Free Republic

Making Skylab Human-Friendly Best known for his iconic designs, from the Lucky Strike logo to Air Force One, Raymond Loewy also consulted on NASA’s first space station. They dined on Lobster Newberg, fresh bread, and butter cookies, and slumbered in their own individual berths, which had the luxury of privacy curtains. But in the blackness of space, there was one thing the Skylab astronauts still craved: Color. As Skylab commander Gerald Carr told the New York Times in September 1994, the astronauts were so starved for color they would stare at the test color bars used to calibrate their cameras....

The director of the Alaska Human Rights Commission resigned Monday, three days after she was suspended for her actions involving a “Black Rifles Matter” sticker on a vehicle in the commission’s Anchorage parking lot. Marti Buscaglia, in a letter to commissioners, said she hoped her resignation would put the issue behind the agency.

Animals are often able to adapt to their human-influenced surroundings with remarkable ease.(Inside Science) -- In 2012 and 2013, Bill Bateman, a zoologist based in Perth, Australia, began to notice something interesting about how animals were navigating the bush: When mining companies created small paths through the previously tangled environment to install seismic lines, animals started preferentially using those trails to move from one place to another. And animal ingenuity wasn’t confined to walking on beaten paths. “The more we looked, the more evidence there was that anthropogenic structures were often used to the advantage of these animals,” said Bateman,...

Supporters of President Donald Trump’s proposed border security measures gathered to form a human “wall” along a section of the U.S.-Mexico border in New Mexico on Saturday. Donning “Make America great again” hats, chanting “build a wall” and waving American flags, the demonstrators linked arms near an open section of the border at Sunland Park, northwest of El Paso. One of the protesters, Anthony Aguero, told Reuters that migrants would “have to find somewhere else” to cross into the U.S. “We are here to bring attention to the fact that there isn’t a wall here,” he said.

"This is an urgent humanitarian issue. My Administration is committed to leveraging every resource we have to confront this threat, to support the victims and survivors, and to hold traffickers accountable for their heinous crimes." President Donald J. TrumpHUMANITARIAN CRISIS AT THE BORDER: There is a humanitarian crisis at the southern border as human traffickers victimize countless women and children. Transnational criminal organizations from Mexico and Central America engage in human trafficking in staggering numbers across our southern border.Human traffickers use loopholes in our immigration laws to exploit women and children. More than 30% of women are sexually assaulted on...

<p>SEATTLE -- Southwest Airlines says a Dallas-bound flight returned to Seattle last weekend because a human heart was left on board.</p> <p>The Seattle Times reports that Flight 3606 arrived in Seattle from Sacramento, California. Someone forgot to unload the heart before the plane left for Dallas, and the captain announced over Idaho they were turning back.</p>

Judicial Watch has obtained exclusive information and photos from Guatemalan authorities revealing that they have recovered seven unaccompanied minors from human smugglers working inside the caravan. The children have been taken into custody and they are being provided with food, water and medical attention, according to a high-level Guatemalan government official. The smugglers have been arrested and the broader investigation into criminal activity in the caravan is ongoing...

PHILADELPHIA -- Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz had just finished a hot August training-camp practice and was chatting with the family of Lukas Kusters -- the Dutch Destroyer -- when a little boy came sprinting onto the field and approached the circle. He had a full head of blonde hair and was wearing shades and a green Wentz jersey. In his right hand was a replica Eagles helmet he was hoping his favorite player would sign. "Max," called Lukas Kusters' mom, Rebecca Burmeff, encouraging the boy to join them. "Do you know who this is?"

DNA extracted from bone fragments found in the cave show the girl was the offspring of a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father. The discovery, reported in Nature, gives a rare insight into the lives of our closest ancient human relatives. Neanderthals and Denisovans were humans like us, but belonged to different species. "We knew from previous studies that Neanderthals and Denisovans must have occasionally had children together," says Viviane Slon, researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) in Leipzig, Germany. "But I never thought we would be so lucky as to find an actual offspring of...

Seeing the rising issue of fake news and its repercussions amongst public, new ways to tackle this problem are being set up. Tech giant Apple has taken the decision to take charge of filtering fake news from real news on itself. The aim of this move is to present reliable news to its readers ahead of the mid-term elections. The Apple News app added a new section which will highlight stories curated by ‘human editors’. These stories will be well-sourced and fact-based.

Research involving 62 species found mammals spent relatively less time being active during the day when humans were nearbyHuman disturbance is turning mammals into night owls, with species becoming more nocturnal when people are around, research has revealed. The study, encompassing 62 species from around the globe, found that when humans were nearby, mammals spent relatively less time being active during the day and were more active at night - even among those already classed as nocturnal. Experts say such a shift might not only affect particular animals themselves – for example impacting their ability to navigate or find food...

I Can Prove the Sex of a Human Can you prove the sex of a human? How? Are there standards? I am familiar with the basic concept of identifying sexual organs but that concept is disturbed now and includes an added declaration from the individual. I didn’t want to get into how that came about. I am pondering how I would prove I am a male if proof were required. I am serious, after I declare I am male what further evidence is required for proof? Do I provide birth and baptism records? Is physical evidence still acceptable. I was...

Why Humans Left Africa: Our Ancestors Watched Climate Change To Cold, Dry BY ELANA GLOWATZ @ELANAGLOW ON 10/05/17 AT 3:09 PM Early humans may have left Africa and spread all over the globe because their home climate was drying up. The idea comes from samples of marine sediment taken from northeastern Africa that show the area was cold and dry around 60,000 years ago, which is around the time humans might have migrated off that continent and into Europe and Asia. A team of scientists wrote in the journal Geology that after warm and wet conditions between 120,000 and 90,000...

Researchers have identified the remains of the earliest known modern humans to have left Africa. New dating of fossils from Israel indicates that our species (Homo sapiens) lived outside Africa around 185,000 years ago, some 80,000 years earlier than the previous evidence. Details appear in the journal Science. The co-lead researcher, Prof Israel Hershkovitz, told BBC News that the discovery would fundamentally alter ideas of recent human evolution. "We have to rewrite the whole story of human evolution, not just for our own species but all the other species that lived outside of Africa at the time," the researcher, from...

September 4, 2017 | David F. Coppedge Evolutionists Tripping Over Human Tracks on Crete These can’t be hominid tracks. They are far too early! Well, then, who made them? Per Ahlberg and his friends publishing in the Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association have gotten their field of paleoanthropology in hot water. Writing in The Conversation, Ahlberg, from the University of Uppsala, says, “Our controversial footprint discovery suggests human-like creatures may have roamed Crete nearly 6m years ago.” Six million years? That’s way back before humans were supposed to have evolved. This not only throws the evolutionary timeline out of whack,...

* This may be the most intact primate fossil skull ever discovered. * The fossil comes from a little-known period of primate evolutionary history. Source: Fred Spoor This is Alesi, the skull of the new extinct ape species Nyanzapithecus alesi (KNM-NP 59050). ================================================================================================================================ A group of scientists have found what may be the most intact fossilized primate skull ever discovered, and the find could shed light on the common evolutionary heritage shared by apes and humans. The lemon-sized skull was discovered in Kenya by an international team of researchers, and was dated to the middle of the Miocene era, a...

At least nine people died after being crammed into a sweltering tractor-trailer found parked outside a Walmart in the midsummer Texas heat, authorities said Sunday in what they described as an immigrant-smuggling attempt gone wrong.Thirty-nine were inside when rescuers arrived, and the rest were believed to have escaped or hitched rides to their next destination, officials said. Some of the survivors told authorities they were from Mexico, Homan said.[SNIP]...investigators were still gathering evidence from the tractor-trailer, which had an Iowa license plate and was registered to Pyle Transportation Inc. of Schaller, Iowa.

President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcer doubled down Friday on recent comments that undocumented immigrants “should be afraid” under the Trump administration. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Thomas Homan said in an interview today that he has “zero regrets” about his remarks before Congress this week, expanding on them. “It needed to be said,” Homan told CNN on the sidelines of a Central American prosperity and security conference. “And by me saying you should be worried, you should be afraid — if you lie on your taxes, you’ve got to be worried, ‘Is the IRS going to audit me?’ …...

Q: What were the five mass extinctions in Earth's history? A: Quick Answer The five mass extinctions in Earth's history occurred at or near the end of the Ordovician, Devonian, Permian, Triassic and Cretaceous periods. Four of these served as the effective border between one period and the next, while the Devonian extinction occurred over a period of 20 million years in the Devonian twilight. The species lost in each extinction ranged from between 60 to 96 percent of life on Earth. Continue Reading

Sitting down for a friendly chat with Chelsea Clinton on Tuesday’s NBC Today, co-host Savannah Guthrie sympathized with her one-time network colleague over Hillary Clinton’s “devastating” loss in the 2016 election: “Well, we know of course that your mom is a woman who inspires you....She’s actually been more in the spotlight recently, and really, I think, seeming to open up about the emotional process of dealing with an election loss. She’s called it a ‘crushing and devastating blow.’” Guthrie fretted: “Set politics aside, just as a human, what has it been like for you as a daughter to see her...