Free Republic

One of the world's early documentaries featured unique footage of the lives of Arctic fur trappers in 1919. After long being forgotten, it's now been restored for modern audiences in Canada, including communities descended from those featured in the silent film.In July 1919, the RMS Nascopie departed Montreal. It carried supplies bound for Arctic fur trade posts. But the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) ice-breaker had extra cargo on its annual trip. A film crew is on board. The ship headed north. As they travelled, a cameraman filmed the Nascopie crashing through ice floes. When the ship anchored, he went overboard,...

TUESDAY, Jan. 10 (HealthDay News) -- Studies have shown that vitamin D is critical for bone health and could have a protective benefit for the heart, but new research suggests that too much of it could actually be harmful. "Clearly, vitamin D is important for your heart health, especially if you have low blood levels of vitamin D. It reduces cardiovascular inflammation and atherosclerosis, and may reduce mortality, but it appears that at some point it can be too much of a good thing," study leader Dr. Muhammad Amer, an assistant professor in the division of general internal medicine at...

Back when I was even younger, and living in Rome, the main topic of conversation was of course Communism. Italy had the largest Communist Party outside the Soviet Union, and it was forever on the cusp of becoming the biggest party in Italy, thus forming the government, thus taking over. (Marginal comment for those who aren’t up on 20th century Italian political history: it never happened). Although the deep thinkers at the European and American universities were eager for the West to lose its “inordinate fear of Communism” (a phrase conceived by then-National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and pronounced by...

An estimated 20 tons of dead herring fish mysteriously washed up on the cost of Norway and then disappeared. The fish remains turned up on Norway's northern coast on New Year's Eve, and officials are still looking to explain just how and why they showed up. "People say that something similar happened in the 80s," said local resident Jan-Petter Jorgensen, 44, who was walking his dog Molly when he made the discovery. "Maybe the fish have been caught in a deprived oxygen environment, and then died of fresh water?" Jorgensen asked. > Locals, meanwhile, had to ponder just what a...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Two teams of Michigan State University researchers – one working at a medieval burial site in Albania, the other at a DNA lab in East Lansing – have shown how modern science can unlock the mysteries of the past. The scientists are the first to confirm the existence of brucellosis, an infectious disease still prevalent today, in ancient skeletal remains. The findings, which appear in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, suggest brucellosis has been endemic to Albania since at least the Middle Ages. Although rare in the United States, brucellosis remains a major problem in...

Another new year and another host of celebrity dieters, but it's not a modern phenomenon. Lord Byron was one of first diet icons and helped kick off the public's obsession with how celebrities lose weight, says historian Louise Foxcroft.There has never been any shortage of celebrities who have followed diets, endorsed them or tried to sell us one of their own devising, even back as far as the 1800s. The "mad, bad, and dangerous to know" Lord Byron was thought of as the embodiment of the ethereal poet, but he actually had a "morbid propensity to fatten". Like today's celebrities,...

Researchers have found a possible connection between a hormone found in body fat and the risk of dementia, adding to the growing evidence on the potential link between the condition and diabetes. A new study found that women with high levels of a hormone called adiponectin were at an increased risk of developing dementia. Scientists say the findings reflect the complicated and still unclear relationships between metabolism, hormones and the brain degeneration that occurs in dementia. The researchers studied frozen blood samples from 840 of the participants from the large Framingham Heart Study, taken after the patients had been monitored...

Eagerly he collects wood from the ground, snaps the branches into small pieces and carefully balances them in a pile. Then, taking care not to burn himself, he gently strikes a match and gets ready for a fry-up. Like all red-blooded males, Kanzi loves messing around with a barbecue. But then, as these extraordinary pictures show, Kanzi is no man. He is a bonobo - pygmy chimpanzee - and his love of fire is challenging the way that we think about our closest relatives in the animal kingdom. For although bonobo apes and larger chimpanzees use twigs and leaves as...

The Thivillons have been caring for Digit the gorilla for more than a decade, but having a primate at home throws up some unlikely problems. In a village near Lyon in south-east France, a couple have become local celebrities by virtue of their adopted child. Digit, as she is known, is a gorilla and has been living in the same room as Pierre and Elaine Thivillon for nearly 13 years. Their relationship began in 1999, when the young primate came into the care of the couple, who manage the zoo at Saint Martin la Plaine where she was born. Within...

PARIS (Reuters) - The euro could become the world's leading currency in the next decade if leaders of the single-currency bloc succeed in tightening fiscal integration, European Central Bank policymaker Christian Noyer said in an article to be published in the Journal du Dimanche. European leaders struck a historic deal at an emergency summit in Brussels on December 9 to draft a new treaty for deeper economic union, in an attempt to stem the debt crisis that is threatening to cause the collapse of the single currency. The news temporarily calmed markets. But concerns quickly resurfaced as the final details...

> In this release: 1. Cassini data shows Saturn moon may affect planet's magnetosphere 2. Using Loch Ness to track the tilt of the world 3. Alaskan lake bed cores show expanding Arctic shrubs may slow erosion 4. Evaluating the energy balance of Saturn's moon Titan 5. A new way to measure Earth's magnetosphere 6. Waves triggered by lightning leak out of Earth's atmosphere > The astronomical tide redistributes the ocean to such an extent that the changing mass of water along the coast deforms the seafloor. As the ocean tide ebbs and flows, the surface of the Earth rises...

NEW YORK (AP) — For the first time, the top export of the United States, the world's biggest gas guzzler, is — wait for it — fuel. Measured in dollars, the nation is on pace this year to ship more gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel than any other single export, according to U.S. Census data going back to 1990. It will also be the first year in more than 60 that America has been a net exporter of these fuels. Just how big of a shift is this? A decade ago, fuel wasn't even among the top 25 exports. And...

At Power Line, Steve Hayward spots Paul Krugman phoning in his periodic “Keynes Was Right” column, and asks: I wonder if Krugman also credits Keynes’s views on Jews, which British blogger Damian Thompson of The Telegraph brings to our attention. From Keynes’s diary: [Jews] have in them deep-rooted instincts that are antagonistic and therefore repulsive to the European, and their presence among us is a living example of the insurmountable difficulties that exist in merging race characteristics, in making cats love dogs … It is not agreeable to see civilization so under the ugly thumbs of its impure Jews who...

A model has helped shed light on how human-started fires shaped Africa's landscape, researchers report.Before human activity became widespread, most fires were caused by lightning strikes during the continent's wet seasons, they said. As the human population expanded, more fires occurred during the dry season, triggering a shift in the impact of fires on Africa's ecology, they added. > It has been estimated that early humans could have had the ability to start fires about 300,000 years ago, but the real impact was from about 70,000 years ago as human populations became more widespread. >

Here, Prof Clive Finlayson looks back at the year's developments in human evolution research and asks whether recent discoveries rule out a well known idea about our ancestors.Hobbits on Flores, Denisovans in Siberia, Neanderthals across Eurasia and our very own ancestors. Given this array of human diversity in the Late Pleistocene, we might well be forgiven for thinking that Ernst Mayr's contention that "in spite of much geographical variation, never more than one species of man existed on Earth at any one time" had finally been put to bed. It now seems that a high degree of diversity was also...

MURMANSK, Russia (Reuters) - Russia said it had won the battle with a raging blaze aboard a nuclear submarine on Friday by submerging the stricken vessel at a navy shipyard after hours of dousing the flames with water from helicopters and tug boats. There was no radiation leak, authorities said. Television pictures showed a giant plume of smoke above the yard in the Murmansk region of northern Russia as over 100 firemen struggled to douse flames which witnesses said rose 10 metres (30 feet) above the Yekaterinburg submarine. "The fire has been localized," Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu told officials who...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – New research has found that elderly people with higher levels of several vitamins and omega 3 fatty acids in their blood had better performance on mental acuity tests and less of the brain shrinkage typical of Alzheimer's disease – while "junk food" diets produced just the opposite result. The study was among the first of its type to specifically measure a wide range of blood nutrient levels instead of basing findings on less precise data such as food questionnaires, and found positive effects of high levels of vitamins B, C, D, E and the healthy oils most...

Scuffles have broken out between rival groups of Greek Orthodox and Armenian clerics in a turf war at Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity.Bemused tourists looked on as about 100 priests fought with brooms while cleaning the church in preparation for Orthodox Christmas, on 7 January. Palestinian police armed with batons and shields broke up the clashes. Groups of priests have clashed before in the church, built on the spot where Christians believe Jesus was born. "It was a trivial problem that... occurs every year," Bethlehem police Lt-Col Khaled al-Tamimi told Reuters.

A Venezuelan campaign group says the country has suffered a record number of murders in 2011. The Venezuela Violence Observatory says at least 19,336 people have been killed this year, an average of 53 a day. The figures suggest Venezuela's murder rate is the highest in South America and four times that of Mexico. Criminal violence is set to be a major issue in next year's elections, when President Hugo Chavez is seeking another term in office. "We must inform the nation that 2011 will end as the the most violent year in the nation's history," the Venezuela Violence Observatory...

Remarkable images of life from one of the most inhospitable spots in the ocean have been captured by scientists.Researchers have been surveying volcanic underwater vents - sometimes called black smokers - in the South West Indian Ridge in the Indian Ocean. The UK team found an array of creatures living in the super-heated waters, including yeti crabs, scaly-foot snails and sea cucumbers. They believe some of the species may be new to science.