting and harsh--if it exists at all. Oceans, too, have their inhospitable pockets. Scientists are discovering that climate change--and not just fertilizer from farm use--may be spurring the emergence of barren underwater landscapes in coastal waters. Expanding dead zones not only spell trouble for biodiversity, but they also threaten the commercial fisheries of many nations. Dead zones are not new; they form seasonally in economically vital ecoystems worldwide, including the Gulf of Mexico and Chesapeake Bay. Agricultural runoff sparks many of these die-offs; increased use of nitrogen fertilizers has doubled the number of lifeless pockets every decade since the 1960s, resulting in 405 dead zones now dotting coastlines globally. [More] Bar Code of Life: DNA Tags Help Classify Animals Wandering the aisles of a supermarket several years ago, one of us (Hebert) marveled at how the store could keep track of the array of merchandise simply by examining the varying order of thick and thin lines that make up a product’s barcode. Why, he mused, couldn’t the unique ordering of the four nucleic acids in a short strand of DNA be mined in a similar way to identify the legions of species on earth? Ever since Carl Linnaeus began systematically classifying all living things 250 years ago, biologists have looked at various features--color, shape, even behavior--to identify animals and plants. In the past few decades, researchers have begun to apply the genetic information in DNA to the task. But both classical and modern genetic methods demand great expertise and eat up huge amounts of time. Using just a small section of the DNA--something more akin to the 12-digit barcode on products--would require far less time and skill. [More]

Tags: dna, dead, zones, pockets, identify

Dawson City, Yukon--After revving up with a roar, a core drill designed to punch holes in concrete begins digging into ice more than 100,000 years old. Here in the Klondike, the drill serves as a kind of gas-powered, handheld time machine, bringing up frozen earth from the Pleistocene, when mammoths and other megafauna once ruled. In a land where miners still hunt for gold, paleomammalogist Ross Mac­Phee of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and his colleagues seek a different kind of treasure--DNA from extinct titans. Millennia ago, as the earth in the Klon­dike cracked during the springtime thaw, water leaked in, only to freeze again during winter to form wedges of ice, explains geologist Duane Froese of the University of Alberta. Dripping in with this water was sediment from the surface, which might hold DNA from mammoths, as well as that of the plants, bacteria and other life once found in the region, MacPhee says. Nothing is known about the genetics of mammoths from the middle Pleistocene, and such DNA could elucidate their evolution. The researchers hope to find clear evidence that two species of , not just one, roamed the Americas at the end of the last ice age. [More] Not-So-Permafrost: Big Thaw of Arctic Soil May Unleash Runaway Warming "Drunken" trees listing wildly, cracked highways and sinkholes--all are visible signs of thawing Arctic permafrost. When this frozen soil warms, it releases carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases as microbes start to thrive on the organic material it contains--a potentially potent source of uncontrollable climate change. [More]

Tags: mammoth, dna, ice, kind, thaw

Researchers report genetic evidence bolstering the socially contentious idea that polygyny--the mating practice where some males dominate reproduction by fathering children with several women--was the norm for sexual behavior throughout human history and prehistory. Because polygyny means other men father few or no children, the study, published today in PLoS Genetics, also shows that, on average, women bequeath more genes to their offspring than men do.  [More] Going Green to Save the Economy: A Q&A with Thomas L. Friedman Some politicians and pundits fear that addressing global warming will drain the U.S. economy and hurt the nation’s competitive edge. But going green and clean is the best way to remain an economic powerhouse, argues Thomas L. Friedman in his new book Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008). We asked Friedman, a New York Times op-ed columnist, to explain his thinking. Click here for an extended version of this inteview [More]

Tags: green, women, friedman, men, polygyny

Dawson City, Yukon--After revving up with a roar, a core drill designed to punch holes in concrete begins digging into ice more than 100,000 years old. Here in the Klondike, the drill serves as a kind of gas-powered, handheld time machine, bringing up frozen earth from the Pleistocene, when mammoths and other megafauna once ruled. In a land where miners still hunt for gold, paleomammalogist Ross Mac­Phee of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and his colleagues seek a different kind of treasure--DNA from extinct titans. Millennia ago, as the earth in the Klon­dike cracked during the springtime thaw, water leaked in, only to freeze again during winter to form wedges of ice, explains geologist Duane Froese of the University of Alberta. Dripping in with this water was sediment from the surface, which might hold DNA from mammoths, as well as that of the plants, bacteria and other life once found in the region, MacPhee says. Nothing is known about the genetics of mammoths from the middle Pleistocene, and such DNA could elucidate their evolution. The researchers hope to find clear evidence that two species of mammoth, not just one, roamed the Americas at the end of the last ice age. [More] Not-So-Permafrost: Big Thaw of Arctic Soil May Unleash Runaway Warming "Drunken" trees listing wildly, cracked highways and sinkholes--all are visible signs of thawing Arctic permafrost. When this frozen soil warms, it releases carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases as microbes start to thrive on the organic material it contains--a potentially potent source of uncontrollable climate change. [More]

Tags: mammoth, dna, ice, kind, thaw

Editor's Note: This is an extended version of the "Sustainable Developments" column from the July Issue of Scientific American. In a dramatic call to action in April, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon--backed by the African Union, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the Gates Foundation, ExxonMobil, the World Bank, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, among other key international organizations and businesses--set a timetable for comprehensive malaria control in Africa by the end of 2010. Ki-moon has listened to the best science, weighed the recent evidence, and thrown down the gauntlet: there is no reason why a million or more children should die every year of a largely preventable and wholly treatable disease. Now we have a global timetable and a coalition to end the scourge. [More] News Bytes of the Week--Przewalski's Prize: Vets Reverse Vasectomy on Endangered Horse Back out to stud: veterinarians perform first reverse vasectomy on an endangered horse Veterinarians at the Smithsonian Institute's National Zoo  in Washington, D.C., announced this week that they reversed a vasectomy that had been performed nearly a decade ago on a Przewalski's horse (pronounced "zshah-VAL-skeez"), a short, stocky breed that only grows to about four feet (1.3 meters) tall. About 1,500 of the animals have been raised in zoos worldwide since 1970, when they were declared extinct in the wild in their native Mongolia and China. Fearing a loss of genetic diversity in the tiny remaining population, scientists surveyed captive Przewalski's horses in search a set of genes worthy of being passed on. One of their primo candidates: a  20-year-old male named Minnesota, a former resident of the Minnesota Zoo. Alas, it turned out that Minnesota had had a vasectomy in 1999 so that he could be housed with but not impregnate female Przewalski's horses. A first attempt to reverse his vasectomy in March 2007 failed, but zoo officials say a second effort seven months later seems to have done the trick. National Zoo scientists hope to arrange a rendezvous between Minnesota and a suitable female next month. [More]

Tags: vasectomy, zoo, horse, przewalski, minnesota

Ovulating strippers make bigger tipsStrippers looking to shake their moneymakers most profitably may need only swing to the beat of their menstrual cycles. In a revealing study, University of New Mexico researchers (three altruistic guys) recruited 18 subjects (scantily clad women dancers) to log their work shifts, earnings and menstrual cycles (phone numbers, too?) on a Web site for two months, or about 5,300 lap dances. The naked truth: participants scored $335 per five-hour shift while ovulating compared with $260 per shift during the luteal phase after ovulation and $185 while menstruating. The dancers' scientifically gyrating pelvises provided the first direct evidence for human estrus--the equivalent of a baboon's bright red rump--the group reported in Evolution & Human Behavior. (Evol. Hum. Behav.) [More] World's Top 10 Most Polluted Places Sumqayit in Azerbaijan gained the dubious distinction this week of being added to Blacksmith Institute's top 10 list of the world's most polluted sites. Yet another heir to the toxic legacy of Soviet industry, the city of 275,000 souls bears heavy metal, oil and chemical contamination from its days as a center of chemical production. As a result, local Azeris suffer cancer rates 22 to 51 percent higher than their countrymen and their children suffer from a host of genetic defects ranging from mental retardation to bone diseases. "As much as 120,000 tons of harmful emissions were released on an annual basis, including mercury," says Richard Fuller, founder of Blacksmith, an environmental health organization based in New York City. "There are huge untreated dumps of industrial sludge." [More]

Tags: ovulating, shift, cycles, dancers, bigger

Dawson City, Yukon--After revving up with a roar, a core drill designed to punch holes in concrete begins digging into ice more than 100,000 years old. Here in the Klondike, the drill serves as a kind of gas-powered, handheld time machine, bringing up frozen earth from the Pleistocene, when mammoths and other megafauna once ruled. In a land where miners still hunt for gold, paleomammalogist Ross Mac­Phee of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and his colleagues seek a different kind of treasure--DNA from extinct titans. Millennia ago, as the earth in the Klon­dike cracked during the springtime thaw, water leaked in, only to freeze again during winter to form wedges of ice, explains geologist Duane Froese of the University of Alberta. Dripping in with this water was sediment from the surface, which might hold DNA from mammoths, as well as that of the plants, bacteria and other life once found in the region, MacPhee says. Nothing is known about the genetics of mammoths from the middle Pleistocene, and such DNA could elucidate their evolution. The researchers hope to find clear evidence that two species of , not just one, roamed the Americas at the end of the last ice age. [More] Not-So-Permafrost: Big Thaw of Arctic Soil May Unleash Runaway Warming "Drunken" trees listing wildly, cracked highways and sinkholes--all are visible signs of thawing Arctic permafrost. When this frozen soil warms, it releases carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases as microbes start to thrive on the organic material it contains--a potentially potent source of uncontrollable climate change. [More]

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Gary Stix discusses his July Scientific American cover article on DNA evidence for the history of human migration. And editor in chief, John Rennie, talks about the neuroscience of dance, the quantum cosmos and Rubik's Cubes. Plus, we'll test your knowledge of some recent science in the news. Web sites mentioned on this episode include www.sciam.com/sciammag Podcast Transcription [More] Law Protects Genetic Secrets History Would Rather Let Lie When our ancient ancestors migrated out of Africa and throughout the rest of the world, telltale variations in the DNA of the people who settled along the way marked their passage. Today anthropologists and molecular biologists of the Genographic Project, sponsored by the National Geographic Society and others, seek to reconstruct the forgotten migration routes by looking for those genetic “footprints,” as senior writer Gary Stix relates in his article “The Migration History of Humans: DNA Study Traces Human Origins Across the Continents". The unwillingness of many indigenous groups in Australia, the Americas and elsewhere to submit DNA samples has hindered progress, however. Some worry that industrialists will exploit a pharmaceutically useful detail of their genetic patrimony and pay them nothing for it. Still others worry, with good cause, that information emerging from the studies might contradict their cultural traditions about their origins (Native Americans who believe their people have always occupied certain lands do not welcome the suggestion that their ancestors came from Siberia 13,000 years ago). Given the long histories of oppression and insensitivity some of those groups have suffered, their desire for genetic privacy is understandable. [More]

Tags: dna, migration, human, genetic, history

Dawson City, Yukon--After revving up with a roar, a core drill designed to punch holes in concrete begins digging into ice more than 100,000 years old. Here in the Klondike, the drill serves as a kind of gas-powered, handheld time machine, bringing up frozen earth from the Pleistocene, when mammoths and other megafauna once ruled. In a land where miners still hunt for gold, paleomammalogist Ross Mac­Phee of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and his colleagues seek a different kind of treasure--DNA from extinct titans. Millennia ago, as the earth in the Klon­dike cracked during the springtime thaw, water leaked in, only to freeze again during winter to form wedges of ice, explains geologist Duane Froese of the University of Alberta. Dripping in with this water was sediment from the surface, which might hold DNA from mammoths, as well as that of the plants, bacteria and other life once found in the region, MacPhee says. Nothing is known about the genetics of mammoths from the middle Pleistocene, and such DNA could elucidate their evolution. The researchers hope to find clear evidence that two species of mammoth, not just one, roamed the Americas at the end of the last ice age. [More] Not-So-Permafrost: Big Thaw of Arctic Soil May Unleash Runaway Warming "Drunken" trees listing wildly, cracked highways and sinkholes--all are visible signs of thawing Arctic permafrost. When this frozen soil warms, it releases carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases as microbes start to thrive on the organic material it contains--a potentially potent source of uncontrollable climate change. [More]

Tags: mammoth, dna, ice, kind, thaw

Dawson City, Yukon--After revving up with a roar, a core drill designed to punch holes in concrete begins digging into ice more than 100,000 years old. Here in the Klondike, the drill serves as a kind of gas-powered, handheld time machine, bringing up frozen earth from the Pleistocene, when mammoths and other megafauna once ruled. In a land where miners still hunt for gold, paleomammalogist Ross Mac­Phee of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and his colleagues seek a different kind of treasure--DNA from extinct titans. Millennia ago, as the earth in the Klon­dike cracked during the springtime thaw, water leaked in, only to freeze again during winter to form wedges of ice, explains geologist Duane Froese of the University of Alberta. Dripping in with this water was sediment from the surface, which might hold DNA from mammoths, as well as that of the plants, bacteria and other life once found in the region, MacPhee says. Nothing is known about the genetics of mammoths from the middle Pleistocene, and such DNA could elucidate their evolution. The researchers hope to find clear evidence that two species of mammoth, not just one, roamed the Americas at the end of the last ice age. [More] Not-So-Permafrost: Big Thaw of Arctic Soil May Unleash Runaway Warming "Drunken" trees listing wildly, cracked highways and sinkholes--all are visible signs of thawing Arctic permafrost. When this frozen soil warms, it releases carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases as microbes start to thrive on the organic material it contains--a potentially potent source of uncontrollable climate change. [More]

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Editor's Note: This is an extended version of the "Sustainable Developments" column from the July Issue of Scientific American. In a dramatic call to action in April, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon--backed by the African Union, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the Gates Foundation, ExxonMobil, the World Bank, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, among other key international organizations and businesses--set a timetable for comprehensive malaria control in Africa by the end of 2010. Ki-moon has listened to the best science, weighed the recent evidence, and thrown down the gauntlet: there is no reason why a million or more children should die every year of a largely preventable and wholly treatable disease. Now we have a global timetable and a coalition to end the scourge. [More] News Bytes of the Week--Przewalski's Prize: Vets Reverse Vasectomy on Endangered Horse Back out to stud: veterinarians perform first reverse on an endangered horse Veterinarians at the Smithsonian Institute's National Zoo  in Washington, D.C., announced this week that they reversed a vasectomy that had been performed nearly a decade ago on a Przewalski's horse (pronounced "zshah-VAL-skeez"), a short, stocky breed that only grows to about four feet (1.3 meters) tall. About 1,500 of the animals have been raised in zoos worldwide since 1970, when they were declared extinct in the wild in their native Mongolia and China. Fearing a loss of genetic diversity in the tiny remaining population, scientists surveyed captive Przewalski's horses in search a set of genes worthy of being passed on. One of their primo candidates: a  20-year-old male named Minnesota, a former resident of the Minnesota Zoo. Alas, it turned out that Minnesota had had a vasectomy in 1999 so that he could be housed with but not impregnate female Przewalski's horses. A first attempt to reverse his vasectomy in March 2007 failed, but zoo officials say a second effort seven months later seems to have done the trick. National Zoo scientists hope to arrange a rendezvous between Minnesota and a suitable female next month. [More]

Tags: vasectomy, zoo, horse, przewalski, minnesota

Gary Stix discusses his July Scientific American cover article on DNA evidence for the history of human migration. And editor in chief, John Rennie, talks about the neuroscience of dance, the quantum cosmos and Rubik's Cubes. Plus, we'll test your knowledge of some recent science in the news. Web sites mentioned on this episode include www.sciam.com/sciammag Podcast Transcription [More] Law Protects Genetic Secrets History Would Rather Let Lie When our ancient ancestors migrated out of Africa and throughout the rest of the world, telltale variations in the DNA of the people who settled along the way marked their passage. Today anthropologists and molecular biologists of the Genographic Project, sponsored by the National Geographic Society and others, seek to reconstruct the forgotten migration routes by looking for those genetic “footprints,” as senior writer Gary Stix relates in his article “The Migration History of Humans: DNA Study Traces Human Origins Across the Continents". The unwillingness of many indigenous groups in Australia, the Americas and elsewhere to submit DNA samples has hindered progress, however. Some worry that industrialists will exploit a pharmaceutically useful detail of their genetic patrimony and pay them nothing for it. Still others worry, with good cause, that information emerging from the studies might contradict their cultural traditions about their origins (Native Americans who believe their people have always occupied certain lands do not welcome the suggestion that their ancestors came from Siberia 13,000 years ago). Given the long histories of oppression and insensitivity some of those groups have suffered, their desire for genetic privacy is understandable. [More]

Tags: dna, migration, human, genetic, history

A development company controlled by Osama bin Laden’s half brother revealed last year that it wants to build a bridge that will span the Bab el Mandeb, the outlet of the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean. If this ambitious project is ever realized, the throngs of African pilgrims who traverse one of the longest bridges in the world on a journey to Mecca would pass hundreds of feet above the probable route of the most memorable journey in history. Fifty or sixty thousand years ago a small band of Africans--a few hundred or even several thousand--crossed the strait in tiny boats, never to return. The reason they left their homeland in eastern Africa is not completely understood. Perhaps the climate changed, or once abundant shellfish stocks vanished. But some things are fairly certain. Those first trekkers out of Africa brought with them the physical and behavioral traits--the large brains and the capacity for language--that characterize fully modern humans. From their bivouac on the Asian continent in what is now Yemen, they set out on a decamillennial journey that spanned continents and land bridges and reached all the way to Tierra del Fuego, at the bottom of South America. [More] No-Till: How Farmers Are Saving the Soil by Parking Their Plows John Aeschliman turns over a shovelful of topsoil on his 4,000-acre farm in the Palouse region of eastern Washington State. The black earth crumbles easily, revealing a porous structure and an abundance of organic matter that facilitate root growth. Loads of earthworms are visible, too--another healthy sign. Thirty-four years ago only a few earthworms, if any, could be found in a spadeful of his soil. Back then, Aeschliman would plow the fields before each planting, burying the residues from the previous crop and readying the ground for the next one. The hilly Palouse region had been farmed that way for decades. But the tillage was taking a toll on the Palouse, and its famously fertile soil was eroding at an alarming rate. Convinced that there had to be a better way to work the land, Aeschliman decided to experiment in 1974 with an emerging method known as no-till farming. [More]

Tags: human, continent, aeschliman, journey, soil