We Have Created
Human-Animal Embryos Already, Say British Team
by Mark Henderson, Times Online
Embryos
containing human and animal material have been created in Britain
for the first time, a month before the House of Commons votes on new
laws to regulate the research.
A team at Newcastle University announced yesterday that it had
successfully generated “admixed embryos” by adding human DNA to
empty cow eggs in the first experiment of its kind in Britain.
The Commons is to debate the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill
next month. MPs have been promised a free vote on clauses in the
legislation that would permit admixed embryos. But their creation is
already allowed, subject to the granting of a licence from the Human
Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA)...
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Neanderthals speak
out after 30,000 years
by Ewen Callaway, New Scientist
Talk about a
long silence – no one has heard their voices for 30,000 years. Now
the long-extinct Neanderthals are speaking up – or at least a
computer synthesiser is doing so on their behalf.
Robert McCarthy, an anthropologist at Florida Atlantic University in
Boca Raton has used new reconstructions of Neanderthal vocal tracts
to simulate the voice. He says the ancient human's speech lacked the
"quantal vowel" sounds that underlie modern speech.
Quantal vowels provide cues that help speakers with different size
vocal tracts understand one another, says McCarthy, who was talking
at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical
Anthropologists in Columbus, Ohio, on April 11.
"They would have spoken a bit differently. They wouldn't have been
able to produce these quantal vowels that form the basis of spoken
language," he says...
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Robotic Lunar Base
With Legs Changes Everything
by Bill Christensen,
Space.com
The ATHLETE (All-Terrain Hex-Legged
Extra-Terrestrial Explorer) robot could play an essential role in
new lunar bases.
According to NASA, the 15 ton lunar habitat would be mounted on top
of the six-legged robot. The habitat could walk right off of the
lunar lander, and then proceed to any desired location. Wheeled
locomotion would be used for level ground; more challenging terrain
could be negotiated with the full use of the flexible legs.
The ATHLETE-based habitat could then be controlled directly by
astronauts; mission control could also direct the habitat from
Earth. My favorite alternative, an autonomous robot habitat, is also
slated for testing. It would use software developed for the Mars
rovers Spirit and Opportunity...
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Astronomers
Discover Our 'Twin' Solar System
Daily Mail
Astronomers have
discovered a distant "twin" solar system which looks very similar to
our own.
So far researchers have identified two planets very similar to
Jupiter and Saturn, which orbit a star about half the size of the
Sun around 5,000 light-years away.
But they believe this could be just the start of an exciting time of
discovery which will eventually lead to astronomers finding new
planets which could support life...
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The Poop on the
First Americans
by Sharon Begley, Newsweek
If you think creationists and
evolutionary biologists can’t stand one another, spend some
time—about three minutes will do—with scientists who study the first
Americans.
The old guard has for years defended the dogma that the so-called
Clovis people, whose artifacts have been dated at 13,000 years old,
are the rightful owners of that honor. Their challengers (who call
their opponents the “Clovis police”) keep presenting evidence for
older settlements, such as those at Meadowcroft in Pennsylvania,
Topper in South Carolina and Monte Verde in southern Chile, which
contains artifacts dated to 14,000 years ago. Now comes what some
anthropologists are calling the most convincing evidence to date of
an earlier settlement of America: feces.
Fossilized feces, to be exact. Called coprolites, they were
discovered in caves in south-central Oregon in 2002 and 2003. The
oldest of the droppings have been carbon-dated to about 14,340 years
old, the scientists report in a paper published online this
afternoon in Science—more than 1,000 to 1,400 years older than the
generally-accepted age of the Clovis culture. And a genetic analysis
finds that they contain mitochondrial DNA unique to present-day
North American Indians—persuasive evidence that the legendary walk
on a land bridge across the Bering Strait took place some 1,000
years earlier than the old school insists...
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