Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Stories below the fold

Boys will be boys and men will be men story of the day:

Archeoblog: New light on Old Neanderthals
The abstract for the article, entitled The Date of Interbreeding between Neandertals and Modern Humans, which is free to access, is as follows
Comparisons of DNA sequences between Neandertals and present-day humans have shown that Neandertals share more genetic variants with non-Africans than with Africans.... We measure the extent of linkage disequilibrium (LD) in the genomes of present-day Europeans and find that the last gene flow from Neandertals (or their relatives) into Europeans likely occurred 37,000–86,000 years before the present (BP), and most likely 47,000–65,000 years ago...
More at Nat Geo.

but earlier stories suggesting European red heads got their red hair from Neanderthal genes is not true: one of my podcasts about this said it's a different gene.

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A breakthrough in deciphering Proto Elemite writing?

interesting story, but they still can't read it.

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Denver zoologists save a baby tapir with "mouth to snout respiration".

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Your tax dollars at work boondoggle of the week:

Wiring hiking trails to play canned music.



Users of a peaceful and popular Santa Clarita trail will soon be exposed to a "sonic intervention" as a new project designed to encourage passersby to linger and listen gets underway.
The endeavor, called Stroll, is a collaboration between the city of Santa Clarita and the California Institute of the Arts and uses audio devices erected along the city's South Fork Trail to emit an eclectic mix of field recordings, electronic sounds, the spoken word and performed music.
No, there is no mention about how much it costs, or why those setting it up never figured out that if we wanted to listen to " Tibetans chanting mantras in Katmandu, Nepal. Robin Sukhadia, now a graduate of the CalArts program, collected street sounds from Kolkata, India; and KristĂ­n Pora Haraldsdottir documented poems from her native Iceland' we could just put the noise on our ipods...

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will a new additive result in the antibiotics being able to kill MRSA?

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 Andy Serkis, the CGActor behind Gollum, is planning to direct a new film Animal Farm.

altogether now: All Animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others....

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Latest fake job; new book by British woman claims she was brought up my monkeys.

yet despite not having contact with humans in the time one develops language, apparantly she managed to learn not only Spanish but English...

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Freakonomics points out the law of unintended consequences and recycling laws:
an L.A. Times article suggests the system is being gamed. Last year, it appears that nearly 100 percent of recyclable cans sold in California were returned, and 104 percent (!) of plastic containers:
Crafty entrepreneurs are driving semi-trailers full of cans from Nevada or Arizona, which don’t have deposit laws, across the border and transforming their cargo into truckfuls of nickels. In addition, recyclers inside the state are claiming redemptions for the same containers several times over, or for containers that never existed.
and then there is this lesson on how to pay lower electric bills.
 
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