Pacific Tsunami Warning Area Expanded After 8.1 Quake

This happened Wednesday, November 15, 2006 at 03:14:16 AM? (PST) – Pacific Standard (Los Angeles, Vancouver, Tijuana).

– A tsunami warning area was expanded from eastern Russia to Guam after a magnitude-8.1 earthquake struck in the northern Pacific off the Russian Kuril Islands. The first waves were detected in northern Japan and measured up to 30 centimeters (1 foot) on the island of Hokkaido, the U.S. Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said. Wave heights of 20 centimeters were recorded north of Tokyo, Japan’s meteorological agency said. Japan later downgraded its alert for Hokkaido to an advisory.

“That’s good news because it was a fairly big earthquake,” Victor Sardina, a geophysicist at the center in Honolulu, Hawaii, said in a telephone interview. “The wave is pretty small and we don’t expect extensive damage. We will still keep monitoring to make sure it doesn’t represent a threat.”The quake struck today at 8:15 p.m. Tokyo time at a depth of 30 kilometers (19 miles), the Japanese agency said. Residents of Japanese coastal areas were urged to flee after the agency said the tsunami could produce a wave up to 2 meters (6.5 feet) high in northern and eastern Japan. – bloom

Neanderthal DNA decoded

Using a 38,000-year-old bone fragment found in a Croatian cave, scientists have decoded a section of DNA from humanity’s closest related species ? the long extinct and enigmatic Neanderthal.

So far, researchers have sequenced only about 1 million out of an estimated 3 billion base pairs of the Neanderthal genome. They expect it will take two years to complete a full draft.

The reports, to be published concurrently Thursday in the journals Nature and Science, demonstrate the feasibility of squeezing genetic information out of fossils ? a new way of probing the ancient past that until now has been glimpsed primarily through scattered bones and artifacts.

For more than 100,000 years, Neanderthals lived throughout Europe and western Asia but died out shortly after modern humans began to push their way north from Africa about 40,000 years ago.

“They disappeared from the fossil record from the planet about 28,000 to 30,000 years ago,” said Edward Rubin, director of the genomics division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and senior author of the report in Science. “The sequence data will serve as a DNA time machine that will tell us about biology and aspects of Neanderthals that we could never get from their bones.”

The preliminary sequences contain enough information to calculate that Homo neanderthalis and Homo sapiens shared at least 99.5% of their DNA. All the characteristics that make humans unique are contained in the remaining 0.5%.

The two species last shared a common ancestor about 700,000 year ago. Significant mixing between ancestors of Neanderthals and humans ended about 370,000 years ago, according to Rubin’s group. – latimes

Interesting. Recall this study from 2003:

One study “found that 99.4 percent of the most critical DNA sites are identical in the corresponding human and chimp genes. With that close a relationship, the two living chimp species belong in the genus Homo, says Morris Goodman of Wayne State University in Detroit.” – newsci

Rumsfeld Gone Wild

It took me a minute to figure out what was going on here! Great stuff.

Pakistan ‘kidney bazaar’ thrives

JANDALA, Pakistan (AP) — Nassem Kausar has done it. So, she says, have her sister, six brothers, five sisters-in-law and two nephews.

Each has sold a kidney to a trade that has led Pakistan’s media to dub the country a “kidney bazaar.”

“We do this because of our poverty,” said Kausar, who is in her 30s and lives with her family in Sultanpur Mor, a village in eastern Pakistan.

A kidney nets the donor $2,500, sometimes less than half that amount, while recipients — some 2,000 a year — pay $6,000 to $12,000, compared with $70,000 in neighboring China.

Critics blame an economic system that enmeshes farmers in chronic debt, forcing them to sell their kidneys, and say the trade should be banned. The government says it is taking action.

In the United States, donating kidneys for money is banned. – cnn

Conspiracy theories propel AM radio show into Top 10

There was a time when “Coast to Coast AM,” the late-night syndicated talk radio show dedicated to paranormal activities and political conspiracies, didn’t get much respect.

“At one point it was, ‘Oh, that strange show about weird paranormal things?’ ” said George Noory, who has hosted the program on weeknights from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. PST full time since 2003.

That all changed when millions from the mainstream met up with the after-midnight fringe folks to make “Coast to Coast AM” a top-rated radio show.

The show that gives self-described vampires a place to vent on its Friday night Wild Card line is the same one that was taking calls about Sept. 11 conspiracy theories just two weeks after the terrorist attacks. And “Coast to Coast AM,” which airs in the Bay Area on KSFO 560 AM, is the same show that can now reach upward of 3 million listeners through 500 stations each week, according to Premiere Radio Networks, the company that syndicates the show.

“There’s absolutely a growing conspiracy climate,” said Noory, explaining the phenomenon of numbers typically unheard of for that time slot. “People are tired of being misled and confused from taking information directly from a government official. After a while, it becomes almost like a pressure cooker that needs to let off steam.”

That conspiracy theories have joined the mainstream is an extraordinary phenomenon in itself, according to Michael Barkun, a political science professor at Syracuse University and author of “A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America.”

“These kinds of ideas that used to be really out on the fringe and tucked away in a subterranean subculture are now a part of pop culture,” said Barkun? …Barkun also credits the Internet, which eliminates a gatekeeper, as an ideal medium to grow a culture of conspiracy. – sfgate

Sea Urchin Genome Reveals Striking Similarities to Humans

Sea urchins and humans have a remarkable amount in common?genetically speaking.

Scientists already knew that the creatures, which resemble underwater hedgehogs, are one of only a few invertebrates (animals without backbones) on the human branch of the evolutionary tree.

But a new sequence of the California purple urchin’s genome reveals that the marine creatures and humans bear a striking number of similarities … The scientists identified more than 23,000 genes in the 814 million base pairs, or “letters,” of DNA code taken from the sea urchin.

The sea urchin represents the first sequenced genome from the echinoderms, which are the closest known relatives of the chordates, the group that includes vertebrates, animals with spinal columns. … The genome includes analogs to many essential human genes that were previously thought to be exclusive to vertebrates.

But missing among the sea urchin genes are some genes found in flies and worms. This, scientists say, shows that sea urchins are closer kin to humans than beetles, flies, crabs, and clams.

“Humans and sea urchins have a common ancestor,” Weinstock said. The eyeless sea urchin also has genes associated with taste, smell, hearing, balance?and surprisingly, even vision. – natgeo

The Joe Lieberman Vote Irregularity

What are the odds of this:

In 2000, Joe Lieberman’s Republican challenger received 448,077 votes.
In 2006, Joe Lieberman’s Democratic challenger received 448,077 votes.

Updated with screenshots, before they fix the glitch in the Matrix.