CAROLINA NATURALLY: Apr 11, 2015

Saturday, April 11, 2015

The Daily Drift

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Today in History

1512		The forces of the Holy League are heavily defeated by the French at the Battle of Ravenna.
1713		The Treaty of Utrecht is signed, ending the War of Spanish Succession. France cedes Maritime provinces to Britain.
1783		After receiving a copy of the provisional treaty on 13 March, Congress proclaims a formal end to hostilities with Great Britain.
1814		Napoleon abdicates and is exiled to Elba.
1898		American President William McKinley asks Congress for declaration of war with Spain.
1941		Germany bombers blitz Conventry, England.
1942		Detachment 101 of the OSS–a guerrilla force–is activated in Burma.
1945		After two frustrating days of being repulsed and absorbing tremendous casualties, the Red Army finally takes the Seelow Heights north of Berlin.
1951		President Truman fires General Douglas MacArthur as head of United Nations forces in Korea.
1961		Israel begins the trial of Adolf Eichman, accused of war crimes during WWII.
1961		Folk singer Bob Dylan performs in New York City for the first time, opening for John Lee Hooker.
1968		President Johnson signs the 1968 Civil Rights Act.
1974		The Judiciary committee subpoenas President Richard Nixon to produce tapes for impeachment inquiry.
1981		President Ronald Reagan returns to the White House from hospital after recovery from an assassination attempt.
1986		Dodge Morgan sails solo nonstop around the world in 150 days.
1991		The U.N. Security Council issues formal cease fire with Iraq.
1996		Forty-three African nations sign the African Nuclear Weapons Free Zone Treaty.

Greece Nazi occupation: Athens asks Germany for €279bn

Greek bailout

The Greek government says Germany owes Greece nearly €279bn (£204bn; $303bn) in war reparations for the Nazi occupation during World War Two.

It is the first time Greece has officially calculated what Germany allegedly owes it for Nazi atrocities and looting during the 1940s.
However, the German government says the issue was resolved legally years ago.
Greece's radical left Syriza government is making the claim while struggling to meet massive debt repayment deadlines.
Reacting to the Greek claim, German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel said it was "dumb" to link Greece's bailout by the eurozone with the question of war reparations.
"To be honest I think it's dumb. I think that it doesn't move us forward one millimeter on the question of stabilizing Greece," he said.
He said ordinary Greek citizens however deserved "huge respect" for their economic sacrifices under the bailout program. The Greek elite had "plundered" the country, he complained.

'Legally closed'

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras raised the reparations issue when he met German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin last month.
The new figure given by Greek Deputy Finance Minister Dimitris Mardas includes €10.3bn for an occupation loan that the Nazis forced the Bank of Greece to pay.
"According to our calculations, the debt linked to German reparations is 278.7bn euros," Mr Mardas told a parliamentary committee investigating responsibility for Greece's debt crisis.
Mr Mardas said the reparations calculation had been made by Greece's state general accounting office.

Greece was invaded by Nazi Germany in 1941 - here German soldiers raise their flag over the Acropolis Berlin paid 115m Deutschmarks to Athens in 1960 in compensation - a fraction of the Greek demand. Greece says it did not cover payments for damaged infrastructure, war crimes and the return of the forced loan.Germany insists the reparations issue was settled in 1990, before Germany reunified.
The budget spokesman for Chancellor Merkel's Christian Democrats, Eckhardt Rehberg, reiterated on Tuesday that "the reparations issue is for us closed, politically and legally - the same applies to the so-called forced loan".
Syriza politicians have frequently blamed Germany for Greek citizens' hardship under the austerity imposed by international lenders.
Mr Tsipras is trying to renegotiate the €240bn EU-IMF bailout that saved Greece from bankruptcy. Greece has not received bailout funds since August last year, as the lenders are dissatisfied with the pace of Greek reforms.
A Greek repayment of €448m to the International Monetary Fund is due this Thursday.
Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has said that Greece "intends to meet all obligations to all its creditors, ad infinitum".

How Europeans evolved white skin

Common European traits like pale skin and brown eyes evolved relatively recently in central and southern Europe.

by Ann Gibbons

Most of us think of Europe as the ancestral home of white people. But a new study shows that pale skin, as well as other traits such as tallness and the ability to digest milk as adults, arrived in most of the continent relatively recently. The work, presented here last week at the 84th annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, offers dramatic evidence of recent evolution in Europe and shows that most modern Europeans don’t look much like those of 8000 years ago.
The origins of Europeans have come into sharp focus in the past year as researchers have sequenced the genomes of ancient populations, rather than only a few individuals. By comparing key parts of the DNA across the genomes of 83 ancient individuals from archaeological sites throughout Europe, the international team of researchers reported earlier this year that Europeans today are a mix of the blending of at least three ancient populations of hunter-gatherers and farmers who moved into Europe in separate migrations over the past 8000 years. The study revealed that a massive migration of Yamnaya herders from the steppes north of the Black Sea may have brought Indo-European languages to Europe about 4500 years ago.
Now, a new study from the same team drills down further into that remarkable data to search for genes that were under strong natural selection—including traits so favorable that they spread rapidly throughout Europe in the past 8000 years. By comparing the ancient European genomes with those of recent ones from the 1000 Genomes Project, population geneticist Iain Mathieson, a postdoc in the Harvard University lab of population geneticist David Reich, found five genes associated with changes in diet and skin pigmentation that underwent strong natural selection.
First, the scientists confirmed an earlier report that the hunter-gatherers in Europe could not digest the sugars in milk 8000 years ago, according to a poster. They also noted an interesting twist: The first farmers also couldn’t digest milk. The farmers who came from the Near East about 7800 years ago and the Yamnaya pastoralists who came from the steppes 4800 years ago lacked the version of the LCT gene that allows adults to digest sugars in milk. It wasn’t until about 4300 years ago that lactose tolerance swept through Europe.
When it comes to skin color, the team found a patchwork of evolution in different places, and three separate genes that produce light skin, telling a complex story for how European’s skin evolved to be much lighter during the past 8000 years. The modern humans who came out of Africa to originally settle Europe about 40,000 years are presumed to have had dark skin, which is advantageous in sunny latitudes. And the new data confirm that about 8500 years ago, early hunter-gatherers in Spain, Luxembourg, and Hungary also had darker skin: They lacked versions of two genes—SLC24A5 and SLC45A2—that lead to depigmentation and, therefore, pale skin in Europeans today.
But in the far north—where low light levels would favor pale skin—the team found a different picture in hunter-gatherers: Seven people from the 7700-year-old Motala archaeological site in southern Sweden had both light skin gene variants, SLC24A5 and SLC45A2. They also had a third gene, HERC2/OCA2, which causes blue eyes and may also contribute to light skin and blond hair. Thus ancient hunter-gatherers of the far north were already pale and blue-eyed, but those of central and southern Europe had darker skin.
Then, the first farmers from the Near East arrived in Europe; they carried both genes for light skin. As they interbred with the indigenous hunter-gatherers, one of their light-skin genes swept through Europe, so that central and southern Europeans also began to have lighter skin. The other gene variant, SLC45A2, was at low levels until about 5800 years ago when it swept up to high frequency.
The team also tracked complex traits, such as height, which are the result of the interaction of many genes. They found that selection strongly favored several gene variants for tallness in northern and central Europeans, starting 8000 years ago, with a boost coming from the Yamnaya migration, starting 4800 years ago. The Yamnaya have the greatest genetic potential for being tall of any of the populations, which is consistent with measurements of their ancient skeletons. In contrast, selection favored shorter people in Italy and Spain starting 8000 years ago, according to the paper now posted on the bioRxiv preprint server. Spaniards, in particular, shrank in stature 6000 years ago, perhaps as a result of adapting to colder temperatures and a poor diet.
Surprisingly, the team found no immune genes under intense selection, which is counter to hypotheses that diseases would have increased after the development of agriculture.
The paper doesn’t specify why these genes might have been under such strong selection. But the likely explanation for the pigmentation genes is to maximize vitamin D synthesis, said paleoanthropologist Nina Jablonski of Pennsylvania State University (Penn State), University Park, as she looked at the poster’s results at the meeting. People living in northern latitudes often don’t get enough UV to synthesize vitamin D in their skin so natural selection has favored two genetic solutions to that problem—evolving pale skin that absorbs UV more efficiently or favoring lactose tolerance to be able to digest the sugars and vitamin D naturally found in milk. “What we thought was a fairly simple picture of the emergence of depigmented skin in Europe is an exciting patchwork of selection as populations disperse into northern latitudes,” Jablonski says. “This data is fun because it shows how much recent evolution has taken place.”
Anthropological geneticist George Perry, also of Penn State, notes that the work reveals how an individual’s genetic potential is shaped by their diet and adaptation to their habitat. “We’re getting a much more detailed picture now of how selection works.”

Power Lines and Disease

No evidence that low-frequency magnetic fields accelerate development of Alzheimer's, ALS

No evidence power lines accelerate Alzheimer’s, ALS

Low-frequency alternating magnetic fields such as those generated by overhead power lines are considered a potential health risk because epidemiological studies indicate that they may aggravate, among other things, neurodegenerative […]

TB in the 1700s

Mummies reveal how tuberculosis ravaged the heart of 18th century Europe

Bodies found in a 200 year-old Hungarian crypt have revealed the secrets of how tuberculosis (TB) took hold in 18th century Europe, according to a research team led by the […]

Spontaneous Primordial DNA

Study hints at spontaneous appearance of primordial DNA

The self-organization properties of DNA-like molecular fragments four billion years ago may have guided their own growth into repeating chemical chains long enough to act as a basis for primitive […]

Desert Fairy Circles

Mysterious desert fairy circles share pattern with skin cells

Patterns appearing on both the very large and very small scale are extremely rare, but researchers at Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) in Japan have found […]

Sinkholes Along The Dead Sea

Puzzling Sinkholes Are Opening Up Along the Dead Sea

The Dead Sea is drying up, and gaping sinkholes are appearing in its wake at an alarming rate.

Endangered U.S. Rivers

10 Most Endangered U.S. Rivers of 2015

Each year American Rivers names 10 of the most threatened waterways in the United States. This year the river flowing through one of America's most iconic landmarks tops the list.

Looking Under Antarctica

New robotic vehicle provides a never-before-seen look under Antarctica

A first-of-its-kind robotic vehicle recently dove to depths never before visited under Antarctica’s Ross Ice Shelf and brought back video of life on the seafloor. A team of scientists and […]

Earth Shots

Earth Shots: Must-See Planet Pics

A super typhoon inspires awe from the space station, Texas dust storms pick up superbugs and we get an overview of shockingly low snow pack in California.

The Sun's Seasons

Sun experiences seasonal changes

The Sun undergoes a type of seasonal variability, with its activity waxing and waning over the course of nearly two years, according to a new study by a team of […]

Welcome to Florida, where bobcats snatch sharks out of the ocean

This will probably improve tourism.

Welp.

The shark was reportedly approximately four feet long, for extra NOPE. Next week in Florida: I dunno, probably a mosquito flying away with a baby or something.

Living Honey Bees

Scientists explain why we need honey bees to live

Spring Peeper Watch

Spring Peeper Watch: Photos

The hard to see but easily heard small frogs called Spring Peepers start breeding from March to June

Reptile News

Endangered Tortoises Feasting on Invasive Plants

More than half of the plants eaten by the giant tortoises on one of the Galapagos Islands are non-native.

Biologists Seek Purpose of 'Pinocchio' Lizard's Nose

New information has been uncovered about the role that the lizard's long nose plays.

A Spider's Changing Colors

A species of crab spider is able to slowly change its color to match its background when hunting, a rare ability in the animal kingdom, says a Ball State University professor. Gary Dodson, a Ball State biology professor, and Alissa Anderson, who graduated with a master's degree in 2012 from Ball State, were the first to measure the rate of color change in the whitebanded crab spider, an arachnid with the scientific name of Misumenoides formosipes. Anderson is now pursuing her doctorate at the University of Nebraska. Their study was recently published in the journal Ecological Entomology.
As part of the research project, Anderson took digital photos of the crab spider while the white specimens sat on yellow flowers at Ball State's Cooper Farm, an off-campus area with a rich diversity of biological habitats for environmental education and field research.
"This species of spider crab is one of the few that can reversibly change their body color in a manner that to the human eye results in a match to the flowers on which they ambush prey," Dodson said. "We knew that females, but not males, can switch between white and yellow depending on the background. But we did not how quickly that happened."
Researchers used Adobe Photoshop software to collect data on the spiders' ability to change colors, measuring the time it takes for the animal to shift from white to various shades of yellow.
However, they discovered that it was more difficult for yellow crab spiders to match their white background as opposed to their white counterparts. A possible answer is that morphing from white to yellow is less physiologically damaging than the reverse.
Dodson also pointed out that this species of crab spider exhibits one of the most extreme examples of sexual size dimorphism across all animals. Females, which are the size of a "fat kernel of corn," are 20 times larger in mass than males. The small males become adults prior to females and then go searching for mates through a physically complex habitat.
"Acrobatic skills are critical as they must do a lot of climbing and bridging—scrambling across silk lines sent across gaps between plants," Dodson said. "They can't see the females, yet they find them at a rate that random searching could not explain. We documented that the males will optimize their searches by moving toward the odor of a flower species on which sedentary females hunt for prey."
He also found that male crab spiders outnumber females and multiple suitors will gather around females close to becoming adults. The males often get in fights that result in the loss of limbs and sometimes death.
"We determined that first to arrive, body size and previous contest experience are predictors of who will win the fights and remain close to the female," Dodson said. "We also were able to document another surprising behavior for these spiders—that the males drink nectar. This has since been determined for several other species. Overall, it has been a fascinating animal to study."