Making whoopie with Neanderthals

September 4th,2010    by lala

The point about science is that it provides the best tools we have for discovering the truth about the world around us, but this doesn't of course mean that it can always give us simple answers to big questions.

Take the long-running debate over the Neanderthals, the species Homo neanderthalis, the last close relative of our own tribe, Homo sapiens, to go extinct. The question is whether the Neanderthals were a just a distant relative – an evolutionary dead end who did not interbreed with anatomically modern humans – or whether they were indeed part of our direct ancestry.

Soon after the first bones of the Neanderthals were found in the Neander Valley of Germany in 1856, scientists proposed that they were the immediate "cavemen" ancestors of present-day Europeans. It fitted in with Darwinian theory and the idea of a progressive, linear line of ascent, from apeman to modern man – a notion that is now disabused as a hopelessly simplistic view of our complex family tree.

But the thing about science is that it never stops raising fresh questions that can constantly undermine the comfortable scientific orthodoxy. The carbon dating showed that Neanderthals lived in Eurasia for tens of thousands of years before anatomically modern humans arrived there from their migration out of Africa. But then it emerged that for thousands of years the two species occupied the same territory, and even the same cave systems – but almost certainly not at the same time.

The archaeology suggested little interaction between early, anatomically modern Homo sapiens, known as Cro-Magnon man in Europe, and the seemingly less sophisticated Neanderthals. Anatomically, the stocky Neanderthals with their beetle-brows, flared rib cages and short limbs seemed no match to the gracile moderns with their clever tool making and arty body ornaments.

Although it became clear that the Neanderthals were not the direct ancestor of Homo sapiens, scientists were split on just how the two species interacted when they presumably lived cheek by jowl for thousands of years. The alternatives were memorably summed up by anthropologist Erik Trinkaus of Washington University: making war or making whoopee.

The latest study aimed at answering this question suggests the latter – when Neanderthal man met Homo sapiens woman it resulted in what scientists euphemistically call "gene flow". It seems that this interbreeding, which probably took place somewhere in the Middle East when the first modern humans migrated out of Africa, has resulted in a little bit of Neanderthal in all of us today with a non-African ancestry.

We know this because this remarkable piece of research has extracted fragments of DNA from Neanderthal bones dating to 40,000 years ago and, even more remarkably, the scientists involved, led by the legendary Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, constructed about 60 per cent of the full Neanderthal genome, the 3bn chemical bases that make up the entire DNA code. This enabled them to compare the Neanderthal genome with that of five modern-day people from around the world, and, to Paabo's astonishment, Neanderthal DNA sequences were found in the genomes of the three people who lived outside Africa. Paabo freely admits that he was biased against such a finding. His earlier work on mitochondrial DNA suggested no such interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans, so his initial reaction was that the data had to be a statistical fluke, or erroneous.

But it is a measure of greatness in science if you can accept something that you had previously rejected, when faced with new and convincing evidence.

Comparisons between the genomes of modern humans and the Neanderthals clearly indicated that there was a small but significant amount of interbreeding early in the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens, most probably after our species had first emerged from Africa between about 80,000 and 50,000 years ago. Other scientists, such as Professor Joao Zilhao of Bristol University, who has long argued that there was close cultural and biological interaction between Neanderthals and modern humans, can rightly feel vindicated for their somewhat unfashionable stance.

drive from www.independent.co.uk

The curious incident of the fox in the night

September 3rd,2010    by lala

Some people get real pleasure from looking out of the window at home in the early evening to see a wild fox loping across the garden. These graceful creatures, famous in mythology for their cunning, have fired the human imagination for centuries.

But the fox's reputation as an unobtrusive cohabitant of human cities took a severe knock yesterday after two baby girls were taken to hospital – having apparently been bitten by an animal who wandered into a three-storey Victorian house in Hackney, through patio doors left open because of the heat.

The nine-month-old twins, Lola and Isabella Koupparis, were sleeping in their cots while their parents watched television downstairs with the twins' four-year-old brother.

"We were watching Britain's Got Talent, it had just finished," the twins' mother, Pauline Koupparis told BBC London yesterday. "We heard the girls cry. I went up the stairs. As soon as I got to the second step I thought it's a funny cry, it's not a normal cry. It was quite muffled but very pained.

"I went into the room and I saw some blood on Isabella's cot. I thought she'd had a nose bleed. I put on the light and I've seen the fox. It wasn't even scared of me. It just stared me straight in the eye. I started screaming. Then I realised that Lola was also covered in blood. My husband came running up – by this stage we were both screaming hysterically – and the fox didn't even move. My husband lunged at it a few times and it just moved a few inches each time."

One girl, who slept on her back, had been bitten on the face. The other, who was asleep on her stomach, had been bitten on the arm. Both were taken to hospital. Isabella, who was bitten on the arm, is in intensive care. Police described the condition of both twins as "serious but stable".

Asked how her daughters were faring yesterday, Mrs Koupparis said: "One is really good and one is not so good." She added: "It's a living nightmare. It's something I would never have expected to happen – let alone to us and my beautiful girls."

The day after the attack, pest control officers from Hackney Council set traps in the Koupparis's garden and caught a fox, which was humanely put down – but they do not know whether it was the same animal which attacked the twin girls.

The news came as a shock to people who have spent their working lives studying the behaviour of foxes. They said it is extremely rare for one of the animals to attack a human, although there have been other occasional reports of similar incidents.

In Edinburgh five years ago, an 88-year-old woman was bitten by a fox when she went out into her garden late in the evening to feed her cats. In 2002, a fox reportedly crept into a house in Dartford, Kent, and bit a 14-week-old boy on the head.

John Bryant, a pest-control consultant who specialises in foxes, told BBC's Today programme that he had dealt with only two alleged fox attacks in 40 years. In one case the "fox" proved to be an Alsatian dog, and the other was a cat. He described the attack on the baby girls as a "freakish event".

"It's not, in my experience, fox behaviour," he added. "If it was a fox, it must have been a cub. There are thousands of three-month-old teenage cubs now wandering around, beginning to explore their parents' territory. They will walk into houses, walk round, mess on the bathroom floor and sometimes sleep on the bed if people are not around."

Martin Hemmington, founder of the rescue charity the National Fox Welfare Society, said urban foxes will usually avoid contact with humans. "It takes quite a lot of effort to catch them," he said. "Walking into people's houses is not commonplace and they would never go in with the intention of attacking someone. I can only imagine the fox has found itself in a situation and it has become distressed and panicked. They are wild animals and will bite if cornered."

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How to beat the invisible killer

September 2nd,2010    by lala

High blood pressure is common, mostly symptomless, and potentially lethal. Known as the silent killer, it is a direct cause of more than 100,000 strokes each year (two thirds of the total). It also increases the risk of heart disease, kidney problems and blindness. A quarter of adults have high blood pressure, and among those over 60 the proportion rises to half. But many people don't know they have it. An estimated 18 per cent of men and 13 per cent of women with high blood pressure are not receiving treatment that could protect them from an early death.

High blood pressure is not just a problem for older people. Blood pressure can rise at any age. One in 10 men aged 25-34 years have high blood pressure compared with approximately two in five men aged 35-44 years, according to the Blood Pressure Association. Fewer women are affected at a young age, but one in 10 women in their twenties are affected.

Has thinking about blood pressure changed?

Dramatically. The old view was that high blood pressure was necessary in older people in order to pump the blood through furred arteries, which had been narrowed by fatty deposits. In the 1930s there was huge controversy over whether it would be safe to attempt to lower blood pressure. When the first trials of blood pressure- lowering medicines were carried out in the 1960s, only patients with extreme raised pressure were entered into them, because of what were perceived to be the risks. The results showed rapidly and unequivocally that lowering the pressure saved lives.

Is the problem getting worse?

Yes – because we are an ageing population and our arteries get stiffer as we get older. Modern Western lifestyles are also making high blood pressure increasingly common. It is almost unknown in parts of the world such as rural Africa, where factors such as poor diet, lack of exercise, excess salt and too little fruit and vegetables don't apply. This is so even though Africans have an underlying genetic propensity to high blood pressure. The problem is now so widespread in the West, with half the over- sixties affected, that high blood pressure has come to represent normality.

What is high blood pressure?

As the heart pumps the blood around the body it exerts pressure on the artery walls. If you have high blood pressure, it means your heart is having to work harder to pump the blood. This can weaken the heart or damage the artery walls, resulting in a blockage or a rupture of the walls (haemorrhage). High blood pressure is defined as a sustained pressure of 140/90mm Hg or over.

What does that mean?

Blood pressure is measured in millimetres of mercury (Hg). Two measures are used, to record the maximum and minimum pressures during a single beat of the heart. The first figure – 140 – is called the systolic pressure, which is the maximum pressure as the heart contracts, pumping the blood round the body. The second figure – 90 – is the diastolic pressure, or the minimum pressure as the heart relaxes while the ventricles (chambers) of the heart fill with blood before it pumps again.

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Paris Hilton likely to avoid jail on cocaine bust

September 1st,2010    by lala

Paris Hilton was charged today with cocaine posession after a high-profile arrest in Las Vegas during the weekend, but the socialite is unlikely to do a second stint behind bars.

Hilton, 29, faces up to four years in a Nevada prison if convicted of the felony charge of possessing 0.8 grams of "powder cocaine" in a purse.

But the Los Angeles Times, quoting a legal expert, said Hilton was more likely to be sentenced to a diversion programme if prosecutors are able to prove their case.

Hilton and her boyfriend, Cy Waits, were stopped just before midnight on Friday after police said they smelled marijuana smoke coming from their vehicle. When a crowd formed, they were taken to the nearby Wynn Hotel for some privacy.

The police report details that when Hilton asked to get some lip balm from her purse, an officer saw "a small bindle of what I believed to be cocaine in a clear baggy" and the bindle fell from the purse into the officer's hand.

Hilton told police she had borrowed the purse from a friend, and she thought the cocaine was gum.

The Los Angeles Times quoted Dmitry Gorin, a former Los Angeles County prosecutor and noted defence attorney, as saying that prosecutors would need to prove that it was Hilton's purse and also have to overcome any doubts that the marijuana smell came from her vehicle.

Similar arrests are often made on the Las Vegas Strip, and most end up in some kind of diversion programme unless the person has a lengthy prior record, he said.

Hilton has had dust-ups with the law, but she is not quite a hardened criminal. She spent three weeks in a Los Angeles jail in 2007 for violating probation on a reckless driving charge. In July, she was detained on suspicion of possessing marijuana in South Africa following a World Cup soccer match, but was released by police and not charged.

After her latest arrest, her lawyers issued a statement encouraging people "not to rush to judgment until all of the facts have been dealt with in a court of law." There was no further statement from the lawyers today, and court officials in Las Vegas also declined comment.

drive from www.independent.co.uk

Nato repels daring assaults on Afghan bases by insurgents in US uniform

August 31st,2010    by lala

Insurgents wearing US army uniforms launched an audacious co-ordinated attack on two major Nato bases in eastern Afghanistan early yesterday morning. The Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) said the attacks were repelled with five insurgents captured and 24 killed, four of whom were wearing suicide vests. The Afghan Defence Ministry added that two Afghan soldiers were killed in the fighting and two wounded.

The assaults were on the sprawling Camp Salerno and nearby Camp Chapman in Khost at about 3am – just before morning prayers. The camps are about 60 miles south-east of Kabul, close to the border with Pakistan. The area is a hotbed of insurgent activity. In December seven CIA officers were killed in a suicide bombing on Camp Chapman – the worst attack on the CIA in 25 years.

In recent months the Taliban have been launching increasingly sophisticated guerrilla-style attacks on Nato bases, with similar assaults launched at Bagram, Jalalabad and Kandahar.

Afghan police said about 50 insurgents armed with rifles, heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons were involved in the latest assault. Two insurgents did manage to breach the perimeter of Camp Salerno but were monitored as they cut the fence and were killed immediately.

"Coalition forces had the two insurgents under surveillance and when they cut the fence a quick reaction force was dispatched to the location, where they were killed," an Isaf statement said. Small-arms fire continued through the morning.

Major Wazir Pacha, of the provincial police headquarters, added that they had captured a pickup truck full of ammunition along with a light truck packed with explosives – which may have been intended for use in a suicide bombing – that had become stuck in deep mud. Bomb specialists later destroyed the truck and its cargo. After being repelled from the bases, the insurgents approached the nearby offices of the governor and provincial police headquarters but were driven off.

"Given the size of the enemy's force, this could have been a major catastrophe for Khost. Luckily we prevented it," Khost's provincial police chief, Abdul Hakim Ishaqzai, said.

Nato said the dead insurgents were members of the Haqqani network, a Taliban-affiliated group with strong ties to al-Qa'ida that is accused of launching frequent raids across the border from neighbouring Pakistan.

An airstrike on a truck in which insurgents were fleeing killed a senior Haqqani explosives expert suspected of arranging suicide bomb attacks, along with two other militants. Isaf said last week that it had captured a senior commander of the local Taliban network in Khost – although it is not clear whether the arrest is connected to the latest attacks.

drive from www.independent.co.uk

New York student charged with attack on Muslim taxi driver

August 30th,2010    by lala

A college student who did volunteer work in Afghanistan has been charged with slashing the neck and face of a Bangladeshi taxi driver who said he was Muslim.

A criminal complaint alleges Michael Enright uttered an Arabic greeting and told the driver: "Consider this a checkpoint" before the brutal attack occurred on Tuesday night inside the yellow cab on Manhattan's East Side. Police say Enright, 21, was drunk at the time.

Enright is being held on charges of attempted murder and assault as hate crimes, and possession of a weapon. The handcuffed defendant did not enter a plea during the brief court appearance.

In addition to a serious neck wound, cab driver Ahmed Sharif suffered cuts to his forearms, face and one hand while trying to fend off his attacker, prosecutor James Zeleta said while arguing against bail.

Jason Martin, defending, told the judge his client was an honours student at the School of Visual Arts who lived with his parents in suburban Brewster, New York.

Enright volunteered for Intersections International, a group that promotes interfaith dialogue and has supported plans for an Islamic centre and mosque two blocks from Ground Zero. A group representative, the Reverend Robert Chase, called the situation "tragic".

"We've been working very hard to build bridges between folks from different religions and cultures," Chase said. "This is really shocking and sad for us."

Sharif, a 43-year-old Bangladeshi immigrant who has driven a cab for 15 years, was quoted in a news release from the New York Taxi Workers Alliance as saying that the attack had left him shaken.

"I feel very sad," he said. He added that, because of tensions over the mosque, "all drivers should be more careful". He accepted an invitation from New York's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, a supporter of the mosque, to visit City Hall.

"This attack runs counter to everything that New Yorkers believe no matter what God we pray to," the mayor said.

At around 6pm on Tuesday, a man hailed the cab at East 24th Street and Second Avenue, a police spokeswoman said. Sharif said that during the trip his customer asked him whether he was Muslim. When the driver said yes, the customer pulled out a weapon – believed to be a folding tool with a knife blade called a Leatherman – and attacked him.

After the assault, the driver tried to lock the customer inside the cab and drive to a police station, police said. The attacker jumped out of a window, 17 blocks from where he hailed the cab, police said.

An officer noticed the commotion, found Enright slumped on the pavement and arrested him.

drive from www.guardian.co.uk

Meat consumption per capita

August 28th,2010    by lala

Between 1961 and 2002, meat consumption has seen a large increase virtually worldwide and a corresponding jump in its environmental impact.

Links between meat consumption and climate change have been widely known for many years, partly due to deforestation in the Amazon rainforest to make room for the livestock. Clearing these forests is estimated to produce a staggering 17% of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than the entire transport sector.

Increased meat-eating has followed rising affluence in many parts of the world. China's levels doubled between 1990 and 2002. Back in 1961, the Chinese consumed a mere 3.6kg per person, while in 2002 they reached 52.4kg each; half of the world's pork is now consumed in China.

The US and the UK are among the few countries whose meat consumption levels have remained relatively stable. Surprisingly, it is not the US with the largest consumption (124.8), but Denmark with a shocking 145.9kg per person in 2002.

drive from www.guardian.co.uk

From gate to plate – chefs grow their own

August 26th,2010    by lala

It's an old gardeners' adage that nothing tastes as good as a home-grown vegetable. But that was before some of Britain's best restaurants started planting their own kitchen gardens to cash in on the soaring popularity of locally sourced food.

Chefs from London to Loch Voll are growing their own produce, from bumper crops of carrots to unusual herbs they find difficult to source. Some restaurants are rearing their own animals to give diners the ultimate gate-to-plate experience.

In France and the US the "locavore" movement is well established, and the idea is catching on at last in Britain's restaurants. Richard Harden, of Harden's London Restaurants guide, said: "We had lost our connection with food, so this is about trying to get closer to what we eat."

The award-winning chef Simon Rogan has run Howbarrow Organic Farm alongside his L'Enclume restaurant in Cartmel, Cumbria, since last year. He said: "The organic produce we serve now just costs us the price of the seed. For us it's a quality thing: we can pick things out of the ground when we want." Eventually he hopes to cut his "six-figure" annual vegetable bill down to zero.

Although chefs such as Mr Rogan, or the French culinary legend Alain Passard, whose farm in Brittany supplies his Parisian restaurant, L'Arpège, are at the radical end of the scale, even London-based chefs are sowing seeds where they can. Shane Osborn has planted a garden on the roof of his double Michelin-starred London restaurant, Pied à Terre. Nuno Mendes, the Portuguese El Bulli-trained chef, is picking his own herbs for his Viajante restaurant in east London, which opened this year.

They follow the likes of Oxfordshire's Raymond Blanc, who has served diners at Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons vegetables grown in his two-acre kitchen garden for several years, and Nigel Haworth, whose celebrated Lancashire hotel and restaurant, Northcote Manor, was another early pioneer. Other restaurants that grow-their-own include the Nut Tree Inn, Oxfordshire, and Monachyle Mhor, on Loch Voll in Perthshire.

Restaurateurs who lack the space to get planting are finding other methods. Tony McKinlay, who owns the south London restaurant Platform, has gone into partnership with one of his suppliers, the Devon-based farmer Barnaby Butterfield. The pair are both shareholders in a company that runs a central kitchen where the animal carcases are butchered and prepped before being dished up at Platform. The aim is to use every bit of the animal.

drive from www.independent.co.uk

Big mouth strikes again

August 25th,2010    by lala

When I invite Michael Winner to lunch at McDonald's in Wood Green he readily accepts, as I rather knew he would.

I then feel bad and even try to talk him out of it. Michael, I say, Wood Green is known locally as Hood Green for all its prowling hoodies; hoodies who are mostly accompanied by those powerfully squat, fat-bollocked Staffordshire Bull Terriers sometimes called Tyson and sometimes called Killer. Michael, I continue, last time I went to see a film in that badlands of north London and pulled down the seat, it had a huge penis graffitied on it. Michael, I further continue, when I opted to not sit on that seat – sit on a penis?; at my age? – and pulled down the next one it had "Fuck You!!" scrawled on it. Do we even think the second exclamation mark was necessary, Michael? Wasn't the point rather well-made with the first? Michael, you don't have to do this. I thought it would be amusing to take you out of your comfort zone, away from Sandy Lane or dining with your hundreds of celebrity friends (ie, Michael Caine) but I can now see it's a rotten, lousy, stinking, mean-spirited, cruel, low, putrid, patronising, cheap, shaming and pathetic idea. "Next Thursday, darling?" he suggests. And we're on.

So, McDonald's in Hood Green, which is situated on the high street, between an amusement arcade and a shop offering the faux-est of faux Ugg boots for £4.99, it is. I arrive first and wait outside; wait while keeping a safe distance from the two fat-bollocked Staffies already tied to the railings. (I have nothing against Staffies, by the way, and do understand they can be very sweet when not otherwise occupied with taking your leg or your nose off.) I am informed of Michael's whereabouts every two minutes or so. Either he calls from his car – "I'M ON GREEN LANES, DARLING!" – or his PA calls from his office: "HE'S ON GREEN LANES, DEBORAH!" I eventually spot his vintage Rolls-Royce nosing down the high street, past all the shops with "pound" in the title: Poundworld, Poundstretcher, Poundland; useful shops which may or may not one day go upmarket, as in Twopoundworld, Twopoundstretcher and Twopoundland. It's a small dream of mine. Anyway, Michael's driver parks up and then Michael exits the car. This causes quite a stir. Particularly among a group of large, black ladies who shriek hysterically: "It's the calm-down-dear, man ... it's the calm-down-dear, man." And then keep repeating: "Nice to see you, nice to see you ... calm down, dear!"

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It's one big girls' night out at the theatre

August 24th,2010    by lala

We have read chick lit and watched chick flicks; now women are queuing up for a stream of female-friendly dramas on the stage. Theatre is awash with shows appealing particularly to women, many based on popular novels and films, and more are in the pipeline. Women are responding in their droves, often on a girls' night out.

Crowd-pleasers include the musical Legally Blonde, which opened in January and is based on the Reese Witherspoon film, and the Abba-inspired Mamma Mia!, which went from the stage to the big screen. Bridget Jones: The Musical is in development, with author Helen Fielding adapting her chick lit phenomenon and Lily Allen writing the songs.

Dirty Dancing, inspired by the 1987 film, smashed West End records when it took £11m in advance sales. Ghost: The Musical, based on another popular Patrick Swayze film, opens next year. Grease has played to more than 1.25 million people – approximately three-quarters of them women – since returning to the West End three years ago.

Arlene Phillips is choreographing Flashdance: The Musical, an adaptation of the 1983 film about a female welder who loves to dance, which previews from September. "I don't think it's a conscious 'we are going to do chick theatre'," she said. "It just happens to be that there is an explosion of those musicals around and, fortunately, it is the women audiences who go back again and again that are keeping these musicals on in the West End." She added theatre had changed, with audiences now including hen nights and groups of women screaming for the show's stars.

"When, for instance, Grease first opened, it was very much a traditional theatre audience coming to see it," explained the So You Think You Can Dance judge, who also choreographed that musical. "It was families or teenagers. You didn't get, as we do now, huge parties. Sometimes on the Friday night and Saturday night, the theatre is packed with screaming crowds of women cheering on the dancing. That is something new."

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