Category Archives: Evolution

July 25, 2017 by Alistair Keely Different coloured proteins allow scientists to carry out 'bacterial time travelling'. Credit: University of York

Scientists have discovered bacteria are able to "fine-tune" their resistance to antibiotics raising the possibility of some superbugs being resistant to drugs which they have never even been in contact with.

Bacteria can become resistant to antibiotics in several ways. One really fast and effective way is by gaining extra DNA, called a plasmid, from other bacteria.

The plasmid provides bacteria with the genes needed to become resistant to specific antibiotics.

E.coli

Scientists know that in hospitals bacteria can spread resistance through these plasmids, but don't know much about how the plasmids and the bacteria form a relationship with each other.

Using a technique called experimental evolution, the scientists from the Universities of York and Sheffield, controlled the environment the E. coli were exposed to and allowed them to grow and evolve.

The bacteria were grown for 80 days (about 530 generations) exposing them continuously to an antibiotic.

During the 80 days the bacteria were exposed to the antibiotic, first they gained additional resistance mutations themselves, but this meant that the resistance provided by the plasmid was now somewhat redundant and could therefore be tuned down.

This produced a plasmid and host that were now dependent upon each other when exposed to this antibiotic.

First author Michael Bottery, from the University of York's Department of Biology, said: "Gaining resistance plasmids is just the start of the bacteria's journey to become resistant; the marriage between plasmid and bacteria is a complex one, involving both compromise and changes in behaviour.

"It is a relationship we need to unpick further in order to best preserve the use of the antibiotics we have for use in both critical and routine medical procedures.

"The experiment has shown that if you stop giving antibiotics, resistance won't go away. If you keep using the same antibiotics the bacteria will just get better and better by fine-tuning their resistance.

"And we have also shown if you give the same antibiotic over and over again it could also become resistant to completely different antibiotics which they have never seen before."

Co-dependent

Dr Jamie Wood, Senior Lecturer in Biological Modelling at York added: "The hosts have taken advantage of the plasmid resistance to evolve their own resistance and become co-dependent on each other.

"What we are really showing here is the relationship between the bacteria and these plasmids is a really complicated situation and we might be able to find better ways of managing it.

"Antibiotic resistance is a huge global threat - the UN has put it as equal threat as climate change.

"We need to gain this kind of basic scientific understanding of how bacteria become resistant, but also how they maintain resistance and how resistance changes over time."

Explore further: Antibiotic resistanceit's a social thing

More information: Michael J. Bottery et al. Adaptive modulation of antibiotic resistance through intragenomic coevolution, Nature Ecology & Evolution (2017). DOI: 10.1038/s41559-017-0242-3

Trace concentrations of antibiotic, such as those found in sewage outfalls, are enough to enable bacteria to keep antibiotic resistance, new research from the University of York has found. The concentrations are much lower ...

A new study led by scientists at the University of Oxford has found that small DNA molecules known as plasmids are one of the key culprits in spreading the major global health threat of antibiotic resistance.

In recent years, scientists, clinicians and pharmaceutical companies have struggled to find new antibiotics or alternative strategies against multi-drug resistant bacteria that represent a serious public health problem. In ...

New research suggests it is possible to quickly and accurately diagnose some the most dangerous and drug-resistant types of bacterial infections, using equipment already owned by most hospitals.

Plasmids are pieces of independent DNA that often carry multiple antibiotic resistance genes. Plasmids can jump from one bacterium to another, spreading that resistance. A team of French investigators now shows that bacteria ...

An international group of researchers, including Professor Michael Gillings from Macquarie University, have reported that pollution with antibiotics and resistance genes is causing potentially dangerous changes to local bacteria ...

Researchers from Monash University's Biomedicine Discovery Institute have helped solve the mystery of how emus became flightless, identifying a gene involved in the development and evolution of bird wings.

Researchers at the University of California San Diego have found that microbial species living on cheese have transferred thousands of genes between each other. They also identified regional hotspots where such exchanges ...

Our bodies are composed of trillions of cells, each with its own job. Cells in our stomach help digest our food, while cells in our eyes detect light, and our immune cells kill off bugs. To be able to perform these specific ...

Scientists have discovered bacteria are able to "fine-tune" their resistance to antibiotics raising the possibility of some superbugs being resistant to drugs which they have never even been in contact with.

Humpback whales learn songs in segments like the verses of a human song and can remix them, a new study involving University of Queensland research has found.

A team of scientists from the Kunming Institute of Botany in China and the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena has discovered that parasitic plants of the genus Cuscuta (dodder) not only deplete nutrients from ...

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Antibiotic resistance driven by intragenomic co-evolution - Phys.Org

Washington Times

Wisconsin company to offer staff microchip implants: 'The next evolution in payment systems' Washington Times Wisconsin-based Three Square Market will soon offer its employees the option of having microchips implanted under their skin. The technology will work in tandem with computers, allow employees to pay for food, and open doors. (KSTP-TV ABC-5 Wisconsin ... and more »

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Wisconsin company to offer staff microchip implants: 'The next evolution in payment systems' - Washington Times

ByYin Wilczek, Bloomberg BNA

Hui Chen recently left the Justice Department after almost two years as the departments first-ever compliance counsel. While at the Criminal Divisions Fraud Section, she helped prosecutors evaluate corporate compliance programs in areas such as securities and financial fraud, health-care fraud, and foreign bribery. Her cases at the DOJ included BP PLCs Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Volkswagen AGs emissions scandal, and Odebrecht SAs Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations. Those prosecutions garnered some of the largest corporate fines ever levied by the DOJ. Chen, now a private compliance consultant, speaks to Bloomberg BNA about her former role, and what lies ahead for the Fraud Section.

Hui Chen.

Bloomberg BNA: When you left, what was the state of corporate compliance programs?

Hui Chen:For me to render an assessment on that, essentially youre asking a probation office who handles drunk driver cases how many people drive drunk. If youre not a company thats being investigated, I wont see you in that role. I saw presumably some of the worst, so thats not a representative view.

What I would say is that there is great variation in corporate compliance that goes from companies in large part doing a pretty good job but occasionally slipping, to companies that completely dont get it. There are companies that should be seeing the risk but arent doing anything about it, which I think would be a little bit surprising to some, and I think thats particularly true for companies that operate mainly outside the U.S.

I also think that many companies that are relatively small arent attuned to the risks they face when they expand. So lets say they found a niche market in the U.S. They then jump into opportunities for their niche business in other markets without giving enough thought to what that might mean in terms of business and people risks.

I also see companies that are obsessively focused on their particular regulated risks but are not attentive to fundamental risks.

BBNA: What sorts of fundamental risk?

Chen:Take financial services. There are companies that say, Were going to dot all the `is and cross all the ts, but they dont think that lying to customers is a problem. I think that problem is more widespread than Wells Fargo. So the fundamentals are lying, cheating and stealing, things your mother would have taught you when you were five.

BBNA: In a sense, your role at the DOJ was a sop to business because you once worked in-house and can represent the corporate view. Do you think you were effective in that role?

Chen:I dont see myself as representing the business view. I see myself as representing the business reality. So I think I was quite effective in working with the prosecutors to bring that reality to the discussion. Again, I cannot say better things about the prosecutorstheyre smart people with common sense. What most of them dont have is that experience of working in-house. And Im able to bring that reality to the table, and they very much get it and they appreciate it.

One of the results of that, for example, is that companies used to bring in binders full of their policies. Pretty early on at DOJ, I started asking the prosecutors to tell companies not to bring their policies to compliance presentations. I said to them, I really dont care what the policy says because I challenge them to show me a single employee who sat there and read them. I can tell you right now that nobody in the company reads the policies except for the people who drafted them. Im more interested in how the policies actually operate.

And the reaction from the prosecutors was, this was what we always thought but we just didnt feel like we had the credibility to say it because we havent been in the companies. Now, I think they routinely tell companies not to bring their policies in.

BBNA: So youve left a legacy?

Chen:I think so. TheEvaluation of Corporate Compliance Programsdocument I authored really reflected a lot of that view. The work that Ive been doing with monitors, and really, the most important thing is, the monitors got it, the prosecutors got it. We want to see evidence, we want to see data, of effectiveness.

BBNA: Under the new administration, how do you think the DOJ will operate? Were you already seeing changes when you were there?

Chen:Thats not an easy question to answer, only because I think people dont really appreciate how a large agency

works. Changes can come in very subtle ways; changes can happen very slowly. I know there are people out there who count the number of resolutions and say, oh my gosh, this is the first year under the Trump administration and the numbers either went up or went down, whatever it is.

White-collar cases take a long time. The cases that are being resolved now are cases that started years ago. You want to see the Trump administrations impact, you should look four years from now, not now. What I would watch is how theyre allocating resources. When Trump came in, he put a freeze on hiring but various agencies and their components got exemptions. I was a former Justice Department prosecutor when the administration transitioned from Bush I to Clinton. My impression is that the Criminal Division traditionally got an exemption, and its usually not impacted by political transitions.

Now, the Fraud Section, to my knowledge, hasnt got an exemption for hiring. And a number of people have departed. Ive been going to one departure party after another, including my own. So how are they replacing these people, and what happens when you go from, lets say, 40 prosecutors to 10?

BBNA: After your experience at the DOJ, what tips can you offer compliance officers who are interacting with the department?

Chen:Use common sense.

Make sure your program produces actual results that are measured thoughtfully.

Do assume the prosecutors are smart people with common sense who can see through charades. Prosecutors can detect the difference between a program thats designed to satisfy them versus a program thats designed to work.

BBNA: How do you think the Fraud Section will evaluate corporate compliance under the Trump administration?

Chen:I dont not see the Fraud Section changing one bit. All the current leadership are people who have been there for the past several years and so long as they stay in placeand as far as I know, none of them is planning to go anywherethe current acting chief and the acting deputy chief, and all the unit chiefs, theyre dedicated, committed, smart people, and I dont see their approach changing one bit.

Now, going forward, would they have to engage in more battles with their upper management? Thats to be seen. Again, once you get above the Fraud Section, youre dealing with political appointees, and who they are and what their priorities are will change things.

We all understand, anybodys whos worked in large organizations, if you have upper management that is generally supportive of what you do, then it makes your job so much easier. You know somebodys got your back and you go do what you believe is the right thing to do. If you have an upper management that is constantly challenging you, then youre going to have to pick your battles because you cant battle with them 100 percent of the time.

That does impact how effective you are and how far you can go. Right now, they still dont have a Criminal Division chief, and the acting chief is a career narcotics prosecutor, I believe. I do not know if hes ever handled a white-collar case. That will impact things; its a different set of assumptions that you have to carry into your meetings.

To contact the reporter on this story: Yin Wilczek in Washington atywilczek@bna.com

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Seth Stern atsstern@bna.com

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Former DOJ Official on Evolution of Corporate Compliance | Big Law ... - Bloomberg Big Law Business

The result is disappointing, although not surprising.

Turkey has recently announced a new school curriculum that would ban Darwins theory of evolution in primary and secondary education. The decision of the Turkish government has led to protests from proponents of secularism whose foundations have been undermined since 2002 when Recep Tayyip Erdogan came to power, reports Jutarnji List on 23 July 2017.

The events in Turkey have brought the issue into focus in other countries as well. The Pew Research Centre has recently published a study Religious beliefs and national affiliation in Central and Eastern Europe in which it examined attitudes towards evolution in 18 European, mostly former communist, countries. The research in Croatia was conducted by the Ipsos agency from June 2015 to July 2016, on a sample of 1,616 respondents.

The survey showed that the theory of evolution is accepted by 57 percent of the population, which is four percent less than in Serbia, where a scandalous initiative to expel Darwin from the curriculum was launched two months ago.

I think that we in Croatia do not need to fear such efforts for now. Nevertheless, we need to actively promote the learning and teaching of evolution in schools, as it is one of the fundamental pillars of scientific thinking and the foundation of developed societies, based on numerous evidence, said Boris Joki from the Institute for Social Research and the former leader of the expert working group for the implementation of curricular reform.

I would find it extremely harmful and dangerous if the teaching of evolution in Croatian schools were to come into question. Although currently there is no organised and publicly articulated initiative to expel evolution from Croatian schools, during the work of curricular reform expert group there was pressure from certain circles to do precisely that. Some of those who have actively hampered the efforts of more than 500 teachers and university professors personally spoke to me about it. But, as in many other situations, they are not brave enough to say it in public, explained Joki.

A few years ago, he published the book Science and Religion in Croatian Elementary Education: Pupils' Attitudes and Perspectives, which is the first study of the positions of students towards natural sciences and religion. The survey included 500 students of elementary schools in Zagreb who attended Catholic catechism classes.

My scientific paper showed that most students at the end of their primary education belong to the so-called theistic-evolutionist position, in which evolutionist explanation is accepted. They just attribute the initiation of the process to the influence of the supernatural. A smaller number of students take up the entirely evolutionist position, while an even smaller percentage of them completely reject evolution and assume the creationist position, said Joki, whose team has prepared a curriculum of which the teaching of evolution was an essential element.

Working groups that have developed the curricula have devoted particular attention to issues of diversity of the living world. These topics should be taught from the first grade of elementary school, while a more specific discussion of the evolution would begin in the fifth grade of elementary school and should be elaborated through several grades of elementary and high school, as well as through different subjects. That was supposed to bring Croatia closer to developed Western societies, concluded Joki.

Translated from Jutarnji List.

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In Croatia, Just 57% of People Believe in Theory of Evolution - Total Croatia News

If opera is going to grow as an art form in the 21st century, its going to need more than directors imposing quirky concepts onto familiar repertoire or composers retracing well-worn tracks of post-Romanticism. Its going to need the kind of musical and dramatic persuasiveness that enthralled the Santa Fe Operas audience on Saturday night at the world premiere of The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, a bracing opera by composer Mason Bates and librettist Mark Campbell.

This is an American tale told with American bravado. Steve Jobs was both adored and vilified as a person and as a corporate genius, but as the visionary behind the Apple computer empire he was ultimately responsible for the iGadgets (phone, pad, pod, ) that have become defining artifacts of modern life. The operas scenario extracts seminal chapters from his life story, casting him as both hero and villain, a man at war with himself. He develops his passion for engineering as a child, achieves technological breakthroughs in his familys garage and gleans ideas from his educational experiences. He has a relationship (and a daughter) with a woman he treats terribly, and he searches for inner peace through Zen Buddhism. He establishes and oversees his mega-successful corporation, he marries a supportive woman who helps tame some of his demons, he gets sick, he dies. Librettist Campbell shuffles these episodes and arrives at a nonlinear narrative that, on the face of it, seems somewhat random; and yet it unrolls with a strong sense of theatrical momentum and is not at all confusing.

Simple, clear-cut, uncluttered and clean sings Jobs at one point, clarifying his design goals to an engineer. Director Kevin Newbury seems to have taken that as his own watchword, masterminding a production in which one scene flows to the next seamlessly, each employing visual details that support the thrust of the action rather than distract from it. Sets, lighting and projections (devised respectively by Victoria Vita Tzykun, Japhy Weideman and 59 Productions) work as a piece. Horizontal bars of multicolored fluorescence contain the space from above, sometimes echoed by thin pillars of light ranged near the sides of the stage. Brightly lit wall-height blocks skim fluidly across the stage as if in balletic choreography. Furnishings are limited to what is essential to the story: workbenches, office desks and chairs, nothing extraneous. The production capitalizes on the projection capacities made available through the theaters recent overhaul. The imagery of Jobs life is projected, often in energetic juxtaposition (circuit boards, press clippings, Zen calligraphy), and a scene where he does LSD with his girlfriend in an apple (!) orchard gets woozy indeed. This is in no way a costume drama, although Paul Careys realistic wardrobe designs help clarify the intermixed chronology and they even make clothing styles of the 1970s and 80s seem relatively unobjectionable, which is quite an achievement. Groups of employees or board members are moved about as precisely as the elements of the set.

Just before an early expanse in which we first see Jobs with his Zen master, Campbells libretto proposes a stage direction: If the back wall of the Santa Fe Opera House can open up for the next scene, that would be lovely. It could and it was, with the last sliver of the sun gleaming on the horizon of the Jemez Mountains. Quite a sun, sings Jobs mentor. Always loveliest when its leaving. And yet, having tapped the houses ace in the hole, Newbury does not overplay the hand. The point is made, the audience inhales the exquisite moment, and the stage soon reconfigures so the plot can move on.

Bates music tends to be powerfully optimistic, trading to some degree in sustained transcendence. The scores vivaciousness comes more from high-energy rhythms, often repeated in a post-minimalist way (John Adams may come to mind), and from a vivid sonic palette. A good deal of advance chatter focused on Bates use of electronic sounds, which he presided over from his computer setup in the orchestra pit. But its not like olden days when superimposing electronic sounds over an orchestra had an oil-and-water quality. Bates has spoken of how he considers modern electronica to be a further family of symphonic music-making strings, woodwinds, brass, percussion, electronica and this score exemplifies his contention, with the electronic sounds weaving in out of the integrated texture with a sense of inevitability. These are hardly unfamiliar sounds, to be sure. We hear them all the time in movie soundtracks, but Bates shows real expertise in using them to enlarge orchestral texture.

He had some challenges to meet. He has been almost exclusively an instrumental composer, building up a solid output of symphonic and chamber works but a vocal catalog that is limited to six choral pieces and two song cycles. An opera obviously requires skill in vocal writing, and Bates showed that he has the requisite chops to write effectively for lyric theatre. Indeed, this is not much of a stop-and-sing numbers opera. Although it includes some certifiable arias and ensembles, these seem crafted more to support the dramatic narrative than as opportunities for vocal display which is not meant as criticism. One also wondered how effectively Bates would navigate the sheer scale of operatic structure, since none of his concert pieces has extended beyond a half-hour and most run 15 minutes or less. But the question of whether he could maintain musical interest through a 95-minute operatic score (without intermission) seemed to some extent moot. The piece consists of a prologue and epilogue with 18 discrete episodes in between, so that averages out to four and three-quarter minutes per scene. Some are longer and some shorter, but with his succession of modestly scaled segments, Bates landed on an effective plan that was entirely achievable for a composer writing his first opera one that moreover helps define the works kinetic verve.

Michael Christie conducted with precision and pizzazz, and a couple of orchestral interludes truly got the adrenaline pumping. One of them, at about the operas one-hour mark, accompanies projected images charting the meteoric rise of the company and its growing complication as a corporate organism. I wouldnt be surprised if it were extracted to stand as a frenetic orchestral showpiece in its own right.

The cast was uniformly commendable for their acting as well as their singing. In the title role, baritone Edward Parks is on stage practically the whole time. He appears in roles like Figaro in The Barber of Seville and Valentin in Faust, so he is obviously able to sing in an expansive operatic baritone style. But he didnt really do that here. He presented the part more intimately, as a lieder-singer might, with naturalness of style and exemplary diction. Subtle amplification underscored his performance, and indeed those of all the singers a logical use of electronic technology in a score such as this.

Mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke was a pleasure to hear as Jobs wife, Laurene. Her rich, warmly covered tone was put to finest use in her climactic aria Humans are messy, awkward and cluttered, an anthem to empathy, one that may become embraced as a standalone piece. A similarly touching performance came from Wei Wu, as Jobs Buddhist mentor Kbun Chino Otogawa. This beautifully written role encompasses both wisdom and wry humor, and Wei Wus bass not particularly large but of velvety texture infused it with a feeling of profound comfort, a welcome anchor in the emotional turbulence that sometimes surrounded it. Garrett Sorenson conveyed substantial character development as Jobs fellow inventor and business partner Steve Wozniak; he began as a comical dork and ended up as a serious corporate grown-up, his bright tenor letting loose fully in the tenseness, and then fury, of his aria Goliath, in which he resigns from the company he has built with Jobs. Smaller roles were admirably conveyed by baritone Kelly Markgraf (as Jobs father), mezzo-soprano Mariya Kaganskaya (as a calligraphy teacher), soprano Jessica E. Jones (as Chrisann Brennan, Jobs girlfriend), and Asher Corbin (a nonsinging part upheld admirably by a young actor portraying the 10-year-old Jobs).

Bates and Campbell are not the only people charting a path for operas future, but one is more likely to find seriously creative new work in warehouses and experimental theatres than on a major opera stage. Santa Fe Opera and its general director, Charles MacKay, deserve congratulations for making such a piece available at this level. The day of the premiere, the company added an additional performance (on Aug. 22) to the six it had originally scheduled. That should help accommodate audience demand as word circulates about this charismatic piece. It will surely appeal to millennials, thanks to its dynamism in harnessing the technology of today to tell the story of technologys yesterday. But more traditional opera-lovers are bound to embrace it, too. Like all the finest operas, it is animated by a stimulating plot, it is brimful with compelling music, and not less important it has an ample heart.

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'The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs': Zen and the art of opera - Santa Fe New Mexican

If you had to select one symbol of cybersecurity industry, youd be hard pressed to find a better choice than the pair of conferences, Black Hat Briefings (Black Hat) and DEF CON. The duo is known affectionately as Hacker Summer Camp by many conference goers. Much has changed since the first Black Hat in 1997 and DEF CON in 1993. Not only have the crowds swelled, but so has the very nature of digital technology.

Over the decades the conferences have expanded in both audience and content covered. Black Hat, for example, has shifted from its focus on enterprise security red teaming to include more defensive security work, security team management in addition to its staple of systems exploitation. The conference even added a CISO Summit to its schedule, which extended the length of the show by a day. With this years event starting today in Las Vegas, lets look at how the pair of conferences have changed over the years.

Chris Wysopal, the seventh member of the hacker collective L0pht and the current CTO of software security firm Veracode attended many the early DEF CON and Black Hat conferences. Over time, as the number of events during the week expanded and the week grew longer, something had to give, and he took a not-so brief hiatus from DEF CON. After Black Hat had added the CISO Summit, it became a four-day long event, and I decided to skip DEF CON, recalls Wysopal. It just grew to become too long of a grind.

[ Related: 4 places to find cybersecurity talent in your own organization ]

When DEF CON 20 rolled around, Wysopal grew curious about how the show changed. It was DEF CONs 20th anniversary, and I figured itd be worth it to stay and check out, he recalls. I was just blown away. It had tripled in size. It didn't feel like a conference anymore. It felt like a festival, he says. Not only were there more activities, such as the lock-picking village, but the existing activities grew. The Capture the Flag contest used to be five or six tables of people hacking, it grew to about 50 tables. Everything had just grown and grown, he says.

Things had certainly changed and grown since the first Black Hat, as well. Presentations at the inaugural Black Hat included talks on local network security assessments, firewall management and attack techniques over the Internet. Renowned security researcher Mudge keynoted on secure coding practices and source code analysis, while Adam Shostack spoke on code reviews and deriving value from the effort. Sluggo focused on defending against denial-of-service attacks.

Richard Thieme, an author and professional speaker who has spoken at all but two DEF CONs from DEF CON 4 though DEF CON 25 and numerous Black Hat conferences recalls the Thursday keynote he gave at the very first Black Hat. It was a bunch of guys and some gals who have been instrumental from the very beginning working to figure out how do we do this security thing, says Thieme.

[Related: 3 tips to get the most out of Black Hat/Defcon]

In a way, these conferences are a moving image showing the maturation of the security community, says Thieme. In the first days, they got to see for themselves, firsthand, as having something valuable to offer to important people: how to protect assets, he says. In the beginning, they were finding their way.

DEF CON certainly found its way. At the first DEF CON, held at the Sands Hotel & Casino, there were about 100 attendees. In 2016, about 22,000 attended DEF CON, and 15,000 attended Black Hat.

Black Hat certainly had its share of historical moments over those years. Most of those moments revolved around the release of high-impact security vulnerabilities released from edgy security research. Such incidents included David Litchfields making known a proof-of-concept attack against SQL Server that shortly after that resulted in the infamous 2003 SQL Slammer worm.

Security researcher Michael Lynn felt it necessary to quit his job at Internet Security Systems (the vendor was put under pressure from Cisco to squelch the talk) to release information regarding flaws he uncovered in the operating system that powers Cisco routers. Today, such research is likely to be released ahead of the actual conference rather than during the show, such as when researchers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek unveiled their remote Jeep hacks in 2015.

For most conference goers, big historic events aside, when you ask them about their early conference memories and the value they get from either show, theyll usually mention networking and the chance to meet security professionals that might be otherwise out of reach.

Stefano Zanero, information security consultant and researcher, and Black Hat review board member, recalls the impression from his first Black Hat (2004) where he also presented. I was a young Ph.D. student presenting for the first time to such a large international audience. Obviously, it made quite a big impression on me, says Zanero. Black Hat was extremely engaging. The conference was smaller then and being a speaker made sure that you had occasions to meet the whole "who's who" of security. That character probably gets lost somehow in its growth, Zanero says.

That growth hasnt stopped Zaneros ability to make valuable contacts over the years, he says. I think networking and in-person meetings are the actual value

of conferences in this growing but still very small world of cybersecurity. The network of professional contacts I made over the years at Black Hat is an invaluable asset in my work, he says.

When I first attended Black Hat, it seemed to be a unique amalgam of hacker culture and business focus, united around information security something that was both novel and necessary for security to garner the attention and budget it would need to become a priority for all but the tech elite, says Taylor Banks, long-time security researcher and principal Hacktologist at ACE Hackware.

Banks, says that some in the DEF CON and broad hacker community viewed the Black Hat conference as selling out. For me, I found it [Black Hat] to be a good mix, and was pleasantly surprised to find an information security conference that could justify a high price tag and simultaneously provide a good environment for networking and recruiting, while still proving to be a good value to attendees and their employers, he says.

Admittedly, I think to compare Black Hat to DEF CON was a bit unfair. I would argue that while much of the same information was often presented at both events (and often by the same people), it made DEF CON a significantly better value. But for many organizations, the stigma of sending employees to a hacker con made it much more difficult to justify even a small expense to less tech-savvy stakeholders and board members. I also think that, because of the environment, those new to the field found DEF CON quite intimidating, while Black Hat seemed a much easier event to break into, says Banks.

How has Black Hat changed over the years? The obvious answer is that it dramatically grew. The less obvious answer is that growth brought in a wider spectrum of people, so networking activities and occasions dramatically changed, says Zanero, who says he does miss the more tight-knit community of years ago. The current exhibit hall is overwhelming, Zanero says. What has not changed, in my opinion, is the quality and level of the talks, while they somehow [also] broadened to a wider range of topics, he adds.

[Related: The best of Black Hat: The consequential, the controversial, the canceled]

When speaking with many who have attended the conference over the years, the verdict on whether the quality of the talks has remained high is mixed. The past that disappeared was Black Hat as a cutting-edge hacking convention, says Thieme.

What it's become, especially since it was sold, is a mini RSA. It's vendor-driven, and the focus is determined somewhat by the technical expertise, but also clearly voiced needs of the marketplace, which are not necessarily always highly technical, says Thieme. In the old days, there were probably more hitters who swung for the fences. Today, there are more journeymen ball players who self-censor about things that are likely to get them or the enterprise into real hot water, Thieme says. It's become mainstream.

Another big change that paralleled the growth of the audience has been the growth of the expo floor. The expo floor was much smaller, and it was always companies that were focused almost exclusively on the things Black Hat was doing. The expo floor was full of companies who were pen testing or were hardcore security companies, and it wasn't just companies that happen also to have a security product or service that came to the show, says Wysopal.

That begs the question, considering all of the growth and broadening of focus: Is there still value to be found? The answer is near unanimously a yes. One just has to work harder for it and hunt down what they want from the show. If you're targeted and know how to hunt value, then the place is an absolute jungle teeming with animals, says Thieme.

Wysopal agrees. There are many different types of audiences going to these shows. There are people who want to attend the talks, and theyre learning something by doing that. There are others that are going to network. Maybe they are looking for a job, or theyre simply catching up with people they only see at the conference every year. Then you have those who are actually looking for products and solutions there. You have all of this going on at once, and not everyone is doing everything. You get a successful conference when you can satisfy a lot of different audiences, says Wysopal. And by that measure, both Black Hat and DEF CON certainly continue to succeed.

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Black Hat and DEF CON: The evolution of Hacker Summer Camp - CSO Online

TEMECULA Nearly two-thirds of students will reject their faith by the time theyve finished college, the result of a constant bombardment of secular lessons. A new nonprofit project, Debunking Evolution, aims to combat that influence by teaching students the scientific case against evolution.

The projects creatorssaidthey are committed to providing Christian families with Biblically and scientifically based answers to the evolutionary theory that many children are taught during sixth, seventh and 10th grades in public schools in California.

The program was designed by experienced professionals and reviewed by scientists at the three leading creation ministries in the United States: Answers in Genesis, the Institute for Creation Research and Creation Ministries International.

One of Debunking Evolutions co-creators, Pat Roy, is slated to share what tenets of evolution are taught in textbooks and the arguments against them as the keynote speaker at the Murrieta Temecula Republican AssemblysAug. 11meeting, which runs from6 p.m. to 8:15 p.m.at the Temecula City Hall Conference Room, 41000 Main Street.

Nearly a decade and a half ago, Roy and his wife, Sandy homeschool parents created the Jonathan Park Creation Adventure Series, an audio drama that has been heard on more than 700 radio stations worldwide and has reached millions with the message of the Creator.

Roy also worked at the Institute for Creation Research for over 12 years, as he and his team took some of the most complex scientific proofs for creation and translated them into everyday language and concepts.

The event is open to the public. The cost is $15 for members, $20 for non-members, $10 for students under 25 and Gold Eagle members and free for active duty military. To RSVP, leave a message at(951) 304-2757, email MurrietaOnlineNews@outlook.com or visitwww.MTRA.club.

Originally posted here:

Murrieta Temecula Republican Assembly hosts Debunking Evolution lecture - Valley News

Human evolution, also known as hominization, is the evolutionary process that led to the emergence of anatomically modern humans, beginning with the evolutionary history of primates in particular genus Homo and leading to the emergence of Homo sapiens as a distinct species of the hominid family, the great apes. This process involves the gradually loss of typical animal characteristics and the development of exclusively human properties.[1]

The study of human evolution involves many scientific disciplines, including physical anthropology, primatology, archaeology, paleontology, neurobiology, ethology, linguistics, evolutionary psychology, embryology and genetics.[2] Genetic studies show that primates diverged from other mammals about 85 million years ago, in the Late Cretaceous period, and the earliest fossils appear in the Paleocene, around 55 million years ago.[3]

Within the Hominoidea (apes) superfamily, the Hominidae family diverged from the Hylobatidae (gibbon) family some 1520 million years ago; African great apes (subfamily Homininae) diverged from orangutans (Ponginae) about 14 million years ago; the Hominini tribe (humans, Australopithecines and other extinct biped genera, and chimpanzee) parted from the Gorillini tribe (gorillas) between 9 million years ago and 8 million years ago; and, in turn, the subtribes Hominina (humans and biped ancestors) and Panina (chimps) separated about 7.5 million years ago to 5.6 million years ago.[4]

Human evolution from its first separation from the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees is characterized by a number of morphological, developmental, physiological, and behavioral changes. The most significant of these adaptations are bipedalism, increased brain size, lengthened ontogeny (gestation and infancy), and decreased sexual dimorphism. The relationship between these changes is the subject of ongoing debate.[5][pageneeded] Other significant morphological changes included the evolution of a power and precision grip, a change first occurring in H. erectus.[6]

Bipedalism is the basic adaptation of the hominid and is considered the main cause behind a suite of skeletal changes shared by all bipedal hominids. The earliest hominin, of presumably primitive bipedalism, is considered to be either Sahelanthropus[7] or Orrorin, both of which arose some 6 to 7 million years ago. The non-bipedal knuckle-walkers, the gorilla and chimpanzee, diverged from the hominin line over a period covering the same time, so either of Sahelanthropus or Orrorin may be our last shared ancestor. Ardipithecus, a full biped, arose somewhat later.[citation needed]

The early bipeds eventually evolved into the australopithecines and still later into the genus Homo. There are several theories of the adaptation value of bipedalism. It is possible that bipedalism was favored because it freed the hands for reaching and carrying food, saved energy during locomotion,[8] enabled long distance running and hunting, provided an enhanced field of vision, and helped avoid hyperthermia by reducing the surface area exposed to direct sun; features all advantageous for thriving in the new savanna and woodland environment created as a result of the East African Rift Valley uplift versus the previous closed forest habitat.[9][8][10] A new study provides support for the hypothesis that walking on two legs, or bipedalism, evolved because it used less energy than quadrupedal knuckle-walking.[11][12] However, recent studies suggest that bipedality without the ability to use fire would not have allowed global dispersal.[13] This change in gait saw a lengthening of the legs proportionately when compared to the length of the arms, which were shortened through the removal of the need for brachiation. Another change is the shape of the big toe. Recent studies suggest that Australopithecines still lived part of the time in trees as a result of maintaining a grasping big toe. This was progressively lost in Habilines.

Anatomically, the evolution of bipedalism has been accompanied by a large number of skeletal changes, not just to the legs and pelvis, but also to the vertebral column, feet and ankles, and skull.[14] The femur evolved into a slightly more angular position to move the center of gravity toward the geometric center of the body. The knee and ankle joints became increasingly robust to better support increased weight. To support the increased weight on each vertebra in the upright position, the human vertebral column became S-shaped and the lumbar vertebrae became shorter and wider. In the feet the big toe moved into alignment with the other toes to help in forward locomotion. The arms and forearms shortened relative to the legs making it easier to run. The foramen magnum migrated under the skull and more anterior.[15]

The most significant changes occurred in the pelvic region, where the long downward facing iliac blade was shortened and widened as a requirement for keeping the center of gravity stable while walking;[16] bipedal hominids have a shorter but broader, bowl-like pelvis due to this. A drawback is that the birth canal of bipedal apes is smaller than in knuckle-walking apes, though there has been a widening of it in comparison to that of australopithecine and modern humans, permitting the passage of newborns due to the increase in cranial size but this is limited to the upper portion, since further increase can hinder normal bipedal movement.[17]

The shortening of the pelvis and smaller birth canal evolved as a requirement for bipedalism and had significant effects on the process of human birth which is much more difficult in modern humans than in other primates. During human birth, because of the variation in size of the pelvic region, the fetal head must be in a transverse position (compared to the mother) during entry into the birth canal and rotate about 90 degrees upon exit.[18] The smaller birth canal became a limiting factor to brain size increases in early humans and prompted a shorter gestation period leading to the relative immaturity of human offspring, who are unable to walk much before 12 months and have greater neoteny, compared to other primates, who are mobile at a much earlier age.[10] The increased brain growth after birth and the increased dependency of children on mothers had a big effect upon the female reproductive cycle,[19] and the more frequent appearance of alloparenting in humans when compared with other hominids.[20] Delayed human sexual maturity also led to the evolution of menopause with one explanation providing that elderly women could better pass on their genes by taking care of their daughter's offspring, as compared to having more children of their own.[21]

The human species eventually developed a much larger brain than that of other primatestypically 1,330 cm3 in modern humans, nearly three times the size of that of a chimpanzee or gorilla.[22] The pattern of encephalization started with Homo habilis, after a hiatus with Anamensis and Ardipithecus species which had smaller brains as a result of their bipedal locomotion[23] which at approximately 600cm3Homo habilis had a brain slightly larger than that of chimpanzees, and this evolution continued with Homo erectus (8001,100cm3), reaching a maximum in Neanderthals with an average size of (1,2001,900cm3), larger even than modern Homo sapiens. This pattern of brain increase happened through the pattern of human postnatal brain growth which differs from that of other apes (heterochrony). It also allows for extended periods of social learning and language acquisition in juvenile humans which may have begun 2 million years ago. However, the differences between the structure of human brains and those of other apes may be even more significant than differences in size.[24][25][26][27]

The increase in volume over time has affected areas within the brain unequallythe temporal lobes, which contain centers for language processing, have increased disproportionately, and seems to favor a belief that there was evolution after leaving Africa, as has the prefrontal cortex which has been related to complex decision-making and moderating social behavior.[22] Encephalization has been tied to an increasing emphasis on meat in the diet,[28][29][30] or with the development of cooking,[31] and it has been proposed that intelligence increased as a response to an increased necessity for solving social problems as human society became more complex.[32] The human brain was able to expand because of the changes in the morphology of smaller mandibles and mandible muscle attachments to the skull into allowing more room for the brain to grow.[33]

The increase in volume of the neocortex also included a rapid increase in size of the cerebellum. Traditionally the cerebellum has been associated with a paleocerebellum and archicerebellum as well as a neocerebellum. Its function has also traditionally been associated with balance, fine motor control but more recently speech and cognition. The great apes including humans and its antecessors had a more pronounced development of the cerebellum relative to the neocortex than other primates. It has been suggested that because of its function of sensory-motor control and assisting in learning complex muscular action sequences, the cerebellum may have underpinned the evolution of human's technological adaptations including the preadaptation of speech.[34][35][36][37]

The reason for this encephalization is difficult to discern, as the major changes from Homo erectus to Homo heidelbergensis were not associated with major changes in technology. It has been suggested that the changes have been associated with social changes, increased empathic abilities[38][39] and increases in size of social groupings[40][41][42]

The reduced degree of sexual dimorphism is visible primarily in the reduction of the male canine tooth relative to other ape species (except gibbons) and reduced brow ridges and general robustness of males. Another important physiological change related to sexuality in humans was the evolution of hidden estrus. Humans and bonobos are the only apes in which the female is fertile year round and in which no special signals of fertility are produced by the body (such as genital swelling during estrus).

Nonetheless, humans retain a degree of sexual dimorphism in the distribution of body hair and subcutaneous fat, and in the overall size, males being around 15% larger than females. These changes taken together have been interpreted as a result of an increased emphasis on pair bonding as a possible solution to the requirement for increased parental investment due to the prolonged infancy of offspring.

The ulnar opposition the contact between the thumb and the tip of the little finger of the same hand is unique to anatomically modern humans.[43][44] In other primates the thumb is short and unable to touch the little finger.[43] The ulnar opposition facilitates the precision grip and power grip of the human hand, underlying all the skilled manipulations.

A number of other changes have also characterized the evolution of humans, among them an increased importance on vision rather than smell; a smaller gut; loss of body hair; evolution of sweat glands; a change in the shape of the dental arcade from being u-shaped to being parabolic; development of a chin (found in Homo sapiens alone); development of styloid processes; and the development of a descended larynx.

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The word homo, the name of the biological genus to which humans belong, is Latin for "human". It was chosen originally by Carl Linnaeus in his classification system. The word "human" is from the Latin humanus, the adjectival form of homo. The Latin "homo" derives from the Indo-European root *dhghem, or "earth".[45] Linnaeus and other scientists of his time also considered the great apes to be the closest relatives of humans based on morphological and anatomical similarities.

The possibility of linking humans with earlier apes by descent became clear only after 1859 with the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, in which he argued for the idea of the evolution of new species from earlier ones. Darwin's book did not address the question of human evolution, saying only that "Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history."[46]

The first debates about the nature of human evolution arose between Thomas Henry Huxley and Richard Owen. Huxley argued for human evolution from apes by illustrating many of the similarities and differences between humans and apes, and did so particularly in his 1863 book Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature. However, many of Darwin's early supporters (such as Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Lyell) did not initially agree that the origin of the mental capacities and the moral sensibilities of humans could be explained by natural selection, though this later changed. Darwin applied the theory of evolution and sexual selection to humans when he published The Descent of Man in 1871.[47]

A major problem at that time was the lack of fossil intermediaries. Neanderthal remains were discovered in a limestone quarry in 1856, three years before the publication of On the Origin of Species, and Neanderthal fossils had been discovered in Gibraltar even earlier, but it was originally claimed that these were human remains of a creature suffering some kind of illness.[48] Despite the 1891 discovery by Eugne Dubois of what is now called Homo erectus at Trinil, Java, it was only in the 1920s when such fossils were discovered in Africa, that intermediate species began to accumulate.[citation needed] In 1925, Raymond Dart described Australopithecus africanus.[49] The type specimen was the Taung Child, an australopithecine infant which was discovered in a cave. The child's remains were a remarkably well-preserved tiny skull and an endocast of the brain.

Although the brain was small (410cm3), its shape was rounded, unlike that of chimpanzees and gorillas, and more like a modern human brain. Also, the specimen showed short canine teeth, and the position of the foramen magnum (the hole in the skull where the spine enters) was evidence of bipedal locomotion. All of these traits convinced Dart that the Taung Child was a bipedal human ancestor, a transitional form between apes and humans.

During the 1960s and 1970s, hundreds of fossils were found in East Africa in the regions of the Olduvai Gorge and Lake Turkana. The driving force of these searches was the Leakey family, with Louis Leakey and his wife Mary Leakey, and later their son Richard and daughter-in-law Meaveall successful and world-renowned fossil hunters and paleoanthropologists. From the fossil beds of Olduvai and Lake Turkana they amassed specimens of the early hominins: the australopithecines and Homo species, and even Homo erectus.

These finds cemented Africa as the cradle of humankind. In the late 1970s and the 1980s, Ethiopia emerged as the new hot spot of paleoanthropology after "Lucy", the most complete fossil member of the species Australopithecus afarensis, was found in 1974 by Donald Johanson near Hadar in the desertic Afar Triangle region of northern Ethiopia. Although the specimen had a small brain, the pelvis and leg bones were almost identical in function to those of modern humans, showing with certainty that these hominins had walked erect.[50] Lucy was classified as a new species, Australopithecus afarensis, which is thought to be more closely related to the genus Homo as a direct ancestor, or as a close relative of an unknown ancestor, than any other known hominid or hominin from this early time range; see terms "hominid" and "hominin".[51] (The specimen was nicknamed "Lucy" after the Beatles' song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", which was played loudly and repeatedly in the camp during the excavations.[52]) The Afar Triangle area would later yield discovery of many more hominin fossils, particularly those uncovered or described by teams headed by Tim D. White in the 1990s, including Ardipithecus ramidus and Ardipithecus kadabba.[53]

In 2013, fossil skeletons of Homo naledi, an extinct species of hominin assigned (provisionally) to the genus Homo, were found in the Rising Star Cave system, a site in South Africa's Cradle of Humankind region in Gauteng province near Johannesburg.[54][55] As of September 2015[update], fossils of at least fifteen individuals, amounting to 1550 specimens, have been excavated from the cave.[55] The species is characterized by a body mass and stature similar to small-bodied human populations, a smaller endocranial volume similar to Australopithecus, and a cranial morphology (skull shape) similar to early Homo species. The skeletal anatomy combines primitive features known from australopithecines with features known from early hominins. The individuals show signs of having been deliberately disposed of within the cave near the time of death. The fossils have not yet been dated.[56]

The genetic revolution in studies of human evolution started when Vincent Sarich and Allan Wilson measured the strength of immunological cross-reactions of blood serum albumin between pairs of creatures, including humans and African apes (chimpanzees and gorillas).[57] The strength of the reaction could be expressed numerically as an immunological distance, which was in turn proportional to the number of amino acid differences between homologous proteins in different species. By constructing a calibration curve of the ID of species' pairs with known divergence times in the fossil record, the data could be used as a molecular clock to estimate the times of divergence of pairs with poorer or unknown fossil records.

In their seminal 1967 paper in Science, Sarich and Wilson estimated the divergence time of humans and apes as four to five million years ago,[57] at a time when standard interpretations of the fossil record gave this divergence as at least 10 to as much as 30 million years. Subsequent fossil discoveries, notably "Lucy", and reinterpretation of older fossil materials, notably Ramapithecus, showed the younger estimates to be correct and validated the albumin method.

Progress in DNA sequencing, specifically mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and then Y-chromosome DNA (Y-DNA) advanced the understanding of human origins.[58][9][59] Application of the molecular clock principle revolutionized the study of molecular evolution.

On the basis of a separation from the orangutan between 10 and 20 million years ago, earlier studies of the molecular clock suggested that there were about 76 mutations per generation that were not inherited by human children from their parents; this evidence supported the divergence time between hominins and chimps noted above. However, a 2012 study in Iceland of 78 children and their parents suggests a mutation rate of only 36 mutations per generation; this datum extends the separation between humans and chimps to an earlier period greater than 7 million years ago (Ma). Additional research with 226 offspring of wild chimp populations in 8 locations suggests that chimps reproduce at age 26.5 years, on average; which suggests the human divergence from chimps occurred between 7 and 13 million years ago. And these data suggest that Ardipithecus (4.5 Ma), Orrorin (6 Ma) and Sahelanthropus (7 Ma) all may be on the hominid lineage, and even that the separation may have occurred outside the East African Rift region.

Furthermore, analysis of the two species' genes in 2006 provides evidence that after human ancestors had started to diverge from chimpanzees, interspecies mating between "proto-human" and "proto-chimps" nonetheless occurred regularly enough to change certain genes in the new gene pool:

The research suggests:

In the 1990s, several teams of paleoanthropologists were working throughout Africa looking for evidence of the earliest divergence of the hominin lineage from the great apes. In 1994, Meave Leakey discovered Australopithecus anamensis. The find was overshadowed by Tim D. White's 1995 discovery of Ardipithecus ramidus, which pushed back the fossil record to 4.2 million years ago.

In 2000, Martin Pickford and Brigitte Senut discovered, in the Tugen Hills of Kenya, a 6-million-year-old bipedal hominin which they named Orrorin tugenensis. And in 2001, a team led by Michel Brunet discovered the skull of Sahelanthropus tchadensis which was dated as 7.2 million years ago, and which Brunet argued was a bipedal, and therefore a hominidthat is, a hominin (cf Hominidae; terms "hominids" and hominins).

Different models for the beginning of the present human species.

Anthropologists in the 1980s were divided regarding some details of reproductive barriers and migratory dispersals of the Homo genus. Subsequently, genetics has been used to investigate and resolve these issues. According to the Sahara pump theory evidence suggests that genus Homo have migrated out of Africa at least three and possibly four times (e.g. Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis and two or three times for Homo sapiens). Recent evidence suggests these dispersals are closely related to fluctuating periods of climate change.[63]

Recent evidence suggests that humans may have left Africa half a million years earlier than previously thought. A joint Franco-Indian team has found human artefacts in the Siwalk Hills north of New Delhi dating back at least 2.6 million years. This is earlier than the previous earliest finding of genus Homo at Dmanisi, in Georgia, dating to 1.85 million years. Although controversial, tools found at a Chinese cave strengthen the case that humans used tools as far back as 2.48 million years ago. [64] This suggests that the Asian "Chopper" tool tradition, found in Java and northern China may have left Africa before the appearance of the Acheulian hand axe.

Up until the genetic evidence became available there were two dominant models for the dispersal of modern humans. The multiregional hypothesis proposed that Homo genus contained only a single interconnected population as it does today (not separate species), and that its evolution took place worldwide continuously over the last couple million years. This model was proposed in 1988 by Milford H. Wolpoff.[65][66] In contrast the "out of Africa" model proposed that modern H. sapiens speciated in Africa recently (that is, approximately 200,000 years ago) and the subsequent migration through Eurasia resulted in nearly complete replacement of other Homo species. This model has been developed by Chris B. Stringer and Peter Andrews.[67][68]

Sequencing mtDNA and Y-DNA sampled from a wide range of indigenous populations revealed ancestral information relating to both male and female genetic heritage, and strengthened the Out of Africa theory and weakened the views of Multiregional Evolutionism.[69] Aligned in genetic tree differences were interpreted as supportive of a recent single origin.[70] Analyses have shown a greater diversity of DNA patterns throughout Africa, consistent with the idea that Africa is the ancestral home of mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam, and that modern human dispersal out of Africa has only occurred over the last 55,000 years.[71]

"Out of Africa" has thus gained much support from research using female mitochondrial DNA and the male Y chromosome. After analysing genealogy trees constructed using 133 types of mtDNA, researchers concluded that all were descended from a female African progenitor, dubbed Mitochondrial Eve. "Out of Africa" is also supported by the fact that mitochondrial genetic diversity is highest among African populations.[72]

A broad study of African genetic diversity, headed by Sarah Tishkoff, found the San people had the greatest genetic diversity among the 113 distinct populations sampled, making them one of 14 "ancestral population clusters". The research also located a possible origin of modern human migration in south-western Africa, near the coastal border of Namibia and Angola.[73] The fossil evidence was insufficient for archaeologist Richard Leakey to resolve the debate about exactly where in Africa modern humans first appeared.[74] Studies of haplogroups in Y-chromosomal DNA and mitochondrial DNA have largely supported a recent African origin.[75] All the evidence from autosomal DNA also predominantly supports a Recent African origin. However, evidence for archaic admixture in modern humans, both in Africa and later, throughout Eurasia has recently been suggested by a number of studies.[76]

Recent sequencing of Neanderthal[77] and Denisovan[78] genomes shows that some admixture with these populations has occurred. Modern humans outside Africa have 24% Neanderthal alleles in their genome, and some Melanesians have an additional 46% of Denisovan alleles. These new results do not contradict the "out of Africa" model, except in its strictest interpretation, although they make the situation more complex. After recovery from a genetic bottleneck that could possibly be due to the Toba supervolcano catastrophe, a fairly small group left Africa and later briefly interbred on three separate occasions with Neanderthals, probably in the middle-east, on the Eurasian steppe or even in North Africa before their departure. Their still predominantly African descendants spread to populate the world. A fraction in turn interbred with Denisovans, probably in south-east Asia, before populating Melanesia.[79]HLA haplotypes of Neanderthal and Denisova origin have been identified in modern Eurasian and Oceanian populations.[80] The Denisovan EPAS1 gene has also been found in Tibetan populations.[81]

There are still differing theories on whether there was a single exodus from Africa or several. A multiple dispersal model involves the Southern Dispersal theory,[82] which has gained support in recent years from genetic, linguistic and archaeological evidence. In this theory, there was a coastal dispersal of modern humans from the Horn of Africa crossing the Bab el Mandib to Yemen at a lower sea level around 70,000 years ago. This group helped to populate Southeast Asia and Oceania, explaining the discovery of early human sites in these areas much earlier than those in the Levant.[82] This group seems to have been dependent upon marine resources for their survival.

Stephen Oppenheimer has proposed a second wave of humans may have later dispersed through the Persian Gulf oases, and the Zagros mountains into the Middle East. Alternatively it may have come across the Sinai Peninsula into Asia, from shortly after 50,000 yrs BP, resulting in the bulk of the human populations of Eurasia. It has been suggested that this second group possibly possessed a more sophisticated "big game hunting" tool technology and was less dependent on coastal food sources than the original group. Much of the evidence for the first group's expansion would have been destroyed by the rising sea levels at the end of each glacial maximum.[82] The multiple dispersal model is contradicted by studies indicating that the populations of Eurasia and the populations of Southeast Asia and Oceania are all descended from the same mitochondrial DNA L3 lineages, which support a single migration out of Africa that gave rise to all non-African populations.[83]

Stephen Oppenheimer, on the basis of the early date of Badoshan Iranian Aurignacian, suggests that this second dispersal, may have occurred with a pluvial period about 50,000 years before the present, with modern human big-game hunting cultures spreading up the Zagros Mountains, carrying modern human genomes from Oman, throughout the Persian Gulf, northward into Armenia and Anatolia, with a variant travelling south into Israel and to Cyrenicia.[84]

The evidence on which scientific accounts of human evolution are based comes from many fields of natural science. The main source of knowledge about the evolutionary process has traditionally been the fossil record, but since the development of genetics beginning in the 1970s, DNA analysis has come to occupy a place of comparable importance. The studies of ontogeny, phylogeny and especially evolutionary developmental biology of both vertebrates and invertebrates offer considerable insight into the evolution of all life, including how humans evolved. The specific study of the origin and life of humans is anthropology, particularly paleoanthropology which focuses on the study of human prehistory.[85]

The closest living relatives of humans are bonobos and chimpanzees (both genus Pan) and gorillas (genus Gorilla).[86] With the sequencing of both the human and chimpanzee genome, current estimates of the similarity between their DNA sequences range between 95% and 99%.[86][87][88] By using the technique called the molecular clock which estimates the time required for the number of divergent mutations to accumulate between two lineages, the approximate date for the split between lineages can be calculated.

The gibbons (family Hylobatidae) and then orangutans (genus Pongo) were the first groups to split from the line leading to the hominins, including humansfollowed by gorillas, and, ultimately, by the chimpanzees (genus Pan). The splitting date between hominin and chimpanzee lineages is placed by some between 4to8 million years ago, that is, during the Late Miocene.[4][89][90]Speciation, however, appears to have been unusually drawn-out. Initial divergence occurred sometime between 7to13 million years ago, but ongoing hybridization blurred the separation and delayed complete separation during several millions of years. Patterson (2006) dated the final divergence at 5to6 million years ago.[91]

Genetic evidence has also been employed to resolve the question of whether there was any gene flow between early modern humans and Neanderthals, and to enhance our understanding of the early human migration patterns and splitting dates. By comparing the parts of the genome that are not under natural selection and which therefore accumulate mutations at a fairly steady rate, it is possible to reconstruct a genetic tree incorporating the entire human species since the last shared ancestor.

Each time a certain mutation (Single-nucleotide polymorphism) appears in an individual and is passed on to his or her descendants a haplogroup is formed including all of the descendants of the individual who will also carry that mutation. By comparing mitochondrial DNA which is inherited only from the mother, geneticists have concluded that the last female common ancestor whose genetic marker is found in all modern humans, the so-called mitochondrial Eve, must have lived around 200,000 years ago.

Human evolutionary genetics studies how one human genome differs from the other, the evolutionary past that gave rise to it, and its current effects. Differences between genomes have anthropological, medical and forensic implications and applications. Genetic data can provide important insight into human evolution.

There is little fossil evidence for the divergence of the gorilla, chimpanzee and hominin lineages.[92] The earliest fossils that have been proposed as members of the hominin lineage are Sahelanthropus tchadensis dating from 7 million years ago, Orrorin tugenensis dating from 5.7 million years ago, and Ardipithecus kadabba dating to 5.6 million years ago. Each of these have been argued to be a bipedal ancestor of later hominins but, in each case, the claims have been contested. It is also possible that one or more of these species are ancestors of another branch of African apes, or that they represent a shared ancestor between hominins and other apes.

The question then of the relationship between these early fossil species and the hominin lineage is still to be resolved. From these early species, the australopithecines arose around 4 million years ago and diverged into robust (also called Paranthropus) and gracile branches, one of which (possibly A. garhi) probably went on to become ancestors of the genus Homo. The australopithecine species that is best represented in the fossil record is Australopithecus afarensis with more than one hundred fossil individuals represented, found from Northern Ethiopia (such as the famous "Lucy"), to Kenya, and South Africa. Fossils of robust australopithecines such as Au. robustus (or alternatively Paranthropus robustus) and Au./P. boisei are particularly abundant in South Africa at sites such as Kromdraai and Swartkrans, and around Lake Turkana in Kenya.

The earliest member of the genus Homo is Homo habilis which evolved around 2.8 million years ago.[93]Homo habilis is the first species for which we have positive evidence of the use of stone tools. They developed the Oldowan lithic technology, named after the Olduvai Gorge in which the first specimens were found. Some scientists consider Homo rudolfensis, a larger bodied group of fossils with similar morphology to the original H. habilis fossils, to be a separate species while others consider them to be part of H. habilissimply representing intraspecies variation, or perhaps even sexual dimorphism. The brains of these early hominins were about the same size as that of a chimpanzee, and their main adaptation was bipedalism as an adaptation to terrestrial living.

During the next million years, a process of encephalization began and, by the arrival (about 1.9 million years ago) of Homo erectus in the fossil record, cranial capacity had doubled. Homo erectus were the first of the hominins to emigrate from Africa, and, from 1.8to1.3 million years ago, this species spread through Africa, Asia, and Europe. One population of H. erectus, also sometimes classified as a separate species Homo ergaster, remained in Africa and evolved into Homo sapiens. It is believed that these species, H. erectus and H. ergaster, were the first to use fire and complex tools.

The earliest transitional fossils between H. ergaster/erectus and archaic H. sapiens are from Africa, such as Homo rhodesiensis, but seemingly transitional forms were also found at Dmanisi, Georgia. These descendants of African H. erectus spread through Eurasia from ca. 500,000 years ago evolving into H. antecessor, H. heidelbergensis and H. neanderthalensis. The earliest fossils of anatomically modern humans are from the Middle Paleolithic, about 200,000 years ago such as the Omo remains of Ethiopia; later fossils from Es Skhul cave in Israel and Southern Europe begin around 90,000 years ago (0.09 million years ago).

As modern humans spread out from Africa, they encountered other hominins such as Homo neanderthalensis and the so-called Denisovans, who may have evolved from populations of Homo erectus that had left Africa around 2 million years ago. The nature of interaction between early humans and these sister species has been a long-standing source of controversy, the question being whether humans replaced these earlier species or whether they were in fact similar enough to interbreed, in which case these earlier populations may have contributed genetic material to modern humans.[94][95]

This migration out of Africa is estimated to have begun about 70,000 years BP (Before Present) and modern humans subsequently spread globally, replacing earlier hominins either through competition or hybridization. They inhabited Eurasia and Oceania by 40,000 years BP, and the Americas by at least 14,500 years BP.[96]

Evolutionary history of the primates can be traced back 65 million years.[97] One of the oldest known primate-like mammal species, the Plesiadapis, came from North America;[98] another, Archicebus, came from China.[99] Other similar basal primates were widespread in Eurasia and Africa during the tropical conditions of the Paleocene and Eocene.

David R. Begun [100] concluded that early primates flourished in Eurasia and that a lineage leading to the African apes and humans, including to Dryopithecus, migrated south from Europe or Western Asia into Africa. The surviving tropical population of primateswhich is seen most completely in the Upper Eocene and lowermost Oligocene fossil beds of the Faiyum depression southwest of Cairogave rise to all extant primate species, including the lemurs of Madagascar, lorises of Southeast Asia, galagos or "bush babies" of Africa, and to the anthropoids, which are the Platyrrhines or New World monkeys, the Catarrhines or Old World monkeys, and the great apes, including humans and other hominids.

The earliest known catarrhine is Kamoyapithecus from uppermost Oligocene at Eragaleit in the northern Great Rift Valley in Kenya, dated to 24 million years ago.[101] Its ancestry is thought to be species related to Aegyptopithecus, Propliopithecus, and Parapithecus from the Faiyum, at around 35 million years ago.[102] In 2010, Saadanius was described as a close relative of the last common ancestor of the crown catarrhines, and tentatively dated to 2928 million years ago, helping to fill an 11-million-year gap in the fossil record.[103]

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Human evolution - Wikipedia

July 21, 2017 Eruption of Cleveland Volcano, Aleutian Islands, Alaska is featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 13 crewmember on the International Space Station. Credit: Image courtesy of the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, NASA Johnson Space Center

Researchers have found that the formation and breakup of supercontinents over hundreds of millions of years controls volcanic carbon emissions. The results, reported in the journal Science, could lead to a reinterpretation of how the carbon cycle has evolved over Earth's history, and how this has impacted the evolution of Earth's habitability.

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, used existing measurements of carbon and helium from more than 80 volcanoes around the world in order to determine its origin. Carbon and helium coming out of volcanoes can either come from deep within the Earth or be recycled near the surface, and measuring the chemical fingerprint of these elements can pinpoint their source. When the team analysed the data, they found that most of the carbon coming out of volcanoes is recycled near the surface, in contrast with earlier assumptions that the carbon came from deep in the Earth's interior. "This is an essential piece of geological carbon cycle puzzle," said Dr Marie Edmonds, the senior author of the study.

Over millions of years, carbon cycles back and forth between Earth's deep interior and its surface. Carbon is removed from the surface from processes such as the formation of limestone and the burial and decay of plants and animals, which allows atmospheric oxygen to grow at the surface. Volcanoes are one way that carbon is returned to the surface, although the amount they produce is less than a hundredth of the amount of carbon emissions caused by human activity. Today, the majority of carbon from volcanoes is recycled near the surface, but it is unlikely that this was always the case.

Volcanoes form along large island or continental arcs where tectonic plates collide and one plate slides under the other, such as the Aleutian Islands between Alaska and Russia, the Andes of South America, the volcanoes throughout Italy, and the Mariana Islands in the western Pacific. These volcanoes have different chemical fingerprints: the 'island arc' volcanoes emit less carbon which comes from deep in the mantle, while the 'continental arc' volcanoes emit far more carbon which comes from closer to the surface.

Over hundreds of millions of years, the Earth has cycled between periods of continents coming together and breaking apart. During periods when continents come together, volcanic activity was dominated by island arc volcanoes; and when continents break apart, continental volcano arcs dominate. This back and forth changes the chemical fingerprint of carbon coming to Earth's surface systematically over geological time, and can be measured through the different isotopes of carbon and helium.

Variations in the isotope ratio, or chemical fingerprint, of carbon are commonly measured in limestone. Researchers had previously thought that the only thing that could change the carbon fingerprint in limestone was the production of atmospheric oxygen. As such, the carbon isotope fingerprint in limestone was used to interpret the evolution of habitability of Earth's surface. The results of the Cambridge team suggest that volcanoes played a larger role in the carbon cycle than had previously been understood, and that earlier assumptions need to be reconsidered.

"This makes us fundamentally re-evaluate the evolution of the carbon cycle," said Edmonds. "Our results suggest that the limestone record must be completely reinterpreted if the volcanic carbon coming to the surface can change its carbon isotope composition."

A great example of this is in the Cretaceous Period, 144 to 65 million years ago. During this time period there was a major increase in the carbon isotope ratio found in limestone, which has been interpreted as an increase in atmospheric oxygen concentration. This increase in atmospheric oxygen was causally linked to the proliferation of mammals in the late Cretaceous. However, the results of the Cambridge team suggest that the increase in the carbon isotope ratio in the limestones could be almost entirely due to changes in the types of volcanoes at the surface.

"The link between oxygen levels and the burial of organic material allowed life on Earth as we know it to evolve, but our geological record of this link needs to be re-evaluated," said co-author Dr Alexandra Turchyn, also from the Department of Earth Sciences.

Explore further: Limestone assimilation under volcanoes helps understand Earth's carbon cycle

More information: Emily Mason et al. Remobilization of crustal carbon may dominate volcanic arc emissions, Science (2017). DOI: 10.1126/science.aan5049

Journal reference: Science

Provided by: University of Cambridge

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Researchers have found that the formation and breakup of supercontinents over hundreds of millions of years controls volcanic carbon emissions. The results, reported in the journal Science, could lead to a reinterpretation ...

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The headline entirely misses the point ... or is that the point? Climate science is beginning to grow up.

The Moon broke Pangaea to pieces when it impacted 13kya at the YDB, a comet split Greenland off of north America 10.5kya, and a meteor, from C/1811F1, reshaped the Mississippi river valley on Dec.16, 1811... [can you verify these findings?]- https://www.linke...ony-hood

thanks guys ;-]

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Link identified between continental breakup, volcanic carbon ... - Phys.Org

To understand the significance of the so-called Monkey Trial, one must try to imagine the America of 1925; specifically, the southern state of Tennessee.

Under pressure by a coalition of strict Christians, Tennessee became the first state in the United States to pass a law the Butler Act that deemed it illegal to "teach any theory that denies the Story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animal."

The act alarmed many in the legal community, including the recently formed American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which persuaded John Scopes, a 24-year-old high school science teacher and football coach from Illinois, to test the constitutionality of the law in what became known as The Monkey Trial.

The trial also attracted intense media attention, including live radio broadcasts of the trial for the first time in history, according to an award-winning documentary by PBS's American Experience on the trial.

Attorney Clarence Darrow represented Scopes; William Jennings Bryan, a Democratic conservative, represented both Tennessee and the fundamentalists who were deeply opposed to Charles Darwin's theory.

"I knew, sooner or later, that someone would have to stand up to the stifling of freedom that the anti-evolution act represented," Scopes wrote in his 1967 book Center of the Storm: Memoirs of John T. Scopes.

The trial ended on July 21 with a guilty verdict and $100 fine.

A year later, the ACLU issued its appeal to the Tennessee Supreme Court, which upheld the law, but overturned the conviction of Scopes on a legal technicality.

Decades later in 1967, Tennessee repealed the act and teachers were free to teach the theories of Darwin without breaking the law.

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1925 Scopes Trial Pits Creationism Against Evolution - Voice of America