Anti-Colonial Agitator

2004-12-14T11:39:00.000-05:00

See new blog: http://irishtribesman.blogspot.com/

2004-12-10T12:41:00.000-05:00

Given the wealth of evidence that smoking damages your health, you would have to be stupid not to kick the habit. Now a study suggests this could be a self-fulfilling prophecy, because smoking reduces your IQ.

Lawrence Whalley at the University of Aberdeen and colleagues at the University of Edinburgh, both in the UK, looked at how the cognitive ability of 465 individuals, approximately half of whom were smokers, changed over their lifetime and whether this related to their smoking habits.

They had all been tested in 1947 at age 11 as part of the Scottish Mental Survey, which made no distinction between smoking habits. They were tested a second time between 2000 and 2002, when they were 64 years old.

Smokers performed significantly worse in five different cognitive tests than did both former smokers and those who had never smoked.

2004-12-09T13:01:00.000-05:00

The Face of British Colonialism:

2004-12-06T13:24:00.000-05:00

Slimming pills and gay children:

Women who take slimming and thyroid pills during pregnancy are substantially more likely to have homosexual children, according to research.

A study of thousands of mothers and their adult children has revealed that Thyroxine – used to treat thyroid deficiency – and amphetamine-based diet pills appear to influence sexual orientation. Both were identified as being strongly linked to a higher rate of homosexuality among female offspring.

The mothers of homosexuals were found to be up to eight times more likely to have taken such drugs, with the effect being strongest with daughters whose mothers took the drugs during the first three months of pregnancy. The discovery, to be published by researchers in America, backs claims that human sexuality is determined by genetic and biochemical factors at work during early pregnancy.

Prof Lee Ellis and colleagues at Minot State University, North Dakota, traced the mothers of more than 5,000 American and Canadian students and members of gay and lesbian support groups, looking for links between prescription drugs taken during pregnancy and the sexual orientation of their children.

The researchers found that the mothers of homosexual women were at least five times more likely to have taken synthetic thyroid medications during pregnancy than mothers of heterosexual women, and eight times more likely to have used amphetamine-based diet pills such as Dexedrine and diethylpropion.

They also found evidence that some drugs have the opposite effect during pregnancy, reducing the probability of homosexual offspring. Mothers of heterosexual males were 70 per cent more likely to have taken drugs to combat nausea than those of male homosexuals.

The results suggest that the effect of the drugs is strongest with female babies and when taken during the first three months of pregnancy, which accords with previous studies showing that sexual orientation is decided during this period. The results will appear in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.

2004-12-03T12:26:00.000-05:00

Irish prosperity:

The Irish are the second most prosperous people in the European Union - and even wealthier than the Swiss, according to figures published today.

Nothing can shift Luxembourgers from the top spot - the Grand Duchy boasts per capita wealth running at more than twice the EU average.

But, for the third year running Ireland is ahead of rich nations such as Germany, Austria and Denmark.

The figures from Eurostat, the EU's statistical office, assess GDP in terms of purchasing power standards (PPS).

Taking 100 as the EU average, Luxembourg per capita GDP is put at 215%, followed by Ireland at 133%.

Denmark, Austria, the Netherlands, the UK and Belgium are next, at around 120%.

At the other end of the scale, Lithuania, Poland and Latvia recorded figures last year of less than half the EU average.

Countries still aspiring to become EU members - Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania and Turkey, have even lower per capita wealth - in Turkey's case just 28% of the EU average.

Three prosperous countries happy to stay outside the EU - Iceland, Norway and Switzerland - are doing very nicely, although all are outshone by Luxembourg and two of them by Ireland.

The figures: EU 25 nations, GDP per capita in PPS (average 100)

Luxembourg - 215
Ireland - 133
Denmark - 123
Austria - 122
Netherlands - 121
UK - 118
Belgium - 118
Sweden - 115
Finland - 113
France - 111
Germany - 108
Italy - 107
Spain - 98
Cyprus - 83
Greece - 81
Slovenia - 77
Malta - 75
Portugal - 74
Czech Republic- 69
Hungary - 61
Slovakia - 52
Estonia - 49
Lithuania - 46
Poland - 46
Latvia - 41

Aspiring EU members:
Croatia - 46
Bulgaria - 30
Romania - 30
Turkey - 28

Outsiders:
Iceland - 119
Norway - 148
Switzerland - 131.

2004-12-01T13:58:00.000-05:00

The brain is wired for faces:

Faces produce a particular resonance of recognition, even in the youngest infants, who respond to the sight of a face almost from birth. While neurobiologists have known that a particular area of the brain, called the fusiform face area (FFA), lights up with activity when we see a face--and even that the FFA is necessary for us to recognize faces--there is controversy over what kind of processing the area is doing.

Now, Galit Yovel and Nancy Kanwisher have tackled two central questions with one set of experiments: the nature of processing that occurs in the FFA and whether the FFA is "domain specific," that is, exclusively involved in face perception, or whether the area is engaged in more general spatial processing of visual features.

Their conclusions are that the FFA extracts configural information about faces rather than processing spatial information on the parts of faces. Also, their studies indicated that the FFA is exclusively involved in face recognition.

2004-12-01T11:59:00.000-05:00

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has predicted that the Irish economy will grow by 5% in 2004, rising to 5.5% in 2005 before easing below 5% in 2006. The OECD also forecasts that the US economy would show growth of 3.6% in 2004 and 2.9% in 2005, while the eurozone would post growth of 1.8% and 1.9%.

2004-11-29T13:00:00.000-05:00

Genes and Ethiopian atheletes:

The long-distance running prowess of Ethiopia’s elite male athletes is partly dictated by their genes.

Researchers have established that such athletes are more likely to have certain variants of four Y chromosome genes compared with other Ethiopians. No one knows what the genes do, or how influential they are, but they are the first to be linked to east Africans’ outstanding ability for endurance events.

Ethiopian and Kenyan athletes have run 37 of the 40 fastest times recorded over 10,000 metres. Alongside dedication and training, there is no doubt that social and geographic factors, such as having to run long distances to school at high altitudes, contribute to their success.

To find out if genes also play a significant role, Yannis Pitsiladis of the International Centre for East African Running Science at the University of Glasgow in the UK and colleagues studied the Y chromosomes of elite athletes, city dwellers and other non-athletes from the Ethiopian region of Arsi, where many runners originate.

Four gene variants were clearly more common among the athletes, and one was less common. No mutation was unique to the athletes, however, suggesting that it is the combination of certain gene types that makes the difference.

2004-11-24T12:50:00.000-05:00

Bigotry in Scotland:

RENEWED calls were made yesterday for a clampdown on sectarian violence after a study showed Catholics were twice as likely as Protestants to suffer abuse and a pub packed with Celtic supporters was attacked by scores of football hooligans.

The Crown Office study of prosecutions under new anti-sectarianism legislation found in 63% of cases the victims were Catholics, and 29% were Protestants.

Joseph Devine, the Bishop of Motherwell, one of Scotland's most senior Catholics, blamed sectarian marches organised by the Orange Order for much of the violence and called on the Scottish Executive to introduce tighter regulations.

The attack, on a pub in the Merchant City, Glasgow, oc-curred soon after the weekend Old Firm game. A group of about 60 youths, described as "football casuals" burst into the Locomotiv bar in Bell Street, uprooting tables and chairs and attacking customers.

Many of the customers were women. They had earlier been watching live television coverage of the game at Ibrox, which Rangers won 2-0.

The gang's attack occurred after they were denied entry to O'Neill's bar across the street after stewards hurriedly shut the doors.

Witnesses said the gang were not wearing football colours. One said: "There was no provocation. They seemed to be on the look-out for trouble."

The group fled before police arrived and no arrests were made. There were no injuries.

Police said it had no evidence the attack was sectarian-related. Nineteen arrests were made in and around the game at Ibrox – one for racial breach of the peace.

The Crown Office study showed 450 people have been charged with religious hatred since the crime of religious aggravation was introduced in June last year. Under the law, a person who commits a crime such as assault or breach of the peace can have an element of bigotry added to the charge.

A detailed review of 108 cases found 68 in which Catholics suffered sectarian abuse, compared with 31 where Protestants were targeted. It also revealed 14% of offences were related to football and 15% were linked to sectarian marches.

Most of the offences reviewed took place in Glasgow (54%) and Lanarkshire (22%), but the bigotry was not restricted to the west of Scotland – 10% were in the Lothian and Borders area, and at least one person was charged in every other police force area in Scotland, except Highland.

Bishop Devine said: "That almost two-thirds of such crimes are directed against Catholics who comprise just 17% of the population, is both alarming and saddening."

2004-11-23T09:49:00.000-05:00

Obesity linked to dementia in women:

Women who are obese for many years are more likely to suffer brain cell loss linked to dementia, according to new research.

The Swedish team followed 290 women over 24 years and found that women who were obese during this period were much more likely than slim women to show brain atrophy - the abnormal loss of neurons - by the end of the study.

Deborah Gustafson and colleagues at the Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Gothenburg, Sweden measured the body mass index (BMI) of the women between 1968 and 1992. On their final visit the women – then aged between 70 and 84 – also underwent CT scans of their brains.

The researchers found that almost half of the women showed brain cell death in the temporal lobes in 1992 and on average these women had a higher BMI – their height in metres, squared, divided by their weight in kilograms – than those who showed no brain cell loss. Brain shrinkage in this area is associated with Alzheimer’s disease and loss of cognitive function.

2004-11-22T10:57:00.000-05:00

Were humans born to run?:

Proponents of the theory say that long-distance running may be an even more significant evolutionary adaptation than bipedal walking, an ability which may have emerged with the appearance of the first hominids some 6 million years ago.

It is true that we cannot keep up with the fastest four-legged mammals. The speediest humans can sprint at barely 10 metres per second for just 15 seconds, whereas horses and greyhounds can gallop twice as fast for many minutes.

Yet anthropologists, in focusing on this lack of short-term speed, have overlooked how well adapted we are for endurance running, according to biologist Dennis Bramble at the University of Utah, and his colleague Dan Lieberman of Harvard University.

"Our legs are full of tendons that are not present in other primates," says Lieberman. "You don’t use your Achilles tendon when you walk," he says, but it is essential for running. Our buttock muscles, whose large size is a distinctly human attribute, are also vital for running, as they help stabilise the trunk and prevent it pitching forwards.

These muscles too are barely used in walking. Runners also need to keep their bodies cool, which could explain our large number of sweat glands and largely hairless skin.

Many of these adaptations appeared with Homo erectus around 2 million years ago. The long legs, short arms and low shoulders of H. erectus and later humans match the demands of running, while in contrast, the limb proportions of the earlier australopithecines were much closer to those of modern chimps, say Lieberman and Bramble.

2004-11-22T10:44:00.000-05:00

The first great ape?:

The fossil of an ancient species of ape, thought to be an ancestor to all living great apes, including humans, has been discovered at a construction site in western Spain. It reveals that the great apes went through more evolutionary stages than previously thought.

In particular, the structure of the ape’s hand indicates that the ability to climb vertically and to swing through trees evolved separately in apes and not simultaneously, as had previously been thought.

The skull and partial skeleton of Pierolapithecus catalaunicus were discovered in rock sediment at a construction site near Barcelona.

It provides a missing piece of the human evolutionary jigsaw, linking humans to other living species of great ape. It could be the last common ancestor of all the great apes.

2004-11-22T10:11:00.000-05:00

The Economist Intelligence Unit’s quality-of-life index:

When one understands the interplay of modernity and tradition in determining life satisfaction, it is then easy to see why Ireland ranks a convincing first in the international quality-of-life league table. It successfully combines the most desirable elements of the new - material wellbeing, low unemployment rates, political liberties — with the preservation of certain life satisfaction-enhancing, or modernity-cushioning, elements of the old, such as stable family life and the avoidance of the breakdown of community.

2004-11-17T14:08:00.000-05:00

Were the ancient Greeks sexually repressed?:

Forget the ancients being sexually free, "Love, Sex and Marriage" portrays the classical Greeks as being anything but liberal.

If the book is to be believed, homosexuals were frowned upon, paedophiles were punished, and masturbation was seen fit only for barbarians and slaves.

It is a thesis that debunks almost every popular perception of the ancient bedroom antics. At a time of renewed interest in the ancient world, book stores say the public cannot get enough of it.

Even the Athens Hilton - the preferred hotel for straight-laced retirees and businessmen - says its bookshop cannot keep abreast of demand for the tome, whose graphic illustrations include depictions of men and women cavorting on vases and urns.

"It takes a very different point of view to the traditional one that is held around certain sexual practises in ancient Greece," says author Nikos Vrissimtzis. "Contrary to popular opinion, that world was not a paradise for homosexuals, and paedaracy was held in such contempt that it was very heavily punished."

Mr Vrissimtzis, a sociologist who specialises in ancient Greece, wrote the book after years of work in museums and libraries, studying classical text, inscriptions and pottery.

The research proved, yet again, that the ancients saw sex as completely natural and - unlike their modern day descendants - had no inhibitions or taboos.

But, the author says, his findings also show that in the absence of religious doctrines, the ancients were ruled by social rather than moral dictates.

In an exclusively patriarchal society where only women were meant to be submissive, such strictures made life especially difficult for homosexuals.

"Homosexuals were not, as many believed, openly accepted by society. They were marginalised and punished by law," Vrissimtzis says. "For example, they could not enter the ancient Agora or participate in ranks and rituals involving the state."

The author's claims contradict the views of hundreds of western classicists. Throughout the centuries, academics have argued that homosexuality was not only socially acceptable - and rife - but actively encouraged in ancient times.

But in the book he goes even further. Social pressures were such, says the Greek author, that only the bravest of men indulged in the performance of oral sex on women, because the perceived passivity of the act was considered improper.

Masturbation was also out, although sex toys, not least ancient dildos, were regularly used by prostitutes and slaves.

"Ancient Greece was not a liberal society." Vrissimtzis continues. "The sexual habits of its people have been misunderstood due to the misinterpretation of the sources and biased Christian morality."

2004-11-17T13:28:00.000-05:00

Ireland tops list for quality of life:

A new listing has ranked Ireland as the best country in the world for quality of life.

It has come top of a worldwide quality-of-life index published by the Economist Intelligence Unit for its The World in 2005 report.

According to Irishman Dan O'Brien, who is a senior editor with the EIU, Ireland's scores because it has retained a strong community and family-based society, along with its newfound affluence.

The study combined a series of quality-of-life measures, from income per capita to church attendance, to rank 111 countries around the globe.

It says Ireland's came top because, unlike most other wealthy countries, it had retained strong traditional values.

It was less afflicted than other countries, he says, by the modern problems of western life, from family breakdown to drink and drug addiction.

The survey found that Ireland's income per head of population was fourth in the world.

2004-11-16T14:38:00.000-05:00

Did political correctness cost the Democrats the election?:

The Democratic Party needs to take a serious inward examination to determine what values it wants to tout.

If anything needs beheading in America, it is that tawdry beast political correctness. It is the father of discontent, asserting the right to shut off free speech, or expression it deems offensive.

Its high priests have worked hard to prevent people from doing, or saying, anything not deemed politically correct.

In 11 states, muted Americans spoke out on Election Day. They did it in secret. And they did it in frustration. And they did it in rage.

One cannot oppose anything advanced under the flag of political correctness without running the risk of being targeted for sensitivity classes.

Expressions of rebellion are manifested at the polls. The polls went for Bush.

Until the Democratic Party shakes off the bonds of political correctness and gives meat -- not lip -- to family values, it will face an uphill struggle.

2004-11-16T13:18:00.000-05:00

A gay gene?:

Prof Camperio-Ciani, who worked with Prof Dr Francesca Corna and Dr Claudio Capiluppi, emphasises in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, Series B that the team's findings are based on one part of a complex interplay between genes and culture. He suggests that some genetic factors should be linked to the X chromosome (of which men carry one and women two) because earlier work has shown how male homosexuality tends to be on the maternal, not the paternal, line.

The study by the Italian team confirmed a link with the so-called "gay gene", Xq28, which was first identified on the X chromosome by Dr Dean Hamer in America.

It also confirmed an established theory that links homosexuality to the fraternal birth order: homosexual men are more likely to have elder brothers, but not elder sisters, than either lesbians or heterosexual men.

2004-11-15T15:03:00.000-05:00

Low-carb diets and men:

Atkins-style low carbohydrate diets are more effective for men than women, US researchers say.

A third of the 15 men on the diet lost more than 10lbs with one participant shedding 25lbs while the weight loss among the 13 women was not as dramatic.

The University of Connecticut study, partly funded by the Atkins Foundation, also compared different types of diet.

A low carbohydrate diet was up to three times more effective at losing weight from the trunk area than a low fat one.

About 10m Britons are believed to be following a diet at any one time, a third of them choosing Atkins-style, high-protein regimes.

The Atkins diet involves restricting carbohydrates, such as potatoes, and concentrating on eating meat and other high protein food.

But critics claim it can have consequences such as kidney damage, thin bones and high cholesterol.

During the study, featured in the Nutrition and Metabolism journal, participants followed each diet for 50 days.

Report co-author Jeff Volek, assistant professor of kinesiology at the University of Connecticut, said: "The results of this study demonstrate that short-term carbohydrate diets outperform low fat diets in terms of weight loss and fat loss."

And he added while the difference was clearest for men, women also lost more weight on low carbohydrate diets.

2004-11-15T13:12:00.000-05:00

Brain inflammation link to autism:

Compared with normal control brains, the brains of the people with autism were found to contain abnormal patterns of immune system proteins called cytokines and chemokines consistent with inflammation.

Researcher Dr Carlos Pardo-Villamizar said: "These findings reinforce the theory that immune activation in the brain is involved in autism, although it is not yet clear whether it is destructive or beneficial, or both, to the developing brain."

Similarly, samples of cerebrospinal fluid obtained from six children with autism were also found to contain elevated levels of cytokines.

The researchers say it might eventually be possible to develop a diagnostic test for autism based on looking for signs of inflammation - and that treating this inflammation might reduce the symptoms of autism.

However, Dr Andrew Zimmerman, a paediatric neurologist at the Kennedy-Krieger Institute in Baltimore who also worked on the study, said it was possible that inflammation was produced as a result of the brain trying to combat some other process damaging to brain cells.

A spokesperson for the National Autistic Society said other scientists had also examined the possible connection between the immune system and autism.

One study has linked the condition to the disease encephalitis, while another found raised levels of nitric oxide in the plasma of children with autism.

This chemical plays a role in the immune response, and which is known to affect neurodevelopmental processes.

2004-11-09T11:27:00.000-05:00

Did evangelicals win the election for Bush?:

Karl Rove, the president's chief political adviser, famously said that the key to this election was turning out four million evangelical Christians who did not vote in the year 2000.

Well, this year - unlike four years ago - Mr Bush won the popular vote. And his margin was just short of four million voters.

Now, it would be foolish to assume that all those 3.5 million voters were evangelical Christians. They were not.

Mr Bush got some defections from the growing Hispanic vote - which usually trends Democratic - and he made gains among Catholics and in the Jewish community.

But the core of the president's support was Christian conservatives.

Three-quarters of all white voters who described themselves as evangelical Christians voted for President Bush, according to national surveys of voters as they left the polls on Tuesday.

And, this year, evangelicals made up one-in-five of all voters - a record.

2004-11-09T11:00:00.000-05:00

Are mothers responsible for gay sons?:

Our genome is "programmed" by the addition of chemical markers called methyl groups to the DNA, which shut down genes. One of the most dramatic examples of methylation is the shutdown of one of the two X chromosomes (one from each parent) in every woman’s cells, a process called X-inactivation (New Scientist print edition, 10 May 2003).

Normally, this process is random; either of the X chromosomes can be inactivated.

But when Sven Bocklandt of the University of California, Los Angeles, compared blood and saliva samples from 97 mothers of gay men with samples from 103 mothers without gay children he found this process was extremely skewed in the mothers with gay sons, with one X chromosome being far more likely to be inactivated than the other.

Only 4% of the mothers without gay sons showed this skewing, compared with 14% of mothers with at least one gay son. Among mothers with two or more gay sons, the figure was 23%.

Such skewing is generally associated with genetic disorders, but the mothers all appear to be healthy. Their daughters also seemed unaffected, with only 1 out of 24 showing skewing.

Bocklandt suspects that whatever is causing the skewed methylation of the X chromosome also affects the methylation of certain genes on the chromosomes the women pass on to their sons. Mothers might not be resetting their own "I like males" program, he told a meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics in Toronto last week.

2004-11-08T13:56:00.000-05:00

Was agriculture the worst mistake that humans ever made?:

While farmers concentrate on high-carbohydrate crops like rice and potatoes, the mix of wild plants and animals in the diets of surviving hunter-gatherers provides more protein and a better balance of other nutrients. In one study, the Bushmen's average daily food intake (during a month when food was plentiful) was 2,140 calories and ninety-three grams of protein, considerably greater than the recommended daily allowance for people of their size. It's almost inconceivable that Bushmen, who eat seventy-five or so wild plants, could die of starvation the way hundreds of thousands of Irish farmers and their families did during the potato famine of the 1840s.

2004-11-08T12:52:00.000-05:00

Ethnic drugs - the wave of the future?:

The drug, which is administered orally, has already caused controversy on both sides of the Atlantic as it would become the world's first "ethnic drug".

But while the marketing and development of the treatment has been branded as crude, experts say it actually represents a step towards genetically-targeted drugs.

It has been known for some time that certain ethnic groups are more prone to some diseases than others.

In the US African Americans are twice as likely to develop heart failure than white people.

A similar pictures emerges in the UK with certain ethnic groups more susceptible to disease than others.

The latest government Health Survey for England showed that South Asian men were more at risk of angina and heart attack than other groups.

Black Caribbean and Indian men were at greater risk of stroke and all ethnic minority groups, apart from the Irish and Chinese, were likely to suffer a higher rate of diabetes.

Conversely, other evidence has suggested the white population is more prone to cancer.

Doctors are also realising that certain groups respond better to some treatment.

For example, black heart patients are known have a poorer response to beta-blockers and Ace inhibitors, both of which are used to treat heart disease.

2004-11-08T12:46:00.000-05:00

Women less faithful than gorillas?:

Nature is fighting back in response to female promiscuity by producing a biological 'sperm' chastity belt, say US scientists.

Semen becomes more sticky to act as a plug, thereby preventing sperm from competitors impregnating females who sleep around, they found.

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute team, along with colleagues from Chicago and Kansas City, studied humans, monkeys and gorillas.

The findings appear in Nature Genetics.

The researchers examined the semen of 12 different species of primates.

In species where the females were most promiscuous, the males had developed several strategies to ensure they would be the male most likely to father any offspring and pass on their genes.

As well as having larger testicles and producing more sperm, the semen was more sticky.

Chimpanzees, for example, which are a promiscuous species, had more advanced evolution of a gene controlling the stickiness of semen than gorillas, which tend to be monogamous and stay faithful to their partner for life.

Humans were midway between, suggesting that while women are nothing like as promiscuous as chimps, neither are they as faithful as gorillas.

2004-11-05T13:42:00.000-05:00

Did gay marriage cost John Kerry the election?:

A new report from inside the John Kerry campaign suggests that in the final weeks of the campagin former president Bill Clinton advised Kerry to come out in favor of ballot measures that wrote antigay marriage discimination into the constitutions of 11 states. According to the latest issue of Newsweek, "Looking for a way to pick up swing voters in the red states, former president Bill Clinton, in a phone call with Kerry, urged the senator to back local bans on gay marriage. Kerry respectfully listened, then told his aides, 'I'm not going to ever do that.'"

2004-11-04T14:00:00.000-05:00

IMF positive on Irish economy:

Ireland's economic expansion has continued to pick up speed this year and is expected to do the same in 2005 with only moderate inflation, the International Monetary Fund said today.

'The economic recovery will gain momentum with gross national product growth of 4.5% in 2004 accelerating slightly to 5% in 2005,' the IMF said in its annual Article IV review of the Irish economy, which was concluded on October 29. 'Core inflation is forecast to stay close to 2%,' the Washington-based IMF added.

2004-11-04T10:17:00.000-05:00

How Bush won:

"Ohio with the job loss figure should have been an easy win for Sen. Kerry but it wasn’t, essentially because of these values issues," said Gary Bauer, a leading social conservative. "To some extent voters in Ohio may have felt, 'I’m not happy about the job loss but I can’t do anything about those international trends anymore than George Bush could.'"

Of those who said the economy mattered most, 83 percent supported Kerry while only 17 percent supported Mr. Bush. Of those who said values mattered most, 85 percent backed President Bush while just 14 percent supported Kerry.

Though this was the first election since 1972 where war was at the forefront, exit polling showed moral values were a central issue to many Americans.

Though he won support from social conservatives nationwide, it was not evangelical Protestants alone who tipped the scale in Mr. Bush's favor. Strikingly, John Kerry, the would-be second Catholic president, was unable to capture more Catholic votes than Mr. Bush, a born-again Christian. An altar boy as a child, Kerry won only 44 percent of Catholics; Mr. Bush improved on his 2000 mark, grabbing 55 percent of Catholic support.

"We’ve either got to find a way to win much more strongly among women, which we have done in the past, which I believe we did in 1992. Or we’ve got to find a way to gain the trust of white men who do not believe that Democrats serve their interests," said Steve Grossman, who co-chaired John Kerry’s 1996 Senate campaign and was chairman of the Democratic National Committee during Bill Clinton's presidency.

Indications are that evangelical whites turned out heavily for the president in Ohio and elsewhere. A contributing factor for their high turnout may have been the amendment to ban same-sex marriage, which passed in Ohio, as well as in the ten other states.

President Bush’s chief political adviser, Karl Rove, pressed the Republican secretary of state of Ohio to have the marriage ban on the ballot. Though all indications are Mr. Bush had a principled belief that marriage should only be defined between a man and women, Rove believed the measure would galvanize his base – even if it meant the estrangement of an estimated 1 million gay Republicans.

Rove's decision to largely ignore independent voters at the close of the election was a strategic gamble. But by early Wednesday morning, Rove looked to have hit the jackpot – yet again. (That's possibly why President Bush called Rove the "architect" as he accepted a second term in office Wednesday afternoon.)

"I think that the Democratic Party has a real problem," said Bauer, who heads the advocacy group American Values, which lobbied strongly for the same-sex marriage bans. "They continue to be perceived as way out of step on these cultural issues. As a result of that, places like West Virginia, Ohio, Missouri, even states like Wisconsin, are now fertile ground for the Republican Party."

2004-11-03T11:22:00.000-05:00

Kerry Calls Bush to Concede Election:

President Bush won a second term from a divided and anxious nation, his promise of steady, strong wartime leadership trumping John Kerry's fresh-start approach to Iraq and joblessness. After a long, tense night of vote counting, the Democrat called Bush Wednesday to concede Ohio and the presidency, The Associated Press learned.

2004-10-28T13:54:00.000-04:00

Will there be a massive flu epidemic this winter?:

The world is on the brink of a major flu epidemic — one that could claim more than a billion lives, the head of the Russian Virology Institute, Academician Dmitry Lvov said at a press conference organized by the RIA-Novosti news agency on Thursday.

“Up to one billion people could die around the whole world in six months,” Lvov said. The expert did not give a timeframe for the epidemic, but said that it is highly probable that it will start this year. “We are half a step away from a worldwide pandemic catastrophe,” the academic said.

2004-10-26T13:00:00.000-04:00

Can male orgasms fight breast cancer?:

Men with a low sex drive are more likely to develop breast cancer, according to new research.

The study reveals that the fewer orgasms a man has the greater his risk of being diagnosed with the disease.

Although breast cancer is rare in men, the mortality rate is high: around 250 cases are reported in the UK each year, with around 100 deaths.

Researchers in Greece compared the lifestyles of 23 men with breast cancer with 76 healthy men.

They found that men who had fewer than six orgasms per month were significantly more likely to develop breast cancer.

2004-10-26T11:00:00.000-04:00

A new form of HIV/AIDS?:

A study of African hunters has shown that a virus similar to Aids has passed from apes to humans from bushmeat of the kind that is being sold illegally in the UK.

A leading scientist has told the File On 4 programme that the virus was probably passed on to tribesmen via body fluids when the animals were slaughtered and butchered.

Assistant Professor Nathan Wolfe, who tested more than 1,000 pygmy hunters for Johns Hopkins University, found a retrovirus from the same family as HIV in a number of them.

"This is the area of the world where HIV came from, and this is most likely the mechanism by which HIV emerged into the human population," he said.

Although the full public health implications are still unknown, the fear is that the new virus could result in a new disease which would have global impact.

2004-10-25T12:48:00.000-04:00

The slow birth of the Protestant Movement:

Archaeologists in Germany say they may have found a lavatory where Martin Luther launched the Reformation of the Christian church in the 16th Century.

The stone room is in a newly-unearthed annex to Luther's house in Wittenberg.

Luther is quoted as saying he was "in cloaca", or in the sewer, when he was inspired to argue that salvation is granted because of faith, not deeds.

The scholar suffered from constipation and spent many hours in contemplation on the toilet seat.

2004-10-21T10:38:00.000-04:00

The girly-men of science:

Levels of hormone exposure in the womb helps determine which academic discipline researchers work in, a new study suggests. Perhaps surprisingly, a "female" pattern of exposure was common in scientists, while a "male" pattern dominated in the social sciences.

The survey compared the length of people's index (first) fingers with their ring (third) fingers. This comparison is thought to indicate prenatal sex hormone exposure, probably because some developmental genes control the formation of both the reproductive system and the digits.

In the general population, men have a “digit ratio” of 0.98 on average - the index finger being slightly shorter than the ring finger. Women have a digit ratio of 1.0 on average, meaning the two fingers are the same length.

However the 107 male and female academics surveyed at Bath University, UK, had very similar ratios - 0.987 for men and 0.984 for women. This suggests the two groups were exposed to the same levels of oestrogen and testosterone in the womb.

Hormone levels also appear to predict which discipline researchers work in. Staff in the departments of chemistry, computer science, mathematics and physics all had average ratios of over 0.995 - close to the female average - despite 81% of those subjects being male.

In contrast, the staff of the social science departments of economics, education, management, social and policy sciences had an average ratio below 0.98, the male average, despite only 66% of this sample being male.

“It’s unnerving to think the profession I’m in was determined by the hormones I was exposed to in the womb,” says Mark Brosnan, the lead author from the University of Bath, UK, whose work has been submitted to the British Journal of Psychology.

John Manning, an expert on digit ratios from the University of Central Lancashire, is not surprised that hormone levels in the womb can have such an influence. “The effect of testosterone on the developing brain is organisational and permanent,” he says.

2004-10-19T15:03:00.000-04:00

A German, Hans-Otto Schiemann, has claimed to have deliberately infected dozens of Thai women with the HIV virus:

He is accused of offering the town's young women large sums of money to have sex with him.

Residents in Chaiyaphum said Mr Schiemann offered students aged from 15 to 17 around 4,000 baht ($100) for sex.

Officials have since put up posters around the town, 340 km (210 miles) northeast of Bangkok, warning women to avoid him.

Residents believe Mr Schiemann, whose Thai wife has Aids, has been waging a campaign of vengeance against Thai women whom he blames for infecting him.

"Thai women are bad. Thai women are witches and they're monkeys," he told reporters outside the provincial court in Chaiyaphum on Monday.

"I'm a playboy. I'm a rich man. Everybody likes a rich man," he said.

2004-10-19T14:42:00.000-04:00

Why do Sardinians live so long?:

Some 135 people per million live to see their 100th birthday on Sardinia, while the western average is nearer 75. Centenarians are scattered around all of the island's 377 municipalities, but in the mountainous interior around the Nuoro province the prevalence of centenarians is striking: 240 in every one million people.

While in other countries an average of five women reach the century for every man who reaches this milestone, on Sardinia the female-male ratio is only two to one, with an equal number of men and women 100 years old or greater in the Nuoro province.

"This area is the only one in Italy where remaining male life expectancy at age 85 exceeds the female level", Deiana said.

Among its Methuselahs, Sardinia recorded Antonio Todde, the world's oldest man, who died this year less than 3 weeks away from his 113 birthday. Now the oldest man on the island, and the third oldest in the world, is Giovanni Frau, who will turn 112 in December.

2004-10-19T14:27:00.000-04:00

Do our genes make us happy?:

Low levels of serotonin are thought to play a role in several psychiatric disorders, including depression. The team believes humans may have many versions of the gene controlling serotonin levels, meaning our susceptibility to mental disorders may be genetically determined.

Serotonin, often dubbed a "feel-good" chemical, is re-absorbed in the brain. Antidepressants slow down the re-absorption rate so the mood-boosting chemical stays active in the brain for longer. Scientists have already found that an enzyme, tryptophan hydroxylase-2 (Tph2), governs serotonin levels. Finding what kind of Tph2 gene a patient has could help predict the effectiveness of drugs on that person.

2004-10-19T10:08:00.000-04:00

Anti-Irish Catholic bigotry in Scotland:

Dr William Kenefick, a history researcher from the University of Dundee who will give a presentation comparing Jewish and Irish immigration, said he believes there was relatively less prejudice against Jews as a byproduct of this antipathy towards Catholics.

“It has been said that Scotland is the only country in Europe where there were no organised attacks on Jews, and although there was some stereotyping in the 1930s, it could be described more as anti-German,” he said.

“I am travelling along that route, finding that the Catholics were coming under much more scrutiny [than the Jews]. In the 1920s, the Kirk really came out against Irish Catholics, wanting repatriation for the unemployed.

“The propaganda was considerable: statistics were used spuriously and quite wrongly to suggest that the Irish Catholics were more likely to be wife beaters, more prone to be in prison, and had more infanticide in their community.”

2004-10-19T10:00:00.000-04:00

Job discrimination in the north of Ireland:

Catholics in Northern Ireland are almost twice as likely as Protestants to be unemployed, according to the latest official figures published today.

The unemployment rate for Catholics was 8.1% against a rate of 4.3% for Protestants, the Labour Force Survey covering 2002 published by the Statistics and Research Agency showed.

2004-10-18T12:11:00.000-04:00

Sectarian violence in the north of Ireland:

Police are treating as sectarian an attack on teenage church group members outside an ice rink in east Belfast.

Two windows in their minibus were smashed outside the Ice Bowl in Dundonald on Saturday at about 2200 BST.

Four members of the group from Knappagh Presbyterian Church in Armagh were pushed and punched as they stepped off the vehicle.

It is understood the group, in their early teens, were mistaken for Catholics.

2004-10-15T15:17:00.000-04:00

Could an overactive immune system be the trigger for some people's life-threatening depression?:

Most of us associate depression with being run down and having poor immunity to infections. The startling side effects of the immune-boosting drugs turn that notion on its head. They suggest that some people who are depressed may actually be suffering from an over-heated immune system, and that damping down inflammation could offer a brand new way to treat routine clinical depression--while making billions for the pharmaceuticals industry into the bargain. It's a theory that recasts depression--one of the great plagues of our time--as a chronic inflammatory disease like rheumatoid arthritis.

In an inflammatory attack, immune cells rev each other up by pumping out substances known as inflammatory cytokines. Drugs like interferon are simply artificial versions of these substances. That's why they boost immunity so well--and why, according to the new "immune theory" of depression, they also induce such dark moods in some patients. If the body's own supplies of cytokines stay too high for too long, maybe they too become toxic to mood and trigger depression.

The case is far from proven but evidence is mounting. "At the beginning I was very reluctant to get into this question because depression is such a can of worms," says neurobiologist Robert Dantzer of France's national medical research agency INSERM at the University of Bordeaux 2. "But when we saw the way these drugs affected patients, it made me sure that it was worth it."

2004-10-15T13:43:00.000-04:00

Religious intolerance in Jerusalem:

Christians in Jerusalem have attacked what they say is the increasingly common phenomenon of ultra-orthodox Jews spitting on them.

The statement followed a brawl between an orthodox Jewish yeshiva (religious school) student and an Armenian archbishop.

They clashed in Jerusalem's Old City after the student spat at a cross being carried by the clergyman during a procession near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Archbishop Nourhan Manougian slapped the student and in the ensuing scuffle, his 17th century ceremonial medallion was broken.

Both were questioned by police and the student is facing charges. He has been banned from the Old City for 75 days. The Armenians say the action was inadequate.

Archbishop Manougian told an Israeli newspaper that Israeli leaders must speak out about the "daily" abuse. "When there is an attack against Jews anywhere, the Israeli government is incensed, so why when our religion and pride are hurt, don't they take harsher measures?" he asked.

His critique has encouraged other Christian leaders to speak out, including a senior Greek Orthodox clergyman who has disclosed that he was recently approached by an elderly man wearing a skullcap who spat in his face.

Daniel Rossing, the director of a Jerusalem centre for Christian-Jewish dialogue, said there had been an increase in such incidents recently as "part of a general lack of tolerance".

2004-10-15T13:12:00.000-04:00

The role of fathers in creating responsible mothers:

It is now generally accepted, for instance, that it is the father's genes that build the placenta. This is one aspect of a mysterious process known as "imprinting," whereby the genes of placental mammals seem to remember from which parent they come. This is why, so far, it has proved very difficult to create a functioning embryo from the genes of "parents" of the same sex (and why it proved so difficult to create a viable mammalian clone).

One of the most interesting aspects of imprinting is that, in mice, there is a gene that determines "good" motherhood. A female mouse who fails to have the gene imprinted is perfectly normal except that she will build a poor nest, allow her pups to wander off, and fail to keep them clean. Her pups, not surprisingly, usually die. The responsible gene is inherited from the father. The mother's gene never imprints.

Something similar may apply to humans. A study by researchers from the Institute of Child Health in London looked at "Turner's Syndrome" girls, who are missing the paternal X chromosome. These girls scored lower on recognizing other people's feelings, realizing the effect of their behavior on others, obeying commands, and interacting socially.

2004-10-15T12:49:00.000-04:00

Women are at their most attractive when ovulating:

The lack of obvious visible manifestations of ovulation in human females, compared with the prominent sexual swellings of many primates, has led to the idea that human ovulation is concealed. While human ovulation is clearly not advertised to the same extent as in some other species, we show here that both men and women judge photographs of women’s faces that were taken in the fertile window of the menstrual cycle as more attractive than photographs taken during the luteal phase. This indicates the existence of visible cues to ovulation in the human face, and is consistent with similar cyclical changes observed for preferences of female body odour. This heightened allure could be an adaptive mechanism for raising a female’s relative value in the mating market at the time in the cycle when the probability of conception is at its highest.

2004-10-15T12:17:00.000-04:00

The sweaty smell of ovulation:

EVIDENCE that women have a tell-tale body odour that reveals when they are fertile has been discovered, one of several subtle clues that overturn the conventional wisdom that men cannot detect ovulation.

The find has triggered a hunt for the signalling chemical, a type of pheromone called a copulin, which could prove a boon for perfume manufacturers.

Given that women go through huge hormonal changes during their menstrual cycle, a team at the University of Texas, Austin, decided to see if there were corresponding odours associated with the different phases of the cycle.

Prof Devendra Singh, who reported the work yesterday in the Proceedings of Royal Society with Dr Matthew Bronstad, commented : "We have found that men can reliably detect the fertile phase of the cycle by body odour. Men could use ovulation-linked odours in their mate selection."

2004-10-15T11:42:00.000-04:00

Bad news for Scottish men:

Men in Scotland are continuing to die younger than those in the rest of the UK, according to figures.

The Office for National Statistics said eight of the 10 areas with the lowest male life expectancy were in Scotland.

Glasgow was the only area in Britain where the figure fell below 70 - making it 11 years fewer than in East Dorset.

The city also had the lowest life expectancy for women in 2001-2003. The figure of 76.4 is more than eight years lower than in Kensington and Chelsea.

Inverclyde, Dundee, North Lanarkshire and West Dunbartonshire all appeared in the bottom 10 for both sexes.

The Western Isles, Renfrewshire and East Ayrshire also features in the male list, while West Lothian was the other of the six Scottish areas among the bottom 10 for women.

2004-10-15T11:18:00.000-04:00

Cell phones increase tumor risk:

Using a mobile phone for ten or more years doubles the risk of getting a type of benign head tumour, a Swedish study has found.

The study is relatively small, it looked at 148 patients and 600 controls, and the effect will need to be confirmed with larger groups. But it is the first to show clear evidence that mobile phone use could increase the risk of getting tumours.

"We were surprised about the results, but the outcome is quite clear," says Anders Ahlbom, an epidemiologist at the Karolinska Institute, who was involved in the study.

"We are now convinced of the quite strong risk due to the use of mobile phones, and we are waiting for confirmation from the other research groups," says Ahlbom.

2004-10-14T11:57:00.000-04:00

Brian Feeney comments on unionist politicians:

In south Belfast, Michael McGimpsey, wannabe knight of the doleful countenance, hero of Sandy Row, stalwart defender of its culture against all-comers – even those with money to buy attractive flats – Michael doesn't know that loyalist paramilitaries control residence qualifications in Sandy Row and Donegall Pass. Yet he would claim to have his ear to the ground. Maybe he needs to talk to Belfast's famous street dogs?

Perhaps they would make more sense than his fellow unionist, DUP councillor Ruth Patterson.

There are astonishing gaps in her knowledge too. Earlier this year she invited members of parties which are self-declared fronts for the UDA and UVF to her swearing-in as high sheriff.

How could she invite them yet not anyone from the largest party on the council, Sinn Féin?

Ah, that's because she doesn't have contact with parties linked to paramilitarism you see.

So what about the PUP and UPRG? Well, she doesn't know if they are linked to paramilitarism she said, but she knows "for sure" that SF and the IRA are linked.

So there's a thing. She doesn't know anything about the political links of the paramilitary groups which dominate her area, but she's certain about similar links of groups which have no presence at all in her area.

2004-10-14T10:44:00.000-04:00

Do germs cause heart disease?:

Heart disease is now being linked to Chlamydia pneumoniae, a newly discovered bacterium that causes pneumonia and bronchitis. The germ is a relative of Chlamydia trachomatis, which causes trachoma, a leading cause of blindness in parts of the Third World. C. trachomatis is perhaps more familiar to us as a sexually transmitted disease that, left untreated in women, can lead to scarring of the fallopian tubes, pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy, and tubal infertility.

2004-10-14T10:14:00.000-04:00

Epilepsy drug lowers IQ:

A drug given to pregnant women to combat epilepsy can significantly lower their child's IQ, researchers say.

Scientists studied 375 children born to epileptic mothers in the Liverpool and Manchester areas.

They found children of mothers who took sodium valproate were more likely to have lower IQs and more likely to have anatomical abnormalities.

2004-10-13T15:14:00.000-04:00

Growing chaos in Iraq as the insurgents turn on each other:

Local insurgents in the city of Fallujah are turning against the foreign fighters who have been their allies in the rebellion that has held the U.S. military at bay in parts of Iraq's Sunni Muslim heartland, according to Fallujah residents, insurgent leaders and Iraqi and U.S. officials.

Relations are deteriorating as local fighters negotiate to avoid a U.S.-led military offensive against Fallujah, while foreign fighters press to attack Americans and their Iraqi supporters. The disputes have spilled over into harsh words and sporadic violence, with Fallujans killing at least five foreign Arabs in recent weeks, according to witnesses.

2004-10-13T13:39:00.000-04:00

What killed the dinosaurs?:

Birds and mammals may have displaced dinosaurs gradually in the 20 million years before the disastrous asteroid collision traditionally blamed for wiping dinosaurs out, say a New Zealand evolutionary biologist and a British colleague.

Professor David Penny, from Massey University, and Matt Phillips from Oxford University said fossil and molecular evidence did not support the theory of an asteroid-impact extinction.

Popular theory says that birds and mammals flourished on Earth only after an asteroid impact wiped out the dinosaurs and pterosaurs, or flying reptiles, at the end of the Cretaceous period 65 million years ago. But Professor Penny and Dr Phillips are not convinced.

"We agree completely with the geophysicists that an extraterrestrial impact marks the end of the Cretaceous," Professor Penny said. "But after 25 years they have still not provided a single piece of evidence that this was the primary reason for the decline of the dinosaurs and pterosaurs."

2004-10-13T13:06:00.000-04:00

The deadly weapons of loyalism:

Let's remember: despite several acts of decommissioning by the IRA, neither the UVF nor the UDA have handed over a single gun or bullet.

Mr. Ervine's latest remarks merely serve to perpetuate the myth that loyalist guns are kept only to defend loyalists from potential republican attack.

The reality is that loyalist guns are not kept silent but are actively used on the streets, whether in the commissioning of serious crime, drug dealing, intimidation, extortion, protection rackets, armed robberies, and violent vigilante attacks or are turned on each other in a series of bloody feuds.

2004-10-13T13:03:00.000-04:00

What about loyalist decommissioning?:

A decade on from their 1994 ceasefire and loyalist decommissioning is still "years away", according to a group linked to the UDA.

The Ulster Political Research Group - which gives political analysis to the UDA - wants to talk to the government about the future of the organisation.

But David Nicholl of the UPRG said arms would be the "last thing" addressed in terms of any movement from the UDA.

"In reality, if you are talking about loyalist decommissioning, we are years from that," he said.

2004-10-13T12:52:00.000-04:00

The real intentions of the DUP:

Despite some mixed messages from Paisley subalterns, the DUP have no interest in genuinely improving, democratising or reviving power-sharing or the all-Ireland institutions, or of implementing the broad equality agenda. Its priority is to hold up or, preferably, wreck the Good Friday process while consolidating its position as the ascendent party of Ulster unionism at the further expense of David Trimble and the Ulster Unionist Party.

As such, DUP's attention is firmly focused on the possibility of a UK general election next May, at which it hopes to replace the UUP as the leading unionist party in the Westminster parliament.

2004-10-13T12:46:00.000-04:00

The Human-Bacteria Race:

Most of the cells in your body are not your own, nor are they even human. They are bacterial. From the invisible strands of fungi waiting to sprout between our toes, to the kilogram of bacterial matter in our guts, we are best viewed as walking "superorganisms," highly complex conglomerations of human, fungal, bacterial and viral cells.

That's the view of scientists at Imperial College London who published a paper in Nature Biotechnology Oct. 6 describing how these microbes interact with the body. Understanding the workings of the superorganism, they say, is crucial to the development of personalized medicine and health care in the future because individuals can have very different responses to drugs, depending on their microbial fauna.

The scientists concentrated on bacteria. More than 500 different species of bacteria exist in our bodies, making up more than 100 trillion cells. Because our bodies are made of only some several trillion human cells, we are somewhat outnumbered by the aliens. It follows that most of the genes in our bodies are from bacteria, too.

2004-10-13T12:35:00.000-04:00

Is male homosexuality the price that must be paid for female fertility?:

Andrea Camperio-Ciani and colleagues argue genetic factors favouring homosexual male offspring could make women more fertile.

"Our data resolve this paradox by showing that there might be, hitherto unsuspected, reproductive advantages associated with male homosexuality," they said.

They looked at 98 homosexual and 100 heterosexual men and their relatives, which included more than 4,600 people overall.

The female relatives on the mother's side of the homosexual men tended to have more offspring than the female relatives on the father's side.

This suggests that these women who, in theory, pass on the gay trait to their male offspring are also more fertile.

In comparison, the female relatives on both the mother's and the father's side of the heterosexual men did not appear to be as fertile, having fewer offspring.

The researchers believe the homosexuality-increased fertility trait must be passed down on the female X chromosome.

2004-10-13T11:45:00.000-04:00

The Irish economy will grow by up to 5% in 2005 as the economic recovery take a firmer hold, a report from a leading economist at AIB Global Treasury said. The Irish economy is moving back onto a firmer footing with real GDP forecast to grow by at least 4% in 2004 and by 5% in 2005. The economy's medium term growth potential is estimated at close to 5%, economists John Beggs and Oliver Mangan said. Real GNP, the Irish Government's preferred method of measuring economic growth, will expand by 3.5% in 2004 and by 4.3% in 2005. Economic growth will be more broadly based with a strong contribution from both domestic demand and from net exports. Domestic spending is forecast to rise by 3.5% to 4.0% in 2004 - 2005 while exports are expected to grow by 6% to 7%, AIB has forecast. Two factors critical to the outlook for the Irish economy are the sustainability of the global recovery and the prospects for the Irish labor market. There are improving grounds for optimism on both fronts, the report said.

2004-10-08T13:30:00.002-04:00

A new poll of political party popularity in Ireland:

The nationwide poll, of 1,000 people taken last week, found Fianna Fáil on 35% (up two points since June), Fine Gael 24% (no change), Labour 13% (down two), Sinn Féin 12% (up one), Greens 4% (no change) and the PDs on 3% (down one).

2004-10-08T13:06:00.000-04:00

How many members of the Bush administration does it take to change a light bulb?

None. "There's nothing wrong with that light bulb. It has served us honorably. When you say it's burned out, you're giving encouragement to the forces of darkness. Once we install a light bulb, we never, ever change it. Real men don't need artificial light."

2004-10-07T15:02:00.000-04:00

A new species of ape?:

Shelly Williams, a U.S. primatologist affiliated with the Jane Goodall Institute in Maryland, captured the apes on video in 2002 with the help of local people and was once briefly confronted by a group of four of them in dense forest.

This, along with other evidence, makes her think that there is a chance the animals could be a new species of great primate — in other words, an undiscovered genetic relative of humans.

Other possibilities are that it is gorilla-chimp hybrid, or a new sub-species of chimp that would be 50 percent bigger than its largest cousins.

2004-10-07T14:41:00.000-04:00

Diminishing Birth Rates and the Fall of the Global Empire?:

Falling fertility leads not only to population aging but to population decline. World population could be shrinking before today's children retire, and there is an 85 percent chance that it will be doing so by the end of the century, according to projections by the International Institute for Applied Systems.

If global fertility rates converge with those seen today in Europe or among native-born Americans, by 2200 the world population could shrink to half of what it is today, according to U.N. projections. The only precedent we have for such a decline in population is the period of late antiquity, when falling birth rates helped bring about the collapse of the Roman Empire.

2004-10-07T13:43:00.000-04:00

Apparently British loyalists don't just hate Irish Catholics:

Plans to build a Chinese community resource centre in a loyalist area of south Belfast are expected to be jettisoned because of the objections of local residents.

The Chinese Welfare Association has been given lottery grants of almost €500,000 to build the centre in the Donegall Pass area, but locals and loyalist paramilitaries objected to the centre during a recent consultation exercise.

The association has criticised the objections and has asked when Chinese people, some of whom have been living in Belfast for three generations, will be accepted.

Local DUP councillor Ruth Patterson has defended the objectors, saying they feared they were being squeezed out of their own area.

2004-10-06T13:45:00.000-04:00

Lice analysis supports contact between modern and archaic humans:

The story of modern humans’ final interactions with the extinct Homo erectus may have been revealed by research into the evolution of lice.

The genetic differences between two types of human lice – which share a common ancestor – suggest that they spent most of the last 1.18 million years living on two distinct hominid species, but places their divergence into two distinct lice species slightly later than the split between Homo sapiens and Homo erectus.

The results suggest that our ancestors must have interacted with H. erectus either through fighting, sharing clothes or having sex, since both types of lice are now found on modern man and lice can only jump from one species to another if there is direct contact.

2004-10-06T12:27:00.000-04:00

Paul Bremer says that troop levels were too low in Iraq:

In remarks published Tuesday, Bremer told an insurance conference at a West Virginia resort, "We never had enough troops on the ground" from the outset to stop what he described as "horrid" looting and the ensuing instability.

Bremer's assessment comes less than three weeks after unusually sharp criticism by leading Republican senators of the administration's management of the war. And, in another rare departure from the administration line, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told the Council of Foreign Relations Monday night that there was no "strong, hard evidence" of a link between al Qaeda terrorists and Saddam Hussein while he ruled Iraq.

Rumsfeld quickly backtracked Tuesday, saying he was "regrettably misunderstood."

But the statements contributed to the growing political problem for the White House.

2004-10-06T11:55:00.000-04:00

Ireland is likely to turn in a growth rate of 4.5% in 2004, according to business advisers PricewaterhouseCoopers. The rate will be the highest in the eurozone, according to the firm's Economic Outlook report. Average growth in the eurozone for 2004 will be just 1.75%, it says. The report also predicts 5% growth in Ireland in 2005, with the eurozone average coming in at 2.25%.

2004-10-04T13:49:00.000-04:00

Bank of Ireland's Chief Economist Dan McLaughlin has predicted growth rates of 6.5% for the Irish economy. He says that Ireland is in a state of transition, moving from the first Celtic Tiger period (1994 to 2000) when growth exceeded 9% a year to that of Tiger 2, with potential growth of 6.5% a year. He points out that this is three times the Euro area potential growth rate and double that of the United States. He says that the growth rates of the Tiger 1 period was achieved through a combination of 3.7% annual productivity growth and employment growth of 5.5%. The Irish economy is now at full employment, so consequently, the economy's potential growth rate is now lower. A growth rate of 6.5% would be made up of 3.7% productivity growth and 2.7% employment growth, with the flow of workers now constrained by the growth of the labor force.

2004-10-01T10:18:00.000-04:00

Jude Collins on the importance of names in Britain's colonial activities:

The fact is, from Elizabethan times and earlier, England has used names to pin down its colonial possessions.

In more recent centuries we have the King's Hall and the Royal Victoria Hospital, Windsor House and Balmoral, and Prince Charles Way and a host of other examples – names given to streets and buildings and places so the people living in them may come to see themselves and their country as somehow lacking legitimacy and worth until linked with the greater power next door.

England's history in Ireland has been one of systematic repression and exploitation, sinking occasionally to acts of barbarism against those who attempted to resist this exploitation.

And when people who have been oppressed get the chance, they naturally want to remove the signs and symbols honouring those who oppressed them. That's what they're doing in New Zealand, India, South Africa, Iraq. That's what they plan to do in Derry.

2004-10-01T10:13:00.000-04:00

Brian Feeney on the trustworthiness of Tony Blair:

This week it's clear that the shine has finally worn off Blair. Opinion polls show his popularity and trustworthiness with the voters is at an all-time low.

The leader of the Scot Nats, Alec Salmond, calls him a liar, and along with a group of MPs Salmond is trying to organise his impeachment for lying to Parliament about Iraq in 2002 and 2003. Compared to what some MPs and members of his own party are calling him, Salmond's strictures are mild.

2004-09-30T12:49:00.000-04:00

The Irish economy will grow by 4.7% in GDP terms in 2004 and 5% in 2005, well ahead of the average rates of 3.6% and 2.9%, respectively, forecast for other advanced economies, according to the IMF. The IMF's latest economic outlook has raised its 2004 world growth forecast to 5%, the highest level in three decades, but said that sharply higher oil prices had sapped the recovery. The last time global growth came close to 5% was in 1984, when it hit 4.8%. While advanced economies are forecast to grow by less than 4%, the average is pulled up by a boom in many expanding Asian economies. However, in its Autumn World Economic Outlook, the IMF said that the global expansion, while still solid, was likely to weaken. It has downgraded its 2005 outlook to 4.3% from an April forecast of 4.4%.

2004-09-30T12:13:00.000-04:00

The Irish economy grew at an annual rate of 4.1% in the second quarter of 2004 compared to an annualised GDP rate of 6.1% in the first quarter, according to the Central Statistics Office's (CSO) Quarterly National Accounts. GNP, which excludes profits from foreign multinationals, was up 4.2%. These rates are slightly slower than in the first quarter, when GDP and GNP grew by 6.1% and 5.2% respectively, but they are well ahead of 2003 figures of 3.7% and 2.8%. The expansion was driven mainly by exports and business investment. Net exports were 8% higher than in the same period in 2003, while capital investment increased by 14% in the second quarter compared to the same period last year, the CSO said.

2004-09-27T15:34:00.000-04:00

Most senior US military officers now believe the war on Iraq has turned into a disaster on an unprecedented scale:

"If you are a Muslim and the community is under occupation by a non-Islamic power it becomes a religious requirement to resist that occupation," Terrill explained. "Most Iraqis consider us occupiers, not liberators." He describes the religious imagery common now in Fallujah and the Sunni triangle: "There's talk of angels and the Prophet Mohammed coming down from heaven to lead the fighting, talk of martyrs whose bodies are glowing and emanating wonderful scents."

2004-09-27T13:36:00.000-04:00

Amnesty International on the Finucane Inquiry:

Amnesty International views this announcement with great suspicion. It states that the Finucane inquiry will require the introduction of new legislation to take account of "the requirements of national security". In light of this, Amnesty International strongly suspects that the UK authorities are using "national security" to curtail the ability of the inquiry to shed light on state collusion in the killing of Patrick Finucane; on allegations that his killing was the result of an official policy and that different government authorities played a part in the subsequent cover-up of collusion in his killing.

2004-09-24T11:07:00.000-04:00

The Irish economy will grow by 5.0% in GNP terms and 5.4% in GDP terms in 2005, according to the latest bulletin from the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI). Strong growth conditions prevail within the Irish economy as indicated by robust employment trends. In 2004, economic activity is anticipated to rise by 5.2% as measured by real GDP and by 4.8% in real GNP terms. Despite the significant number of job losses within certain sectors, labor market conditions continue to improve with the unemployment rate expected to average 4.4% in 2004 and 4.3% in 2005, the ESRI said. A tighter jobs market is expected to underpin wage growth contributing to an anticipated rise in consumer price inflation of 2.2% in 2004 and 2.4% in 2005. Turning to inflation, the report noted that while the effect of higher oil prices is expected to have ratcheted up inflation temporarily, it is not expected to have a significant long-term impact on price changes. While the impact of higher prices will dampen economic activity somewhat, the fact that it has occurred against the backdrop of favorable world economic conditions means that its output effect will be muted, it said.

2004-09-24T10:41:00.000-04:00

An interesting news piece about Indian soldiers who joined forces with the Nazis in order to help end British colonialism in India:

A year later the Indian legionnaires were sent back to India, where all were released after short jail sentences.

But when the British put three of their senior officers on trial near Delhi there were mutinies in the army and protests on the streets.

With the British now aware that the Indian army could no longer be relied upon by the Raj to do its bidding, independence followed soon after.

2004-09-24T10:16:00.000-04:00

Are people destined to commit suicide?:

The Swedish team looked at 700,000 adults and found low birth weight and being born to a teenage mother meant a two-fold rise in suicide risk.

The report also said risk increased for shorter babies.

The authors, from the National Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention in Stockholm, said it proved genetics played an important role in suicides.

2004-09-24T10:11:00.000-04:00

Jude Collins on the moving goalposts of Unionism:

But one thing is clear. On Saturday, having established themselves in the eyes of unionism as the people who brought the IRA to heel, the DUP is now bending itself to cut back on nationalist influence at every turn in the new dispensation – in the role of Deputy First Minister, in the role of executive ministers, in north-south bodies, in policing and justice.

And in that task of hobbling Sinn Féin, the SDLP and the nationalist people, most of respectable unionism supports Paisley and his henchmen.

2004-09-24T10:04:00.000-04:00

The British government will hold a secret inquiry into the murder of Pat Finucane:

Mr Finucane, 39, was shot dead in front of his wife and their three children as they ate dinner at their north Belfast home in February 1989. The loyalist Ulster Defence Association, said it killed the solicitor, who represented many high profile republican clients, because he was a top IRA man, a claim denied by his relatives.

Suggestions of collusion surfaced almost immediately. It was claimed Royal Ulster Constabulary detectives urged loyalists to target Mr Finucane and that roadblocks near his home were lifted to allow his killers to escape.

In 1992, an army/UDA double agent Brian Nelson told the BBC's Panorama that he scouted Mr Finucane's home and gave details to the killers.

Sir John Stevens, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said last year that cooperation between rogue police and army officers and loyalist paramilitaries in the late 1980s and early 1990s led to at least 20 murders, including that of Mr Finucane. Sir John has forwarded more than 20 files on former and serving police and soldiers to the director of public prosecutions.

2004-09-23T10:40:00.000-04:00

Brian Feeney on the intransigence of the DUP:

Is such a turnaround too much too fast? Will the DUP split? You can already see the strains. The fundamentalists in the party who loathe Catholics and nationalists to a degree recognisable in other contexts as racist, will simply not be able to reject the habits of a life-time. For them going into a power-sharing executive would be like de Valera taking the oath in 1927. He found a way round it which split republicanism. What way can Paisley find round doing what he has spent his life avoiding and not be called a Lundy?

While the DUP wrestles with its demons does the nationalist population have to wait? Are nationalists not entitled to the dividends of peace as of right without having to wait for the bigots in the DUP to behave themselves? Look at it another way. For the British government to refuse to move on the whole package until the DUP bigots see the light amounts to giving the DUP bigots a veto on progress. Suppose we reach Halloween and the DUP can't bring itself to cut a deal because the party might split. Does everything grind to a halt until it does, which may be on the Twelfth of Never?

2004-09-21T14:35:00.000-04:00

Neo-Nazis are on the rise in Germany:

The neo-Nazi NPD will now be represented in a German state parliament for the first time since 1968, a year after the then West German authorities in Berlin tried and failed to have the party outlawed.

2004-09-21T14:14:00.000-04:00

Recent genetic research shows that humans did not evolve to be monogamous:

Michael Hammer, a research scientist in UA's Arizona Research Laboratories, said, "We may think of ourselves as a monogamous species, but we're coming from an evolutionary history that's probably slightly polygamous. If we're shifting toward monogamy, it's so recent it hasn't left an imprint on our genome."

2004-09-17T13:29:00.001-04:00

The virus which causes cervical cancer may also trigger some types of skin cancer, according to British researchers. Researchers from the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (ICRF) say that Human Papillomaviruses (HPV) may be involved in the development of squamous cell carcinomas. This type of skin cancer is often linked to organ transplant patients, whose immune systems are compromised. It appears the virus may interact with ultraviolet light from the sun to interrupt the skin's normal defense against damage. The virus had been found in 80% of the squamous cell carcinomas in patients who have received an organ transplant, compared to only 30% of those with a normal immune function. Dr Alan Storey from the ICRF's skin tumor laboratory believes that HPV acts on a protein known as "Bak" which protects skin from damaging changes. The virus seems to destroy the Bak protein so it can not perform the protective function.

2004-09-17T13:29:00.000-04:00

Ireland is the most profitable country in the world for US corporations, according to an analysis of tax havens published in the US journal Tax Notes. The analysis found that profits made by US companies in Ireland doubled from 1999 to 2002, while profits in most of the rest of Europe plunged. The report noted that while Luxembourg showed greater profitability rates for US corporations, Ireland has a much larger "real economy" and produced the greatest profitability. The analysis was conducted by former US Treasury Department international taxation specialist Martin Sullivan. Among its findings was that US multinationals made $2.01 (US dollars) profit in Ireland in 2001 for every $1 (US dollars) they made in 1999. In Britain, US multinational profits dropped sharply to 67 US cents in 2002 for every $1 (US dollars) profit made in 1999. In Germany, profits fell even more dramatically, slipping to 46 cents in 2002 for every $1 (US dollars) made in 1999.

2004-09-17T10:23:00.000-04:00

The racist British National Party has scored a victory in an east London council by-election - its first win in the British capital since 1993. The BNP's Daniel Kelley gained Barking and Dagenham Council's Goresbrook ward from Labor with 1,072 votes to Labor's 602 - a majority of 470. The Conservatives polled 111 votes, the Liberal Democrats 85 and the Greens 59.

2004-09-17T10:08:00.000-04:00

Jude Collins on the hypocrisy of Tony Blair:

Here's what he told a press conference: "Everybody now believes the only basis on which power can be shared in a way that is fair is if violence is given up completely, and there's no ambiguity about it, no ambivalence, no thinking 'Well, a little bit doesn't matter.' It's got to stop."

Now remember who's speaking. This is the British prime minister who, against a tidal wave of anti-war protest in his own country, insisted that he and George Bush were right to invade Iraq. Not that he personally went in there with George – they sent in men with guns and explosive weaponry. These men had orders to shoot or blow to bits any Iraqi people who tried to resist the invasion of their country. Since that invasion, around 1,000 US and British troops have been killed and approximately 12,000 Iraqi civilians. So that's around 13,000 violent deaths to which Tony Blair has been a willing accomplice.

2004-09-16T09:23:00.000-04:00

Brian Feeney on the anti-Good Friday Agreement unionists:

You could fill this page with figures to show that the DUP represent what the majority of unionists support and that combined with UUP antis they constitute a majority of the electorate. Don't worry. You don't even need figures. Yes, it's true that the combined SF, SDLP and Alliance party votes last November were much larger than the DUP's share of the vote. What is also true however is that large numbers of UUP votes went to anti-agreement candidates like Donaldson and Arlene Foster who were more stridently anti-agreement than some DUP candidates. When they subsequently defected to the DUP did you hear any of their electorate complaining?

2004-09-14T11:46:00.000-04:00

Jason Burke in Baghdad reports on the confused psychology of the Iraqi resistance and meets a Sunni guerrilla who welcomed the Americans at first but is now happy to have black GIs in his sights:

His justification for the struggle was an inconsistent mix of political and economic grievances and wounded pride: 'We are under occupation. They bomb the mosques, they kill a huge number of people. There is no greater shame than to see your country being occupied.'

2004-09-14T11:17:00.000-04:00

Sectarian prejudices can be deeply ingrained among some children in the North of Ireland before they are even half way through primary school, it has been claimed. Some as young as three are already beginning to assume political and cultural preferences, research has revealed. And by the time they are six, a third of these children recognize that they belong to either the Protestant or Catholic communities with one in six making sectarian statements. The shocking scale of developing bias within nursery and primary education was disclosed to an all-party group of MPs investigating hate crime in the north of Ireland. Dr Paul Connolly, based in the Graduate School of Education at Queen's University, Belfast has carried out a number of major studies on the nature and extent of racial and sectarian prejudices among nursery and primary-aged children. His findings revealed that more than twice as many Catholic children stated that they did not like the police or Orange Order marches, compared to Protestants. He also found that Catholic three-year-olds are much more likely to prefer the Irish Tricolor and Protestant children the Union flag and that children living in areas with high sectarian tensions and violence have already developed strong, negative attitudes towards those from the other community by the time they are aged seven-to eight.

2004-09-14T10:00:00.000-04:00

The Irish economy's rebound has been driven by internal dynamics rather than the global economy or foreign direct investment, according to economist Robbie Kelleher of Davy Stockbrokers. Kelleher said that the significance of the internal dynamics of the Irish economy, which come from the age and structure of the population, had been understated. He said that the contribution from the overseas sector and foreign direct investment had been overstated, with a significant proportion of the benefits of Irish exports accruing to companies outside Ireland. Also, less than 150,000 people are employed by the overseas sector. The construction sector employs 50% more, and the wholesale and retail trade employs 70% more. In his opinion, the growing Irish population provides a powerful source of increased demand across a whole range of domestic sectors. Ireland, with a population growth rate of 1.6%, has comfortably the most rapidly expanding population in Europe, where the average growth rate is just 0.3% per annum, according to Kelleher.

2004-09-09T14:44:00.000-04:00

A national team of investigators led by psychiatric geneticists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has identified a gene that appears to be linked to both alcoholism and depression:

The researchers believe that normal variations in the gene either protect an individual or make that person more susceptible to alcoholism and/or depression. Their next step will be to identify specific variants in the gene that lead to differences in disease risk.

2004-09-09T14:09:00.000-04:00

Newborn babies prefer to look at attractive faces suggesting that face recognition is hardwired at birth, rather than learned, according to British researcher Alan Slater:

He suggests the reason for this preference is simple - pretty people actually have the prototype of a human face. Researchers have long noted that by melding together hundreds of faces, a statistical average of facial characteristics is reached that happens to be incredibly attractive.

2004-09-09T13:28:00.000-04:00

No one did more to blacken Scotland's name than the 70 lawless clans of Borders "Mafia" who specialized in murder, kidnapping and cattle-rustling for more than three centuries. Bloodshed and blackmail, the hallmarks of the Border Reivers, have always been blamed on their Celtic or Pictish ancestry, adding to the reputation of the Scots as a violent and intolerant race. But that reputation could yet be changed by modern science, which is already indicating that Armstrongs, Douglases, Elliots, Grahams, Rutherfords and other families who rendered the Borders ungovernable up to the end of the 16th century, were not necessarily descended from Scotland?s earliest settlers. The first results from the Border Reiver DNA Project, set up by a computer software consultant from Boston, Massachusetts, shows the gangsters who perfected protection rackets long before Chicago was built may well have had their roots in Scandinavia, Eastern Europe or even North Africa. James Elliott, the project administrator, has spent the last few months analyzing the results of 600 DNA profiles taken from males with Reiver surnames, including a direct descendent of Johnnie Armstrong, the most notorious bandit of them all. It all started when Elliott, the grandson of Scots-Irish emigrants from the north of Ireland, set out to solve the mystery of his own tribal identity. His own DNA test placed him in the same general group as the "Celts". But his closest "relatives" seemed to come from very different places. Elliott?s nearest matches in a leading DNA database consisted of five Siberians, a Hungarian and an Icelander. Close matches in a German databank with 25,000 worldwide profiles were from Turkey, Syria, Ukraine and several other European locations. Then a further test indicated that he was 11% East Asian genetically. The 600 profiles assembled by Elliott and his colleague David Strong currently represents 75 different families. But Elliott says a few are Borders families who co-existed with the Reivers and had observed them, policed them, or had been their victims. The analysis of the genetic composition of individual families, and of the Border Reivers as a whole, has followed similar methodology to the recent BBC program Blood of the Vikings. The study also suggests that the large number of Roman troops stationed along Hadrian's Wall may have left a strong impact on the genetic heritage of the people of the Borders.

2004-09-08T15:31:00.000-04:00

The belief that Ireland's population is descended from the Celts has been disproved by geneticists, who have concluded that they never invaded Ireland. The research at Trinity College Dublin (TCD) into the origins of Ireland's population found no substantial evidence of the Celts in Irish DNA, and concludes that they never settled in Ireland. About 15,000 years ago, ice covered Ireland, Britain and a lot of northern Europe so prehistoric man retreated back into Spain, Italy and Greece, which were still fairly temperate. When the ice started melting again around 12,000 years ago, people followed it northwards as areas became habitable again. The Trinity researchers took samples of mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited from the mother, from 200 volunteers around Ireland using cheek swabs. They also compiled a database of more than 8,500 individuals from around Europe and analyzed them for similarities and matches in the sequences. They found that most of the Irish samples matched with those around Britain and the Pyrenees in Spain. There were some matches in Scandinavia and parts of northern Africa. The geneticists produced a map of Europe with contours linking places that were genetically similar. One contour goes around the edge of the Atlantic, around Wales, Scotland, Ireland and includes Galicia in Spain and the Basque region. Many archaeologists also doubt that there was a Celtic invasion because few of their artifacts have been found in Ireland. The geneticists concluded that modern Irish Catholics are descendants of the first people to settle in Ireland around 9,000 years ago.

2004-09-07T14:45:00.000-04:00

Some of the earliest settlers of America may have come from Australia, southern Asia, and the Pacific, according to new research. Traditional theories have held that the first Americans originated from northern Asia. Dr Silvia Gonzalez, of Liverpool John Moores University, conducted a study of ancient bones found in Mexico and found that they have very different characteristics to Native Americans. Some of the ancient skulls she has looked at are more than 12,000 years old. These skulls have long and narrow heads that are very different from the short, broad skulls of modern Native Americans. One particularly well-preserved skull of a long-headed female, who has been dubbed Penon Woman, has been carbon dated to 12,700 years ago. She said that there was very strong evidence that the first migration came from Australia via Japan and Polynesia and down the Pacific coast of America. A population of the long-headed individuals being studied by Dr Gonzalez had survived into historic times, she claimed. This tribe, which lived on the Baja California peninsula, were called the Pericues. But they appear to have died out in the 18th Century because of disease. Spanish missionaries reported that they were of a different racial type and had different customs to other Native Americans. The results concur with a study of the Pericues carried out by Spanish researchers in 2003.

2004-09-03T13:10:00.000-04:00

British loyalist terrorists have been involved in an attack in which a forklift with burning rubble in its bucket was smashed into the front of an indigenous Irish Catholic bar in Belfast. The British terrorists of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) were blamed for the violent act and a group of around 50 loyalists also threw missiles at the bar after the attack.

2004-09-03T12:10:00.000-04:00

The bands of ancient Neanderthals that struggled throughout Europe during the last Ice Age faced challenges no tougher than those confronted by the modern Inuit, or Eskimos. That’s the conclusion of a new study intended to test a long-standing belief among anthropologists that the lives of the Neanderthals were too tough for their line to coexist with Homo sapiens. And the evidence discounting that theory lies with tiny grooves that mar the teeth of these ancient people. Neanderthals, Homo neanderthalensis, were the dominant hominid inhabiting most of what is now Europe and western Asia. Fossil skulls reveal the distinctively prominent brows and missing chins that set them apart from later humans. They thrived from about 200,000 to 30,000 years ago until their lineage failed for unknown reasons. Most researchers have argued that their lives in extremely harsh, Ice Age-like environments, coupled with their limited technological skills, ultimately led to their demise. Homo sapiens arrived in Europe about 40,000 years ago and survived using more advanced technology. But the short lifespans of Neanderthals and evidence of arthritis in their skeletons suggests that their lives were extremely difficult. That’s where Debbie Guatelli-Steinberg’s work comes in. An assistant professor of anthropology and evolution, ecology and organismal biology at Ohio State University, she published a recent study in the Journal of Human Evolution that changes the current view of the Neanderthals’ unbearable lives. Guatelli-Steinberg has spent the last decade investigating tiny defects -- linear enamel hypoplasia -- in tooth enamel from primates, modern and early humans. These defects serve as markers of periods during early childhood when food was scarce and nutrition was low. These tiny horizontal lines and grooves in tooth enamel form when the body faces either a systemic illness or a severely deficient diet. In essence, they are reminders of times when the body’s normal process of forming tooth enamel during childhood simply shut down for a period of time. To see if the lives of Neanderthals were any harder than that of modern humans she turned to two collections of skeletal remains: One was a collection of Neanderthal skulls at least 40,000 years old from various sites across Europe; the other was a set of remains of Inuit Eskimos from Point Hope, Alaska. She microscopically examined teeth from the Neanderthal skulls for signs of linear enamel hypoplasia, as well as other normal growth increments in teeth called perikymata, and compared their prevalence with those from the Inuit skulls. Guatelli-Steinberg’s examination of perikymata offered snapshots of Neanderthal survival. Smaller than the linear enamel hypoplasia, perikymata are even tinier horizontal lines on the teeth surface. Each one represents about eight days of enamel growth so by counting their number, researchers can gauge the speed of tooth development – more perikymata mean slower growth of the tooth surface. Guatelli-Steinberg counted perikymata within linear enamel hypoplasias, and was able to gauge how long these episodes of physiological stress lasted. The perikymata showed that periods of up to three months of starvation for both the Neanderthals and the Inuit were not uncommon. In fact, Guatelli-Steinberg found that Inuit teeth showed significantly more perikymata than did the Neanderthals, suggesting that the Inuit experienced stress episodes that lasted slightly longer than did those of the Neanderthals. She is looking ahead to do a similar comparison of tooth defects among the European Cro-Magnon who thrived after the Neanderthals disappeared. Coupled with the results of this project, and that of earlier work with non-human primates, she hopes to improve researchers’ understanding of just what information these tooth defects might reveal.

2004-09-02T12:07:00.000-04:00

Brian Feeney on why Unionists will never share power and what should be done about it:

What Dublin and London should be doing after 10 years is looking for a way to penalise unionists for refusing to share power on equal terms instead of rewarding them for stalling and endorsing each and every pre-condition no matter how preposterous. The evidence of the last decade is that appeasing unionists simply results in them placing another hurdle in the way of progress.

2004-09-01T14:42:00.000-04:00

Far from opposites attracting, people tend to choose friends who look like them, research suggests. Dr Lisa DeBruine believes that humans may have evolved to prefer the company of people who remind them of family. The researchers showed volunteers male and female faces that had been computer-manipulated to produce a family resemblance. Men liked other men's faces that resembled their own and women liked other women's faces that resembled their own. DeBruine, of McMaster University, Canada, said that previous research had shown that people were more likely to trust others who looked like them. She believes it may be possible that humans evolved to place greater trust, and to have greater affection for, people who look as though they may be related to them because the chances are higher that they share common genes. By forging a bond in this way, it could help these people to thrive, and thus, in evolutionary terms, to pass their genes down to the next generation. Professor David Perrett, of the Perception Lab at St Andrew's University, said: "It is likely that people who look similar to ourselves share our genes, and it makes sense to help the cause of these individuals because, in effect, we are helping our own genes."

2004-08-30T12:53:00.000-04:00

Historians of the Stone Age fear that they will have to rip up their theories about Neanderthal Man after doubt has been cast on the carbon dating of skeletons by a leading German anthropologist. Work by the flamboyant Professor Reiner Protsch von Zieten showed that Neanderthal Man existed in northern Europe. Calculations on skeletal remains found at Hahnofersand, near Hamburg, stated that they were 36,000 years old. Yet recent research at Oxford University's carbon-dating laboratory has suggested that they date back a mere 7,500 years. By that time, Homo sapiens were already well-established and the Neanderthals were extinct. Chris Stringer, a Stone Age specialist and head of human origins at London's Natural History Museum, said: "What was considered a major piece of evidence showing that the Neanderthals once lived in northern Europe has fallen by the wayside. We are having to rewrite prehistory."

2004-08-27T13:07:00.000-04:00

A study to diet for: Docs can’t ‘weight’ for Atkins alternative

Easy Atkins may be the best way to diet

Diet With the 'Right Carbs' Seems to Boost Health

New data validate the low-glycemic diet

Sick of Low-Carb Diets? Try Low-GI

2004-08-20T09:51:00.000-04:00

Ireland raises economic growth forecasts.