Could Neanderthals Saved Mankind Out of Africa by Making Them Whiter?

Tags: Light Skin Neanderthals Mated with Humans Out of Africa, Gene Skin Pigmentation, Sun forms Vitamin D, Survival,

These conclusions are not considered in the article, but seems to correlate more closely with the genetic data than those proposed by the scientists.Note that I condensed the article greatly with what sections I thought were more important to the general public.

Beware, only one person was selected for a complete genome analysis from various ethnic regions sources, but it is probably good enough. Neanderthals had pale skin with red hair. Pale skin was needed to get the weak sun in the north to produce enough vitamin D to survive. The offspring of those who mated with Neanderthals survived and carried to skin color genes needed to survive. Neanderthals have been around for more than 200,000 years.

Africans do not have those Neanderthal genes of 1-4% found in Europeans and Asians. I am sure these data shocked the mostly white modern humans who did the study. Here is a related excerpt near the end of the very long article:

... But the mutations they've found so far "are all very interesting, precisely because there are so few," says Pääbo, whose team is trying to identify their function. The catalog includes changes in genes that encode proteins important for wound healing, the beating of sperm flagellum, and gene transcription (see table, above). Several of these newly evolved modern human genes encode proteins expressed in the skin, sweat glands, and innersheaths of hair roots, as well as skin pigmentation. "The fact that three of six genes carrying multiple substitutions are in skin is fascinating," says Poinar. Pääbo speculates that these changes "reflect that skin physiology has changed but how, of course, we don't know yet." ... http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/328/5979/680

Jim Kawakami, May 6, 2010, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com

Could Neanderthals Saved Mankind Out of Africa by Making Them Whiter? "Close Encounters of of the Prehistoric Kind" by Ann Gibbons May 7, 2010 http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/328/5979/680

... On page 710, an international team of researchers presents theirfirst detailed analysis of the draft sequence of the Neandertalgenome, which now includes more than 3 billion nucleotides collected from the bones of three female Neandertals who lived in Croatia more than 38,000 years ago. By comparing this composite Neandertal genome with the complete genomes of five living humans from different parts of the world, the researchers found that both Europeans and Asians share 1% to 4% of their nuclear DNA with Neandertals. But Africans do not. This suggests that early modern humans interbred with Neandertals after moderns left Africa, but before they spread into Asia and Europe. The evidence showing interbreeding is "incontrovertible," says paleoanthropologist John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who was not involved in the work. "There's no other way you can explain this."

As a result, many people living outside Africa have inherited a small but significant amount of DNA from these extinct humans. "In a sense, the Neandertals are then not altogether extinct," says lead author Svante Pääbo, a paleogeneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, who was surprised to find he was part Neandertal. "They live on in some of us."

The team also used the Neandertal DNA like a probe to find the genes that make us modern. Even though the genomes of humans and Neandertals are 99.84% identical, the researchers identified regions that have changed or evolved since our ancestors and Neandertals diverged sometime between 270,000 and 440,000 years ago—their new, slightly younger estimate of the split. So far, the team has detected tantalizing differences in genesinvolved in metabolism, skin, the skeleton, and the development of cognition, although no one knows yet how these genetic changes affect physiology. "This is a groundbreaking study!" enthuses evolutionary geneticist Hendrik Poinar of McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. "We can actually discuss an extinct human species—Neandertals—on a genetic level rather than strictly on morphological grounds."

Mixed marriage

The discovery of interbreeding in the nuclear genome surprised the team members. Neandertals did coexist with modern humans in Europe from 30,000 to 45,000 years ago, and perhaps in the Middle East as early as 80,000 years ago (see map, p. 681). But there was no sign of admixture in the complete Neandertal mitochondrial (mtDNA) genome or in earlier studies of other gene lineages (Science, 13 February 2009, p. 866). And manyresearchers had decided that there was no interbreeding that led to viable offspring. "We started with a very strong bias against mixture," says co-author David Reich of Harvard Medical School in Boston. Indeed, when Pääbo first learned that the Neandertal DNA tended to be more similar to European DNA than to African DNA, he thought, "Ah, it's probably just a statistical fluke." When the link persisted, he thought it was a bias in the data. So the researchers used different methods in different labs to confirm the result. "I feel confident now because three different ways of analyzing the data all come to this conclusion of admixture," says Pääbo.

The finding of interbreeding refutes the narrowest form of a long-standing model that predicts that all living humans can trace their ancestry back to a small African population that expanded and completely replaced archaic human species without any interbreeding. "It's not a pure Out-of-Africa replacement model—2% interbreeding is not trivial," says paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London, one of the chief architects of a similar model. But it's not wholesale mixing, either: "This isn't like trading wives from cave to cave; the amount of admixture is tiny," says molecular anthropologist Todd Disotell of New York University in New York City. "It's replacement with leakage."

Although the 1.3-fold coverage of the Neandertal genome is aremarkable technical feat, one-third of the genome is still murky. In a separate paper (p. 723), the team describes and successfully tests a new method for filling in gaps in the rough draft of the genome.

The team also used three methods to nail down the interbreedingresult. First, they compiled the Neandertal genome using DNA from the limb bones of three female Neandertals who lived in Vindija Cave in Croatia from 38,000 to 44,000 years ago; they confirmed parts of the genome with much smaller amounts of DNA from Neandertals who lived in Spain, Germany, and Russia.

Once they were satisfied that the composite genome was a fair representation of Neandertals from across a great part of their geographical range, researchers compared the Neandertal genome to a chimpanzee's to determine which genetic variants were primitive, ancestral forms. Then they compared the new, derived genetic variants in Neandertals to those in the complete genomes of five living humans, including a San from Southern Africa, aYoruba from West Africa, a Papua New Guinean, one Han Chinese, and one French European.

The team measured the genetic proximity of Neandertals to pairs of modern humans from different continents, first using single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), or sites in the genome where a single nucleotide differs between individuals. When they compared a Neandertal with a European and an Asian, they found that theNeandertal always shared the same amount of derived (or more recently evolved) SNPs with each of them. But when they compared a Neandertal with an African and a European, or with an African and an Asian, the Neandertal always shared more SNPs with the European or Asian than with the African. "We've shown that Neandertals are significantly more closely related to non-Africans than Africans on average," says Reich. ...

Some of those changes are likely to be neutral changes that accumulated through genetic drift, but the team also used the Neandertal data to find other evolutionary changes that were beneficial to modern humans and so rose to high frequencies in some populations. Specifically, they have identified 15 regions containing between one and 12 genes. The widest region is located on chromosome 2 and contains the gene THADA, a region that varies in modern humans and that has been associated with type 2 diabetes. Changes in this gene may have affected energy metabolism in modern humans.

But the mutations they've found so far "are all very interesting, precisely because there are so few," says Pääbo, whose team is trying to identify their function. The catalog includes changes in genes that encode proteins important for wound healing, the beating of sperm flagellum, and gene transcription (see table, above). Several of these newly evolved modern human genes encode proteins expressed in the skin, sweat glands, and innersheaths of hair roots, as well as skin pigmentation. "The fact that three of six genes carrying multiple substitutions are in skin is fascinating," says Poinar. Pääbo speculates that these changes "reflect that skin physiology has changed but how, of course, we don't know yet." ... http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/328/5979/680

Since 1960 Tax Rates Increased 30% for Middle 20% of Americans, Drop 30% for Top 0.1%, Top 400 52%

Tags: Since 1960 Tax Rates Increased 30% for Middle 20% of Americans, Drop 30% for Top 0.1%, Top 400 52%

Wealth for the Common Good by Katrina Vanden Heuvel, Editor of http://www.thenation.com/ http://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut/548904/%20wealth_for_the_common_good April 06, 2010

Taxpayers in the middle--who made more than the bottom 40 percent but less than the top 40 percent--saw an increase in their taxes, paying 15.9 percent of their incomes in total federal taxes in 1960 and 16.1 percent in 2004. Adding insult to injury, "Our children and grandchildren... will be asked to pay back, with interest, the trillions our federal government has been borrowing to offset our loss of tax revenue from wealthy taxpayers." ...

In 2007, if the top 0.1 percent of taxpayers had paid total federal taxes at the same rate as they paid in 1960, the federal treasury would have collected an additional $281.2 billion. If the top 400 had paid the same rate as it did in 1955 it would have meant an additional $47.7 billion in revenue. (The incomes of the top 400 have multiplied by 27 times--adjusted for inflation--since 1955, yet back then they paid over three times more of their incomes in federal income tax.) ...

Between 1960 to 2004, the top 0.1 percent of U.S. taxpayers have seen the share of their income paid in total federal taxes drop from 60 to 33.6 percent. The top 400 income-earners have seen the share of their income they pay in federal income tax alone plummet from 51.2 percent in 1955 to 16.6 percent in 2007. ...

Twenty-five percent of the largest US corporations had $1.1 trillion in gross sales in 2005 but paid no federal income taxes. Where is the debate on corporate tax rates and loopholes? If corporations are now people, can't they start paying taxes like people too? ...

____________________________________________

MRI and CT-Scans Can Result in Kidney Damage and Cancer Respectively

Tags: C-Scans 29,000 Cancers/yr, MRI Gadolinium Causes Kidney Failure and Organ Fibrosis

CT-Scans Causes 29,000 Cancers a Year By Liz Szabo, USA TODAY

Doctors are exploring ways to reduce the amount of radiation exposure from medical imaging tests in light of renewed concerns about the cancer risk, according to research presented at a radiology conference this week.

Medical radiation from exams such as CTs, or computed tomography, causes 29,000 new cancers a year, a report in the Archives of Internal Medicine showed in December. An accompanying article found that the scans may expose people to four times as much radiation as previously estimated. TheFood and Drug Administration is considering safeguards for CT scanners and other imaging machines.

"It's a very serious issue," says radiologist Sobhi Abadi of McGill University in Montreal, who presented his research Tuesday at a meeting of the American Roentgen Ray Society in San Diego. ... http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2010-05-05-radiation05_st_N.htm

Kidney Failure and Fibrosis of Other Organs and Sometimes Seen Externally with Gadolinium Contrast Agent Use with MRI Scans

This problem has been known for at least several years. About 5 years ago, I was horrified to hear that researchers routinely were studying their children brain responses with MRI brain scans using these contrast agents after nothing finding out that these were very large atoms which might have bad side-effects. I ran many nuclear Magnetic scans of molecules using this type of agent and took care not to get it on my skin.

Jim Kawakami, May 4, 2010, http://http://jimboguy.blogspot.com

Gadolinium is a chemical element used in image contrast agents during magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) procedures. Once injected, gadolinium-based contrast agents accumulate in abnormal tissues of the brain and body. This accumulation provides a greater contrast between normal and abnormal tissues, allowing doctors to better locate uncommon cell growths and tumors. Recently this drug has come under scrutiny by the Food and Drug Administration due to gadolinium side effects such as nephrogenic systemic fibrosis / nephrogenic fibrosing dermopathy (NSF/NFD).

FDA Black Box Warning for Gadolinium

In May, 2007 the Food and Drug Administration demanded that manufacturers of gadolinium-based contrast agents include “black box warnings” and extensive warning information in the drugs’ literature and packaging. These warnings were a result of well-documented cases linking nephrogenic systemic fibrosis / nephrogenic fibrosing dermopathy (NSF/NFD) to gadolinium exposure patients who suffer from severe kidney disorders and have been exposed to gadolinium-based contrast agents.

Nephrogenic Systemic Fibrosis / Nephrogenic Fibrosing Dermopathy (NSF/NFD)

Nephrogenic systemic fibrosis (NSF) and nephrogenic fibrosing dermopathy (NFD) is a disease-causing fibrosis of the skin and connective tissues. Sufferers may experience thickening of the skin, and fibrosis may develop in the diaphragm, thigh muscles, lower abdomen and lung vessels. Over time the debilitating effects of the disease worsen and sometimes cause death. ... http://www.levinsimeskaisergornick.com/gadolinium.html

Anti-Fructose Sugar Campaign on Facebook and YouTube Has Been Effective in Lowering Consumption 9%

Tags: Fructose Makes Us Fat and Sick, Richard Johnson, MD, End of Overeating, FDA's David Kessler, HFCS eliminated in Gatorade and Hunt's Ketchup, Princeton Fat Rats, Insatiable Appetite, Leptin Inactivated, Ghrelin keeps us hungry, ADM, Cargill, ConAgra, Corn Products Int.,

Key points not considered in the Times article or editorially omitted crucial for understanding the High Fructose Corn Sugar Problem causing the numerous health problems not only here, but throughout the developed war including Japan and China. The key to profits for the food industry is to get customers to crave their products and shut off the body's natural mechanism to stop eating.

If fats and HFCS activates our pleasure centers, we want more discussed by FDA's David Kessler in The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite. Kessler found that universities showed that dopamine is produced to give us pleasure when we eat fats and sweet things. Humans and our ancestors survived by going for calories because they did not get to eat from refrigerators. He could not pass a McDonalds without going in a picking up a burger and HFCS laced coke. His research help him not be obese.

The amount of sugar in our diet was fairly stable until the mid-1980s when it basically started to go up to reach 15% of our total calories verses 10%, a 50% increase since 1960. Because HFCS is put into everything it is hard to calculate how much we really eat. It may be much higher. Fructose with frequent consumption is able to turn off our ability to know when we should stop eating. Leptin does not penetrate our brain to tell us to stop eating. The belly Omentum organ keeps pushing out Ghrelin our hunger chemical to keep us eating.

That is why the rats in the Princeton study who started out with equal calories of cane sugar and HFCS ate more rat chow with the latter. I found that this is the case with me where I was hungry all the time when I started drinking lots of fructose laden orange juice. My weight started dropping with a zero to low fructose diet because I stopped eating as much between meals. I did not get hungry except at meal times. That is how the French stay slim. They don't eat between meals. Americans eat at all times of the day and night!

I have often quoted from the peer reviewed and published research showing danger of consuming excess fructose. The study says that we need to stop all fructose for two weeks to diminish the fructose enzymes in all the cells of our body. Fructose metabolism in the liver and in each cell in our body is killing our cells early and causing high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, and insatiable craving for food. The Sugar Fix: The High Fructose Fallout That Is Making You Fat and Sick by Richard J. Johnson, MD, with Timothy Gower.

Jim Kawakami, May 2, 2010, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com

Melanie Warner NY Times April 30, 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/business/02syrup.html?ref=general&src=me&pagewanted=all

FOR much of 2009, Michael Locascio, an executive at ConAgra Foods, watched with concern as the bad news about high-fructose corn syrup kept coming. ...

ConAgra decided to reformulate one of its biggest brands, replacing the high-fructose corn syrup [HFCS] in Hunt’s ketchup with old-fashioned sugar. This month, new bottles featuring a banner proclaiming “No high fructose corn syrup” arrive in stores. Hunt’s ketchup is among the latest in a string of major-brand products that have replaced the vilified sweetener. Gatorade, several Kraft saladdressings, Wheat Thins, Ocean Spray cranberry juice, Pepsi Throwback, Mountain Dew Throwback and the baked goods at Starbucks, to name a few, are all now made with regular sugar. ...

The Corn Refiners Association, which represents makers of the syrup like A.D.M., Cargill and Corn Products Internatiional, has spent the last six years trying to convince Americans that high-fructose corn syrup is a natural ingredient — made from corn! — that’s really no different from sugar. High-fructose corn syrup is singled out because it is still one of the biggest sources of calories in our diet and because it is made from corn — a lavishly subsidized crop that appears, in one way or another, in so much of our food.

According to the NPD Group, a market research firm, more than half of all Americans — 53 percent — now say they are concerned that high-fructose corn syrup may pose a health hazard, up from 40 percent in 2004. ... (See my comments above. Jim ) http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/business/02syrup.html?ref=general&src=me&pagewanted=all

Middle Age Brain Experience Trumps Younger Brains

Tags: Experience, Middle-aged Brains, health, Exercise, Inductive Reasoning and Problem Solving Better, Judgement, 65 Middle-Age

Use it or lose it. Our health influences both our body and our brain.

One 12 oz can of coke gives us 20 grams of Fructose ( even worse, fruit juice.) If drunk rapidly as is usually the case, the damage to our body and brain goes up exponentially. Anything above that routinely damages our body. Before going on a low fructose diet which includes carbon hydrates, protein, and fat at more modest amounts, you need two weeks of zero fructose to get rid of the excess fructose enzymes. Excess fructose produces triglycerides, bad LDL, uric acid which causes inflammation (heart attacks, strokes, and cancer spread) of our arteries and increases our blood pressure independent of salt. Since I cut down on fructose, I can eat more salty foods without boosting my blood pressure and have kept my weight down and don't get hungry between meals.

Fructose also cross-links your liver and DNA and advances aging effects.

The most obvious effect is to make Americans fat and obese and has led to an epidemic in Diabetes 2 and Kidney failures, amputations, and death. The Sugar Fix: The High-Fructose Fallout that is Making you Fat and Sick by Richard J. Johnson, MD with Timothy Gower.

Jim Kawakami, May 2, 2010, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com

NY Times Tara Parker-Pope April 30, 2010 ... Do teenage brains and middle-aged brains have much in common?

A.

The thing the middle-aged brain shares with the teenage brain is that it’s still developing. It’s not some static blob that is going inextricably downhill. Scientists found that when they watched the brains of teenagers, the brains were expanding and growing and cutting back and shaping themselves, even when the kids are 25 years old. I think for many years scientists just left it at that. They thought that from 25 on, we just get “stupider.” But that’s not true. They’ve found that during this period, the new modern middle age, we’re better at all sorts of things than we were at 20.

Q.

So what kinds of things does a middle-aged brain do better than a younger brain?

A.

Inductive reasoning and problem solving — the logical use of your brain and actually getting to solutions. We get the gist of an argument better. We’re better at sizing up a situation and reaching a creative solution. They found social expertise peaks in middle age. That’s basically sorting out the world: are you a good guy or a bad guy? Harvard has studied how people make financial judgments. It peaks, and we get the best at it in middle age. ...

So what’s happening in middle age that leads to these improvements?

A.

What we have by middle age is all sorts of connections and pathways that have been built up in our brain that help us. They know from studies that humans and animals do better if they have a little information about a situation before they encounter it. By middle age we’ve seen a lot. We’ve been there, done that. Our brains are primed to navigate the world better because they’ve been navigating the world better for longer.

There also are some other physical changes that they can see. We used to think we lost 30 percent of our brain cells as we age. But that’s not true. We keep them. That’s probably the most encouraging finding about the physical nature of our brain cells.

Q.

Is there anything you can do to keep your brain healthy and improve the deficits, like memory problems?

A.

There’s a lot of hype in this field in terms of brain improvement. I did set out to find out what actually works and what we know. What we do with our bodies has a huge impact on our brains. Our brains are more like our hearts in that everything you do for your heart is thought to be equally as good or better for your brain. Exercise is the best studied thing you can do to your brain. It increases brain volume, produces new baby brain cells in grownup brains. Even when our muscles contract, it produces growth chemicals. Using your body can help your brain. ... http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/30/the-talents-of-a-middle-aged-brain/?src=me&ref=general

Comments on Cartoons from www.gocomics.com

Tags: BP Spill Profits, Bush Stripped Regulatory Agencies, CEOs Don't Make Good Presidents, Book: The Spirit Level, Wall Street: Zero Sum Game, Why Europeans Happier?, Neo-Nazi's Supported Arizona Law, Rachel Maddow, Rubin Glass-Steagal Kaput

GoComics prevented me from saving the BP cartoon showing BP CEO holding a large bag of $6.08 billion in profits with the cost of a clean-up costing $6 million next to a burning rig. In 2003 an effort was made to pass a bill that increased safety regulations for Off-Shore Oil Rigs and remote control shut off valve and other safety devices to prevent a large spill. BP succeeded in stopping any regulation bills from passing. No problem in the Bush/Cheney Oil Cartel administration. All other large countries has these safety measures in place.

BP has beautiful ads saying how good they are, but the facts show that they ignore maintenance resulting in a large pipeline spill in Alaska and a plant explosion in Louisiana killing about ten people. They just don't do maintenance at all! Probably the reason for the explosion on the rig.

Remember that large corporations only care about profits and nothing else. The government safety organization OSHA had to be tripled in size by Obama as did the Auto Safety division that tries to keep us safe. The corporations have actuaries that determine the cost of not doing something to make it safer verses the cost of improving equipment or maintaining them. It is cheaper to not do it and pay for any lawsuits from people killed and injured becomes chump change!

Shows what happens when a corporate Supreme Court and a corporate government runs our country. We don't count!

Saw the former President of Harvard Bok talk on the Charlie Rose Show. www.charlierose.com . He was hawking his book on happiness! One thing he said right is that people really do not know what makes them happy. It is better to observe what they do and how they do it or just give them a well designed test.

Bok should have read the book "The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger" by two British researchers, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, who actually have reams of data to prove their point. It took more than ten years to compile the facts. University Presidents are picked for fund raising abilities and not their ability to make an university to prepare students to tackle the real world. The Ivy schools unfortunately instill in their students that they are very special and deserving of great economic success, but not policies that will make our country greater for all people.

Yes, the Republicans talk about high taxes to prevent more equality because it sounds good. The middle 20% have been taxed to hell in our Zero Sum Game (google) while the taxes for the rich have fallen so much that they contribute less to improve our country and take more of government help than in the past.

Because taxes are so low for the affluent and rich, we normal Americans have to pay for more things which European countries provide for all. Because these countries to different extents offer many of the necessary things, it is not necessary to keep increasing profits for companies to survive if we did not have Wall Street and its equivalent. Lets get rid of these monstrosities We are the suckers. We need VAT taxes which are retroactive to 2000. In the 1950s when they had to be good citizens, about 50% of our school costs were paid by them. Now it is less than 10% and going down as their profits increased exponentially.

This is the conservative philosophy from God Crazy Chuck Asay. He is criticizing providing aid for those who lost their jobs. I am fairly sure he just reads the contradictory stories in the Old Testament to pick up the "Right" view and ignores the teachings of Jesus!

Arizona racist law was strongly supported by The FAIR Group which has leaders and associates who hug the neo-Nazi leaders. See video http://rachel.msnbc.com Rachel was able to get the FAIR leader who behaves like Bill O'Reilly of FOX and prevented Rachel from even asking questions or give replies to his diatribes. The next day she gave up the fact check and he lied almost 100% of the time while looking as if he was insulted. He is definitely a sociopath.

I watched the hearings on C-Span 3. I could not believe how arrogant they were! Goldman Sachs did what Wall Street has always done without significant punishment such as going to jail. The Enron collapse was set up by JP Morgan Chase and other Wall Street Firms. Goldman Sachs out-did them and nearly destroyed Greece! The stock market is reacting to the crooks at Goldman Sachs. Yes, Blame the Leader, Blankfein who approved everything. The big crook at City Group was our dear former Goldman Sachs chairman Rubin! Paulson set up the derivatives trade at Goldman Sachs in about 2001 after Bush got in by stealing the election with the considerable help of the Supreme Court. Those who read the jump page of the recount by newspapers of the New York Times would know that Gore would have won by any permutation of the recount in Florida. Jeb Bush did not go to jail for fraudulently removing 100,000 registered Democrats by calling them felons!

Rubin also was the strongest player in getting rid of Glass-Steagal Act put in by President Franklin D. Roosevelt which allowed Investment banks to use depositors money to speculate.

We should tax wealth instead of income heavily! Corporations are a fascist state with one ruler. Does California want more of Bush/Cheney?

Jim Kawakami, May 01, 2010, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com