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A generation of idiots
Prehistoric bugs from 230 million years ago found in amber
These photomicrographs are of the two new species of ancient gall mites in 230-million-year-old amber droplets from northeastern Italy, taken at 1000x magnification. The gall mites were named (left) Triasacarus fedelei and (right) Ampezzoa triassica. Credit: University of Göttingen/A. Schmidt
(Phys.org)—An international team of scientists has discovered the oldest record of arthropods—invertebrate animals that include insects, arachnids, and crustaceans—preserved in amber. The specimens, one fly and two mites found in millimeter-scale droplets of amber from northeastern Italy, are about 100 million years older than any other amber arthropod ever collected. The group’s findings, which are published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, pave the way for a better evolutionary understanding of the most diverse group of organisms in the world.
Amber is an extremely valuable tool for paleontologists because it preserves specimens with microscopic fidelity, allowing uniquely accurate estimates of the amount of evolutionary change over millions of years,” said corresponding author David Grimaldi, a curator in the American Museum of Natural History’s Division of Invertebrate Zoology and a world authority on amber and fossil arthropods.
Globules of fossilized resin are typically called amber. Amber ranges in age from the Carboniferous (about 340 million years ago) to about 40,000 years ago, and has been produced by myriad plants, from tree ferns to flowering trees, but predominantly by conifers. Even though arthropods are more than 400 million years old, until now, the oldest record of the animals in amber dates to about 130 million years. The newly discovered arthropods break that mold with an age of 230 million years. They are the first arthropods to be found in amber from the Triassic Period.
Read more: http://phys.org/news/2012-08-prehistoric-bugs-million-years.html
Early Human Ancestor, Australopithecus Sediba, Fossils Discovered in Rock
July 13, 2012
ScienceDaily — Scientists from the Wits Institute for Human Evolution based at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg have just announced the discovery of a large rock containing significant parts of a skeleton of an early human ancestor. The skeleton is believed to be the remains of ‘Karabo’, the type skeleton of Australopithecus sediba, discovered at the Malapa Site in the Cradle of Humankind in 2009.
Professor Lee Berger, a Reader in Palaeoanthropology and the Public Understanding of Science at the Wits Institute for Human Evolution, will make the announcement at the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum in Shanghai, China on 13 July 2012.
“We have discovered parts of a jaw and critical aspects of the body including what appear to be a complete femur (thigh bone), ribs, vertebrae and other important limb elements, some never before seen in such completeness in the human fossil record,” says Berger. “This discovery will almost certainly make Karabo the most complete early human ancestor skeleton ever discovered. We are obviously quite excited as it appears that we now have some of the most critical and complete remains of the skeleton, albeit encased in solid rock. It’s a big day for us as a team and for our field as a whole.”
Read more: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120712162744.htm
Giving Ancient Life Another Chance to Evolve: Scientists Place 500-Million-Year-Old Gene in Modern Organism
July 12, 2012
“This is as close as we can get to rewinding and replaying the molecular tape of life,” said scientist Betül Kaçar, a NASA astrobiology postdoctoral fellow in Georgia Tech’s NASA Center for Ribosomal Origins and Evolution. “The ability to observe an ancient gene in a modern organism as it evolves within a modern cell allows us to see whether the evolutionary trajectory once taken will repeat itself or whether a life will adapt following a different path.”
Read more: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120711100726.htm
If you believe in liberty, the U.S. government now considers you a terror suspect
July 10, 2012
(NaturalNews) In this season of Independence, it’s important – and sad – to note how far we’ve come from our nation’s founding, where brave, insightful men laid everything on the line just a couple of centuries ago in an all-or-nothing effort to birth the greatest, most successful, free country in the history of the earth.
Today, holding dear such values as freedom and liberty will get you put on a terrorist list. Welcome to America 2012.
A new study funded by the Department of Homeland Security, using your tax dollars, describes Americans who are “suspicious of centralized federal authority” and “reverent of individual liberty” as “extreme right-wing” terrorists.
The study, titled, “Hot Spots of Terrorism and Other Crimes in the United States, 1970-2008,” was produced by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland – a group seeded with $12 million in start-up funding via DHS.
To give the authors their due, there was equal and appropriate mention in the Executive Summary about left-wing extremism as well, which they said “was concentrated in the 1970s and ethno-national/separatist terrorism was concentrated in the 1970s and 1980s.”
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/036421_liberty_terror_suspect_government.html#ixzz20CyAYsiG
In a Cosmology Breakthrough, Astronomers Measure a Filament of Dark Matter
By Rebecca Boyle 07.05.2012
Invisible, cold dark matter plays a major role in the evolution of galaxies, according to modern cosmological theory. The most advanced simulations of cosmic evolution show stringy tendrils of mass — dark matter — connecting giant clusters of galaxies via a vast cosmic web. Now for the first time, astronomers have been able to detect one of these filaments, sussing out its location by watching it warp light.
Nevada Issues a Driver’s License to Google’s Self-Driving Car
By Paul Adams 05.08.2012 at http://www.popsci.com/
New Primordial Protozoan Species Is Not in Any Known Kingdom of Life
New Primordial Protozoan Species Is Not in Any Known Kingdom of Life
A tiny microorganism found in Norwegian lake sludge may be related to the very oldest life forms on this planet, a possible modern cousin of our earliest common ancestor. It is not a fungus, alga, parasite, plant or animal, yet it has features associated with other kingdoms of life. It could be a founding member of the newest kingdom on the tree of life, scientists said.
Walk Away From What You Know
‘You have the power to cripple national consumerism.
Yes, You.
Walk away.
Walk away from mortgages, interest, fees, taxes and materialism.
First you must begin to look at your relationship with the paper in your wallet. You have to let it go. Money is fake and they give it in small amounts, then take it back in bigger amounts. Always leaving you working your ass off for a few material goods. Is it worth it? Do you feel better or bigger or happier in your lexus? Does it change your family dynamics or the relationship with your wife? You have to let it go. Stop playing in the playground, it’s designed to never let you win. Why keep playing?’
Believe nothing 