How Khrushchev’s daughter saved the fox-dogs of Siberia. RT-Images/Thinkstock Reprinted (in modified form) with permission from How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog): Visionary Scientists and a Siberian Tale of Jump-Started Evolution, by Lee Alan Dugatkin and Lyudmila Trut, published by the University of Chicago Press. © 2017 by Lee Alan Dugatkin and Lyudmila Trut. All rights reserved. For the last six decades, Lyudmila Trut and her colleagues have been running one of the most audacious experiments ever undertaken. The experiment, first conceived and led by Trut’s mentor, Dmitry Belyaev, aimed to rerun the evolutionary process that led to the domestication of dogs but in real time, using the fox as a stand-in for the wolf. Belyaev and Trut’s experiment began in 1959 and it came within a hair’s breath of being shut down that very same year by none less than the premier of the Soviet Union. Geneticists at the meeting were forced to stand up and refute their scientific knowledge and practices. He never made good on his threat.
Acidified ocean water found along US West Coast San Francisco: A study of the California current system has found highly acidified water along the US West Coast. The study led by Francis Chan, a marine ecologist at the Oregon State University (OSU), said conditions will continue to worsen due to the atmospheric carbon dioxide primarily to blame for the increase in acidification has been rising substantially, Xinhua news agency reported. Representational image. While findings of the study, which was published in the Nature Scientific Reports, identified "hotspots" of pH, or potential of hydrogen, measurements as low as any oceanic surface waters in the world, there were "refuges" of more moderate pH environments that could become havens for some marine organisms to escape more highly acidified waters. "The threat of ocean acidification is global and though it sometimes seems far away, it is happening here right now on the West Coast of the US and those waters are already hitting our beaches," Chan said on Sunday.
How the U.S. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico We have testimony from people who say they participated in the crime. They described some 50 trucks arriving in Allende, carrying people connected to the cartel. They broke into houses, they looted them and burned them. Afterward, they kidnapped the people who lived in those houses and took them to a ranch just outside of Allende. First they killed them. There’s no missing the signs that something unspeakable happened in Allende, a quiet ranching town of about 23,000, just a 40-minute drive from Eagle Pass, Texas. In March 2011 gunmen from the Zetas cartel, one of the most violent drug trafficking organizations in the world, swept through Allende and nearby towns like a flash flood, demolishing homes and businesses and kidnapping and killing dozens, possibly hundreds, of men, women and children. The destruction and disappearances went on in fits and starts for weeks. Then the DEA took a gamble. The Massacre We were eating at Los Compadres, and two guys came in. The Operation The Takeover
Earth has 3 trillion trees but they're falling at alarming rate While He Was Tweeting: Trump Axes Protection for Endangered Whales Trump Administration Axes Protection [...] The National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration’s fisheries division has sidelined a rule designed to safeguard marine mammals like humpback whales. (Photo by Gregory "Slobirdr" Smith/ flickr CC 2.0) It was no secret that the Trump administration was probably not going to be the kind of place that embraced whales, but rule changes that affect endangered species are coming fast from all sides. Mosbergen writes: Environmental experts are calling the move a declaration of “war” by the Trump administration against threatened marine life. While the number of whales, sea turtles and dolphins killed in the swordfishing industries nets has declined significantly since earlier protections were put in place in the 1990s, the populations of some of these species are extremely low. Read the whole story at HuffPost.
This is what emboldened white supremacists look like | Douglas Williams | Opinion It was a scene out of the darkest days of the civil rights movement. A couple of dozen white supremacists rallied around a statue of Robert E Lee, a Confederate army general, in Virginia, carrying torches and chanting: “You will not replace us.” But this was no black-and-white newsreel, relaying the horrors of a time long since past. The cause for this neo-Klan rally? Perhaps it is no surprise that, in a state that hosted the capital of the Confederacy for the vast majority of the civil war, decisions around squaring grand monuments to the defenders of slavery with social progress have always been cause for tension. When the city of Richmond decided in 1995 to place a statue of the black tennis star and city native Arthur Ashe on Monument Avenue – named as such because it is home to several statues of Confederate soldiers – the decision was greeted by a furor. But the context for our current-day battles is much different. They are not isolated anymore.
Best And Worst Places To Be A Kid in world (US #36) Children on the North Cape in Norway live in one of the top countries for kids, according to a Save the Children report. Norway is tied with Slovenia for the top spot. Jekaterina Nikitina/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Jekaterina Nikitina/Getty Images Children on the North Cape in Norway live in one of the top countries for kids, according to a Save the Children report. A recent report from Save the Children documents what many people have known for a long time — a baby is far better off being born in Europe than in sub-Saharan Africa. It's a point that has been made before. "These are important issues," says Black, who was not involved in producing the report. Best Places To Be A Kid 1. Worst Places To Be A Kid 1. Source: Save the Children The report looks at how child labor, early marriage, preventable diseases and lack of educational opportunities not only threaten kids' lives but also deprive them of a chance to be children. Norway and Slovenia tied for the top slot.
Scientists Saw A Nearly Unheard Of Antarctic Meltdown Antarctica is unfreezing. In the past few months alone, researchers have chronicled a seasonal waterfall, widespread networks of rivers and melt ponds and an iceberg the size of Delaware on the brink of breaking away from the thawing landscape. A new study published in Nature Communications only adds to the disturbing trend of change afoot in Antarctica. Researchers have documented rain on a continent more known for snow and widespread surface melt in West Antarctica last summer, one of the most unstable parts of a continent that’s already being eaten away by warm waters below the ice. Surface melt became widespread over West Antarctica in January 2016. The findings, published Thursday, indicate that last year’s super El Niño played a large role in driving the meltdown, but researchers are concerned that overlaying natural climate patterns onto the long-term warming driven by carbon pollution could put Antarctica’s ice in an even more precarious position. You May Also Like: It’s June.
Raul Labrador's claim that no one dies from lack of health care access: Pants on Fire What Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, told a restive town hall audience in Lewiston, Idaho, was destined to go viral. And it did. At the May 5, 2017, event, questioners asked the congressman about the Republicans’ vote the previous day on a major health care overhaul that would roll back many aspects of President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, including limits on expanding Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for the poor. "You are mandating people on Medicaid accept dying," one audience member said. To which Labrador responded, "No no, you know that line is so indefensible. The crowd howled in protest, and the comment drew immediate national attention. Given all the attention to Labrador’s comment, we decided to fact-check it. It’s not our first time looking at a similar question. However, Labrador’s statement put a different twist on the question. Labrador’s explanation A literature review Any contrary views? "Rep. Our ruling We rate his statement Pants on Fire. Raul Labrador