DHS Begins Test of Biometric Exit Procedures at Two U.S. Airports, the next step toward deploying biometric exit procedures for international travelers.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) today began collecting biometrics - digital fingerprints - from non-U.S. citizens departing the United States as part of a pilot program at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport. Since 2004, biometrics have helped DHS prevent the use of fraudulent documents, protect visitors from identity theft and stop thousands of criminals and immigration violators from entering the United States.

Collecting biometrics allows us to determine faster and more accurately whether non-U.S.

"The men are getting really angry and the women are a little too gleeful,” wrote New York Times columnist Lisa Belkin commenting on the overwhelming response she got for an article on a new study that found that men, too, may have a “biological clock” ticking when it comes to having what biologists would call “high quality” offspring.

I’m fascinated by the contributions of researchers outside of the mainstream— the monk whose bean garden seeded modern genetics, the bicycle mechanic brothers who built a flying machine in their garage, and all of those amateur stargazers who found supernovae in their favorite corner of the sky.

Modern indie researchers, often called "grassroots scientists" or  “citizen scientists”, make especially good food for thought when grad school is at its most frustrating. It’s comforting to remember that at its heart, science is still open to anyone with a bit of curiousity and good observation skills.

FOXP2 may be the gene that makes us human - or so the hype goes. Hyped or not, FOXP2 is rightly a focus of intense research, since it is a gene that clearly has a major effect on human speech. Mutations in FOXP2 are responsible for some rare but strange language disorders, such as the inability to learn grammatical skills or make the proper mouth/facial movements to properly articulate words. 

"Somebody's got to stand up to experts," cried the creationist head of the Texas State Board of Education, Don McLeroy. McLeroy's lament is nothing new in American culture - we love to lionize the artless hero who conquers the world through clean living and common sense, and without resorting to elitist expertise. (Although some see the pendulum swinging the other way.)

The key issue in considering competition is the question of whether changes in resource availability or mates would alter the confrontation. If the answer is negative, then no competition can be said to have occurred. The mere existence of confrontation does not necessarily denote competition.



So in considering competition the definition will be focused specifically on the conditions whereby two individuals engage each other in some confrontation for a specific and separate resource. To that end, one of the individuals will end up acquiring that resource while the other is either eliminated or goes elsewhere.



However, in a general sense, it is useful to consider first how competition actually manifests itself.

Many parasites depend on their host’s behavior in order to successfully reproduce. Instead of leaving this behavior to chance, some parasites actively manipulate their hosts to produce the desired behavior. For example, after infecting a rat, the taxoplasmosa gondii parasite needs to be transferred to a cat’s belly to reproduce. To do this, the sneaky parasite rewires its rat host to actively seek the smell of cat urine. When the rat gets eaten, the parasite completes its necessary transfer.

Cordyceps fungi infect insects and steer them to higher ground where, when the insect dies and the fungus bursts forth, the fungus spores will be more effectively dispersed by wind.

VIB (the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology) researchers linked to K.U.Leuven and Harvard University say they have shown that stretches of DNA previously believed to be useless 'junk' DNA play a vital role in the evolution of our genome. Their findings were that unstable pieces of junk DNA help tuning gene activity and enable organisms to quickly adapt to changes in their environments.

Junk DNA in two paragraphs

"Most people do not realize that all our genes only comprise about 3% of the total human genome. The rest is basically one large black box,"  says Kevin Verstrepen, heading the research team. "Why do we have this DNA, what is it doing?"

Oxidative stress has been linked to aging, cancer and other diseases in humans. Paradoxically, researchers have suggested that small exposure to oxidative conditions may actually offer protection from acute doses. Now, scientists at the University of California, San Diego, have discovered the gene responsible for this effect. Their study, published in PLoS Genetics on May 29, explains the underlying mechanism of the process that prevents cellular damage by reactive oxygen species (ROS).

Scientists at the University of Leeds say they have uncovered a previously unknown giant volcanic eruption.   And it's no ordinary eruption, they say - it led to global mass extinction 260 million years ago. 

The eruption in the Emeishan province of south-west China unleashed around half a million cubic kilometres of lava, covering an area 5 times the size of Wales, and wiping out marine life around the world.