RP400 Cracking the Case

RP400 Cracking the Case
It is China in the year 1247. Song Ci has just written Washing Away of Wrongs, a book that contains the first written accounts of forensic science— the type of science that is used to answer legal questions. The book tells of an investigator who travels to a remote village in order to solve a murder mystery. After examining the murder victim's wound, he tries out various weapons on animal corpses to identify what kind of weapon the murderer used. He then gets the villagers to bring their scythes to the center of town. Flies start to accumulate on one of the scythes because it still has trace amounts of blood on it. The villager who owns the scythe breaks down and confesses to the murder.
Hundreds of years pass. It's late nineteenth century France. Alexandre Lacassagne conducts a study into the relationship between bullets and guns. His work lays the foundation for the modern practice of ballistic fingerprinting, which is how investigators match bullets to the gun that fired them.
Next, Argentine policeman Juan Vucetich shocks the world in 1892 when he uses a suspect's fingerprints to convict her for a murder. Mr. Vucetich's technique for classifying fingerprints would eventually spread to police departments all over the world.
Another breakthrough occurs in Germany about 15 years later. Margarethe Filbert's murderer is captured after investigators use soil samples taken from the murderer's shoes to verify his movements on the day that the crime took place.
In 1987, a British man named Colin Pitchfork becomes the first criminal to be convicted using DNA fingerprinting evidence. Investigators believe that a 17-year-old would have been wrongly convicted for the double murders if not for the DNA evidence proving he was innocent.
Nowadays, police forces the world over have taken these past breakthroughs and integrated them in order to facilitate police work. For example, American government agencies have created vast databases containing DNA, fingerprint, paint type, tire tread, and weapon and bullet manufacturing information.
It seems that the life of a criminal has gotten a lot harder since the days of just having to wash off your scythe thoroughly.

RP399 Loose Your Arrows

 RP399 Loose Your Arrows!

Archery is the practice of firing an arrow into a target, living or otherwise, using a bow. The origins of archery possibly date back as far as 50,000 B.C., a theory supported by the discovery of prehistoric stone arrowheads in Africa. Since its invention, archery has been used primarily in hunting and war. The Mongol armies of Genghis Khan conquered Asia with their devastating mounted archers, and many gods and heroes of myth and legend are depicted as archers. The Greek demigod Hercules, the Chinese hero Houyi (who shot down nine of the ten suns), and the English folk hero Robin Hood are just some of the many archers celebrated in popular legends.
Despite the strong start, bows gradually lost their prominence as the long-range weapon of choice after the rapid development of portable firearms in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Soldiers could be trained to use guns much faster, and their ability to pierce armor easily caused the bow to become quickly obsolete. As such, modern archery is treated as a competitive sport rather than a combative skill, with participants firing at targets placed at set distances, then scored depending on their accuracy.
Commonly, an archer stands with his or her side facing the target with both feet at shoulder-width apart, providing a stable base for the shooter. The arrow is then loaded into the bow in a process called "nocking the arrow." The nock is the small groove at the end of the arrow that the string of the bow fits into. The bow is then raised, and the arrow is drawn back in one smooth motion. The left arm should be locked in a straight position, pointing toward the target, while the right arm, which draws the bow, should be bent with the elbow at shoulder height and in line with the arrow. If the drawing arm is too far back, the arrow will not fly straight on release.
You may be surprised to find out that the world record for the furthest arrow ever shot using a handheld, pulled bow is an astonishing 1,222.01 meters—that's over a kilometer! Not bad for just wood, string, and an arm, don't you think?

RP398 Apricot Kernels: the Cancer Buster

 RP398 Apricot Kernels: the Cancer Buster?

In the war against cancer, allies can come from the most unlikely places. Take apricot kernels for example. These soft, bitter-tasting seeds are found by breaking open the hard pit of an apricot. While they may taste awful, some people are convinced that they can cure cancer.
The secret to the kernel's success is that it's high in amygdalin. Amygdalin contains two toxic substances, benzaldehyde and cyanide. Usually, these poisons are bound to other molecules so they can't hurt us. But when cancer cells show up, it's another story completely. Cancer cells contain an enzyme that unlocks the poison in amygdalin. That's bad news for the cancer cell. Therefore, amygdalin is kind of like a freelance killer that floats around your body looking for cancer cells to assassinate.
Most research pertaining to apricot kernels was originally conducted by an American biochemist named Ernst Krebs Jr. in the 1950s. Dr. Krebs claimed that people could remain cancer free if they just ate fifteen apricot kernels a day.
In 1996, an Australian named Paul Reid took Dr. Krebs's advice to heart. Paul had been diagnosed with a form of blood cancer that wasn't treatable using conventional radiation or chemotherapy. Instead of losing heart, Paul decided to explore alternative methods of treatment. He started a strict organic diet and ate 30 apricot kernels every day. Years later, Paul beat his cancer and went on to live well beyond the five years that his original diagnosis gave him.
Paul Reid isn't alone. There are many people who swear that alternative treatments like apricot kernels can cure cancer. However, there is no scientific evidence that proves apricot kernels are effective. In addition, the United Kingdom Food Standards Agency has ruled that a mere two apricot kernels a day is the maximum safe dose. Under these regulations, the 30 that Paul ate daily to treat his cancer would be considered a serious risk of cyanide poisoning.
More studies need to be conducted before we' ll know for sure whether or not apricot kernels are the next wonder drug in the fight against cancer.

RP397 The Hobbit

 RP397 The Hobbit

It lived over 12,000 years ago and was only the size of a three-year-old human child, and yet it hunted dwarf elephants weighing 1,000 kg and lived alongside giant dog-sized rats and killer lizards. Homo floresiensis, nicknamed the “Hobbit” because of its small size, lived on the island of Flores, Indonesia, and may have been the last species of early humans to interact with modern humans, Homo sapiens.
The species is probably descended from Homo erectus, an ancestor it shared with modern humans, which arrived on Flores around one million years ago. Hundreds of thousands of years later, Homo erectus had evolved into the tiny Hobbit probably because of a phenomenon known as insular dwarfism. On small islands, survival favors those who need a lower energy intake from the limited food available. Animals therefore tend to develop smaller body sizes.
The species was discovered in 2003 by archaeologists excavating a cave. They found a female skeleton, one meter tall, buried in the sediment covering the cave floor. Originally, they mistook it for that of a child. Later, eight additional skeletons were found in the cave along with stone tools and dwarf elephant bones.
Homo floresiensis differed from modern humans not only in height. Their arms were longer, and they had large feet and teeth, though not much of a chin. Their brains, however, were far smaller than ours and smaller even than the average chimpanzee's. In spite of this, they used sophisticated tools, fire, and probably even had language, evidenced by their complex group hunting strategies.
Most evidence points to Homo floresiensis becoming extinct about 12,000 years ago after a volcanic eruption destroyed many of the island's inhabitants. Modern human remains have been found dating from around 11,000 years ago, but not before, so it is unclear whether the two species ever mingled.
However, Flores's modern-day inhabitants have legends that tell of small, hairy humanlike creatures who lived in caves and spoke a strange primitive language. These creatures were thought to be alive as recent as the nineteenth century, leading archaeologists to infer that perhaps they were the surviving descendants of Homo floresiensis, and may still be living in the poorly explored forests of Indonesia.

RP396 Part of the Herd

 RP396 Part of the Herd

It is said that there's safety in numbers.
Fish collect in huge schools, and zebras come together in large groups, blending into an uncountable mass to confuse predators. This kind of herd behavior, while apparently beneficial to the whole group, actually has a more selfish motive. Though a flock of birds may look majestic and graceful, seemingly moving as if with one mind, each individual animal is in fact looking out for itself and itself alone. Each animal is trying to get as close to the center of the herd as possible, effectively using its fellows as living shields. It is of course the unfortunate individual on the outer edges that inevitably gets eaten. Herd behavior is also seen in humans, with similarly selfish motives and potentially destructive results.
Crashes on the stock market are a result of human herd behavior. Panicked investors try to sell their stock before others, resulting in a financial disaster caused by individual fear. People have been trampled to death in supermarkets during frantic shopping seasons in a bid to get that last-in-stock product.
Being a part of a huge crowd can cause people to behave in ways that they wouldn't otherwise behave. An individual becomes less aware of the true effects of his or her actions, depending on raw emotion rather than reason and looking to the majority for signals on how to proceed. This kind of behavior has been labeled mob mentality and has led to acts of violence and destruction that people would not usually be willing to perform.
An experiment by a British illusionist recently explored the dark side of herd behavior. He set up a fake TV show for which the audience members were asked to vote for what should happen to an unsuspecting member of the public. They were given choices between something nice and something unpleasant, and as the show progressed the audience increasingly voted for the unpleasant option, resulting in the victim having his property destroyed, being told he had been fired, and in the end being kidnapped. This was done to show how uncharacteristically people can behave when they are an anonymous part of a crowd.

RP395 Troubled Waters

 RP395 Troubled Waters

There is an environmental crisis that is brewing deep within the rivers, lakes, and oceans of our planet. It's called eutrophication, and it's what happens when excessive amounts of nitrates or phosphates are added to a body of water.
Eutrophication can ravage entire food chains in underwater ecosystems because it alters the delicate balance of life at its most basic level. Simple plant life like algae thrives in water that has undergone eutrophication. In fact, algae and phytoplankton grow so rapidly that nothing else can survive. As the algae grows and expands, it suck s all of the oxygen out of the water, suffocating more complicated forms of plant life. Consequently, fish and other aquatic life forms lose their primary source of food and starve to death.
As if that wasn't scary enough, scientists have also discovered that eutrophication is increasing acidity in the world's oceans. A recent study by the University of Georgia found that eutrophication increases the amount of carbon dioxide that oceans are able to absorb from the atmosphere. It concluded that the continued eutrophication of coastal waters could lead to the collapse of several species of crabs, snails, clams, and coral.
Eutrophication can occur in freshwater systems just as easily as it can in the open ocean. Surveys have shown that 54 percent of the lakes in Asia are eutrophic, as well as 53 percent in Europe and 48 percent in North America. Some of the world's largest and most well-known lakes are also considered to be eutrophic, such as Lake Erie in the United States and Tai Lake in China. Eutrophic water can be dangerous to drink. Thus, the more eutrophication there is in freshwater lakes, the less drinking water there will be for a global population that is already starting to get thirsty.
Though eutrophication can occur naturally, this crisis is the direct result of human activity. Farming in particular is thought to be a main reason why eutrophication is increasing. Most fertilizers contain either phosphates or nitrates, the two chemicals that cause eutrophication. According to some estimates, over 600,000,000 tonnes of phosphates were added to the earth's surface between 1950 and 1995. With numbers like these, it's not hard to see why eutrophication is becoming so widespread.

RP394 Humanity's First Words

 RP394 Humanity's First Words

The origin of language is a puzzle that has baffled theorists for hundreds of years. How did early humans go from producing animal-like howls and grunts to expressing abstract ideas and passing on complex skills? So far there has been no universally agreed upon conclusion, and the puzzle has been called "the hardest problem in science."
There are two main approaches to tackling the problem. The first assumes that language gradually evolved from preexisting systems used by our primate ancestors, such as mating calls or warning signals. The second is that language suddenly came out of nowhere, caused by a random mutation that reorganized the brain and emerged almost perfectly formed in a very short period of time.
Some scientists suggest that a basic form of language existed with early humans such as Homo ergaster (1.8 million years ago). This basic language was somewhere between a primate form of communication and modern language. It was probably mainly made up of commands and suggestions and also depended heavily on gestures.
Studies of chimpanzees have suggested that the emergence of language is linked to our ability to trust each other within a community. Chimps use a variety of sounds and calls to signal different meanings, but they also try to use these signals to deceive their fellows. Therefore, any sound whose meaning could be easily faked is often ignored and treated as a deception. It is only in a community in which the members trust each other enough to allow signals that express things other than involuntary natural or emotional reactions that language can flourish.
However, a phenomenon in Nicaragua has lent credibility to the theory that language may have appeared relatively suddenly. In 1980, an institute for the deaf was created in Nicaragua. The school focused on lip-reading, but the children, when allowed to play together, began creating their own basic sign language. The next generation of children built on this basic language, and it became more and more complex. This suggested that humans have a kind of innate grammar, and that it was possibly a mutation in the brain of early humans that gave rise to this remarkable ability to form sophisticated languages from scratch.