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TaikoBots Are Go! Detailed description of experiments onboard Shenzhou IV (Chinese Manned Space Program!) In early morning on 30 december 2002, Shenzhou IV spaceship was successfully launched into orbit from Jiuquan Satellite Launching Center. Shenzhou IV conducted eight kinds of applied science and technological research in orbit. These included: multimode microwave remote sensing ground observations environmental monitoring in space scientific experiments in space comprehensive and precision orbit determination experiments spatial cell electrofusion experiments, biological macromolecule and cell synthesis, micro-gravity fluid physical tests, and payload support system tests in orbit. In support of these overall science goals Shenzhou IV carried a...

Receipt for girl reveals Roman slave secrets By David Derbyshire, Science Correspondent (Filed: 22/03/2003) The first evidence of Roman Britain's slave trade has been unearthed: a receipt for a young French girl bought for the equivalent price of a small sports car today.Faint scratchings on a wooden writing tablet show that a wealthy slave working for the imperial household bought a girl named Fortunata (Lucky), a member of a Celtic tribe living on the borders of Normandy and Brittany. The silver-fir tablet had been preserved in wet London soil for 2,000 years.Although many Roman slaves were forced to work...

Secrets of the stones March 13 2003 For nearly 8000 years, the Gunditjmara people of western Victoria farmed eels. They modified more than 100 square kilometres of the landscape, constructing artificial ponds across the grassy wetlands and digging channels to interconnect them. They exported their produce and became an important part of the local economy. And then white settlers arrived and all they left of the Gunditjmara's thriving industry were several hundred piles of stones that had formed the foundations to the people's huts. Since the 1970s, archaeologists have suspected that the stone remains in the Lake Condah region were...

The newly-discovered footprints descending an inclined slope of an extinct volcano (Pic: University of Padua)  Markings in hardened volcanic ash, dubbed "devils' trails" by local Italian villagers, have been confirmed as the oldest-known footprints ever made by humans. The fossilised hand and footprints belong to three early humans who were probably climbing down the side of the Roccamonfina volcano in southern Italy about 385,000 to 325,000 years ago, report a team of Italian palaeontologists in today's issue of the journal, Nature. "We believe that these tracks are the oldest human footprints found so far," said Professor Paolo Mietto of...

<p>Eight anthropologists who want to study an ancient skeleton must want until a federal court has heard an appeal of the case by four Northwest tribes that consider the bones sacred.</p> <p>The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision, made last week, prevents any study of the 9,300-year-old skeleton known as Kennewick Man, which scientists have sought to examine since 1996.</p>

Proof that bird flu killed man in Hong Kong prompts alarm By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor 21 February 2003 Doctors confirmed yesterday that a man who died of a viral illness in Hong Kong last Sunday had been suffering from "bird flu", in the first known fatality from the disease since 1997. Health authorities in Hong Kong urged people to stay calm amid fears that the outbreak, thought to be caused by the transmission of the virus from chickens, could be the beginning of a pandemic. The man's nine-year-old son is in hospital with the rare strain of flu, A(H5N1)....

New Age For Mungo Man, New Human HistoryA University of Melbourne-led study has finally got scientists to agree on the age of Mungo Man, Australia's oldest human remains, and the consensus is he is 22,000 years younger. A University of Melbourne-led team say Mungo Man's new age is 40,000 years, reigniting the debate for the 'Out of Africa' theory. The research also boosted the age of Mungo Lady, the world's first recorded cremation, by 10,000 years putting her at the same age as Mungo Man. It is the first time scientists have reached a broad agreement on the ages of...

A male koala bellows: the booming sound announces a male's prowess and boosts his chances of mating (Pic: M. Logan)   It takes more than male koala's smile to woo a mate: females may also interested in the quality of his teeth. Australian researchers have found that a male koala's chances of mating can be predicted by how worn his teeth are. Murray Logan and Gordon D. Sanson of Melbourne's Monash University have published a report on their unique way of predicting the reproductive life of koalas in the latest issue of the Australian Journal of Zoology. "It is...

Here is the news: a gene from the testes may be what made humans diverge from their prehistoric ancestors  The sudden emergence of an unusual new gene expressed mainly in the testes of our direct primate ancestors may have helped humans to become a distinct species, American scientists have reported. Professor Daniel Haber, of the Harvard Medical School in Boston, and colleagues report the discovery in a study published in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They conclude that the new gene, known as Tre2, appeared as little as 21 million years ago...

Neanderthal DNA Sequencing In July of 1997 the first ever sequencing of Neanderthal DNA was announced in the Jouranl Cell (Krings, et. al., 1997), a breakthrough in the study of modern human evolution. The DNA was extracted for the type specimen and the mitochondrial DNA sequence was determined. This sequence was compared to living human mtDNA sequences and found to be outside the range of variation in modern humans. Age estimation of the Neanderthal and human divergence is four times older than the age of the common mtDNA ancestor of all living humans. The authors suggest that the Neanderthals...

Ordinary Americans think Bin Laden and Saddam are the same man... By Paul Lashmar and Raymond Whitaker 02 February 2003 When did the "war against terror" become a campaign against Saddam Hussein rather than Osama bin Laden? Less than a month after the September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, some hawkish members of the US administration were stressing a connection with Iraq, but the shift did not become clear until George Bush's State of the Union address in January last year, when the "axis of evil" was unveiled. Suddenly Baghdad was in the frame, and...

Documentary Redraws Humans' Family Tree Hillary Mayell for National Geographic News January 21, 2003 By analyzing DNA from people in all regions of the world, geneticist Spencer Wells has concluded that all humans alive today are descended from a single man who lived in Africa around 60,000 years ago. Modern humans, he contends, didn't start their spread across the globe until after that time. Most archaeologists would say the exodus began 100,000 years ago—a 40,000-year discrepancy. Wells's take on the origins of modern humans and how they came to populate the rest of the planet is bound to be...

Jan. 24 — Today in America, there are three times as many women between 30 and 34 who have never married than there were in the 1970s, which helps explain the popularity of singleton books and movies like “Bridget Jones’ Diary” and TV shows like “Sex and the City.” So is it cool to be over 30, sexy, single and smart or are such women too smart for their own good? In her new book, author Barbara Dafoe Whitehead explores “Why There Are No Good Men Left.” She discusses the book on “Today.” Read an excerpt below.

Mo. Man Gets Probation for Killing Dog: Missouri Man Is Sentenced to Probation for Killing Family Dog With Sledgehammer The Associated Press KANSAS CITY, Mo.--A man was sentenced to three years of probation Wednesday for killing the family dog with a sledgehammer after it bit his son. Michael Welch, 34, pleaded guilty to felony animal abuse for killing Dusty, a Dalmatian-Labrador mix, in 2001. Welch could have gotten up to five years in prison. Welch attacked the dog after it bit his 2-year-old son's nose. He said he saw the boy "bleeding and crying and getting stitched up. ... I...

HOWELL, Mich. (AP) -- A charge against a man accused of scrawling obscenities on a check to pay a traffic ticket has been dropped after a judge said he didn't want to commit any more of the court's resources to the case. District Judge John Pikkarainen dismissed the contempt of court charge against Eric Wilmoth on Thursday. "I'm definitely relieved and very happy," Wilmoth told The Ann Arbor News. "I was pleasantly surprised by the judge's decision." In his opinion dismissing the charges, Pikkarainen wrote, "If the words written by the respondent were uttered in a courtroom setting before a...

Tribes fail to halt study of ancient skeleton 01/09/03RICHARD L. HILL Four Northwest tribes lost another round in federal court Wednesday in their effort to halt a scientific study of the ancient skeleton called Kennewick Man. U.S. Magistrate John Jelderks in Portland rejected the tribes' request to delay the study until the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals can hear the legal dispute. In August, Jelderks ruled that eight anthropologists who sued the federal government could proceed to study the 9,300-year-old remains. The Nez Perce, Umatilla, Colville and Yakama tribes appealed his decision and later asked Jelderks to delay...

Of lasting genes and lost cities of Tamil Nadu Papri Sri Raman (Indo-Asian News Service)Chennai, January 5 India's East Coast, especially along Tamil Nadu, is increasingly drawing the attention of archaeologists and anthropologists from across the world for its evolutionary and historical secrets.The focus has sharpened after genetic scientist Spencer Wells found strains of genes in some communities of Tamil Nadu that were present in the early man of Africa.In the "Journey of Man" aired by the National Geographic channel, Wells says the first wave of migration of early man from Africa took place 60,000 years ago along the continent's...

Excalibur, the rock that may mark a new dawn for man Paleontologists claim 350,000-year-old find in Spanish cave pushes back boundary of early human evolution Giles Tremlett in Madrid Thursday January 9, 2003 The Guardian They have called it Excalibur, though it was plucked from a pit of bones rather than the stone of Arthurian legend. To the ordinary eye it is a hand-sized, triangular chunk of ochre and purple rock, its surface slightly scratched. But to the palaeontologists who found this axe-head buried in a deep cavern on a Spanish hilltop, it is proof of a terrible and defining...

Man released from hospital with 11 bullets in his body A Bolivian man who was shot 11 times has made such a remarkable recovery that doctors decided to leave the bullets inside him. Jose Luis Cespedes, a sports commentator from Santa Cruz, was shot by a gang who tried to steal his car. Doctors have released him from hospital and confirm they have no intention of removing the 11 bullets from his body. Mr Cespedes told El Nuevo Dia newspaper: "They must have fired directly at me 20 times at least. They had no mercy." Doctors from the local hospital...

The sheer immorality of mass unemployment Peter Cadogan Mass unemployment is not essentially an economic problem. It is a moral matter. Ability to work is fundamental to self-respect and that makes it 'a good'. The denial of the right to work is a denial of self-respect and therefore 'a bad'. Moral objection is thus the foundation of the case against mass unemployment. Economic factors are important but secondary. Further, mass unemployment is political before it is economic. The calculated political imposition of unemployment since 1979, to reduce demand and undermine the unions in the cause of reducing inflation, is an...