Science Saturday?

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The sample of fossilized feces that was radiocarbon dated to 12,300 BC and contains preserved 14,000-year-old human protein and DNA.

Evidence Supports Earlier Date for People in North America
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD, The New York Times, April 4, 2008

The discovery was one for the pages of an archaeology classic, something with a title like “Gods, Graves and Scat.”

Some people, coming into new country long ago, stopped at a cave for years perhaps, or only a day’s rest. Time enough, in any event, for them to relieve themselves — you know, answer nature’s call, if they bothered with euphemism. The cave was their in-house outhouse.

Exploring Paisley Caves in the Cascade Range of Oregon, archaeologists have found a scattering of human coprolites, or fossil feces. The specimens preserved 14,000-year-old human protein and DNA, which the discoverers said was the strongest evidence yet of the earliest people living in North America.



Other archaeologists agreed that the findings established more firmly than before the presence of people on the continent at least 1,000 years before the well-known Clovis people, previously thought to be the first Americans. Recent research at sites in Florida and Wisconsin also appears to support the earlier arrivals, and a campsite in Chile indicates migration deep into South America by 14,600 years ago.

The find was published online Thursday by the journal Science, www.sciencexpress.org.

The cave explorations in 2002 and 2003 were led by Dennis L. Jenkins, an archaeologist at the University of Oregon. The primary DNA analysis was conducted by Eske Willerslev and M. Thomas P. Gilbert of the Center for Ancient Genetics at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.

Dr. Willerslev said in a statement, “Other pre-Clovis sites have been claimed, but no human DNA has been obtained, mostly because no human organic material had been recovered.”

The researchers reported that 14 coprolites from the cave sediments were identified as being from humans. The laboratory studies showed that six samples had genetic signatures associated with American Indians and not shared by other groups.

Michael R. Waters, an archaeologist at Texas A&M University who was not part of the team, said, “Paisley Caves adds to the growing body of archaeological evidence that people were here prior to Clovis.”

The Clovis culture, named for the town in New Mexico where some of the first artifacts were uncovered, began sometime between 13,300 and 12,000 years ago, according to a new study in which Dr. Waters participated. Traces of its distinctive fluted projectile points have been found throughout the Americas.

Few artifacts were found at the cave, the discovery team reported, which suggested that the occupants’ visits were brief. This also made it impossible, the scientists said, to determine “the cultural and technological association of the early site occupants and their relationship to the later Clovis technology.”

Another archaeologist not affiliated with the research team, Tom D. Dillehay of Vanderbilt University, noted that some questions persisted over the dearth of artifacts at the site and a possibility of serious contamination of the coprolites. “The cave needs to be understood a little better,” Dr. Dillehay said.

But Dr. Dillehay, whose excavations at Monte Verde in Chile also contradict Clovis-first ideas, added, “If the coprolites are indeed human, this is exciting information, and the dates fall in the same period as Monte Verde.”

An article being published in the journal reports that a few Clovis-first partisans cited the presence of animal DNA in three coprolite samples as grounds for skepticism of the findings. But the geneticists on the team explained that human proteins found in several samples and further tests ruling out significant contamination gave them confidence in their conclusions.

The mitochondrial DNA extracted from coprolites linked the cave dwellers to two genetic groups of early Americans that arose 14,000 to 18,000 years ago, the scientists said. Other research indicates that these people from Eastern Asia most likely migrated in several waves across the Bering land bridge and down the West Coast of the Americas.

So more than old bones, stone tools and hearths can establish the presence of early people making themselves at home. Like the animals they hunted, they also left their scat.





For Seattle Shoppers, Paper or Plastic Could Come with a ‘Green Fee’
By WILLIAM YARDLEY, The New York Times, April 5, 2008

SEATTLE — The cashier’s chorus has long fallen on deaf ears among the sustainability set here. Paper or plastic? “Neither” is of course the greenest answer.

Soon, however, “neither” may be the cheapest answer, too.



Under a proposal announced this week by Mayor Greg Nickels, shoppers in Seattle would pay a 20-cent “green fee” beginning next year for every new paper or plastic bag they use to carry away goods from grocery, drug or convenience stories. They would be encouraged to bring their own bags for carrying home purchases.

Foam food containers would also be banned under the proposal.

The goal, Mr. Nickels said, is to reduce waste, reduce production of paper and plastic and encourage still more people here to be faithful to their bumper-sticker gospel: “Think Globally, Act Locally.” (The proposal also appears likely to burnish Mr. Nickels’s credentials as one of the nation’s greenest mayors.)

“This combination of environmental and economic stewardship will help ensure a truly sustainable city,” Mayor Nickels said.

Richard Conlin, the president of the City Council, who was present at the announcement, said that council members would most likely take up the proposal in June or July and that he expected it to pass easily. Other cities have banned foam containers, but Seattle would appear to be the first in the United States to impose fees on both kinds of shopping bags. Last year, San Francisco banned plastic grocery bags outright, but paper bags can still be used, and without a fee.

Seattle, often just as liberal but less loopy than San Francisco, determined that the production and shipping costs of paper bags made them “actually worse for the planet” than plastic bags, according to a recent local study.

The city said a similar program in Ireland helped reduce the use of disposable bags by 90 percent. The city could expect to raise $10 million annually through the fee, with $1 million going to buy and distribute free reusable bags to each household in the city.

“This proposal,” the mayor said, “is all about forming new habits.”

So there was Kristy Guise the day after the announcement, forming her new habit at the mammoth Fred Meyer grocery and department store in the Ballard neighborhood.

Word of the proposed fee prompted Ms. Guise to take three large reusable shopping bags into the store, but she still needed two plastic bags to hold everything she bought. She figured she would have needed a dozen plastic bags to carry the whole load. Next year that could cost her $2.40 beyond her grocery bill.

“It made me think twice,” said Ms. Guise, 35. “I’ve usually got one or two kids in tow, and I usually just forget.”

Ms. Guise conceded that she was particularly interested in the issue because she worked at a company that sells bags to retail stores. Her efforts to reduce her own bag consumption make for “a bit of a conflict of interest,” she said.

Mr. Conlin, the Council president, said making people pay for bags rather than banning them would encourage people to be aware of what they consume and could help the city avoid potential challenges to its authority to ban products. He dismissed the suggestion that the public dependency on disposable bags was somehow beyond rehabilitation.

“Plastic bags were only invented like three decades ago,” Mr. Conlin said. “It’s not like this was a pioneer tradition.”





Health Database Was Set Up to Ignore ‘Abortion’
By ROBERT PEAR, The New York Times, April 5, 2008

WASHINGTON — Johns Hopkins University said Friday that it had programmed its computers to ignore the word “abortion” in searches of a large, publicly financed database of information on reproductive health after federal officials raised questions about two articles in the database. The dean of the Public Health School lifted the restrictions after learning of them.



A spokesman for the school, Timothy M. Parsons, said the restrictions were enforced starting in February.

Johns Hopkins manages the population database known as Popline with money from the Agency for International Development.

Popline is the world’s largest database on reproductive health, with more than 360,000 records and articles on family planning, fertility and sexually transmitted diseases.

Mr. Parsons said the development agency had expressed concern after finding “two articles about abortion advocacy” in the database. The articles, he said, did not fit database criteria and were removed.

Employees who manage the database instructed their computers to ignore the word “abortion” as a search term.

After learning of the restrictions on Friday, the dean, Dr. Michael J. Klag, said: “I could not disagree more strongly with this decision, and I have directed that the Popline administrators restore ‘abortion’ as a search term immediately. I will also launch an inquiry to determine why this change occurred.”

The school is named for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, a Hopkins alumnus who has given millions of dollars to the university and the school.

Dr. Klag said the school was “dedicated to the advancement and dissemination of knowledge, and not its restriction.”

Ted Miller, a spokesman for Naral Pro-Choice America, an abortion rights group, said: “The public has a right to know why someone would censor relevant medical information. The Bush administration has politicized science as part of an ideological agenda. So it’s important to know if that occurred here.”

A woman answering telephones at the Agency for International Development said officials were not available because they were at a retreat.

Librarians at the Medical Center of the University of California, San Francisco, expressed concern about the restrictions this week after they had difficulty retrieving articles from Popline.

In an e-mail response on Tuesday, Johns Hopkins told the librarians that “abortion” was no longer a valid search term.

“We recently made all abortion terms stop words,” Debra L. Dickson, a Popline manager, wrote. “As a federally funded project, we decided this was best for now.”

Ms. Dickson suggested that instead of using “abortion,” librarians could use other terms like “fertility control, postconception” or “pregnancy, unwanted.”

Gail L. Sorrough, director of medical library services at the medical center in San Francisco, said it was absurd to restrict searches using “a perfectly good noun such as ‘abortion.’ ”

Under the rule, Popline ignored the word “abortion,” just as it ignores terms like “a” and “the.” Ms. Sorrough and a colleague, Gloria Won, reported their experience on an electronic mailing list, and librarians protested the restrictions.

“We sent this out on a listserv, and it just exploded,” Ms. Sorrough said. “Eliminating this term essentially blocks access to reports in the database and ultimately to information about abortion. Unwanted pregnancy is not a synonym for abortion.”

Items on Popline include articles on “demand for abortion by unmarried teenagers” and federal judges’ abortion rulings.

Colin Moynihan contributed reporting.