News Briefs 24-09-2012

How do I know I've spent too much time searching for news? A herd of cats is now vehemently demanding my full attention.

• Are biologists watching an evolutionary leap -- one life form absorbing another? More.
• Evolutionary biologist Richard Lenski and his 55,000 generations of bacteria.
• Spreading the wealth of virulence genes: A study in St Petersburg, Florida found that 80 percent of the dollar bills gathered from non-hospital areas had MRSA, and 50 percent of credit cards also tested positive.
• Is the 'western lifestyle' disturbing key bacterial balance?
• A new study supports the theory of extraterrestrial impact 12,900 year ago, wiping out both beast and man in North America.
• Prehistoric cave artists used cartoon-like techniques to make their images appear to move.
• Evidence from ancient butchery site in Tanzania shows early man was capable of ambushing herds up to 1.6 million years earlier than previously thought.
• From shells to mobile phones: The British Museum's new money gallery.
• Egypt reopens ancient tombs after renovation.
• Could genes for stripes help kitty fight disease? Nice pics here.
• While snakes with two heads alongside each other have been found in the wild before, this snake has a head on each end of its body - and the heads appear to take shifts on which one is in control.
• Scientist or and sorcerer: Isaac Newton's belief in spirits and alchemy may have been essential to achieving his towering scientific achievement: gravity.
• How to survive a mass extinction.
• Winds high in the stratosphere reshape deep ocean currents.
• A melting Greenland weighs perils against potential.
• World on track for record food prices within a year.
• What is it about the human brain that drives us to over-consume sweets, fatty foods, drugs, alcohol -- well, pretty much everything?
• Breakthrough technique lets scientists grow drug in corn.
• Is the can worse than the soda? Study finds correlation between BPA and obesity.
• Worldwide, data centers, each with row after row of computer servers, use about 30 billion watts of electricity - roughly equivalent to the output of 30 nuclear power plants - 90 percent of which is wasted. Longer original article.
• Pharmaceutical scandal: The doctors prescribing the drugs don't know they don't do what they're meant to. Nor do their patients. The manufacturers know full well, but they're not telling.
• Shell companies: Launderers Anonymous. A study highlights how easy it is to set up untraceable companies.
• We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists: Complete YouTube documentary that takes us inside the world of Anonymous, the radical collective that is redefining civil disobedience for the digital age.
• Another UFO sighted over Melbourne.
• Set in the Italian Renaissance in 1503, historian Michael Ennis's new novel The Malice of Fortune 'is based entirely on actual events. All of the major characters are historical figures, and all of them do exactly what the archival evidence tells us they did, exactly where and when they did it. What history fails to tell us is how and why they did it. And thereby hangs a tale...' (Amazon US, Kindle, & UK.)

Thanks, Rick.

Quote of the Day:

When fortune comes seize her in front firmly, because behind she is bald.

Leonardo da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life