Eideard

The tip of a girl’s 40,000-year-old pinky finger found in a cold Siberian cave, paired with faster and cheaper genetic sequencing technology, is helping scientists draw a surprisingly complex new picture of human origins.

The new view is fast supplanting the traditional idea that modern humans triumphantly marched out of Africa about 50,000 years ago, replacing all other types that had gone before.

Instead, the genetic analysis shows, modern humans encountered and bred with at least two groups of ancient humans in relatively recent times: the Neanderthals, who lived in Europe and Asia, dying out roughly 30,000 years ago, and a mysterious group known as the Denisovans, who lived in Asia and most likely vanished around the same time.

Their DNA lives on in us even though they are extinct. “In a sense, we are a hybrid species,” Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist who is the research leader in human origins at the Natural History Museum in London, said in an interview.

The Denisovans were first described a year ago in a groundbreaking paper in the journal Nature made possible by genetic sequencing of the girl’s pinky bone and of an oddly shaped molar from a young adult. Those findings have unleashed a spate of new analyses.

Scientists are trying to envision the ancient couplings and their consequences: when and where they took place, how they happened, how many produced offspring and what effect the archaic genes have on humans today…

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Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Six central banks led by the Federal Reserve made it cheaper for banks to borrow dollars in emergencies in a global effort to ease Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis.

Stocks rallied worldwide, commodities surged and yields on most European debt fell on the show of force from central banks aimed at easing strains in financial markets. The cost for European banks to borrow dollars dropped from the highest in three years, tempering concerns about euro’s worsening crisis after leaders said they’d failed to boost the region’s bailout fund as much as planned…

The premium banks pay to borrow dollars overnight from central banks will fall by half a percentage point to 50 basis points, the Fed said today in a statement in Washington. The so- called dollar swap lines will be extended by six months to Feb. 1, 2013. The Fed coordinated the move with the European Central Bank and the central banks of Canada, Switzerland, Japan and the U.K.

The six central banks also agreed to create temporary bilateral swap programs so funding can be provided in any of the currencies “should market conditions so warrant.” Those swap lines were also authorized through Feb. 1, 2013…

Two hours before the Fed announcement, China cut the amount of cash that the nation’s banks must set aside as reserves for the first time since 2008. The level for the biggest lenders falls to 21 percent from a record 21.5 percent, based on past statements.

While today’s move by the six central banks is likely to ease tensions in money markets, it falls short of some calls for the ECB to step up and act as lender of last resort for the governments of the 17-member euro area and buy unlimited amounts of government bonds. Germany, Europe’s largest economy, has resisted the idea, arguing it isn’t the ECB’s job to do so and would only be a temporary fix…

Under the dollar liquidity-swap program, the Fed lends dollars to the ECB and other central banks in exchange for currencies including euros. The central banks lend dollars to commercial banks in their jurisdictions through an auction process…

The coordinated action “lowers the cost of emergency funding and increases the scope,” Mohamed El-Erian, chief executive officer, of PIMCo. said in a radio interview today on “Bloomberg Surveillance” with Ken Prewitt and Tom Keene. Central banks “are seeing something in the functioning of the banking system that worries them,” El-Erian said.

Mohamed El-Erian would be understated about the end of the universe as we know it.

I’d love to know if it was Ben Bernanke or Tim Geithner – or both – who worked behind the scenes to get this herd of cats into an assembly of thrift and economic repair that should last at least a week or two. I’m convinced it was one or the other. And Euro egos are so tender they won’t be seen admitting either.

Eighteen months since construction began an imposing new tower, The Shard, cuts a commanding figure over the London skyline. The concrete core is now officially 800 feet tall and can be clearly seen dominating the cityscape with 72 floors now completed.

Click on the link for a slideshow.

E’ già da un mese che il tema della tassazione del patrimonio della Chiesa in Italia ha l’onore della cronaca e di qualche prima pagina. Poche in verità, ma in confronto all’ omertà dei grandi giornali e dei partiti politici, direi che se ne comincia a parlare. Grande, d’altronde, è l’ignoranza circa le esenzioni di cui gode la Chiesa nelle più disparate forme e consuetudini. La maggioranza degli italiani quando si parla del tema nomina immediatamente l’8×1000. Ma lì si ferma!

I’m offering this link to a blog post by one of our regular readers – whose English is so much better than my Italian – on a topic important to many nations. That topic is the tax-free status of many religions. State religions. State religion wannabes.

GOOGLE translate helps if you don’t speak Italian.

Orange dots = Flickr photos, blue dots = Twitter messages, white dots = both simultaneously

Have you ever wondered where people are located when they post on Twitter or take a digital photo? Eric Fischer, a programmer and designer, recently answered this question by creating a series of maps showing people’s location when they send a Twitter message or upload a photo to Flickr, the photo-sharing Web site.

The data visualization series is called “See something or say something,” and according to Mr. Fischer’s Twitter feed, uses Twitter and Flickr’s A.P.I., or application programming interface, to figure out the location and times of each photo or message. He then plots it on a map.

In the map images, Mr. Fischer chose orange dots to illustrate the location of photos uploaded to Flickr, the blue dots show Twitter messages and the white dots are the location of both services being used at the same time.

Apps like these are facile enough that I guess we no longer need suggest these folks have too much time on their hands. Although I think that’s certainly true of Mr. Fischer.

Even as China prepares to open bullet train service between Beijing and Shanghai by July 1, its steadily expanding high-speed rail network is being pilloried on a scale rare among Chinese citizens and the news media. Complaints include the system’s high costs and fares, the quality of construction and an allegation of self-dealing by a rail minister who was fired this year on grounds of corruption.

Often overlooked amid all the controversy are the very real economic benefits that the world’s most advanced fast-rail system is bringing to China, and the competitive challenges it poses for the United States and Europe.

Just as building the interstate highway system in the United States a half-century ago made modern commerce more feasible on a national scale, China’s ambitious rail rollout is helping to integrate the economy of this sprawling, populous nation. In China’s case, it is doing so on a much faster construction timetable and at significantly higher travel speeds than anything envisioned by the United States in the 1950s…

Zhen Qinan, a founder of the stock exchange in the coastal city of Shenzhen and the recently retired chief executive of ZK Energy, a wind turbine producer in Changsha, said that high-speed trains were making it more convenient to base businesses here in Hunan Province — a populous region that has long provided labor to the factories of the east, but whose mountain ranges have tended to isolate it from the economic mainstream…

Throughout China, real estate prices and investments have risen sharply in the more than 200 inland cities that have already been connected by high-speed lines in the past three years. Businesses are flocking to these cities, now just a few hours by bullet train from China’s busiest and most international metropolises.

Meanwhile, a shift in passenger traffic to the new high-speed rail routes has freed up congested older rail lines for freight. That has allowed coal mines and shippers to switch to cheaper rail transport from costly trucks for heavy cargos.

Because of this shift, plus the further construction of freight rail lines, the tonnage hauled by China’s rail system increased in 2010 by an amount equaling the entire freight carried last year by the combined rail systems of Britain, France, Germany and Poland, according to the World Bank.

The bullet train bonanza, and the competitive challenge it poses for the West, is only likely to increase with the opening of the 1,320-kilometer Beijing-to-Shanghai line, which will create a business corridor between China’s two most dynamic cities. The Ministry of Railways plans 90 bullet trains a day in each direction…

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Prius V – American name for Toyota’s Prius station wagon

File this one under the category of unexpected. According to Integrity Exports, Toyota logged an outrageous 52,000 orders for its Prius Alpha hybrid over in Japan since the vehicle launched on May 13th. That’s astronomical considering that Toyota set a monthly sales target of just 3,000 units for the gas-electric MPV.

Toyota says that it will ramp up production of the Prius Alpha in response to soaring demand, but boosting output from 3,000 to 5,000 vehicles per month (Toyota’s modified production levels) by summer’s end still doesn’t seem like it’ll be enough.

Despite Toyota promising that the enormous demand for the Prius Alpha won’t affect the launch of the Prius V here in the States, Integrity Exports begs to differ…

Even my barely functional remembrance of things mathematical tells me this critter ain’t landing on time in the United States. Unless Toyota decides to [1] stop taking orders in Japan, right now, and [2] decides to screw some of the people with orders already in-house in Japan.

An annual survey of the rule of law around the world…sees weak protections for fundamental rights in China, “serious deficiencies” in Russia, and problems with discrimination in the United States.

Sweden and Norway scored highest on the World Justice Project Rule of Law Index, which ranks countries on such key areas as whether the government is held accountable, there is access to justice, rights are protected and crime and corruption is prevented.

“Achieving the rule of law is a constant challenge and a work in progress in all countries,” said Hongsia Liu, the executive director of the project, which was funded by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation…

In the case of China, the report noted that the Asian giant had made “major improvements” in the quality, effectiveness and accountability of its legal institutions.

It came in second after Brazil among the so-called BRIC group of emerging powers — Brazil, Russia, India and China…

On India, the report found strong free speech protections, an independent judiciary, and a relatively open government with functioning checks and balances. “However, the unsatisfactory performance of public administrative bodies keeps generating a negative impact on the rule of law…”

Of the BRIC countries, Russia fared the worst in the rankings.

“The country shows serious deficiencies in checks and balances among the different branches of government…leading to an institutional environment characterized by corruption, impunity, and political interference,” it said…

The rule of law was also found wanting in countries like Iran, long at odds with the international community over its nuclear program and which ranked last in the world on protection of fundamental rights…

In Latin America, Venezuela was rated “the worst performer in the world in accountability and effective checks on the executive power…

Western Europe was the top performing region of the world with most countries, except Italy, getting high marks in most categories.

The United States had decent marks for what was promised by our legal system. Delivery was more often than not limited to those who could afford good legal services. Questions of discrimination haven’t especially diminished in terms of public perception – and legislative practices which frequently lead to passing unconstitutional laws to satisfy political pressures, in turn requiring long legal challenges wasting taxpayer and citizen funds, continue to be a constant negative part of American law.

You can download the full report over here – [3.1mb .pdf].

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Germans have been warned not to eat cucumbers until tests identify the source of a deadly E.coli outbreak which local officials say has killed 13 people. It is thought contaminated cucumbers were imported from Spain, but further tests are being carried out.

Germany has registered 1,200 confirmed or suspected E.coli cases so far. With cases reported in Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and the UK, Germany is set to hold crisis talks later.

In many of the reported cases, the gastrointestinal infection has led to Hemolytic-uremic Syndrome (HUS), which causes kidney problems and is potentially fatal.

One woman was taken to hospital in Poland on Monday. She was said to be in a serious condition after returning from a trip to the northern German city of Hamburg, which has seen the majority of infections.

Authorities in the Czech Republic, Austria and France have taken some Spanish-grown cucumbers off shop shelves amid contamination fears. Czech officials said contaminated cucumbers may also have been exported to Hungary and Luxembourg.

Suspicion has fallen on organic cucumbers from Spain imported by Germany but then re-exported to other European countries, or exported directly by Spain.

Austria has banned the sale of cucumbers, tomatoes and aubergines imported via Germany, while Russia has banned the import of some vegetables from Germany and Spain…

Two Spanish greenhouses identified as sources for the outbreak have been closed and are currently under investigation to see whether the outbreak originated there or elsewhere, said an EU spokesman…

The Sweden-based European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has called the outbreak “one of the largest described of HUS worldwide and the largest ever reported in Germany”…

The head of Hamburg University’s Eppendorf Clinic, Joerg Debatin, said more deaths were expected, as 30 people infected with HUS had lost kidney function.

Wow! Sounds a lot worse than any e.coli outbreaks we’ve suffered through here in the States. Though, the fact that we seem to have outbreaks with some regularity may have people already conscious of food-borne illness and responding more quickly. Including the bureaucrats.

UPDATE: German scientists say they’re now confident after extensive testing the source was not Spanish cucumbers.

Virtual wallet technology that lets people pay for a coffee, newspaper or sandwich by swiping a cell phone at a checkout is finally set to start rolling out, executives told the Reuters Technology Summit this week in Paris.

Retailers, fast-food chains, advertisers and banks are preparing for a sea change in electronic commerce as more smartphones capable of making financial transactions are released. Many say it will change the way they do business.

Near-field-communication (NFC), the technology most likely to be used in the West, is a wireless way to swap data at short range, which means NFC-enabled smartphones can pay for goods, store electronic tickets, collect coupons or swap photos…

On Friday, Orange and Barclaycard launched Britain’s first mobile payments service, allowing certain customers to make small payments in branches of fast-food chains including McDonald’s and Subway.

In other countries, notably Japan and South Korea, NFC technology is already well established…

Richard Clemmer said every smartphone manufacturer was looking at putting NFC in its phones. He reckons up to three-quarters of all smartphones will be NFC phones in five years and that some traditional phones will also start adding the technology, particularly for use in developing markets in Africa and Asia…

Low risk data transfers like using NFC to read tags on movie posters, connect to wifi at cafes and swap business cards will help boost acceptance and drive the first big wave of NFC rollout to the consumers.

There has been little or no problem with acceptance of the technology everywhere else in the world where it has been trialed. It has become part of normal.

Not that it means there won’t be political, legal or just plain bird-brained problems getting it up and running here.