Africans have world’s greatest genetic variation

Africans have more genetic variation than anyone else on Earth, according to a new study that helps narrow the location where humans first evolved, probably near the South Africa-Namibia border.

The largest study of African genetics ever undertaken also found that nearly three-fourths of African-Americans can trace their ancestry to West Africa. The new analysis published Thursday in the online edition of the journal Science.

“Given the fact that modern humans arose in Africa, they have had time to accumulate dramatic changes” in their genes, explained lead researcher Sarah Tishkoff, a geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania.

People have been adapting to very diverse environmental niches in Africa, she explained in a briefing.

Over 10 years, Tishkoff and an international team of researchers trekked across Africa collecting samples to compare the genes of various peoples. Often working in primitive conditions, the researchers sometimes had to resort to using a car battery to power their equipment, Tishkoff explained.

The reason for their work? Very little was known about the genetic variation in Africans, knowledge that is vital to understanding why diseases have a greater impact in some groups than others and in designing ways to counter those illnesses.

Scott M. Williams of Vanderbilt University noted that constructing patterns of disease variations can help determine which genes predispose a group to a particular illness.

This study “provides a critical piece in the puzzle,” he said. For example, there are clear differences in prevalence of diseases such as hypertension and prostate cancer across populations, Williams said.

“The human genome describes the complexity of our species,” added Muntaser Ibrahim of the department of molecular biology at the University of Khartoum, Sudan. “Now we have spectacular insight into the history of the African population … the oldest history of mankind.

“Everybody’s history is part of African history because everybody came out of Africa,” Ibrahim said.

via Africans have world’s greatest genetic variation.

Mice attack nursing home war veteran

A BEDRIDDEN war veteran was found on Anzac Day with bloody ears, hands, face and neck after being “severely chewed” by swarming mice at a southwest Queensland nursing home.

Opposition MP Ray Hopper said Queensland Health had been slow to respond to a mice plague at the Dalby Hospital, which includes a nursing home, leading to the attack on the 89-year-old man.

The man’s daughter said staff found her father bleeding from bites to his head, neck, ears and hands on Anzac Day, Mr Hopper said.

“The top of his ears were severely chewed and he had bites to his head and neck,” Mr Hopper said.

“His hands were covered in blood because he was trying to get the mice off him.

“We are talking about a health facility overrun by vermin. It’s atrocious.”

Mr Hopper said the man was so distressed that doctors had put him on morphine to calm him down.

via Mice attack nursing home war veteran | National Breaking News | News.com.au.

For one, they should stop using peanut butter flavored shampoo at the nursing home. 

Evolution In A Test Tube: Scientists Make Molecules That Evolve And Compete, Mimicking Behavior Of Darwin’s Finches

A group of scientists at The Scripps Research Institute has set up the microscopic equivalent of the Galapagos Islands—an artificial ecosystem inside a test tube where molecules evolve to exploit distinct ecological niches, similar to the finches that Charles Darwin famously described in “The Origin of Species” 150 years ago.

The work also demonstrates how, when given a variety of resources, the different species will evolve to become increasingly specialized, each filling different niches within their common ecosystem.

Conducted by Sarah Voytek, Ph.D., a recent graduate of the Scripps Research Kellogg School of Science and Technology, the work is intended to advance understanding of Darwinian evolution. Using molecules rather than living species offers a robust way to do this because it allows the forces of evolution to work over the course of mere days, with a trillion molecules in a test tube replicating every few minutes.

…

When Voytek and Joyce pitted the two RNA molecules in a head-to-head competition for a single food source, they found that the molecules that were better adapted to use a particular food won out. The less fit RNA disappeared over time. Then they placed the two RNA molecules together in a pot with five different food sources, none of which they had encountered previously. At the beginning of the experiment each RNA could utilize all five types of food — but none of these were utilized particularly well. After hundreds of generations of evolution, however, the two molecules each became independently adapted to use a different one of the five food sources. Their preferences were mutually exclusive — each highly preferred its own food source and shunned the other molecule’s food source.

In the process, the molecules evolved different evolutionary approaches to achieving their ends. One became super efficient at gobbling up its food, doing so at a rate that was about a hundred times faster than the other. The other was slower at acquiring food, but produced about three times more progeny per generation. These are both examples of classic evolutionary strategies for survival, says Joyce.

via Evolution In A Test Tube: Scientists Make Molecules That Evolve And Compete, Mimicking Behavior Of Darwin’s Finches.

Invisibility cloak edges closer

Scientists have rendered objects invisible under near-infrared light.

Unlike previous such “cloaks”, the new work does not employ metals, which introduce losses of light and result in imperfect cloaking.

Because the approach can be scaled down further in size, researchers say this is a major step towards a cloak that would work for visible light.

One of the research teams describes its miniature “carpet cloak” in the journal Nature Materials.

This “carpet” design was based on a theory first described by John Pendry, from Imperial College London, in 2008.

Michal Lipson and her team at Cornell University demonstrated a cloak based on the concept.

Xiang Zhang, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, led the other team.

“Essentially, we are transforming a straight line of light into a curved line around the cloak, so you don’t perceive any change in its pathway,” he explained.

This is not the first time an invisibility cloak has been made, but previous designs have used metals, whereas the carpet cloak is built using a dielectric – or insulating material – which absorbs far less light.

“Metals introduce a lot of loss, or reduce the light intensity,” said Professor Zhang. This loss can leave a darkened spot in the place of the cloaked object.

So using silicon, a material that absorbs very little light, is a “big step forward,” he says.

via BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Invisibility cloak edges closer.

Court climax premature for Madonna of Orgasm Church

The church’s founder, artist Carlos Bebeacua who resides in Lövestad in southern Sweden, has been fighting a lengthy legal battle in his bid to have the Madonna of Orgasm Church registered as a faith community in Sweden.

Founded by Bebeacua in the early 1990s, the Madonna of Orgasm Church is centered on a similarly named painting by Bebeacua which sparked protests during the 1992 World’s Fair in Seville, Spain. “The orgasm is God, the orgasm should be worshiped,” Bebeacua once told the Kvällsposten newspaper.

… the court took issue with juxtaposition of the words “Madonna”, “orgasm”, and “church”.

“In the opinion of the administrative court of appeal, the intention of such a combination of words, even in relation to the registration of a community for religious activities, must be to offend, not only for those within the wider circles of the general public who have Christian leanings, but also in society in general,” wrote the court.

via Court climax premature for Madonna of Orgasm Church – The Local.

Humans are so crazy.

Judge won’t let inmate change name to ‘Sinner’

No, the judge said to a 23-year-old Nebraska prison inmate. You can’t call yourself “Sinner Lawrence Bilskirnir.” Court documents said Jonathan L. Thomas cited his Norse religion in seeking the name change, saying he “is a heathen and Thor is his ‘High God.’”

But Lancaster County District Judge Steve Burns says government agencies need to closely track Thomas because of his criminal record and because there are three child-support cases against him.

Burns says Thomas’ reasons do not satisfy the legal requirements.

In his ruling, Burns said that “simply because a person is a Christian, a Jew or a Muslim, they do not change their name to Moses.”

via Judge won’t let inmate change name to ‘Sinner’.

Absurd. It’s odd, yes, but he should be able to change his name to Sinner if he wants.  There are many people with the last name of “Sinner“.

Sept. 11 Image For Kids Causes Furor

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has come under fire for a controversial Sept. 11 image that was placed in a disaster-preparedness coloring book for children.

The book shows children various disasters, including hurricanes and floods, but one of the pages displayed an illustration of the World Trade Center twin towers in New York. One of the towers has smoke and fire coming out of it, while an airplane is shown heading toward the other tower.

FEMA pulled the coloring book from its Web site on Tuesday after receiving complaints from parents.

via Sept. 11 Image For Kids Causes Furor – Orlando News Story – WKMG Orlando.

Should FEMA be in the business of teaching kids about the history of disasters (man made and natural) in the USA?

NewsDaily: New DNA coding to track mosquitoes, fight disease

“DNA barcoding” — a technique that quickly obtains a unique genetic code — would be used to help identify mosquitoes that spread Elephantiasis, a disease formally known as lymphatic filariasis (LF).

It will be the first time that the genetic coding is deployed against a major world disease, backers of the plan said. DNA barcoding is inspired by the black lines on products that are scanned at supermarket checkouts.

“The problem is that there are a whole series of similar-looking mosquito species,” said James Edwards, board president of the Philadelphia-based JRS Biodiversity Foundation which is working with the University of Ghana on the project.

“This will help identify them,” he told Reuters in a telephone interview. Mosquitoes have widely differing abilities to transmit LF so identifying species can help refine use of insecticides.

“The ability to precisely identify mosquito species in this way is a promising advance in the battle against LF, an often disfiguring disease that today threatens 1 billion people across roughly 80 countries,” a statement said.

“Over 120 million people have the parasitic infection and more than 40 million have been permanently disabled or disfigured,” it said.

Elephantiasis results from a microscopic, thread-like worm spread between humans by a mosquito bite. The worm larvae can clog the lymph system and cause grotesque swellings.

via NewsDaily: New DNA coding to track mosquitoes, fight disease.

Identifying Hyenas By Their Giggle

To human ears, the laughs of individual hyenas in a pack all sound the same: high-pitched and staccato, eerie and maniacal. But every hyena makes a different call that encodes information about its age and status in the pack, according to behavioral neurologists from the University of California, Berkeley and the Université de Saint-Etienne, France. They have developed a way to identify a hyena by picking out specific features of its giggle.

The hyena does not laugh when it is having a good time. Rather, field biologists have noticed that hyenas make the sound when competing for food. The giggle is a sign of frustration, a call made by a subordinate animal when dominated by one of its peers.

To find meaning in the giggle, Nicolas Mathevon and his colleagues analyzed sounds made by 17 spotted hyenas kept in captivity. They developed an algorithm that can successfully identity an individual in the pack about half the time, by looking at the timbre and quality of a single note in its giggle. “It’s like telling singers apart by having them sing one note and listening to the quality of that note,” says Mathevon.

Their analysis also shows that the pitch of the giggle drops for older animals, and the giggles of animals that tend to be dominant are less variable. The next step will be to play different kinds of giggles to hyenas and test how the animals respond.

via Identifying Hyenas By Their Giggle.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine Trailer

Critics aren’t very X-cited about it, but I love even bad science fiction.