Based on decades of cutting-edge research, the 15,000-square-foot Hall of Human Origins offers visitors an immersive, interactive journey through 6 million years of human evolution spelling out how defining characteristics of the human species have evolved during millions of years in response to a changing world.

The post New Hall of Human Origins points to environmental change as major force in evolution of hominins appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

A. sediba was discovered in 2008 in the Malapa Cave at the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site located outside Johannesburg.

The post Skeletal casts of early hominin ancestor from Africa donated to National Museum of Natural History appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

One of the primary features that distinguish hominids such as chimpanzees, gorillas and humans from the rest of the animal kingdom are uniquely dexterous hands. […]

The post Did ripening fruit help hominids develop complex hands? appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

"Mother In Charge" film documents the work of a groundbreaking anti-violence activist being recognized nationwide.

Delaware County Sheriff's deputies say they have solved the 36-year-old murder of a teen.

A criminal investigation is underway after the death of an inmate at the Arizona State Prison Complex in Yuma on Thursday.

The lawsuit echoed allegations made by other former employees claiming Mark Roe spoke and acted inappropriately while serving as the county’s top prosecutor from 2009 until his retirement in 2018.

Prosecutor Adam Cornell likened the decision by Sheriff Adam Fortney to publicly question and refuse to enforce the stay-home order "to yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater."

The man, who was taken into custody on Wednesday night, is in "critical, but medically stable" condition at an Everett hospital.

The man, who was taken into custody on Wednesday night, is in "critical, but medically stable" condition at an Everett hospital.

Prosecutor Adam Cornell likened the decision by Sheriff Adam Fortney to publicly question and refuse to enforce the stay-home order "to yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater."

Prosecutor Adam Cornell likened the decision by Sheriff Adam Fortney to publicly question and refuse to enforce the stay-home order "to yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater."

Prosecutor Adam Cornell likened the decision by Sheriff Adam Fortney to publicly question and refuse to enforce the stay-home order "to yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater."

Prosecutor Adam Cornell likened the decision by Sheriff Adam Fortney to publicly question and refuse to enforce the stay-home order "to yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater."

In the wake of the racehorse slaughter scandal, calls are growing for greater financial support for rehoming thoroughbreds and an enforceable standard of care.

This gaggle of geese is beloved by Instagrammers, but the local council says the abandoned birds are destroying the environment and must be rehomed.

MORNING BRIEFING: The father of missing Belgian backpacker Theo Hayez will front the media today as homicide detectives travel to Byron Bay to assist in the investigation, while some of the residents of Mascot Towers will be permitted to return to their homes to pick up belongings.

The shared horror of losing family members to homicide has united two women in their quest to form a unique peer support group in Western Australia.

A day after the discovery of a body, confirmed as Comancheros bikie Shane Ross, police divers search for a gun and declare a double homicide investigation linked to another man's death on Friday night.

From payroll to fax to a homicide suspect. Where do these spammers get their inspiration from?

Police are investigating the Monday night shooting death of a man at an Aurora gas station and convenience store.

Police are investigating the Monday night shooting death of a man at an Aurora gas station and convenience store.

Police said the shooting happened Friday night near the intersection of East 46th Street and Shadeland Avenue.

A statistical analysis of Indianapolis' homicides shows that young black males are four times more likely than others to be victims of homicide.

Indianapolis Metropolitan police are investigating after a man was found shot on the city's northwest side Thursday night.

Late Tuesday night, police officers in Visalia, a San Joaquin Valley city about 40 miles southeast of Fresno, responded to a report of shots fired at a high school.

Two people were killed and another two were wounded Wednesday in four shootings in South Los Angeles, law enforcement authorities said.

A heavy police presence outside a Kitchener apartment building late Friday afternoon has been linked to a homicide investigation by Windsor Police.

A 15-year-old boy is charged with first degree murder in connection to the January murder of Manny Akol in Centretown.

Homicide is the third leading cause of mortality in general population youth aged 15 to 29 years. Groups at greatest risk for early violent death (racial/ethnic minorities, males, poor persons, and urban youth) are overrepresented in the juvenile justice system.

We examined rates of and risk factors for firearm homicide and other causes of death in delinquents 16 years after detention. Our study analyzes gender differences; compares Hispanics, African Americans, and non-Hispanic whites; and includes a representative sample of delinquents. (Read the full article)

Antibiotic resistance is a global concern; however, data on antibiotic-resistant Ureaplasma spp. and Mycoplasma hominis are limited in comparison to similar data on other microbes. A total of 492 Ureaplasma spp. and 13 M. hominis strains obtained in Hangzhou, China, in 2018, were subjected to antimicrobial susceptibility testing for levofloxacin, moxifloxacin, erythromycin, clindamycin, and doxycycline using the broth microdilution method. The mechanisms underlying quinolone and macrolide resistance were determined. Meanwhile, a model of the topoisomerase IV complex bound to levofloxacin in wild-type Ureaplasma spp. was built to study the quinolone resistance mutations. For Ureaplasma spp., the levofloxacin, moxifloxacin and erythromycin resistance rates were 84.69%, 51.44% and 3.59% in U. parvum and 82.43%, 62.16% and 5.40% in U. urealyticum, respectively. Of the 13 M. hominis strains, 11 were resistant to both levofloxacin and moxifloxacin, and five strains showed clindamycin resistance. ParC S83L was the most prevalent mutation in levofloxacin-resistant Ureaplasma strains, followed by ParE R448K. The two mutations GyrA S153L and ParC S91I were commonly identified in quinolone-resistant M. hominis. A molecular dynamics-refined structure revealed that quinolone resistance-associated mutations inhibited the interaction and reduced affinity with gyrase or topoisomerase IV and quinolones. The novel mutations S21A in the L4 protein and G2654T and T2245C in 23S rRNA and ermB gene were identified in erythromycin-resistant Ureaplasma spp. Fluoroquinolone resistance in Ureaplasma spp. and Mycoplasma hominis remains high in China, the rational use of antibiotics needs to be further enhanced.

St. Pachomius can justifiabley be called the founder of cenobitic monasticism, monks who live in community. Even though St. Antony the Great was the first to go into the desert to live a life of seclusion pursuing evangelical perfection, he lived a heremitic life, that is, a primarily solitary life.Pachomius first started out as a hermit in the desert, like many of the other men and women in the third and fourth centuries who sought the most radical expression of Christian life. There he developed a very strong bond of friendship with the hermit Palemon. One day during prayer, he had a vision in which he was called to build a monastery, and was told in the vision that many people who were eager to live an ascetic life in the desert, but were not inclined to the solitary life of a hermit, would come and join him.  His hermit friend, Palemon, helped him to build the monastery and Pachomius insisted that his cenobites were to aspire to the austerity of the hermits.However, Pchomius knew that his idea was a radical one, because most of the men who came to live in his monastery had only ever conceived of the eremitic lifestyle. His great accomplishment was to reconcile this desire for austere perfection with an openness to fulfilling the mundane requirements of community life as an expression of Christian love and service. He spent most of his first years as a cenobitic doing all the menial work on his own, knowing that his brother monks needed to be gently inducted into serving their brothers in the same manner.  He therefore allowed them to devote all their time to spiritual exercises in those first years.  At his death, there were eleven Pachomian monasteries: nine for men and two for women.The rule that Pachomius drew up was said to have been dictated to him by an angel, and it is this rule that both St. Benedict in the west and St. Basil in the east drew upon to develop their better known rules of cenobitic life. St. Pachomius died in the year 346.

A Sussex County Judge has found a Millsboro man guilty of murder. On November 17, 2016, a passerby discovered Darrin Gibbs of Millsboro lying face down on Monroe Street with a gunshot wound to the back of his head. Witness testimony, ballistics evidence, and video surveillance ultimately identified one of Gibbs’ associates, A.J. McMullen, as […]

Indian police on Friday filed charges of culpable homicide, including negligence in handling toxic substances, against a South Korean-owned chemical factory where a gas leak killed 12 people and sickened more than a thousand.

ABSTRACT

While there is no effective vaccine against Chlamydia trachomatis infection, previous work has demonstrated the importance of C. trachomatis-specific CD4⁺ T cells (NR1 T cells) in pathogen clearance. Specifically, NR1 T cells have been shown to be protective in mice, and this protection depends on the host’s ability to sense the cytokine gamma interferon (IFN-). However, it is unclear what role NR1 production or sensing of IFN- plays in T cell homing to the genital tract or T cell-mediated protection against C. trachomatis. Using two-photon microscopy and flow cytometry, we found that naive wild-type (WT), IFN-^–/–, and IFN-R^–/– NR1 T cells specifically home to sections in the genital tract that contain C. trachomatis. We also determined that protection against infection requires production of IFN- from either NR1 T cells or endogenous cells, further highlighting the importance of IFN- in clearing C. trachomatis infection.

IMPORTANCE Chlamydia trachomatis is an important mucosal pathogen that is the leading cause of sexually transmitted bacterial infections in the United States. Despite this, there is no vaccine currently available. In order to develop such a vaccine, it is necessary to understand the components of the immune response that can lead to protection against this pathogen. It is well known that antigen-specific CD4⁺ T cells are critical for Chlamydia clearance, but the contexts in which they are protective or not protective are unknown. Here, we aimed to characterize the importance of gamma interferon production and sensing by T cells and the effects on the immune response to C. trachomatis. Our work here helps to define the contexts in which antigen-specific T cells can be protective, which is critical to our ability to design an effective and protective vaccine against C. trachomatis.

Photorespiration is an essential process in oxygenic photosynthetic organisms triggered by the oxygenase activity of Rubisco. In peroxisomes, photorespiratory HYDROXYPYRUVATE REDUCTASE1 (HPR1) catalyzes the conversion of hydroxypyruvate to glycerate together with the oxidation of a pyridine nucleotide cofactor. HPR1 regulation remains poorly understood; however, HPR1 phosphorylation at T335 has been reported. By comparing the kinetic properties of phosphomimetic (T335D), nonphosphorylatable (T335A), and wild-type recombinant Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) HPR1, it was found that HPR1-T335D exhibits reduced NADH-dependent hydroxypyruvate reductase activity while showing improved NADPH-dependent activity. Complementation of the Arabidopsis hpr1-1 mutant by either wild-type HPR1 or HPR1-T335A fully complemented the photorespiratory growth phenotype of hpr1-1 in ambient air, whereas HPR1-T335D-containing hpr1-1 plants remained smaller and had lower photosynthetic CO₂ assimilation rates. Metabolite analyses indicated that these phenotypes were associated with subtle perturbations in the photorespiratory cycle of HPR1-T335D-complemented hpr1-1 rosettes compared to all other HPR1-containing lines. Therefore, T335 phosphorylation may play a role in the regulation of HPR1 activity in planta, although it was not required for growth under ambient air controlled conditions. Furthermore, improved NADP-dependent HPR1 activities in peroxisomes could not compensate for the reduced NADH-dependent HPR1 activity.

Key Points

A Lufkin, Texas, man was sentenced today to life in prison for his role in a double homicide that took place in Nacogdoches, Texas, in August 2007.

A New Caney, Texas, woman was sentenced to 10 years in prison today for her role in a homicide that took place in Nacogdoches, Texas, in August 2007.

Vice President Joe Biden and Attorney General Eric Holder today announced grants to 12 programs across the country to target the urgent need to reduce domestic violence homicides.

"This morning, I’m proud to join Vice President Biden in unveiling the first-ever Domestic Violence Homicide Prevention Demonstration Initiative grant awards – through which the Justice Department will distribute a total of $2.3 million to 12 cities and counties to support innovative programs dedicated to predicting potentially lethal behavior, stopping the escalation of violence, and saving lives," said Attorney General Holder.

Where financial disparities are greatest, the murder rate tends to be high

I have been trying to write something punchier than David Goldberg at Transportation for America did but I cannot, this event is "so utterly outrageous, so emblematic of the failure of our current transportation

Brazilian prosecutors also accuse miner and safety group of environmental crimes

The billionaire claims books and clothing retailer The Little Homie infringed on his trademark when cashing in on his popular '99 Problems' lyrics for their children's alphabet book.

Gary Lenius, 68, died in March after he and his wife Wanda both drank the fish tank cleaner that contained chloroquine phosphate. Detectives say it is normal protocol for homicide to look into it.

Love Island superfan Amy Schumer has thrown her support behind star Maura Higgins, in a pre-recorded message for Sunday's Aftersun