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Thursday, December 8, 2011

At the meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, North Carolina State University (NCSU) researchers lead by Coby Schal and Ed Vargo presented preliminary research on the genetic diversity of populations of bedbugs. Their DNA analysis showed the diversity is low within a single building. The researchers discovered that the bugs can inbreed and evolve at the same time.

A part of the research included extensive DNA analysis of genetics of bed bugs in different apartments. The diversity was lower than it would be for a population of most other species. Coby Schal said, “We kept discovering the same thing. Within a given apartment, or even a given building, there was extremely low genetic diversity. In most cases there’s just a single female that founded the population.”

Another NCSU anthologist Zachary Adelman, not one of the researchers, said that the fact of different strains of bedbugs in the United States east coast “means they’re coming into the country from lots of different places”.

The discovery shows that pesticides are ineffective if they don’t eliminate the entire population. Just a few survivors can produce a new generation within the house or building quickly; and, as the offspring of those surviving pesticide use, pass on their genetic resistance; emphasising Schal’s remark that, “[t]he insecticides really need to be robust”.

Coby Schal said that for most species, limited diversity causes generic disorders and population does not survive, thus making the discovery a surprise. He said, “But somehow bedbugs are able to withstand the effects of inbreeding, and do quite well.” Schal was suggesting that as cockroaches inbreed successfully as well, its success may be related to the species’ reliance on humans to relocate from place to place. The research is at preliminary stage, meaning the scientists may carry out more analysis before a final release.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

The online payment service PayPal has received a banking licence in Luxembourg, promoting it to the status of a bank. As a consequence PayPal will move their headquarters to Luxembourg.

Since 2004 PayPal had the status of an Electronic Money Issuer supervised by the U.K. Financial Services Authority. Having an official bank status opens new prospects for the company: “This will allow us to actively scout retailers in different European countries. With our British licence, we could only do that in the U.K. itself, and in other countries we could only react to requests of the retailers themselves,” Christopher Coonen, General Manager of PayPal Southern Europe and Benelux, explained.

The change will not affect existing customers dramatically, says Coonen: “We are going to inform them of the new status, and they will have to accept our terms of service again.” He also said that for now, there were no plans to use the new licence to offer traditional banking services, but the possibility was being evaluated by PayPal. Working with local partners would be an option to accomplish this, according to Coonen.

The British newspaper The Daily Telegraph speculates that the move is part of a strategy to compete with Google’s payment service Google Checkout, which launched in the U.K. last month.

PayPal has 130 million users worldwide, and 35 million customers in Europe. Payments via its mother company eBay continue to make up 60% of PayPal’s revenues. More than half of Britain’s internet users have a PayPal account.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

The oldest known gold artifact in the Americas is a necklace from Peru, according to University of Arizona anthropology professor Mark Aldenderfer. The necklace comes from a village in the Jiskairumoko range near Lake Titicaca and consists of gold that had been hammered and rolled into nine cylindrical beads, then strung with turquoise on a wool string.

Radiocarbon dating places the manufacture of the necklace from 2155 to 1936 B.C., which makes this item about 600 years older than the next oldest gold artifact that has been discovered the Americas and the oldest example of metalworking of any kind in the Americas.

Gold metallurgy is almost always associated with agricultural societies. Since the materials used in the necklace are not found in the Titicaca basin, the existence of the necklace implies the region had trade routes and a hereditary elite.

Although this discovery was made in 2004, Professor Alenderfer and his team delayed publication in order to have the gold chemically analyzed and to minimize the risk of looters damaging the site before excavation was complete.