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Avatar: Film-making and Human Destiny by Administrator on January 15, 2010 by Larry KlaesJudging by the abundant reaction to Larry Klaes’ recent article on James Cameron’s Avatar — and by the continuing commentary in society at large — Larry seems to be vindicated when he says the film has become a focal point of discussion for many in the general public. Having engaged in the lively debate in these pages, Larry now wraps up our Avatar coverage with a look at the film’s message and its ramifications, along with comments on its use of science.To some the new film...

KABUL, Dec. 14, 2009 – U.S. troops need to be prepared to operate in a “complex human terrain” when they arrive in Afghanistan, the commander of International Security Assistance Force Joint Command said here today. Army Lt. Gen. David M. Rodriguez took over the job just two months ago. He commands U.S. troops assigned to NATO and troops of 42 other nations for daily operations throughout Afghanistan. “Now that we know where [U.S. troops] are going and when they are coming in, I think we’ll be able to make them well-prepared for what they need to do,” he said during...

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 8 (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Tuesday that emails leaked from a British university have done nothing to undermine the United Nations' view that climate change is accelerating due to humans. "Nothing that has come out in the public as a result of the recent email hackings has cast doubt on the basic scientific message on climate change and that message is quite clear -- that climate change is happening much, much faster than we realized and we human beings are the primary cause," he said.

Peru's police chief has suspended a top investigator for saying he had caught a gang who were murdering people to sell their fat. Last month, top organised crime investigator Felix Murga said police had arrested four suspects who confessed to murdering up to 60 people. He said they were selling their fat for thousands of dollars a litre. But the macabre tale now appears to be nothing more than a tall story - or a big fat lie. 'Sold-on' In an extraordinary press conference, police showed two bottles of what they said was human fat and a photo of a...

LIMA, Peru - Police say a gang in the Peruvian jungle has been killing people and draining fat from the corpses to sell on the black market for use in cosmetics, although medical experts say they doubt a major market for fat exists. Three suspects confessed to killing five people, but the gang may have been involved in dozens more, said Col. Jorge Mejia, chief of Peru's anti-kidnapping police. He said one suspect claimed the gang wasn't the only one doing such killings.

The Golden Record Slide Show Of Images

BAGHDAD, Oct. 6, 2009 – Iraqi Defense Minister Mohammed Abdul-Qader Jassim hosted a conference here yesterday to highlight Iraq’s commitment to human rights. Senior Iraqi army officials, civilians, government employees, political leaders and women from Iraq’s Ministry of Human Rights were on hand for Iraq’s second human rights conference, as well as select members of the Multinational Security Transition Command Iraq, which is responsible for training and advising the defense ministry on human rights issues. “After criminals are captured in Iraq, we must protect their dignity and provide them with clothes, food, medical care and other needs,” the defense minister...

LOS ANGELES – A U.S. Forest Service official says the huge wildfire burning in the mountains north of Los Angeles was human-caused. Deputy incident commander Carlton Joseph said Wednesday that it's not known specifically how it was started. Investigators will be trying to determine whether it was accidental or arson. Carlton says investigators have leads that brought them to the conclusion but he will not give any further information. Carlton notes that the options were lightning or a human cause and lightning has been ruled out.

home | about spiked | issues | support spiked Friday 26 June 2009Restating the case for human uniquenessA brilliant new book cuts through all the media-oriented research about ‘clever chimps’ using tools, doing maths and feeling emotions, and reminds us that, in truth, there is nothing remotely human about primates.Helene Guldberg Not a Chimp: The Hunt to Find the Genes That Make Us Human is a refreshing defence of human uniqueness. ‘We are a truly exceptional primate with minds that are genuinely discontinuous to other animals’, Jeremy Taylor writes. The first half of Not a Chimp challenges ‘the basis...

When we daydream about the future, we tend to focus on the fabulous belongings we're going to have. Jet packs, flying cars, weapons to kill aliens, cell phones that make today's sleek models look clunky -- you name it, we're going to have it. We don't tend to focus, however, on who we'll be in the future. Most of us probably picture ourselves exactly the same, though maybe thinner, as surely we'll all have robot personal trainers by then. While we see the world's technology evolving to meet our needs, we may not think about how we ourselves might be...

By now, we’ve seen it all before. The Liberals do something, and they call it something it’s not (i.e. The Employee Free Choice Act and The Fairness Doctrine). Such is the case with what Wang Dan calls “freedom” in defending his Olbermann-esque stance on the “Pro-Democracy” movement and calling it the “truth.” In a nutshell, many of the claims against China on the issue of “human rights” are unfounded distortions those who support Hillary Clinton and the left. Wang Dan’s claim that “the reforms my fellow students and I were advocating are the central challenges shaping China's destiny today.“ are...

People have a deep desire to communicate with animals, as is evident from the way they converse with their dogs, enjoy myths about talking animals or devote lifetimes to teaching chimpanzees how to speak. A delicate, if tiny, step has now been taken toward the real thing: the creation of a mouse with a human gene for language.

Note: The following text is a quote: Social Science Research Assists Navigation of ‘Human Terrain’ By Navy Lt. Jennifer Cragg Special to American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, May 18, 2009 – The Defense Department is funding research to help warfighters learn and adapt to the social and cultural norms in their deployment areas, a Navy program officer said in a May 13 webcast of “Armed with Science: Research and Applications for the Modern Military” on Pentagon Web Radio. “It's been a shift in the thinking of the Department of Defense away from conventional warfare practices to the asymmetric and irregular...

A herd of pigs in Canada has tested positive for swine flu, after coming into contact with a human carrier. The pigs were apparently infected by an Alberta farm worker who had recently returned from Mexico. The herd, in the western province of Alberta, has been quarantined. Many new cases of swine flu have been diagnosed among humans in Canada, where the total number of sufferers has risen from 35 to 85.

A parasitic microbe commonly found in cats might have helped shape entire human cultures by manipulating the personalities of infected individuals, according to a new study. Infection by a Toxoplasma gondii could make some individuals more prone to some forms of neuroticism and could lead to differences among cultures if enough people are infected, says Kevin Lafferty, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In a survey of different countries, Lafferty found that people living in those with higher rates of T. gondii infection scored higher on average for neuroticism, defined as an emotional or...

Georgia Takes Action: SB 169 to Protect Human Embryos LAWRENCEVILLE, GA, Mar. 9 /Christian Newswire/ -- While President Obama was signing the executive order that would provide federal funds for destructive Human Embryo research today, the Georgia Senate's Health and Human Services Committee moved SB 169: The Ethical Treatment of Human Embryos Act to the Senate Rules Committee on a 7-6 vote. This bill allows for the advancement of scientific research, while also addressing the important ethical questions related in the ongoing debate about Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research (HESCR). First, it allows for the continuation of research that is...

LONDON: The ethical aspect notwithstanding, an Italian doctor has claimed to have cloned three human babies who are "healthy" and now living in eastern Europe. "I helped give birth to three children with the human cloning technique. It involved two boys and a girl who are nine years old today. They were born healthy and they are in excellent health now," the Daily Telegraph quoted Severino Antinori as telling the 'Oggi' weekly. "The women's eggs were impregnated in a laboratory through a method called 'nuclear transfer'," he said, adding that the method used was "an improvement" over the technique used...

Scientists have overcome a major barrier to human use. Monday, March 02, 2009 By Emily Singer In 2006, Shinya Yamanaka and his colleagues at Kyoto University in Japan reported that they could reprogram mouse skin cells to an embryonic-like state by adding four genes, since dubbed the Yamanaka factors. These cells, called induced pluripotent cells, can be transformed into different types of cells and tissues, and hold promise for studying disease and developing cell replacement therapies. However, scientists inserted the genes using viruses, making the cells unsuitable for human use. Now, for the first time, British and Canadian scientists have...

Her eyes met mine as she walked down the corridor peering apprehensively into the kennels. I felt her need instantly and knew I had to help her. I wagged my tail, not too exuberantly, so she wouldn't be afraid. As she stopped at my kennel I blocked her view from a little accident I had in the back of my cage. I didn't want her to know that I hadn't been walked today. Sometimes the shelter keepers get too busy and I didn't want her to think poorly of them. As she read my kennel card I hoped that she...

BEIJING, China (CNN) -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton broached the issue of human rights with Chinese leaders Saturday, but emphasized that the world economic and other crises are more pressing and immediate priorities. "Human rights cannot interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crises," Clinton said in talks with China's foreign minister.

A British gym is trying to add human interest to otherwise dreary workouts by replacing traditional dumbbell weights with human ones. The Gymbox chain gym in central London says fitness enthusiasts can now swap their usual lumps of metal for human beings in a range of shapes and sizes.

According to Darwinian theory, in the past we had a common ancestor with baboons, further back with bananas and still further with bacteria. This dogma has spread like a ‘meme’, which is a contagious idea that propagates in a similar way as a virus by infecting brains, according to inventor of the word, Richard Dawkins.1 In 2002, Roy Britten dispelled the first monkey meme that human and chimpanzee DNA sequences are 98.5% identical.2 He showed that when indelmutations were also taken into account, the difference suddenly became about 5%. The fact that chimpanzee genomes are about 10% larger than that...

Members of a Gaza family whose farm was turned into a "fortress" by Hamas fighters have reported that they were helpless to stop Hamas from using them as human shields. Palestinians search through the rubble of their home in the northern Gaza Strip. Photo: AP Slideshow: Pictures of the week They told the official Palestinian Authority daily newspaper that for years Hamas had used their property and homes as military installations from which the group would launch rockets into Israel, dig tunnels and store arms. According to the victims, those who tried to object were shot in the legs by...

For years researchers have puzzled over whether adaptation plays a major role in human evolution or whether most changes are due to neutral, random selection of genes and traits. Geneticists at Stanford now have laid this question to rest. Their results, scheduled to be published Jan. 16 online in Public Library of Science Genetics, show adaptation-the process by which organisms change to better fit their environment-is indeed a large part of human genomic evolution. "Others have looked for the signal of widespread adaptation and couldn't find it. Now we've used a lot more data and did a lot of work...

In the first speech of his "whistle-stop" tour to Washington, Barack Obama talked global warming to a crowd of shivering Philadelphians who braved 18 degree (sub 10 degree wind-chill) temperatures on their journey to the 30th Street Train Station. It's hard to believe that, given the arctic-like temperatures the northeast has suffered through this winter, the president-elect didn't instruct his writers to reword this passage from his "historic" speech: [my emphasis] "Only a handful of times in our history has a generation been confronted with challenges so vast. An economy that is

Through history, as natural selection played its part in the development of modern man, many of the useful functions and parts of the human body become unnecessary. What is most fascinating is that many of these parts of the body still remain in some form so we can see the progress of evolution. This list covers the ten most significant evolutionary changes that have taken place - leaving signs behind them.

URGENT: Iranian woman could be executed on Wednesday! Do you remember Nazanin Fatehi the girl I lead a campaign for to try and save her life?  The first time I made contact with her while she was in prison was due to a lady in Iran named Fatemeh Haghighat pajouh.   My friend and partner in the "Save Nazanin Fatehi campaign" Mina Ahadi was helping a woman on death row named Fatemeh Haghighat pajouh. We were searching for months to try and locate Nazanin when we first heard her story. By chance, Fatemeh was sharing a cell with Nazanin...

A RACE of half-man, half-beast “humanzees” could be created under new fertility laws, MPs were warned last night. Loopholes would let scientists fertilise animals with human sperm, the Commons was told during a debate on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. Tory MP Nadine Dorries claimed it would revive memories of Soviet tyrant Stalin’s attempt to create the “ultimate soldier” in the 1920s by cross-breeding humans and apes. Democratic Unionist MP Jeffrey Donaldson conjured up the spectre of a monster from Greek legend, saying: “The image that people find most abhorrent is of scientists producing GM babies or cloned adults...

Human suffering became a reality for millions of Americans as the depression continued. Many died of disease resulting from malnutrition. Thousands lost their home because they could not pay the mortgage. In 1932,at least 25,000 families,and more than 200,000 young people wandered through the country seeking food,clothing,shelter,and a job. Many of the young people traveled in freight trains,and lived near train yards called hobo jungles. The homeless,jobless travelers obtained food from welfare agencies,or religious missions in town along the way. Most of their meals consisted of soup,beans,or stew and had very little nourishment. The travelers begged for food,or stole it...

Were we more intelligent when we had no computers or did we gain only with general knowledge with the help of internet? For more please visit www.onlinearticles.co.cc

HAIFA, Israel (Reuters) - paralyzed for the past 20 years, former Israeli paratrooper Radi Kaiof now walks down the street with a dim mechanical hum. That is the sound of an electronic exoskeleton moving the 41-year-old's legs and propelling him forward -- with a proud expression on his face -- as passersby stare in surprise. "I never dreamed I would walk again. After I was wounded, I forgot what it's like," said Kaiof, who was injured while serving in the Israeli military in 1988.

John Edwards Proves He’s Human, Heavy Panting at 11Steve Stajich, Mirror Contributing Writer I can’t tell you what feelings you should have about so-called “adultery.” There are a few points one can make, such as the fact that a fellow who is not married and breaks any rules of monogamy stated or implied is simply a disappointment to a limited few. However, once the state enters your life by conferring the status of “marriage,” it’s no longer just a gnarly Sunday morning argument. Now it’s lawyers and property division and custody issues and money and property and… did we cite...

The dwindling march of the penguins is signaling that the world's oceans are in trouble, scientists now say. Penguins may be the tuxedo-clad version of a canary in the coal mine, with generally ailing populations from a combination of global warming, ocean oil pollution, depleted fisheries, and tourism and development, according to a new scientific review paper. A University of Washington biologist detailed specific problems around the world with remote penguin populations, linking their decline to the overall health of southern oceans. "Now we're seeing effects (of human caused warming and pollution) in the most faraway places in the world,"...

The Great Human Migration Why (Modern) humans left their African homeland 80,000 years ago to colonize the world By Guy Gugliotta Smithsonian magazine, July 2008 Seventy-seven thousand years ago, a craftsman sat in a cave in a limestone cliff overlooking the rocky coast of what is now the Indian Ocean. It was a beautiful spot, a workshop with a glorious natural picture window, cooled by a sea breeze in summer, warmed by a small fire in winter. The sandy cliff top above was covered with a white-flowering shrub that one distant day would be known as blombos and give this...

Stone Age axe holds hidden human figure Published: 10 Jun 08 17:37 CET Online: http://www.thelocal.se/12344/ An artifact from the Stone Age has been hiding in the plain sight of museum visitors and researches in western Sweden. But no one noticed until archaeologist Bengt Nordqvist suddenly discovered the form of a human body on a stone axe. “The axe has been in the museum’s collection for more than 100 years. Anyone could have found the image,” said Nordqvist, who had a hard time containing his excitement. The stone axe was found in connection with the building of a road near Stala...

Another severed human foot has been discovered washed ashore on Canada's Pacific coast, but police are no closer to solving the gruesome mystery on where they are coming from. The shoe-clad foot was discovered on Thursday on a small uninhabited island south of Vancouver in the Strait of Georgia, and is the fourth discovered in the region in the past 10 months. All four cases involved right feet, and each was found on a different island. The earlier feet were also still in shoes. The discoveries have sparked wide speculation over where the feet came from and who they belonged...

Neanderthals were separate species, says new human family tree A wax figure representing a Neanderthal man on display at a museum. A new, simplified family tree of humanity has dealt a blow to those who contend that the enigmatic hominids known as Neanderthals intermingled with our forebears. A new, simplified family tree of humanity, published on Sunday, has dealt a blow to those who contend that the enigmatic hominids known as Neanderthals intermingled with our forebears. Neanderthals were a separate species to Homo sapiens, as anatomically modern humans are known, rather than offshoots of the same species, the new organigram...

Eight New Human Genome Projects Offer Large-scale Picture Of Genetic Difference ScienceDaily (May 2, 2008) — A nationwide consortium led by the University of Washington in Seattle has completed the first sequence-based map of structural variations in the human genome, giving scientists an overall picture of the large-scale differences in DNA between individuals. The project gives researchers a guide for further research into these structural differences, which are believed to play an important role in human health and disease. The results appear in the May 1 issue of the journal Nature. The project involved sequencing the genomes of eight people...

Technique Traces Origins Of Disease Genes In Mixed Human Populations ScienceDaily (Apr. 9, 2008) — A team of researchers from Washington University in St. Louis and the Israeli Institute of Technology (Technion) in Haifa has developed a technique to detect the ancestry of disease genes in hybrid, or mixed, human populations. The technique, called expected mutual information (EMI), determines how a set of DNA markers is likely to show the ancestral origin of locations on each chromosome. The team constructed an algorithm for the technique that selects panels of DNA markers that render the best picture of ancestral origin of...

African inflation could cause "humanitarian tsunami" Brussels Tue Apr 8, 10:02 AM ETAFP/File Photo: People shop for groceries at a supermarket in the Borrowdale Brooke suburb in Harare. Soaring... BRUSSELS (AFP) - Soaring prices of basic foodstuffs could cause a "humanitarian tsunami" in Africa, EU Development Commissioner Louis Michel warned Tuesday. "A world food crisis is emerging, less visible than the oil (price) crisis, but with the potential effect of real economic and humanitarian tsunami in Africa," Michel said in a statement after a meeting with African Union Commission chief Jean Ping. Ping said the soaring prices represented a "major...

Hold the potty humor, please, but archaeologists digging in a dusty cave in Oregon have unearthed fossilized feces that appear to be oldest biological evidence of humans in North America. The ancient poop dates back 14,300 years. If the results hold up, that means the continent was populated more than 1,000 years before the so-called Clovis culture, long believed to be the first Americans. "This adds to a growing body of evidence that the human presence in the Americas predates Clovis," said Michael Waters, an anthropologist at Texas A&M University who was not involved in the project. DNA analysis of...

The Embryology Bill has provoked a bitter split between religion and science THE cries of a baby were the only other sounds to be heard as Cardinal Keith O'Brien delivered his Easter Sunday sermon to a packed St Mary's Cathedral in Edinburgh yesterday. It was perhaps a fitting interruption as Scotland's most senior Catholic clergyman delivered his much-trailed blast at the government's controversial embryo research legislation. Accusing Prime Minister Gordon Brown of "an unprecedented attack on the sanctity and dignity of human life", he warned that the research could lead to the creation of hybrid babies and experiments of "Frankenstein...

Hybrids are made using an animal egg mixed with human genes Leading charities have written to every MP urging them to support the controversial embryo research bill, the BBC has learned. Cancer Research and the British Heart Foundation are among more than 200 charities in favour of the creation of human-animal hybrids for research. The prime minister is facing dissent over the bill, from some of his Labour MPs and leading Catholic clergy. But Health Secretary Alan Johnson said an "accommodation" would be found. The letter, written by the Association of Medical Research Charities, says although there are ethical...

Skull Changes Show Time of Human-Neandertal Split Scott Norris for National Geographic NewsMarch 17, 2008 Gradual changes in human skull size and shape suggest a split between humans and Neandertals (often spelled Neanderthals) about 300,000 to 400,000 years ago, according to a new study. The work provides the first estimate a divergence date for modern humans and Neandertals based on the rate of change of physical characteristics. Genetic Drift Just as DNA changes accumulate over time and provide a kind of "molecular clock" by which the separation of closely related species can be dated, evolved differences in physical form can...

The Vatican has brought up to date the traditional seven deadly sins by adding seven modern mortal sins it claims are becoming prevalent in what it calls an era of "unstoppable globalisation".Those newly risking eternal punishment include drug pushers, the obscenely wealthy, and scientists who manipulate human genes. So "thou shalt not carry out morally dubious scientific experiments" or "thou shalt not pollute the earth" might one day be added to the Ten Commandments. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that "immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into Hell"....

Human crisis in Gaza 'is worst for 40 years' By Tim Butcher in Jerusalem Last Updated: 1:53am GMT 06/03/2008 Gaza's humanitarian crisis is more acute today than at any time since Israel took control of the territory in the 1967 war, aid agencies say. More Gazans are dependent on food aid than ever before, hospitals suffer the longest power cuts yet experienced, record levels of raw sewage are being pumped daily into the sea and the economy has never been worse, says a report. Prepared by aid groups including Oxfam, Amnesty International and Care International UK, The Gaza Strip: A...

Cannibalism May Have Wiped Out Neanderthals Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News Unhealthy Diets? Feb. 27, 2008 -- A Neanderthal-eat-Neanderthal world may have spread a mad cow-like disease that weakened and reduced populations of the large Eurasian human, thereby contributing to its extinction, according to a new theory based on cannibalism that took place in more recent history. Aside from illustrating that consumption of one's own species isn't exactly a healthy way to eat, the new theoretical model could resolve the longstanding mystery as to what caused Neanderthals, which emerged around 250,000 years ago, to disappear off the face of the Earth...

Most Detailed Global Study Of Genetic Variation CompletedA schematic of worldwide human genetic variation, with colors representing different genetic types. The figure illustrates the great amout of genetic variation in Africa. (Credit: Illustration by Martin Soave/University of Michigan) ScienceDaily (Feb. 21, 2008) — University of Michigan scientists and their colleagues at the National Institute on Aging have produced the largest and most detailed worldwide study of human genetic variation, a treasure trove offering new insights into early migrations out of Africa and across the globe. Like astronomers who build ever-larger telescopes to peer deeper into space, population geneticists like U-M's...

Contact: Deborah S. Rogers dsrogers@stanford.edu 650-630-7760 Stanford University Human culture subject to natural selection, Stanford study shows The process of natural selection can act on human culture as well as on genes, a new study finds. Scientists at Stanford University have shown for the first time that cultural traits affecting survival and reproduction evolve at a different rate than other cultural attributes. Speeded or slowed rates of evolution typically indicate the action of natural selection in analyses of the human genome. This study of cultural evolution, which compares the rates of change for structural and decorative Polynesian canoe-design traits, is...

Rat genes shed light on ancient human migrations 15:16 01 February 2008 NewScientist.com news service Emma Young One of humanity’s greatest scourges – the black rat – may help health experts track the spread of disease. New work probing Rattus rattus’s origins and historical movements should help health officials track its ongoing dispersal – and might also explain anomalies in its spread of diseases such as typhus and plague. Ken Aplin at CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems in Canberra, Australia, and colleagues have analysed the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of 170 black rats from 76 regions in 32 countries. They also surveyed other...