Tracing humanity's African ancestry may mean rewriting 'out of Africa' dates

Dec. 13, 2012 ? New research by a University of Alberta archeologist may lead to a rethinking of how, when and from where our ancestors left Africa.

U of A researcher and anthropology chair Pamela Willoughby's explorations in the Iringa region of southern Tanzania yielded fossils and other evidence that records the beginnings of our own species, Homo sapiens. Her research, recently published in the journal Quaternary International, may be key to answering questions about early human occupation and the migration out of Africa about 60,000 to 50,000 years ago, which led to modern humans colonizing the globe.

From two sites, Mlambalasi and nearby Magubike, she and members of her team, the Iringa Region Archaeological Project, uncovered artifacts that outline continuous human occupation between modern times and at least 200,000 years ago, including during a late Ice Age period when a near extinction-level event, or "genetic bottleneck," likely occurred.

Now, Willoughby and her team are working with people in the region to develop this area for ecotourism, to assist the region economically and create incentives to protect its archeological history.

"Some of these sites have signs that people were using them starting around 300,000 years ago. In fact, they're still being used today," she said. "But the idea that you have such ancient human occupation preserved in some of these places is pretty remarkable."

Magubike: Home to a modern Stone Age family?

Willoughby says one of the fascinating things about Magubike is the presence of a large rock shelter with an intact overhanging roof. The excavations yielded unprecedented ancient artifacts and fossils from under this roof. Samples from the site date from the earliest stages of the middle Stone Age to the Iron Age. The earlier deposits include human teeth and artifacts such as animal bones, shells and thousands of flaked stone tools.

The Iron Age finds can be dated using radiocarbon, but the older deposits must go through more specialized processes, such as electron spin resonance, to determine their age. Other parts of the Magubike rock shelter, excavated in 2006 and 2008, include occupations from after the middle Stone Age. Taken together, this information could be crucial to tracking the evolutionary development of the inhabitants.

"What's important about the whole sequence is that we may have a continuous record of human occupation," said Willoughby. "If we do -- and we can prove it through these special dating techniques -- then we have a place people lived in over the bottleneck."

Rugged, hilly terrain may have been key to survival

The team made similar findings at Mlambalasi, about 20 kilometres from Magubike. Among the findings at this site was a fragmentary human skeleton that probably dates to the late Pleistocene Ice Age -- after the out-of-Africa expansion but at the end of the bottleneck period. The bottleneck theory explains what geneticists have found by studying the mitochondrial DNA of living people -- that all non-Africans are descended from one lineage of people who left Africa about 50,000 years ago.

Reconstructions of past environments through pollen and other archeological records in Iringa suggest that people abandoned the lowland, tropical and coastal areas during that period but remained in the highlands, where vegetation has remained mostly unchanged over the last 50,000 years. Those who moved to higher ground may have found what is likely one of the few places that facilitated their survival and forced their adaptation. Further testing will determine whether these findings point to a clearer link to our African ancestors -- a find Willoughby says could put that region of Tanzania on many archeologists' radar.

"It was only about 20 years ago that people recognized that modern Homo sapiens actually had an African ancestry, and everyone was focused on looking at early Homo sapiens in Europe who appeared around 40,000 years ago," she said. "But we now know that as far as back as around 200,000 years ago, Africa was inhabited by people who were already physically exactly like us today or really close to being the same as us. All of a sudden, it's not Europe in this time period that's really important, it's Africa."

Engaging community yields co-operation, opportunity

Along with its scientific significance, Willoughby's work may be a linchpin to potential economic growth for the region. Since 2005, when a local cultural officer showed her the sites, she has been sharing information about her research with local citizens, schools and government -- opening up opportunities for more research and co-operation. She keeps the region informed of the team's findings through posters distributed around Iringa, and has asked for and accepted assistance from local scholars. Now the community is also looking for her help in establishing the historic sites as a tourist attraction that will benefit the region.

Willoughby says she feels fortunate to have the support of the Tanzanian people. She tells people it is a shared history she is uncovering, something she is honoured to be able to do.

"They're telling me, 'You're putting Iringa on the map,'" she said. "As long as they keep letting me work there, and keep letting the people working with me work there, we'll be happy."

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Alberta, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Pamela R. Willoughby. The Middle and Later Stone Age in the Iringa Region of southern Tanzania. Quaternary International, 2012; 270: 103 DOI: 10.1016/j.quaint.2012.02.021

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/PCzrFgNqzPQ/121213142319.htm

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Roanoke Museum Debuts Virginia Aviation Gallery | Leisure Group ...

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Improve your business' sales with posters | Minuteman Press

Poster printing in Witbank has long been considered an extremely effective way to communicate with customers. If used correctly, your sales could increase as a direct result of effective poster marketing campaigns. Posters can be used to introduce your product or service to a new area, or simply inform your consumers of what exactly it is you do or offer.

The importance of a novel marketing campaign cannot be emphasised enough. There is so much mass-spamming junk mail these days that consumers have become numb to most unsolicited mail. Keeping this in mind, you have to come up with an attractive and effective marketing campaign in order to receive the most benefit from your poster marketing.

Improve your business? sales

Here are a few tips on how to improve your sales with poster marketing campaigns:

• Have clear communication goals: This is a great tool for maintaining and building on your relationships with your customers. Posters can carry over messages to your clients, inform them of specific promotions or simply act as an introductory tool that introduces your company or service to new consumers. Decide what your communication goals are and design your posters according.
• Have a clear distribution plan: You need to make sure your posters reach your target audience. Having a clear distribution plan is key to the success of your campaign.

There are many companies specialising in poster printing in Witbank. Work only with professionals that will offer you the best deal possible.

?

Witbank News

Source: http://www.minutemanpress.co.za/news/index.php/mpumalanga/witbank/poster-printing-in-witbank/

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Office no longer an iOS must-have, unless you're Microsoft

In the early days of the iPhone and later the iPad, pundits and consumers alike questioned how useful the devices could be without Microsoft's Office productivity suite. For many, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook are synonymous with business and getting things done. The iPhone launched over five years ago, and the iPad is coming up on three years, but in all that time they've yet to have an official Microsoft Office app suite, and with more than 100 million units sold each, sales have clearly suffered tremendously.

That's not to say that a solid word processor, spreadsheet cruncher, and presentation building app aren't essential for the platform - they are, and that's exactly why Apple built Pages, Numbers, and Keynote for iOS. Apple also sells the three iWork apps for $29.97 combined. That's ninety dollars less than the lowest available tier of Microsoft Office for PC or Mac, and that tier is intended for "home and student" use. It's another eighty bucks if you want a version meant for use in your business. The iOS iWork trifecta, however, continues to be less than thirty dollars, no matter what you intend to use it for.

To be fair, there's a fairly large and vocal contingent that insists they need Office. Numbers still isn't as robust as Excel (as any accountant will tell you), for one. But there's also a large institutional memory barrier to be overcome. Business believe that in order to conduct business, they need Office. That barrier is slowly coming down, one business at a time, with more and more picking up iPads in lieu of PCs.

With the iPad approaching its third birthday after completely turning the idea of what a tablet could be on its head while simultaneously and singlehandedly obliterating the netbook market, Microsoft finds themselves in an interesting predicament. Millions upon millions of iPad users have gotten by without Office, and they've flourished without Office. More and more, people are beginning to realize that they don't need Office to crunch numbers or draft documents or create presentations. With their email and contacts and calendar already in the cloud, they don't need Outlook.

Microsoft let a golden opportunity pass with iOS. For years and years they've managed to convince the overwhelming majority of Windows users that they need to have Office, and those customers have overwhelmingly ponied up for a license. Microsoft has profited mightily from this impression, with even Mac switchers being willing to plop down the extra cash to purchase a copy of Office for their new OS X machines.

But on iOS they have yet to have that opportunity. Hundreds of millions of iOS devices are out there, with not a single installation of Office in the public. Now, with Microsoft finally ready to roll out Office onto iOS, they've run into loggerheads with Apple over how much of a cut Apple should be able to take for sales made through the app. Specifically, Apple is keen to take a 30% cut of the sale price of any app sold through the App Store and 30% of any purchase made in that app using Apple's App Store backend - subscriptions included. The rules are the rules.

Microsoft's much-rumored Office for iOS is likely to take the form of an Office 365 subscription, which if purchased through Apple would result in a 30% commission for Apple into perpetuity, even if the subscriber switches to another platform (unless they opt to shut down their account and start from scratch - unlikely to say the least). Unsurprisingly, Apple's not budging on this. Not only have they made a lot of money off this model and stand to make even more off of Microsoft's work, but they don't need it.

In the early days of iOS, those questions of how well the platform could succeed without Office support were loud and ongoing. Had Microsoft launched Office on the iPhone and iPad early on, they could have furthered the impression that Office was a must-have for anybody serious about anything, even on iOS. But they let years pass, and now Microsoft's flagship applications aren't so must-have anymore and Apple isn't overly eager to accommodate them. It's easy to imagine that four years ago when preparing to launch the iPhone App Store Apple may have been more willing to negotiate with Microsoft to get flagship apps like Word and Excel on the smartphone. But today? Apple's doing just fine without them.

Apple doesn't need Office, and if they can't get past the issue of Apple's cut of revenue, then Apple will happily move on without Office. Apple is a "my way or the highway" company, and that shouldn't surprise anybody. Would Apple get additional App Store income and sell even more iPhones and iPads with Office available? Sure. But that's not going to happen if Microsoft isn't willing to accept Apple's terms.

One could argue, on the other hand, that Microsoft needs iOS. While the "Maybe I don't need Office?" effect is one that is obviously of great concern to Microsoft's cash cow software, the potential of that realization for potential customers leads to further realizations: "Maybe I don't need a PC at all."

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is betting the entire company on Windows 8, Windows RT, and Windows Phone. They've finally recognized that mobility is the future and they've built two-and-a-half operating systems that embrace that future. Windows RT and Windows Phone both come out of the box with Microsoft Office, an implicit admission that Office is a selling point for customers.

Office is synonymous with Windows in the minds of many, and once they realize that they don't necessarily need Office, then they don't need Windows either. By letting the world's most popular smartphone and tablet go for all these years without Office and giving Apple long enough to cement the stronger negotiating position, Microsoft's sacrificed the opportunity to breed another generation of users who absolutely, unequivocally, must have Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Outlook. And that could very well be Microsoft's undoing.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/zo59uLYro3k/story01.htm

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Taliban popular where US fought biggest battle

MARJAH, Afghanistan (AP) ? Nearly three years after U.S.-led forces launched the biggest operation of the war to clear insurgents, foster economic growth and set a model for the rest of Afghanistan, angry residents of Helmand province say they are too afraid to go out after dark because of marauding bands of thieves.

And during the day, they say corrupt police and government officials bully them into paying bribes. After 11 years of war, many here long for a return of the Taliban. They say that under the Taliban, who routinely punished thieves by cutting off a hand, they were at least safe from crime and corruption.

"If you had a box of cash on your head, you could go to the farthest part of Marjah and no one would take it from you, even at night," said Maulvi Daoud, who runs a cubbyhole sized-shop in the town of Marjah. "Today you bring your motorcycle in front of your shop and it will be gone. Now the situation is that you go on the road and they are standing in police and army uniform with weapons and they can take your money."

It was in the town of Marjah in early 2010 that some 15,000 NATO and Afghan forces waged the war's biggest battle. They not only fought the Taliban with weapons, they promised to bring good governance to Marjah and the rest of the southern province of Helmand ? and demonstrate to the residents the advantages of shunning the militants.

But it appears the flaw in the plan was with the quality of Afghans chosen by President Hamid Karzai to govern and police the area after most of the fighting ended. And that adds to growing doubts about the entire country's future after foreign troops withdraw by the end of 2014.

Despite military claims of gains across the province and an overall drop in violence, Marjah residents told The Associated Press that NATO's counterinsurgency experiment has failed. A bleak picture also emerges from anecdotal evidence collected from dozens of interviews with residents elsewhere in the province, some from the most violent districts.

Many claim the U.S.-funded local police, a type of locally sanctioned militia, routinely demand bribes and threaten to accuse those who do not comply of being members of the Taliban. Good governance never came to Marjah, they say.

In villages of sun-baked mud homes, at crowded bus stops and in local tea houses where residents sit cross-legged on plastic-covered tables drinking tea and eating off communal plates, people scoffed at claims of security and development. They heaped criticism on the Afghan government and officials, accusing them of stealing billions of dollars in aid money meant for the people and on an international community that they said ignored their needs and pandered to a corrupt administration.

Daoud, the Marjah shop owner, said there was more security under the country's Taliban regime that was ousted by the U.S.-led invasion in late 2001.

"They were never cruel to us and the one difference was security. It was better during the Taliban," he said.

His partner in the rickety shop along Marjah's chaotic one-street bazaar, Mohammed Haider, said poppy farmers who planted substitute crops such as cotton are losing money because they cannot sell their harvests. He predicted poppy production would double when foreign soldiers leave in 2014.

At a bus stop in Helmand's provincial capital of Lashkar Gah, residents scrambled for dilapidated old buses and cars to go to parts of Helmand. Hamidullah, who like many Afghans uses only one name, was waiting for a bus to Sangin district ? the scene of some of the most violent fighting between the Taliban and British and U.S. forces.

Like the majority of those at the stop, he wanted foreign forces to leave Afghanistan.

"All these foreign soldiers are here and it is totally insecure everywhere in Helmand," Hamidullah said. "For the time that they are in Afghanistan we will always have war."

Several of the men scrambling on top the packed buses and jamming themselves into the back of cars seemed to growl at the presence of foreigners in their midst. A single question: "What is the situation like in Helmand today?" brought a cacophony of answers. Many of the voices sounded angry, some sounded weary and a few angry-looking men walked away.

"We are completely destroyed today," said Hamidullah.

"The situation is getting worse and worse," shouted a voice in the crowd. Another yelled: "There is no security because of the foreigners." And from a deeply wrinkled elderly man whose voice seemed both angry and sad: "If the foreigners are out of Afghanistan, all the problems will be solved. Are our lives any better?"

Analysts who know Helmand say a corrupt government poses one of the biggest hurdles to stability, alienating the local population and driving them into the hands of the Taliban.

The province is strategically important because of a massive poppy production that is financing the insurgency and fueling criminal activity. While some success has been achieved at getting farmers to plant substitute crops, Helmand is still one of Afghanistan's largest opium-producing provinces, often blamed on anti-government sentiment and collusion between corrupt government officials and the Taliban.

The NATO-led coalition, known as the International Security Assistance Force, claims there are tangible gains against the Taliban in Helmand and neighboring Kandahar province.

"While insurgent activity remains problematic in several districts, primarily in northern Helmand and western Kandahar, data from the battle space shows a marked decrease in overall enemy activity," ISAF spokesman Jamie Graybeal said recently.

Despite a drop of 8 percent in militant attacks from January to October compared to the same period last year, Helmand and neighboring Nimroz province accounted for 32 percent of all such attacks reported across the country from October 2011 to October this year, according to ISAF.

Ryan Evans, a research fellow at the U.S.-based Center for National Policy, called Helmand the "most dangerous and violent" of Afghanistan's 34 provinces.

"From 2010 to early 2012, one of five ISAF soldiers was killed in this one province ? Helmand. And the province has since taken more lives and limbs than any other province," said Evans, who worked with U.S. and British troops in Helmand during 2010 and 2011.

The larger question, of course, is whether what's happening in Helmand is a harbinger of what the rest of Afghanistan will look like after the departure of the international troops.

A report released last month by the British Parliament's International Development Committee offered grim statistics.

Afghanistan continues to be one of the poorest countries in the world, with the average person earning less than one dollar a day despite $32 billion in foreign investment.

The country has also tumbled in corruption ratings assembled by Transparency International. Afghanistan was ranked 117 out of 158 countries in 2005, then slid to 180 out of 183 nations last year. The scandal-ridden Kabul Bank milked millions of dollars from Afghans' savings.

Some Afghans believe their countrymen are responsible for the current state of affairs.

Haji Khalil who moved his family from Marjah to Lashkar Gah during the 2010 offensive, blamed Afghans for the spike in thefts and lawlessness since the defeat of the Taliban.

"During the Taliban no one would steal because we knew the punishment, but when they left everyone began to steal," Khalil said.

"We became worse after the Taliban," he said. "The problem is with us."

___

Kathy Gannon is AP's Special Regional Correspondent for Afghanistan and Pakistan. She can be followed on www.twitter.com/kathygannon

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/taliban-popular-where-us-fought-biggest-battle-161235459.html

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FreedomPop Debuts In-Home Wireless Broadband With 1GB Free, Sees Nearly 50% Paid Conversions On Mobile

FreedomPop, the wireless broadband company that started out offering free mobile data plans with 500MB of bandwidth for free, today began offering its Hub Burst modem for pre-order with an early 2013 expected arrival date. The modem uses Clearwire's WiMAX network to provide customers with in-home broadband connections at speeds it claims exceed DSL connections, and comes with 1GB per month of free service.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/9pH10_PZSlA/

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Defiant North Korea launches long-range rocket

North Korea launched a long-range rocket on Wednesday in defiance of its critics abroad ? and claimed that the mission successfully put a satellite in orbit.

U.S. officials told NBC News that it appeared the North Koreans had indeed launched an object, possibly a satellite, into space.

In a statement, the White House said the rocket launch was a highly provocative act that threatens regional security and violates U.N. resolutions. A spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he "deplores" the launch.

Ban said it was "all the more regrettable because it defies the unified and strong call from the international community." He added that he was "in close touch with the government concerned."

Video: Anger, dismay at North Korea rocket launch (on this page)

Missile warning systems detected the launch at 7:49 p.m. ET, and initial reports indicate that the first stage fell into the Yellow Sea. The second stage was predicted to fall into the Philippine Sea, according to a statement issued by the North American Aerospace Defense Command.

Pyongyang's official KCNA news agency said earlier that the rocket was fired from the Sohae Satellite Launch Center on the secretive country's west coast, and said that the Kwangmyongsong weather satellite went into orbit as planned.

North Korea said Wednesday's launch was an attempt to place a satellite into orbit. But U.S. officials say it is a thinly veiled attempt to test a three-stage ballistic missile that would be capable of carrying a nuclear warhead as far as the West Coast of the United States.

Russia added its voice to the condemnation of the launch and also called on other nations to refrain from further escalating tensions.

"The new rocket launch carried out by North Korea flaunts the opinion of the international community, including calls from the Russian side," it said.

China, North Korea's only major diplomatic ally, had urged it not to go ahead with the launch, and expressed regret on Wednesday that it had taken place.

Launch successful?
This is North Korea's fifth test launch of a long-range rocket or ballistic missile. U.S. officials consider the four previous launches failures. The last rocket was launched in April, but it fell apart shortly after being fired.

Initial word of the launch came from media outlets in Seoul and Tokyo, and a spokesman at South Korea's Defense Ministry confirmed to NBC News that the launch had taken place. Later, a Defense Ministry representative told reporters that the launch "looked successful, but whether it has been really successful needs more time to determine."

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After the launch, South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak responded by calling an emergency security meeting. The liftoff came as a shock to many South Koreans because they thought it would not take place until after South Korea's presidential election on Dec. 19. The Defense Ministry said the border between North and South was calm and stable as usual.

Japan's chief cabinet secretary, Osamu Fujimura, said North Korea's rocket flew over Okinawa at 10:01 a.m. local time. He could not confirm whether any debris fell on Japanese territory. "The Japanese government regards this launch as an act compromising the peace and stability of the region, including Japan," Fujimura said.

Fujimura said the launch was "completely unacceptable," but he reassured the public that the Japanese government was doing everything possible to ensure national security. "Please go about your daily lives calmly," he said during a briefing.

Video: North Korea launches rocket (on this page)

Japan's NHK television network reported that the rocket's second stage crashed into the sea off the coast of the Philippines as planned, minutes after passing over Okinawa. After separating from the second stage, the rocket's third stage was designed to carry its payload all the way to orbit.

'Stakes are high'
North Korea says the rocket launch is aimed purely at putting its Kwangmyongsong satellite into a pole-to-pole orbit. But critics fear that the mission's true purpose is to test technologies for sending a nuclear warhead to targets as far away as the U.S. West Coast.

The U.S. State Department issued a statement saying that Washington noted the launch and was monitoring the situation. Earlier this month, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said "a North Korean 'satellite' launch would be a highly provocative act that threatens peace and security in the region." She said such a launch would violate U.N. Security Council resolutions.

North Korea is banned from conducting missile and nuclear tests, under the terms of U.N. sanctions imposed after a series of nuclear weapons tests in 2006 and 2009.

Wednesday's launch follows up on an attempt in April that ended in failure just minutes after liftoff.

This is the second North Korean test launch since President Kim Jong-un came to power following his father's death a year ago.

U.S. official told NBC News that Kim is under pressure to launch a success.

"He knows the stakes are high either way, and it is really what he does next that matters," the official said.

This report includes information from NBC News' Jim Miklaszewski, Julie Yoo in Seoul and Arata Yamamoto in Tokyo, as well as Reuters and The Associated Press.

? 2012 NBCNews.com? Reprints

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/50167891/ns/technology_and_science-space/

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