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Earth

Humans Nearly Went Extinct 1.2M Years Ago 356

Posted by kdawson from the pinch-point dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Scientific American has a story on researchers from the University of Utah who have calculated that 1.2 million years ago, at a time when our ancestors Homo erectus, H. ergaster, and archaic H. sapiens were spreading through Africa, Europe, and Asia, there were probably only about 18,500 individuals capable of breeding in all these species together (PNAS paper here). Pre-humans were an endangered species with a smaller population than today's gorillas and chimpanzees. Researchers scanned two completely sequenced modern human genomes for a type of mobile element called Alu sequences, then compared the nucleotides in these old regions with the overall diversity in the two genomes to estimate differences in effective population size, and thus genetic diversity between modern and early humans. Human geneticist Lynn Jorde says that the diminished genetic diversity one million years ago suggests human ancestors experienced a catastrophic event at that time as devastating as the Toba super-volcano in Indonesia that triggered a nuclear winter and is thought to have nearly annihilated humans 70,000 years ago."
Books

Google's Book Scanning Technology Revealed 100

Posted by kdawson from the real-page-turner dept.
blee37 writes "Last March we discussed Google's patent for a rapid book scanning system. This article describes and provides pictures of how the system works in practice. Google is secretive, but the system's inner workings were apparently divulged by University of Tokyo researchers who wrote a research article on essentially identical technology. There are also videos of robotic page flippers and information about how Google wants to use music to help humans flip pages."

Comment Re:Waiting for the Acer A1 phone (Score 1) 181

by Rapha222 (#29773063) Attached to: HTC Dragging Feet On GPL Source Release For "Hero" Phone
Ok,
By this way, if most parts of the things invented in the last 4000 years come from Europe or western Asia, like matematics, philosophy or handwriting, we (Europeans and Asians) will be the best in ALL of these domains, forever ?
And, besides Apple, what big mobile phone companys remains in the U.S.A ? Motorola ? What else ?
Oh, one more thing, Apple doesn't really created the usable smartphone, it just re-invent advertisement.
IPhone isn't a cheap device, if you put the same budget in a Nokia, Samsung or HTC you will get the same manufacturing quality, and it was always been right.
NASA

First European Commander of the ISS 190

Posted by timothy from the shift-of-power dept.
RobGoldsmith writes 'ESA astronaut Frank De Winne became the first European commander of the International Space Station this morning with the departure of Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka who had filled this role since April. De Winne is the first non-American and non-Russian to take on this role. Watch the videos and view images here.'

Comment Re:France just sucks (Score 1) 356

by Rapha222 (#29697221) Attached to: French President Violates His Own Copyright Law, Again
France doesn't suck. The only thing to remember is that, in France, the country does not kill its own citizens. The culture minister isn't a pedophil, he is just gay ... And it's not a crime, here, in Europe. Don't forget that people who said that the culture minister had relations with young Thai boys are from racist politics ...

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