| The Long and Winding Road: DNA Evidence for Human Migration; Plus July Issue Highlights Gary Stix discusses his July Scientific American cover article on DNA evidence for the history of human migration. And editor in chief, John Rennie, talks about the neuroscience of dance, the quantum cosmos and Rubik's Cubes. Plus, we'll test your knowledge of some recent science in the news. Web sites mentioned on this episode include www.sciam.com/sciammagPodcast Transcription [More] rss.sciam.com |
Hunting for a Mammoth in the Yukon [Slide Show] This week, SciAm frequent contributor Charles Q. Choi spends his days in the Yukon on an expedition with researchers from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Their goal: to recover intact DNA from mammoths, which once roamed the tundra but went extinct some 11,000 years ago.Slide Show: Mammoth Excavation Photos [More] rss.sciam.com |
Ancient Whales Birthed On Land? [The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.]Expectant moms can have very different ideas when it comes to where they plan to have their babies. Some women even choose to give birth in a warm tub of water. But 50 million years ago, whales, it seems, crawled out of the ocean to give birth on land. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Reporter Judith Miller released from prison On this day in 2005, New York Times reporter Judith Miller is released from a federal detention center in Alexandria, Virginia, after agreeing to testify in the investigation into the leaking of the identity of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame. Miller had been behind bars since July 6, 2005, for refusing to reveal a confidential source and testify before a grand jury that was looking into the so-called Plame Affair. She decided to testify after the source she had been protecting, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, signed a waiver giving her permission to speak.The Plame Affair dates back to a July 6, 2003 op-ed piece for the New York Times written by former U.S. diplomat Joseph Wilson, Plame's husband. In it, Wilson questioned the Bush Administration's reasons for going to war in Iraq. Later that month, on July 14, undercover agent Valerie Plame's identity was revealed in a newspaper column by Robert Novak. Wilson's claim that the disclosure was retaliation by the White House for his op-ed piece sparked an investigation in December 2003 led by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. A 1982 law made it illegal to reveal information about a covert agent to anyone not authorized to receive such classified information.Fitzgerald interviewed President George W. Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials, along with various journalists. Although Miller hadn't written an article about Plame, she did meet with Libby shortly after Wilson's op-ed piece was published and Fitzgerald believed Miller had information that was relevant to his investigation.After 85 days in jail, Miller was released and testified before a grand jury that prior to the Novak column, she had several discussions with Scooter Libby in which he talked about Plame. On November 9 of that same year, Miller announced her retirement from the Times after a 28-year career with the newspaper.On March 6, 2007, Scooter Libby was convicted of obstruction of justice, perjury and making false statements to federal investigators in the Plame investigation. In June, he was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison and fined $250,000. However, one month later, on July 2, President George W. Bush commuted Libby's prison term before the ex-White House aide served any time. history.com |
Hollywood icon Rock Hudson dies of AIDS On this day in 1985, actor Rock Hudson, 59, becomes the first major U.S. celebrity to die of complications from AIDS. Hudson's death raised public awareness of the epidemic, which until that time had been ignored by many in the mainstream as a "gay plague."Hudson, born Leroy Harold Scherer Jr., on November 17, 1925, in Winnetka, Illinois, was a Hollywood heartthrob whose career in movies and TV spanned nearly three decades. With leading-man good looks, Hudson starred in numerous dramas and romantic comedies in the 1950s and 60s, including Magnificent Obsession, Giant and Pillow Talk. In the 1970s, he found success on the small screen with such series as McMillan and Wife. To protect his macho image, Hudson's off-screen life as a gay man was kept secret from the public.In 1984, while working on the TV show Dynasty, Hudson was diagnosed with AIDS. On July 25, 1985, he publicly acknowledged he had the disease at a hospital in Paris, where he had gone to seek treatment. The news that Hudson, an international icon, had AIDS focused worldwide attention on the disease and helped change public perceptions of it.The first cases of AIDS were reported in 1981 and the earliest victims were gay men who often faced public hostility and discrimination. As scientists and health care officials called for funding to combat the disease, they were largely ignored by President Ronald Reagan and his administration. Rock Hudson was a friend of Reagan's and his death was said to have changed the president's view of the disease. However, Reagan was criticized for not addressing the issue of AIDS in a major public speech until 1987; by that time, more than 20,000 Americans had already died of the disease and it had spread to over 100 countries. By 2006, the AIDS virus had killed 25 million people worldwide and infected 40 million others. history.com |