The villages of the Colorado River delta in Mexico normally would be bubbling with excitement now about the coming high tides that produce a bounty of fish each spring. This is when a sea-going species, the gulf corvina, gathers in the upper Gulf of California off the mouth of the Colorado River, then rushes like clockwork during the high tides of March and April to spawn in the safer fresh water up the channel. At a place called El Zanjon, an indigenous tribe, the Cucapá, and poor delta residents have long netted the corvina spawn. On isolated salt flats along the river channel, ... Read More
Charting Genomes: Old Hairs Create New Headaches
September 22, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Nearly a century ago in the outback of southwestern Australia, an eminent English anthropologist snipped off a dreadlock from an Aborigine at a fuel stop along the just-built transcontinental railroad. The 20 red to brown hairs in that clay-encrusted clump now have produced a genetic profile that researchers say defines how some of the first modern humans populated the world. The ancient DNA links Aborigines to one of the earliest groups of Homo sapiens, a group that had left Africa about 70,000 years ago, then lived in the Middle East before spreading east. A Danish-led team reports ... Read More
Are Professors Picking the Public’s Pockets?
August 25, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
From his arrival in the U.S. some 25 years ago, Tatsuya Suda deftly cut a path to the upper echelons of academic computer research. Fresh from prestigious Kyoto University, he steadily rose to become a tenured professor at the University of California, Irvine, earning a reputation for dynamic theories in computer networking at the dawn of the cell-phone age. He even wed Grammy-winning singer Rita Coolidge. But along this intellectual course, studded with access to valuable discoveries—Suda was one of the first nanotechnology researchers to explore the idea of using biological molecules ... Read More
Comet Theory Comes Crashing to Earth
May 14, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
It seemed like such an elegant answer to an age-old mystery: the disappearance of what are arguably North America’s first people. A speeding comet nearly 13,000 years ago was the culprit, the theory goes, spraying ice and rocks across the continent, killing the Clovis people and the mammoths they fed on, and plunging the region into a deep chill. The idea so captivated the public that three movies describing the catastrophe were produced. But now, four years after the purportedly supportive evidence was reported, a host of scientific authorities systematically have made the case that the ... Read More
