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News - September 5, 2008 A Deep Thaw: How Much Will Vanishing Glaciers Raise Sea Levels? Some say high, some say low, some say fast, some say slow By David Biello GLACIAL SPEED: Greenland may get much of the scientific attention but it is smaller glaciers such as the Columbia Glacier in Alaska pictured here that are already contributing to sea level rise--and will continue to do so in future. Greenland, the world's largest island, holds enough ice to raise global sea levels by 23 feet (seven meters). Add the ice sheets of Antarctica and the oceans would deepen more...

The SC DEM Chairman just referred to John McCain as a "72 year old man" in his criticism of him while trying to defend the abortion comment by a prominent Democrat chairwoman in South Carolina.

Extreme Experience: Septuagenarian CEOs Senator John McCain, who will be 72 when he formally accepts the nod, has sought to turn his advanced years into an attribute (he is wise) and a counterpoint to the message being championed by his 47-year-old rival, Senator Barack Obama (he is for a fresh start). A similar dynamic is at work in business. You might be surprised at how many senior citizens—media moguls, casino kings, Chinese tycoons—are cutting deals, starting new businesses, and generally kicking boomer and Gen Y butt. If 60 is the new 40, then 80 is the new 60. Mellowing with...

It will come as a shock to many, but it turns out that those 13-year-old looking Chinese gymnasts, were, well 13-year-old Chinese gymnasts. But you don't have to take my word for it. The morons at the state run propaganda machine known as Xinhua, told everyone it was so back in November. For reference, I think He Kexin is the third from the right in the photo.

BEIJING - Just nine months before the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese government's news agency, Xinhua, reported that gymnast He Kexin was 13, which would have made her ineligible to be on the team that won a gold medal this week.

Democratic presidential candidate Senator Obama charged that his Republican rival, Senator McCain, “is engaged in a ‘time-worn’ and insidiously subtle racist campaign against me.” Obama said he bases his accusation on logic and observation. “The Republicans have no winning issues,” Obama claimed. “Polls consistently show the voters disapprove of the same old Republican economic and foreign policies. If they have no winning issues, logically, all that’s left is a smear campaign focused on race.” “Evidence of this ancient strategy is already there for those who look for it,” Obama contended. “Senator McCain has yet to congratulate me for becoming the...

With Age Comes A Sense Of Peace And Calm, Study Shows ScienceDaily (May 19, 2008) — Aging brings a sense of peace and calm, according to a new study from the Population Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin. Starting at about age 60, participants reported more feelings of ease and contentment than their younger counterparts. Catherine Ross and John Mirowsky, professors of sociology, have published the findings in "Age and the Balance of Emotions" in the May 19 issue of Social Science and Medicine. The findings reveal aging is associated with more positive than negative emotions, and...

Watching McCain on Bill O'Reilly this evening it looks to me like his hamster jowls have receded. They haven't completely disappeared, but the look substantially less than before. Of course it could be good make-up work or good lighting by Fox, but I wonder if he is going through some "makeovers" to make him look more youthful?

Bronze Age axe 'factory' survey Part of a Bronze Age axe made from picrite rock Archaeologists are hoping to unearth evidence of what they believe to have been one of Bronze Age Britain's largest axe-making "factories". Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust (CPAT) said the axes, made from a distinctive type rock - known as picrite - had been found throughout the country. A three-week survey at the 4,000-year-old site will start soon in Hyssington, near Welshpool, Powys. The trust's Chris Martin said it may have been a large industrial centre. The trust carried out a preliminary survey last year, but it did...

" Despite a recent promise from Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean not to make Sen. John McCain's age -- he turns 72 in August -- an issue in the presidential campaign, a senior Democratic operative has started a new website designed to draw attention to just that fact. Called "Younger than McCain", the website is being run by Steve Rosenthal, a former political director at the AFL-CIO and executive director of America Coming Together, a massive soft money effort organized around the 2004 presidential race. Rosenthal is now a partner in The Organizing Group."

Wealthy Democrats have donated $40 million to conduct a media campaign against the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Senator John McCain (Ariz.). The campaign will be led by David Brock, chairman of Progressive Media USA. Brock said “the effort is necessary because the major media have fallen down on the job. A person who relies on TV and newspapers will have the impression that Senator McCain is some sort of war hero. But as Senator Rockefeller (D-W.V.) has pointed out, McCain fought on the wrong side in Vietnam. Thankfully, it turned out to be the losing side.” “There are some key...

Dig uncovers Iron Age waterhole Archaeologists have found what they describe as a remarkable Iron Age waterhole on the site of an extension to York University. The waterhole complete with a preserved wickerwork lining was revealed during excavations in Heslington village. The structure also contains fragments of wood giving clues to the landscape of the time, about 2,500 years ago. The university's archaeology department plans more digs at the site, which also contains an important Roman building. The university plans to open the site to local archaeological community groups as well as allowing students access to a live dig. 'Fantastic...

Royal Goddesses of a Bronze Age State Volume 61 Number 1, January/February 2008 by Marco Merola Its arms arranged in a gesture of prayer, the figurine at right probably depicts a living queen worshipping the statuette of a dead royal, left. (Courtesy Maura Sala) It's been more than 30 years since Italian archaeologists found a vast archive of 17,000 cuneiform tablets at the Bronze Age site of Ebla in northern Syria. But the ancient city is still surprising those who work there. Last year archaeologist Paolo Matthiae's team discovered two almost perfectly preserved figurines that confirm textual evidence for a...

Ice age Australians sheltered in caves Anna Salleh ABC Science Online Monday, 24 September 2007 Why would Aboriginal Tasmanians flock to one of the coldest parts of the island during an ice age? One researcher says it was to shelter from the wind in caves and steep valleys (Image: Ian Gilligan) Ice age Aboriginal Australians protected themselves from bitterly cold winds by flocking to caves in one of the most inhospitable parts of the continent, says an archaeologist. Ian Gilligan, a postgraduate researcher from the Australian National University, lays out his argument in the current issue of the journal Antiquity....

Source: Geological Survey of Norway Date: September 11, 2007 Studying Evidence From Ice Age Lakes Science Daily — During the last Ice Age, the ice dammed enormous lakes in Russia. The drainage system was reversed several times and the rivers flowed southwards. A group of geologists is now investigating what took place when the ice melted and the lakes released huge volumes of fresh water into the Arctic Ocean. ”The ice-dammed lakes in Russia were larger than the largest lakes we know today,” Eiliv Larsen, a geologist at the Geological Survey of Norway (NGU), tells me. He is in charge...

Source: University Of South Hampton Date: August 30, 2007 Next Ice Age Delayed By Rising Carbon Dioxide Levels Science Daily — Future ice ages may be delayed by up to half a million years by our burning of fossil fuels. That is the implication of recent work by Dr Toby Tyrrell of the University of Southampton's School of Ocean and Earth Science at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton. Future ice ages may be delayed by up to half a million years by our burning of fossil fuels. (Credit: Canadian Ice Service) Arguably, this work demonstrates the most far-reaching disruption of...

Ice Age cave art site preserved The art was probably made by Ice Age hunter-gatherers Work to protect and preserve an Ice Age site in Derbyshire has been completed. The project at the Ice Age cave art centre at Creswell Crags was funded by the East Midlands Development Agency and the county council. It included building new scree banks to show how the gorge would have looked about 10 to 50,000 years ago. A county council spokesperson said archaeologists were consulted during the preservation project to ensure the site's natural beauty was not spoiled. 'Unique site' A £200,000 bridleway, which...

Source: University of Chicago Date: July 20, 2007 Ice Age Survivors Found In Iceland Science Daily — Many scientists believe that the ice ages exterminated all life on land and in freshwater in large parts of the Northern Hemisphere, especially on ocean islands such as Iceland. Crymostygius thingvallensis, the only species in a recently described family of groundwater amphipods Crymostygidae. (Credit: photograph by Thorkell Heidarsson) Scientists at Holar University College and the University of Iceland have challenged that belief, at least when looking at groundwater animals. They have discovered two species of groundwater amphipods in Iceland that are the only...

People with moles age more slowly than others Last Updated: 1:43am BST 11/07/2007 People who seem to stay younger for longer are also likely to have more moles, research released yesterday suggests. A study of twins found a striking correlation between high numbers of moles and a biological marker for slow ageing. As a result, people with a lot of moles might be expected to live longer than those who have very few, despite facing a greater risk of skin cancer. Dr Veronique Bataille, from the Twin Research Unit at King's College London, who led the study said: "The results...

Stone Age site yields evidence of advanced culture (Xinhua) Updated: 2007-05-04 20:48 Chinese archaeologists say they have uncovered strong evidence that Stone Age people in southern East Asia were at least as technologically advanced as their European cousins -- challenging the long-standing theory of "two cultures". Excavations at the Dahe Stone Age site, in southwest China's Yunnan Province, had revealed elaborate stone tools and instruments that rivaled those of the Mousterian culture that existed at that time in Europe, said Ji Xueping, chief archaeologist at the site. Dated as 36,000 to 44,000 years old, the Dahe site has since 1998...

Comets and disaster in the Bronze AgeCosmic impact is gaining ground as an explanation of the collapse of civilisations, writes Benny Peiser At some time around 2300BC, give or take a century or two, a large number of the major civilisations of the world collapsed. The Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia, the Old Kingdom in Egypt, the Early Bronze Age societies in Israel, Anatolia and Greece, as well as the Indus Valley civilisation in India, the Hilmand civilisation in Afghanistan and the Hongshan Culture in China - the first urban civilisations in the world - all fell into ruin at more...

Stone Age remains found in Gothenburg Published: 26th April 2007 15:27 CET Online: http://www.thelocal.se/7123/ Archaeologists in Gothenburg have found the remains of an early Stone Age house. The discovery was made on a building site in the Kallebäck area of the city. Residents of the new apartments being built in the area will be living on a site inhabited 10,000 years ago. Kallebäck now lies about 5 kilometres from the open sea, but in the stone age the area was a headland jutting out into the sea. "They most probably fished, and would certainly have hunted for seal. This was...

Humans Can See Race and Sex Even in Simple Outlines By Corey Binns Special to LiveScience posted: 30 March 2007 12:47 pm ET Adult minds are so keen at spotting race, gender and age that we can correctly guess those features from nothing more than a black-and-white silhouette, new experiments show. "It's surprising how much information the silhouette provides," said Stanford University cognitive psychologist Nicolas Davidenko, who led the study. "We rarely have to identify a person in a silhouette, yet in the experiment, people can do that without difficulty." The way that our brains process faces, he said, seems...

German MPs raise retirement age German MPs voted 408 to 169 in favour of the measure The German Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, has voted to raise the retirement age from 65 to 67. Germany has one of the lowest birth rates in Europe, and on current trends the population aged over 65 will almost double to 30% by 2035. The plan means that anyone born in 1964 or later will have to wait until they are 67 to collect a state pension. It is expected to be approved by the upper house, the Bundesrat. It will be phased...

CLINTONISM: THE VULGARIZATION OF AMERICA (PART VI) BILL CLINTON: THE PRURIENT YEARS © by Norman Liebmann With Hillary Clinton declaring her candidacy for President, America faces the horrendous prospect of having Bill Clinton back in the White House. Washington was fertile soil for the Clinton brand of depravity. In anticipation of Bubba’s reappearance, the groundskeepers have begun treating the White House Rose Garden soil with penicillin. Since his departure it had become apparent nothing would grow there but pubic hair. For Hillary Clinton, power is the next best thing. What it is the next best thing to is immaterial. For...

Boat provides historical insight The boat would have been powered by up to 12 men A Bronze Age logboat which had lain unseen in the River Tay for 3,000 years is being studied by archaeologists. It is hoped the find will yield important new information about how human ancestors lived. Although the boat, made from the trunk of a single oak, was found five years ago, it was only lifted out of the Tay during the summer. Repairs carried out on the 30ft vessel have already given experts an insight into Bronze Age technology. The boat, which would have been...

PETERSBURG, Va. -- As the World Trade Center rubble smoldered, Sharon Samuel felt determined to do something for her adopted country; she decided to enlist in the Army. But the Army told the Brooklyn hairdresser she was too old. "I wanted to serve. I wanted to give back," said the 40-year-old Trinidad native. "I have felt the pain New Yorkers felt." Samuel got a second chance this year when the Army increased its maximum enlistment age to 42. So, off she went to Fort Lee, about 25 miles south of Richmond, for training in logistical support. She has joined more...

Stone Age Role Revolution: Modern humans may have divided labor to conquer Bruce Bower Chalk up modern humanity's rise and the extinction of Neandertals to a geographic accident. That's the implication of a new analysis of material from previously excavated Stone Age sites. Homo sapiens evolved in Africa's resource-rich tropics. As a result, a division of labor arose beginning around 40,000 years ago that roughly corresponds to the arrangement found in most foraging societies today, say Steven L. Kuhn and Mary C. Stiner, both archaeologists at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Men in these societies hunt small and large...

The most important tension within the new Democratic majority in the House of Representatives is not between liberals and conservatives or free traders and fair traders. It is between older members who once enjoyed the power and perks of majority status, and their younger colleagues who will experience real power for the first time. The older members -- many of whom will be taking over committee chairmanships -- came to political maturity in the pre-Clinton, pre-Gingrich era, before the full flowering of the permanent campaign. They governed from a House in which committee leaders typically had more power than the...

Stone Age babies buried with love By Roger Highfield Last Updated: 1:28am GMT 16/11/2006 The image of Stone Age man as a heartless brute will have to be revised after the discovery of an ancient grave where babies had been carefully buried and ritually decorated. Although childhood mortality may well have been high more than 20 millennia ago, the use of red ochre, as well as the grave gifts — a chain of ivory beads — shows that babies were even then considered full members of society. The burials in Krems-Wachtberg in Lower Austria are the first findings of such...

How depressing, how utterly unjust, to be the one in your social circle who is aging least gracefully. In a laboratory at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center, Matthias is learning about time’s caprice the hard way. At 28, getting on for a rhesus monkey, Matthias is losing his hair, lugging a paunch and getting a face full of wrinkles. Yet in the cage next to his, gleefully hooting at strangers, one of Matthias’s lab mates, Rudy, is the picture of monkey vitality, although he is slightly older. Thin and feisty, Rudy stops grooming his smooth coat just long enough...

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- A man who couldn't find steady work came up with a plan to make it through the next few years until he could collect Social Security: He robbed a bank, then handed the money to a guard and waited for police. On Wednesday, Timothy J. Bowers told a judge a three-year prison sentence would suit him, and the judge obliged. "At my age, the jobs available to me are minimum-wage jobs. There is age discrimination out there," Bowers, who turns 63 in a few weeks, told Judge Angela White. The judge told him: "It's unfortunate you...

PITTSBURGH (Oct. 6) - A group of researchers has set up a foundation based in Pittsburgh to study the members of a rare and exclusive club: people who live to be older than 110. snip...

Stone Age cave in central Vietnam has neighbor Vietnamese researchers, studying a grotto discovered a decade ago in which Paleolithic period tools were found, a few days ago stumbled upon another nearby also containing ancient tools. Experts from the Vietnam Archaeology Institute and the Quang Tri Museum in central Vietnam were researching the Hang Doi (bat) cave in Cam Lo district’s Dragon mountain when they found “Hang Doi 2”. The grotto is 65 meters underground and its vault is 10-20 meter high. They found 11 stone tools inside. Hang Doi was acknowledged as a provincial relic in 1996 and recently...

Biologists have uncovered a deep link between life span and cancer in the form of a gene that switches off stem cells as a person ages. The critical gene, well known for its role in suppressing tumors, seems to mediate a profound balance between life and death. It weighs the generation of new replacement cells, required for continued life, against the risk of death from cancer, which is the inevitable outcome of letting cells divide. To offset the increasing risk of cancer as a person ages, the gene gradually reduces the ability of stem cells to proliferate. The new finding,...

Gristhorpe Man 'was Bronze Age warrior chieftain' Reports by Roger Highfield and Nic Fleming (Filed: 07/09/2006) Gristhorpe Man, who was found buried in a tree trunk in the 19th century, has been identified as a Bronze Age warrior chieftain by archaeologists. The skeleton of Gristhorpe Man, excavated near Scarborough in 1834 Although a few examples of burial in a scooped-out oak tree have been found in Scotland and East Anglia, it was an unusual method and the example found near Scarborough, North Yorks, was the best preserved. The remains were discovered in 1834 by William Beswick, a local landowner, in...

The Washington Post warns of "Pakistan's Awkward Balancing Act on Islamic Militant Groups." But if one looks closely at the actions of Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, it is clear that he has made his choice to side with the West, there's no going back, and he is beyond the pale of reconciliation with his country's lunatic Islamists. The scale has tipped to one side. It is time for Musharraf to explicitly say so and do so, as he'll never appease Pakistan's radicals. Here's an excerpt from the Post: The basic problem for Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, is that he...

ARCHAEOLOGISTS DIG UP MORE ICE AGE REMAINS AT CRESWELL CRAGS By Graham Spicer 23/08/2006 Creswell Crags is a limestone gorge containing important evidence of Ice Age life. Photo Creswell Heritage Trust Archaeologists searching for clues about Ice Age artists have completed a major excavation in Nottinghamshire, unearthing more than 1,000 finds. A team from the University of Sheffield and The British Museum conducted the dig in Church Hole cave at Creswell Crags between August 7 and 18 2006, the site of the only British discovery of Ice Age rock art. The rock art discoveries, made in 2003 and 2004, are...

Ice Age DNA may now be sequenced 15 August 2006 JURASSIC PARK here we come? Not quite, but we might now be able to sequence the genomes of mammoths and even Neanderthals, thanks to a new way to correct the errors in sequencing ancient DNA that are made because it degrades over time. When Svante Pääbo's group at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, analysed DNA from 50 to 50,000-year-old bone samples from wolves, a single error stood out: one of DNA's "letters", cytosine, had degraded in such a way that sequencing machines misinterpreted it as...

Northern Refuge: White spruce survived last ice age in Alaska Sid Perkins Genetic analysis of white spruce trees at sites across North America suggest that that species endured the harsh climate of Alaska throughout the last ice age, a notion that scientists have debated for decades. ICE AGE SURVIVORS. White spruce trees, common in high-latitude North American forests today, endured in Alaska during the last ice age, a new genetic analysis suggests. Inset shows Alaskan and other sites (red dots) sampled in that study. iStockphoto; (inset) Anderson, et al. Picea glauca, the white spruce, is one of the most common...

Growing old with Dave BY DAVE BARRY (This classic Dave Barry column was originally published on Sept. 3, 1995.) Call me a wild and crazy guy if you want, but recently, on a whim, I decided to -- why not? -- turn 48. It's not so bad. Physically, the only serious problem I've noticed is that I can no longer read anything printed in letters smaller than Shaquille O'Neal. Also, to read a document, I have to hold it far from my face; more and more, I find myself holding documents -- this is awkward on airplanes -- with my...

Close window Published online: 21 July 2006; | doi:10.1038/news060717-18 You're only as old as your genesGenetic fingerprint could pinpoint fittest organ donors.Helen Pearson Close up: ageing can be seen in our cells, chromosomes and genes.Credit: DR GOPAL MURTI / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY A fingerprint of gene activity could reveal the true 'youthfulness' of our kidneys, hearts and muscle, regardless of our biological age. The technique might one day be used to find healthy organs for transplants or to warn us of impending disease. It's hard to tell, particularly on a cellular level, whether a young and healthy body conceals...

'Darwin's tortoise' takes her secrets to the grave at the age of 176 By Mark Chipperfield in Sydney (Filed: 24/06/2006) Harriet, a 23st Galapagos tortoise, has died in a Queensland wildlife park at the age of 176, carrying to her grave the mystery of her origins. John Hangar, a senior veterinarian at the Australia Zoo on the Sunshine Coast, said the reptile suffered a heart attack on Thursday. "Harriet sadly died last night after, thankfully, a very short illness," he said. "She had a heart attack and passed away quietly overnight." Harriet made it into the Guinness Book of World...

Stone-age tools dug out of ‘tiger hole’ G.S. MUDUR The ‘tiger hole’ that turned out to be a cave shelter; implements found by archaeologists. Telegraph pictures New Delhi, June 12: An assortment of stone-age tools buried in a cave in the western coastal district of Maharashtra’s Ratnagiri has provided the first evidence of a cave shelter of human ancestors on India’s coastline. What local village folk had shunned as a “tiger hole”, archaeologists from the Deccan College and Postgraduate Research Institute in Pune have shown was a shelter that preserved relics of ancient craftsmanship. “The shape and features of the...

The Baltimore Sun has this story about an 80 year old lady who is trying to become a lawyer. Her kids and grandkids no doubt want her to stop wasting their inheritance on going to school. Age is less and less relevant to new students these days. With nearly 40 percent of college students above 25 years old, many of them are bringing 'baggage' to school with them. That is, they are bringing habits, kids, work loads, excuses, and the challenge of paying their tuition with their minimum-wage jobs. Schools have accomodated older students with special courses, accelerated courses and...

The collective age of the U.S. Congress is one of the oldest in history because voters want seniority, but is setting the stage for a youth coup, experts say. The average age in the U.S. Senate is 60.4 years old, the oldest ever, and the average age of 55 in the House sets records dating back to at least the first half of the 20th century, USA Today reports. With an average age nationwide of 36.2, voters appear to enjoy seniority. Nancy Thompson of the AARP said people want to stay in the workforce longer, although that could be more...

Expedition seeks clues to lost Bronze Age culture By Richard C. Lewis Thu Jun 1, 4:11 PM ETReuters Photo: Deep-sea explorer Robert Ballard speaks at the National Geographic Society in an undated file photo.... PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island (Reuters) - An underwater explorer who found the Titanic and a team of international scientists will soon survey waters off the Greek island of Crete for clues to a once-powerful Bronze Age-era civilization. The expedition about 75 miles northwest of Crete aims to learn more about the Minoans, who flourished during the Bronze Age, and seeks to better understand seafaring four millennia ago,...

Making sacrifices in Stone Age societies Bruce Bower From San Juan, Puerto Rico, at the Paleoanthropology Society and Society for American Archaeology meeting Double and triple burials at 23,000-to-27,000-year-old sites in Europe and western Asia suggest prehistoric human sacrifices, says Vincenzo Formicola of the University of Pisa in Italy. Of 30 known burials from that time period and area, 6 held more than one person. These graves contain two or three children, adolescents, or young adults apparently buried at the same time, positioned in curious ways, and accompanied by unusually valuable objects, Formicola says. Most of the multiple burials include...

Muggings were rife in New Stone Age 11 May 2006 From New Scientist Print Edition. Emma Young IF YOU are worried about being attacked or killed by a violent criminal, just be glad you are not living in Neolithic Britain. From 4000 to 3200 BC, Britons had a 1 in 14 chance of being bashed on the head, and a 1 in 50 chance of dying from their injuries. Grisly figures from the first systematic survey of early Neolithic British skulls reveal that life then was no rural idyll. "It's certainly more violent than we'd considered," says Rick Schulting of...

Enhanced pension deals are county's albatross... The county has the distinction of carrying more retirees (6,050) than active employees (4,631) on county health insurance. Add in 3,100 spouses and dependents of retirees, and the county is insuring more than 9,000 individuals on the retiree side. The county now pays out more in health care for retirees than for active employees. In addition to her monthly check, she was promised, and cherishes, free health insurance for the rest of her life. It is the sum of such promises to Schumann and 6,000-plus other retirees that is a major stumbling block as...