Let's party all day long
"Many primates, including humans, are unusually social animals," says LiveScience. "We spend our lives eating, travelling, even sleeping in constant association with others in our group. A new study casts light on how this came to be. Our earliest ancestors apparently became social creatures when they gave up the night life. Researchers from the University of Oxford delved into our evolutionary history by building a family tree for 217 primate species whose social habits are known. Working backward from the present, they found that early primates were nocturnal animals that lived solitary lives until about 52 million years ago. Our early ancestors apparently transitioned to life in large groups at the same time they shifted to becoming active during the daytime."
The threat of pests
"The threat posed to crop production by plant pests and diseases is one of the key factors that could lead to 'a perfect storm' that threatens to destabilize global food security," says BBC News. "Already, the biological threat accounts for about a 40 per cent loss in global production and the problem is forecast to get worse, scientists warn."
The travellers' hassle
"The topic of travel has become more prevalent among clairvoyants, according to Rosemary the Celtic Lady, the founder of the American Association of Psychics," reports The New York Times. "She said she counselled clients to exhale negative energy from travel stress 'out of their body.' A psychic website also advertises a specific $45 reading for travel, saying that whether the client is 'travelling on business or vacation, this reading will help you be better prepared.'… Psychologists say more patients are talking to them about travel stress. Bonnie Jacobson, a clinical psychologist, said that, in the current economy, her patients felt pressure to pack as much into a business trip as possible and never to tell their bosses the toll that endless travel had taken on their personal lives."
Malaria's Achilles heel?
"You wait for years for a breakthrough in the battle against malaria, and then two come along in two weeks," says The Independent. "But the advance announced [Wednesday] by scientists at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge is potentially far more significant than last month's news of an experimental vaccine.… The Cambridge scientists' discovery offers hope of something far more thrilling: the complete global eradication of the disease. That tantalizing goal is significantly closer, thanks to the discovery of the critical component of human red blood cells that appear to be vital for the malaria parasite to complete its life cycle within the human body. In effect, the deadly parasite's 'Achilles heel' has been identified. This means that it should be possible to design a vaccine that blocks the parasite's development within an infected person – which, researchers believe, should prevent both the disease and its mosquito-borne transmission."
Good surgeons, lousy internists
"The Egyptian pharaoh Hatshepsut could have been killed by her own medication," reports Miller-McCune.com. "So say a pair of scientists at the University of Bonn in Germany. Their research revealed that a vial belonging to the pharaoh – who lived around 1450 B.C. – that was thought to contain perfume turns out to have held lotion to treat a chronic skin disease. … Scientists believe the substance was used to soothe the itchiness of eczema – a condition that ran in the pharaoh's family. But the bottle contained high levels of benzopyrene – 'one of the most dangerous carcinogenic substances we know,' says [Helmut] Wiedenfeld, and the substance that makes cigarettes so dangerous. So was the pharaoh unwittingly poisoning herself? The German researchers lean toward saying yes, because Hatshepsut died of cancer, which could have resulted from years of applying the dangerous salve. 'Egyptian physicians were general practitioners and good surgeons,' Wiedenfeld allowed, 'but they were lousy internists.' "
Thought du jour
"An archeologist is someone whose career lies in ruins."
Anonymous