Study seeks to prove theory humans still evolving

OTTAWA — Rare evidence of the long-held belief that humans are still evolving has been unearthed in the parish records of a French-Canadian island on the Saint Lawrence seaway, researchers say.

Ile aux Coudres is located 80 kilometers (50 miles) northeast of Quebec City. Between 1720 and 1773, 30 families settled there and the population reached 1,585 people by the 1950s.

Poring over church registers containing detailed records of dates of births, marriages and deaths, researchers found the age of women when they had their first child fell from about 26 to 22 years over 140 years from 1799 to just before 1940.

After discounting environmental and social factors, they concluded this substantial change from one generation to the next “largely occurred at the genetic level.”

“It is often claimed that modern humans have stopped evolving because cultural and technological advancements have annihilated natural selection,” says the study led by Emmanuel Milot at the University of Quebec in Montreal.

“Our study supports the idea that humans are still evolving,” it concludes. “It also demonstrates that micro-evolution is detectable over just a few generations in humans.”

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Hacking Crisis Edges Closer to British PM Cameron

David Cameron will be forced to explain damaging new revelations today that have dragged him deeper into the phone-hacking scandal.

It emerged last night that Neil Wallis, the former News of the World deputy editor who was arrested last week, worked for the Conservative Party before last year's election. He gave "informal" advice to Andy Coulson, his former boss at the NOTW, who resigned from the paper over the hacking affair but was later appointed Mr Cameron's director of communications.

In a second blow to the Prime Minister, it was revealed that his chief of staff, Ed Llewellyn, had appealed to Scotland Yard not to mention hacking during a Downing Street briefing last September, four months before Mr Coulson quit his No 10 post. Labour said the disclosure showed Mr Cameron could not do his job properly because of the cloud cast by the hacking controversy.

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Tavis Smiley on Morning Joe: Bush lied us into Iraq

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Separating fact from fiction on U.S. economic myths

With the recent Iowa straw poll and President Obama’s bus tour, Americans are hearing a cacophony of arguments about the wobbly economy. The federal stimulus package passed in 2009 was either a deficit-busting failure full of wasteful projects or an unparalleled rescue that would have been more successful if it had only been bigger. Taxes are either stifling or the lowest they’ve ever been. America needs to invest in infrastructure, or “infrastructure” is merely a euphemism for more government spending. So, here’s our guide to the most prevalent economic myths.

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Anti-Wall Street protests go global

Tax the super-rich or riots will rage in 2012

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — What a year. Rage in London, Egypt, Athens, Damascus. All real. Just a metaphor in the new “Planet of the Apes” film? No, much more. Warning: More rage is dead ahead. Across our planet a new generation is filled with rage. High unemployment. Raging inflation. Dreams lost. Hope gone. While the super -rich get richer and richer.

Listen to that hissing: The fuse is rapidly burning, warning us. Wake up before the rage explodes in your face. This firestorm is endangering America’s future. From forces outside, yes. But far more deadly, from deep within our collective psyche. We have lost our moral compass. We are self-destructing.

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Republicans will not be re-elected in 2012

There has been various circumstantial evidence that the public’s dissatisfaction with the performance of Congress, particularly during the debt ceiling debate, could threaten the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. Disapproval ratings for the Congress are at record highs, as are disapproval ratings for the Republican Party. Other polls show record numbers of Americans saying that their representative should not be re-elected, that most members of Congress should not be re-elected, or both.

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Why Twitter is obsolete

Twitter boasts 200 million users and 350 billion tweets per day, and it's a ubiquitous reference on mainstream TV. Visit Twitter today, and it's a hive of frenetic activity. Millions of people rely on the service for news, commentary, blog updates and social interaction. Twitter is about to close an $800 million funding round, which values the company at about $8 billion.

Suddenly, however, the service has been rendered obsolete by Google's new Google+ service, and also by the company's failure to capitalize on its five-year window of opportunity to innovate its way to indispensability.

It's only a matter of time before Twitter becomes a ghost town. Here's why.

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'We are dying the way all imperiums die'

Project Icarus: Demonstration of Fusion Pulse Propulsion

Project Icarus is a theoretical design study of an interstellar starship. This movie illustrates how a Fusion Pulse Propulsion system works, which was the engine used for the 1970s Project Daedalus. Fusion releases, on average, about a million times from energy than traditional chemical rockets, and so would be perfectly suited for interstellar propulsion. To learn more, visit http://www.icarusinterstellar.org

From Grunting To Gabbing: Why Humans Can Talk

Most of us do it every day without even thinking about it, yet talking is a uniquely human ability. Not only do humans have evolved brains that process and produce language and syntax, but we also can make a range of sounds and tones that we use to form hundreds of thousands of words.

To make these sounds — and talk — humans use the same basic apparatus that chimps have: lungs, throat, voice box, tongue and lips. But we're the ones singing opera and talking on the phone. That is because over thousands of years, humans have evolved a longer throat and smaller mouth better suited for shaping sound.

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Air Force Launches Secretive Space Plane

The Air Force launched a secretive space plane into orbit Thursday night from Cape Canaveral, Florida. And they’re not sure when it’s returning to Earth.

Perched atop an Atlas V rocket, the Air Force’s unmanned and reusable X-37B made its first flight after a decade in development shrouded in mystery; most of the mission goals remain unknown to the public.

The Air Force has fended off statements calling the X-37B a space weapon, or a space-based drone to be used for spying or delivering weapons from orbit. In a conference call with reporters, deputy undersecretary for the Air Force for space programs Gary Payton acknowledged much of the current mission is classified. But perhaps the most intriguing answer came when he was asked by a reporter wanting to cover the landing as to when the X-37B would be making its way back to the planet.

“In all honesty, we don’t know when it’s coming back for sure,” Payton said.

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NASA and GM Take a Giant Leap Forward in Robotics

High School Inventors Design for the Future: 2010

This past weekend, high school students from all over the country gathered at California's NASA Ames Research Center to meet their brilliant peers, present their groundbreaking research -- and chat with interested venture capitalists on the side.

The potential investors hovering in the background are one indication that the Conrad Spirit of Innovation Awards Summit, founded in honor of former astronaut Pete Conrad, isn't your average science fair. Instead of just trophies, winners are presented with grant money they can use to turn their projects into commercial reality (top winners in each category receive $5,000; all finalists receive $1,000 in matching grants).

This year's competition included entries in four different categories: Aerospace, Renewable Energy, Green Building, and Space Nutrition. Here are the grand prize winners.

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Agency hopes to get a flying car airborne by 2015

DARPA didn't reveal much at first about its "Transformer TX" program aimed at developing a flying car for the military. But now the full proposal has been published, and shows that the Pentagon agency hopes to get a prototype airborne by 2015, The Register reports.

The mad scientists want a vertical-takeoff vehicle that handles like an off-road-capable SUV on the ground, and can cruise like a light single-engine aircraft at altitudes of up to 10,000 feet.

Size limits for the design come to about two nose-to-tail Hummers, The Register calculates. That's roomy enough for four fully-equipped troops, or one stretcher and one medic.

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Chinese Government to Build 215-MPH Bullet Trains in California

The US has looked to China for help building railroads ever since Chinese laborers laid down the tracks for the Transcontinental Railroad in the 1860s. Now, California hopes a partnership with the Middle Kingdom can do for 21st Century high-speed rail what that far less pleasant 19th Century "partnership" did for the Transcontinental Railroad. America's most populous state and the world's most populous country have already signed preliminary agreements on the Chinese government building bullet trains on the West Coast, with Governor Schwarzenegger hoping to visit China later this year to further develop the project.

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Let's keep comment as free as possible

I believe that "unregulated political comment online helps the democratic process" – Lord knows something should be done. Only 13% of the public trust politicians to tell the truth. Seven people in 10 believe the present system of governing Britain needs improvement. The democratic process in this country needs help.

Unregulated political comment online – and everywhere else for that matter – helps the democratic process.

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Obama: Health care bill is a 'first step'

As difficult as it was, passing the health care bill is only "a critical first step" in overhauling the system so that it "works for all Americans," President Obama told NBC's Today show.

"It is not going to be the only thing," Obama told Matt Lauer. "We are still going to have adjustments that have to be made to further reduce costs."

Continued

Large Hadron Collider – Live!

The waiting is over. The world's largest, most powerful particle accelerator goes into action this morning. The hunt for new particles, forces and dimensions starts here.

Good morning and welcome to the Guardian's live coverage of the Large Hadron Collider's second launch

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How robots think: an introduction

A future full of helpful robots, quietly going about their business and assisting humans in thousands of small ways, is one of technology's most long-deferred promises. Only recently have robots started to achieve the kind of sophistication and ubiquity that computing's pioneers originally envisioned. The military has hundreds of UAVs blanketing the skies above Iraq and Afghanistan, and Roombas are vacuuming living rooms across the country. At the bleeding edge, there's the DARPA Grand Challenge in 2005. This grueling, 140-mile, no-humans-allowed race through the desert showcased full-sized, completely autonomous robot cars that could navigate across rugged desert terrain, avoiding rocks and cliffs and cacti in a race for a $2 million cash prize. The follow-on 2007 Urban Challenge went even further, with the robotic competitors required to drive alongside humans on crowded roads, recognizing and avoiding other cars and following the rules of the road. Suddenly, the robotic future doesn't look so far off.

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