Megalara Garuda: Giant wasp found in Indonesia

A new and unusual wasp species has been discovered during an expedition to the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.

It was independently also found in the insect collections of the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, where it was awaiting discovery since the 1930s, when it had been collected on Sulawesi.

The new species is pitch-black, has an enormous body size (the male measures about two-and-a-half-inches long), and its males have long, sickle-shaped jaws.

The findings have now been described in the open access journal ZooKeys.

The species belongs into the digger wasp family, which is a diverse group of wasps with several thousands of species known from all over the world.

Female digger wasps search for other insects as prey for their young and paralyze the prey by stinging it. Prey selection is often species specific, but the prey of the new species is unknown.

With its unusual body size and the male’s jaws, the new species differs from all known related digger wasps, so much so that it was placed in a new genus of its own, Megalara.

The new genus name is a combination of the Greek Mega, meaning large, and the ending of Dalara, a related wasp genus.

Lynn Kimsey (UC Davis) and Michael Ohl (Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin), who discovered the giant wasp simultaneously and have worked on it in collaboration, named the species after Garuda, the national symbol of Indonesia, a part-human, part-eagle mythical creature known as the King of Birds in Hindu mythology.

Since this species has never been observed alive, nothing is known about its biology or behaviour. The males of Megalara garuda are distinctly larger than the females, and bear very long jaws.

As can be deduced from other insects with large jaws, it is likely that the males hold the females with it during copulation. It is also possible that they use the jaws for defense.

Christopher Stringer: Rethinking "Out Of Africa"

CHRISTOPHER STRINGER: is one of the world's foremost paleoanthropologists.

He is a founder and most powerful advocate of the leading theory concerning our evolution: Recent African Origin or "Out of Africa".

He has worked at The Natural History Museum, London since 1973, collaborating with scientists across all the disciplines of paleoanthropology, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society, with over 200 papers and books to his name.

"At the moment, I'm looking again at the whole question of a recent African origin for modern humans—the leading idea over the last 20 years.

This argues that we had a recent African origin, that we came out of Africa, and that we replaced all of the other human forms that were outside of Africa.

But we're having to re-evaluate that now because genetic data suggest that the modern humans who came out of Africa about 60,000 years ago probably interbred with Neanderthals, first of all, and then some of them later on interbred with another group of people called the Denisovans, over in south eastern Asia.

If this is so, then we are not purely of recent African origin. We're mostly of recent African origin, but there was contact with these other so-called species.

We're having to re-evaluate the Out-of-Africa theory, and we're having to re-evaluate the species concepts we apply, because in one view of thinking, species should be self-contained units.

They don't interbreed with other species. However, for me, the whole idea of Neanderthals as a different species is really a recognition of their separate evolutionary history—the fact that we can show that they evolved through time in a particular direction, distinct from modern humans, and they separated maybe 400,000 years ago from our lineage

Morphologically we can distinguish a relatively complete Neanderthal fossil from any recent human.

You could argue that they're an extreme variant of Homo sapiens, but a very different 'race' from anyone alive today, or, as I prefer to argue, they're a separate species, with a separate evolutionary history.

I've never actually said that that meant they were completely reproductively isolated from us. We know that many closely related species in primates, for example, can interbreed.

Various species of monkey can interbreed and have fertile offspring, and so can our closest living relatives, Bonobos and common chimpanzees.

In my view the Neanderthals were closely related and probably potentially able to interbreed with modern humans, but until recently I considered that while there could have been interbreeding forty or fifty thousand years ago, it was on such a small scale that all trace of it vanished in the intervening years.

It now seems from Neanderthal genome studies that that was not so. We do have a bit of Neanderthal in us, you and I, it's a small amount, but certainly not negligible.

Does that mean Neanderthals are a different species or does it mean we should include them in Homo sapiens?

Well, they are still only a small part of our makeup now, reflecting something like a 2.5% input of their DNA. Physically, however, they went extinct about 30,000 years ago.

They had distinct behaviour and they evolved under different conditions from us, so I still think it's useful to keep them as a separate species, even if we remember that that doesn't necessarily preclude interbreeding."

Read more of this fascinating article here at EDGE: Rethinking 'Out of Africa' - Includes a Video and audio transcript.

China Institute for the Examination of Foetal Remains

A visitor looks at foetus specimens at the "Mysterious Life" museum of Dalian Hoffen Bio-Technique in Dalian, Liaoning province.

Founded by Dr Sui Hongjin in 2004, the company produces, preserves and exhibits plastinated biotic specimens of human and animals.

The specimens, including whole bodies as well as individual organs and transparent body slices, have been meticulously dissected and preserved to allow visitors to view muscular, nervous, circulatory, respiratory and digestive systems. According to Sui, the bodies are legally collected from medical universities.

Picture: REUTERS/Sheng Li

New Brain Structure Explains Willful Blindness

The article in today's NYT by Nancy Koehn titled “Why Red Flags Can Go Unnoticed” was chiefly concerned with the effects of willful blindness in humans. It did not answer the primary question: WHY do people ignore clear warnings of impending problems.

Bruce Nappi, in his new novel LIARS! provides a profound explanation: two human species coexist on earth today, and one of them is not able to broadly understand or apply logical reasoning, and no, it's not males and females!

The new discovery came when he first determined what creates consciousness in the human brain. Step one was recognising a new physiological brain model that revises Sigmund Freud's Id, ego and super-ego brain structure.

The second was sorting out what makes humans different from animals. In fact, contrary to common belief, that difference does not occur at the homo sapiens level but further back down the evolutionary tree. Differences in awareness for humans and animals are described and labeled A2 and A1 respectively, but, the characteristics listed for humans (A2) raised a big problem: they didn’t describe all known human abilities.

He categorised the additional abilities with a new label A3. The implication was both amazing and unsettling! Both A3 and A2 had human traits, but they were as distinct as A2 (humans) and A1 (animals). The solution required that each be considered a different species - amazing for sure.

However, if the discovery was true, it would have huge ramifications for human social structures. He tested the theory against more and more of the great social questions. The new A3 model produced so many logical answers that he is convinced he has stumbled onto a profound discovery.

New Brain Structure Explains Willful Blindness In Humans And Why Red Flags Go Unnoticed

Stop NASA's Plans to Expose Monkeys to Radiation | PETA.org

Stop NASA's Plans to Expose Monkeys to Radiation PETA.org

For many people, NASA represents cutting-edge science and grandiose achievements like sending a human to the moon. Unfortunately, future NASA plans are not so inspiring.

NASA has announced that it plans to fund a $1.75 million project in which up to 30 squirrel monkeys will be exposed to a large, harmful dose of radiation and then be locked in steel cages without any companionship.

They will be forced to endure years of behavioural tests to measure the inevitable devastation that the radiation causes to their brains and bodies, which would likely include brain damage, skin inflammation, blindness, various types of cancer, including brain tumors, and premature death.

Because of drastic biological differences between species, radiation experiments on monkeys won't tell scientists anything about how astronauts will react to deep space. Luckily, modern in vitro and clinical research methods are available and can be used to study the affects of space radiation on the human body.

In the past, NASA has halted plans to use monkeys in space experiments when the public spoke out against this cruelty, and animals need your support once again. Please contact NASA officials and politely ask them to permanently halt plans to fund radiation experiments using monkeys and to instead direct their funds to modern and humane methods of scientific inquiry.

Hong Kong merchants openly selling shark fins from endangered species

They found 21 percent of the Hong Kong fins came from endangered scalloped hammerhead shark stocks in the western Atlantic.

High-tech forensic methods show that some shark fins on sale in Hong Kong markets come from endangered shark populations, proving the need for stronger trade regulations, a new study said Tuesday.

US scientists using a type of DNA testing said they were able to trace the geographic origin of shark fins on sale in Hong Kong and show that endangered species are being targeted by the trade.

The group is calling for the March 2010 meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to draw up trade regulations to protect hammerhead and other shark populations.

"This trade has operated for years and years under the cover of darkness," said Demian Chapman, a lead author of the research who is based at Stony Brook University's Institute for Ocean Conservation Science, near New York.

"Our work shows that the scalloped hammerhead fin trade is sourced from all over the globe and so must be globally tracked and managed."

The group's research, to be published Tuesday in the Endangered Species Research journal, describes how the team analyzed fingernail-sized DNA samples from 62 scalloped hammerhead shark fins they purchased in a Hong Kong market.

The researchers used a technique known as "genetic stock identification" or GSI to examine each fin's mitochondrial DNA sequence.

The process is based on a DNA test developed in 2005 to distinguish between similar types of hammerhead shark and has been used to trace the geographic origin of some fish, sea turtles and marine mammals.

The study was the first time the technique had been applied to sharks and allowed the researchers to trace the geographic origin of 57 of the 62 purchased fins.

They found 21 percent of the Hong Kong fins came from endangered scalloped hammerhead shark stocks in the western Atlantic.

"The fact that scalloped hammerhead shark DNA shows strong population DNA signatures means that we can trace the geographic origin of most of their fins sold at markets," said Mahmood Shivji, a senior author of the research.

"From a broader perspective, this type of DNA forensic testing of fins will be an incredibly useful tool to prioritize areas for conservation and ensure sharks aren't wiped out in particular regions by excessive fishing," added Shivji, who heads the Guy Harvey Research Institute and Save Our Seas Shark Center at Nova Southeastern University in Florida.