Wednesday, November 21, 2007

“Noah’s flood” spread farming, researchers say

I find the issue interesting how scientists can link the flood and agriculture.
I should say this link may also be there, why do we have a lot of
biodiversity in the tropical areas where they fall into the belt of this
flood as well. Is the Noah's issue also not connected with conservation
of biodiversity when they keep all animals male and female into
the craft??

Read On and do not shoot the messenger, but thought provoking ehh.

Hastings
===========

Nov. 19, 2007World Science staff

http://www.world-science.net/othernews/071119_flood.htm

A giant pre­his­tor­ic flood—which a con­tro­ver­sial the­o­ry has linked to the Bib­li­cal sto­ry of Noah’s Ark—kick-started Eu­ro­pe­an ag­ri­cul­ture, ac­cord­ing to a new stu­dy.A decade-old the­o­ry holds that about 7,500 years ago, a del­uge filled the Black Sea in the Mid­dle East, in­spir­ing the Noah’s Ark flood tale and pos­sibly some of the oth­er flood sto­ries that mys­te­ri­ously re­cur in many myth­o­lo­gies.

Al­though some re­search­ers dis­pute the the­o­ry, the new stu­dy’s au­thors take it fur­ther and say the dis­as­ter al­so trig­gered a boom in ag­ri­cul­ture. “A cat­a­stroph­ic rise in glob­al sea lev­el led to the flood­ing of the Black Sea and drove dra­mat­ic so­cial change across Eu­rope,” the sci­en­t­ists said in an an­nounce­ment of their find­ings.

The del­uge “could have led to the dis­place­ment of 145,000 peo­ple,” they ex­p­lained. “Ar­chae­o­log­i­cal ev­i­dence shows that com­mun­i­ties in south­east Eu­rope were al­ready prac­tis­ing early farm­ing tech­niques and pot­tery pro­duc­tion be­fore the Flood. With the cat­a­stroph­ic rise in wa­ter lev­els it ap­pears they moved west, tak­ing their cul­ture in­to ar­eas in­hab­it­ed by hunter-gatherer com­mun­i­ties” across Eu­rope.The re­search, by the Un­ivers­i­ties of Ex­e­ter, U.K. and Wol­lon­gong, Aus­tral­ia, ap­pears in the Sep­tem­ber is­sue of the re­search jour­nal Qua­ter­nary Sci­ence Re­views.The trig­ger for the hy­poth­e­sized flood would have been the col­lapse of the North Am­er­i­can Ice Sheet some 8,000 years ago, ac­cord­ing to the sci­en­tists.

This would have raised sea lev­els—causing wa­ter to vi­o­lently breach the Bos­po­rus Strait, which pre­vi­ously dammed the Med­i­ter­ra­nean and kept the Black Sea as a freshwa­ter lake.The Aus­tral­ian and U.K. re­search­ers cre­at­ed re­con­struc­tions of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean and Black Sea shore­line be­fore and af­ter the hy­poth­e­sized sea lev­el rise.

They es­ti­mat­ed that nearly 73,000 square km of land, an ar­ea about the size of Ire­land, was lost to the sea in one 34-year pe­ri­od.Con­tro­ver­sy has dog­ged the flood hy­poth­e­sis from the start, al­though it has sup­port from ev­i­dence in­clud­ing signs of hu­man hab­ita­t­ion found well be­neath the sea. One team has pro­posed that al­though there was a flood, it hap­pened too grad­u­ally to threat­en an­y­one, and thus can­not ex­plain the del­uge myths.

Anoth­er sci­ent­ist has claimed that the true source of these ta­les is the pres­ence of ma­rine fos­sils in moun­tains: the fos­sils get there by ge­o­log­ic pro­cess, but an­cient peo­ple might have seen them as proof of past floods.The au­thors of the Qua­ter­nary Sci­ence Re­views pa­per are stick­ing close to the ori­gi­nal del­uge hy­poth­e­sis, pro­posed by ma­rine ge­ol­o­gists Wil­liam Ryan and Wal­ter Pit­man in 1996. “Peo­ple liv­ing in what is now south­east Eu­rope must have felt as though the whole world had flood­ed.

This could well have been the or­i­gin of the Noah’s Ark sto­ry,” said the Un­ivers­ity of Ex­e­ter’s Chris Tur­ney, lead au­thor of the new pa­per. “En­tire coast­al com­mun­i­ties must have been dis­placed, forc­ing peo­ple to mi­grate in their thou­sands. As these ag­ri­cul­tur­al com­mun­i­ties moved west, they would have tak­en farm­ing with them across Eu­rope. It was a rev­o­lu­tion­ary time.”* * *

Monday, November 19, 2007

HOW CAN WE TALK OF LAKE MALAWI BIODIVERSITY WHEN THE WORLD IS BURNING

The world report explicitly said it all, we need to work hard to conserve the biodiversity through our reduction of green house gases. As environmental scientists lets formulate our research questions to help policy makers, come out with informed decisions on whats to need be done to save this burning planet from green house gases.

Lead on the report:
=============================

Scientists paint dire picture of hotter life on Earth

Final U.N. report more alarming than predecessors

By ELISABETH ROSENTHALTHE NEW YORK TIMES

VALENCIA, Spain -- In its final and most powerful report, a U.N. panel of scientists describes the mounting risks of climate change in language that is more specific and forceful than its previous assessments, according to scientists here.
Synthesizing data from its three previous reports, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the first time specifically points out what is risked if governments fail to respond: melting ice sheets that could lead to a rapid rise in sea levels and the extinction of large numbers of species brought about by even moderate amounts of warming, on the order of 1 to 3 degrees.
The report carries heightened significance because it is the last word from the climate panel before world leaders meet in Bali, Indonesia, in December to begin to discuss a global climate change treaty that will replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. It is also the first report from the panel since it shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore in October -- an honor that many scientists here said emboldened the panelists to stand more forcefully behind their positions.
"This document goes further than any of the previous efforts," said Hans Verolme, director of the World Wildlife Fund's Global Climate Change Program. "The pressure has been palpable -- people know they are delivering a document that will be cited for years to come and will define policy."
The previous three sections, released between February and April, focused on one issue at a time: the first on science, the second on how the world could adapt to warming, the third about how countries could "mitigate," or reduce, the greenhouse gases produced.
This fourth and final assessment -- the so-called synthesis report -- seeks to combine lessons from all three. Its conclusions are culled from data contained in the thousands of pages that were essentially technical supplements to the panel's previous publications. How that data is summarized and presented to the world will be a powerful guide to what the scientists consider of utmost importance at the end of a five-year process, offering concrete guidelines for policymakers.
"You look to a synthesis report to provide clarity, to clarify what was obscure in previous reports," said Michael Oppenheimer, a climate scientist at Princeton University. "Now, how can we take these findings and formulate a policy response that's quick enough and big enough?"
Even though the synthesis report is more alarming than its predecessors, some researchers believe that it still understates the trajectory of global warming and its impact. The IPCC's scientific process, which takes five years of study and writing from start to finish, cannot take into account the very latest data on climate change or economic trends, which show much more development and energy use in China.
"The world is already at or above the worst-case scenarios in terms of emissions," said Gernot Klepper of the Kiel Institute for World Economy in Kiel, Germany. "In terms of emissions, we are moving past the most pessimistic estimates of the IPCC, and by some estimates, we are above that red line."
The panel presents several scenarios for the trajectory of emissions and climate change. In 2006, 8.4 gigatons of carbon were put into the atmosphere from fossil fuels, according to a study in the proceedings of the National Academy of Science, which was co-authored by Klepper. That is almost identical to the panel's worst-case prediction for that year.
Likewise, a recent International Energy Agency report looking at the unexpectedly rapid emissions growth in China and India estimated that if current policies are not changed, the world would warm 6 degrees by 2030, a disastrous increase far higher than the panel's estimates of 1 to 4 degrees by 2100.
While the United States, Saudi Arabia and China tried to change the text in order to downplay the consequences of global warming, developing nations -- which will bear the initial brunt of climate change -- were much more forceful than at previous meetings in opposing these efforts, according to a scientist who was in the negotiating room. "I suspect that will continue," he said.
One novel aspect of the report is a specific list of "Reasons for Concern." It includes items that are thought to be very likely outgrowths of climate change that had been mentioned in previous reports, such as an increase in extreme-weather events.
But for the first time it includes less-likely but more-alarming possibilities, such as the relatively rapid melting of polar ice. Previous reports focused more on changes the scientists felt were "highly likely."
"This time they take a step back and look at the totality," Verolme said. "Saying it is less likely to occur, but if it does, we are fried."
One such area is the future melting of ice sheets in Greenland and western Antarctica. In earlier reports, the panel's scientists acknowledged that their computer models were poor at such predictions, and did not reflect the rapid melting that scientists have recently observed.
If these areas melt entirely, seas would rise 40 feet, scientists said. While scientists are certain that the sheets will melt over millennia, producing elevated sea levels, there is now evidence to suggest that it could happen much faster than that, perhaps over centuries.
"In my view, that would make it not just difficult, but impossible to adapt successfully; some of my colleagues would say catastrophic," said Oppenheimer.
This final report also puts more emphasis on the ripple effect of small degrees of temperature change, some of which are already being seen, such as species extinctions and loss of biodiversity.
"A relatively modest degree of warming -- 1 to 3 degrees -- spells a lot of trouble, and I think that was not clear in the previous report," Oppenheimer said.
He said part of the reason for the lack of clarity was that governments had "messed around" with the language and structure of the report during the approval process.
This time around, the consequences of different degrees of climate change will be better laid out so that the ministers who meet in Bali in December will understand the options and the consequences of inaction. "This should light a fire under policymakers," Oppenheimer said.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

NATURAL HUMAN HISTORY REVISITED

Hi Guys

As scientists keep on looking for more evidence of evolution in human
history, one breaking moment brings them back to africa, yes the
great east africa rift valley of which Malawi is well positioned as
the epicenter of human evolution.

However, the dates are much more older than the Lake Malawi formation
dating of 1 million years ago. So may be this ape named Nakalipithecus nakayamai,
did not drink water or feed nuts irrigated from the fesh waters of Lake Malawi.
Nakalipithecus nakayamai is said to be 10 million years old.

The questions is which ape coevoluted with the maginificent lake malawi,
will be left to those who fancy the Lake Malawi cichlids and their
biodivesity, so go figure.

Hastings
================

Experts find jawbone of pre-human great ape in Kenya

By Katie Nguyen Reuters - Tuesday, November 13 03:43 pm

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Researchers unveiled a 10-million-year-old jaw bone on Tuesday they believe belonged to a new species of great ape that could be the last common ancestor of gorillas, chimpanzees and humans.

The Kenyan and Japanese team found the fragment, dating back to between 9.8 and 9.88 million years, in 2005 along with 11 teeth. The fossils were unearthed in volcanic mud flow deposits in the northern Nakali region of Kenya.

The species -- somewhere between the size of a female gorilla and a female orangutan -- may prove to be the "missing link", the key step that split the evolutionary chains of humans and other primates, Kenyan scientists said.

"Based on this particular discovery, we can comfortably say we are approaching the point at which we can pin down the so-called missing link," Frederick Manthi, senior research scientist at the National Museums of Kenya, told reporters.

"We have to find more fossils from a cross-section of sites to sustain that particular theory," he added, speaking at a desk where the approximately four-inch sliver of bone was displayed alongside human and gorilla skulls.

It was the latest important finding in east Africa's Rift Valley -- a region long regarded as the "cradle of humankind".

"The teeth were covered in thick enamel and the caps were low and voluminous, suggesting that the diet of this ape consisted of a considerable amount of hard objects, like nuts or seeds, and fruit," Yutaka Kunimatsu at Kyoto University's Primate Research Institute said in a telephone interview.

"It could be positioned before the split between gorillas, chimps and humans," he added.
However, it was hard to determine what the new species, named Nakalipithecus nakayamai, looked like.

"We only have some jaw fragments and some teeth ... but we hope to find other body parts in our future research. We plan to go back next year. We will try to find bones below the neck to tell us how the animal moved," Kunimatsu said.

Published in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the finding is significant as it gives credence to the theory that the evolution from ape to man may have taken place entirely in Africa.

Prior to this finding, there had been so little fossil evidence in Africa dating between 7 to 13 million years ago that some experts began to surmise that the last common ancestor left Africa for Europe and Asia, and then returned later.

"Now, we have a good candidate in Africa. We do not need to think the common ancestor came back from Eurasia to Africa. I think it is more likely the common ancestor evolved from the apes in the Miocene in Africa," Kunimatsu said.

The Miocene is a period extending from 23.03 million to 5.33 million years ago.
"Some apes (then) left Africa and migrated to Eurasia. They then became orangutans in Southeast Asia. Today's orangutan evolved from the apes that left Africa," he said.

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Technique lets scientists see brain in full color


Hi Friends,


Last week it was a fast genetic mice and today its a brain colouration.


With all this fast evolving molecular technologies, why should other

people go about hungry day in day out simply becasue they missed,

the green revolution which saw the increase in food production in

the latin america and east asia.


While, I partly understand the mismatch overlooked in the food patterns

of the crops targeted in green revolution and the satple foods of sub-sahara.

These new technologies will or may equally provide the fast growing and

high yeilding crops of sub-sahara. Yes, we use our maize and cassava not

wheat and rice as promoted by the green revolution.


As a molecular biologists and concerned citizen of the underprivilaged, I

propose that scientists in this region should take the molecular techniques

seriously and think of ways how to improve the comonly used food crops,

to revolutionise the growth and productivity of these food crops.


Hastings

==========


Take note that the picture and story are credited to Nature and World science staff.
Nov. 6, 2007 Courtesy Nature and World Science staff
http://www.world-science.net/othernews/071106_braincolor.htm

With a com­bina­t­ion of ge­net­ic tricks and fan­cy pro­teins, re­search­ers have col­ored hun­dreds of in­di­vid­ual cells in a mouse brain with dis­tinc­tive hues. This pro­vides a key step to­wards un­der­stand­ing how the nerv­ous sys­tem works, both nor­mally and in dis­eased brains, sci­en­tists said.


The re­search, pub­lished in the Oct. 31 is­sue of the re­search jour­nal Na­ture, takes brain map­ping to a new lev­el, and re­sults in the la­bel­ling of nerve cells with ap­prox­i­mately 90 dif­fer­ent co­lour com­bina­t­ions.


Over a hun­dred years ago, the Span­ish phy­si­cian Ra­mon Y Ca­jal opened the gates to mod­ern neu­ro­sci­ence with a tech­nique that col­ors nerve cells so their struc­ture is clearly vis­i­ble, called Gol­gi stain­ing.


But it uses only one col­or, and un­til now it has re­mained dif­fi­cult to map out in­di­vid­ual cells in each brain cir­cuit. In the new re­search, Jeff Licht­man of Har­vard Un­ivers­ity in Mas­sa­chu­setts and col­leagues de­vel­oped a technicol­or ver­sion of Gol­gi stain­ing, called “Brain­bow,” that they said al­lows more de­tailed re­con­struc­tions of brain cir­cuits