Sandyenglish’s NewsCloud Journal

It is a measure of the profound decay of American democracy that when the president of the United States welcomed the Roman Catholic pontiff to Washington last week, a major concern was that the representative of a 2,000-year-old religious institution, steeped in reaction and hostility to science and human progress, might seem to criticize the US government from the left.

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Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have uncovered the first clues about the ancient origins of a mother’s intricate lifeline to her unborn baby, the placenta, which delivers oxygen and nutrients critical to the baby’s health.

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A shape comparison of the most complete fossil femur (thigh bone) of one of the earliest known pre-humans, or hominins, with the femora of living apes, modern humans and other fossils, indicates the earliest form of bipedalism occurred at least six million years ago and persisted for at least four million years. William Jungers, Ph.D., of Stony Brook University, and Brian Richmond, Ph.D., of George Washington University, say their finding indicates that the fossil belongs to very early human ancestors, and that upright walking is one of the first human characteristics to appear in our lineage, right after the split between human and chimpanzee lineages. Their findings are published in the March 21 issue of the journal Science.

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Long before tourists arrived in the Bahamas, ancient visitors took up residence in this archipelago off Florida’s coast and left remains offering stark evidence that the arrival of humans can permanently change — and eliminate — life on what had been isolated islands, says a University of Florida researcher.

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Inhaled depleted uranium (DU) oxide aerosols are recognised as a distinct human health hazard and DU has been suggested to be responsible in part for illness in both military and civilian populations that may have been exposed.

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Greenhouse gases likely accounted for over half of the widespread warmth across the continental United States in 2006, according to a new study that will be published 5 September in Geophysical Research Letters, a publication of the American Geophysical Union.

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Two fossils discovered in northern Kenya directly challenge the established view that there was a linear progression from apes to humans.

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A detailed map that pinpoints the location of every atom in a 450-million-year-old resurrected protein reveals the precise evolutionary steps needed to create the molecule’s modern version, according to researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Oregon.

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The Jewish catacombs under Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini’s Rome villa are being restored and readied for visitors. “It’s going to take several months to prepare the site and make it safe,” said the head of Italy’s Jewish Cultural Heritage Foundation, Bruno Orvieto.

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Preliminary results from DNA tests carried out on a mummy believed to be Queen Hatshepsut is expected to support the claim by Egyptian authorities that the remains are indeed those of Egypt’s most powerful female ruler.

Egyptologists in Cairo announced last month that a tooth found in a wooden box associated with Hatshepsut exactly fitted the jaw socket and broken root of the unidentified mummy.

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