Recall issued for 38,000 GM vehicles in Canada over software safety glitch
Transport Canada has issued a recall for 38,000 General Motors (GM) vehicles for safety risks related to a software glitch, the agency reported in a notice on Wednesday.
A new study has found that preserved ancient hominin DNA from tens of thousands of years ago can be recovered from sediments from archaeological sites.
Geologists have generally considered archeological sediments as unimportant byproducts of excavation. However, a team led by researchers in Germany has found that DNA and other biomolecules can be extracted from these sediments.
鈥淭he retrieval of ancient human and faunal DNA from sediments offers exciting new opportunities to investigate the geographical and temporal distribution of ancient humans and other organisms at sites where their skeletal remains are rare or absent,鈥 said senior author Matthias Meyer .
The authors will share findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They examined blocks of sediment recovered decades ago from the Denisova Cave in Siberia and soaked in a plastic resin. The blocks were then sliced and examined under a microscope.
The Denisova Cave is an archeological site that has produced artifacts from Neanderthals and Denisova hominins, another ancient hominin species. Archeologists believe the cave may have been used as a toilet by ancient hominins 30,000 to 40,000 years ago.
The researchers successfully extracted "substantial amounts" of Neanderthal DNA from just a few milligrams of sediment. Even from such a small amount of sediment, they were able to identify the sex of the individuals and match them to bone fragments that were also discovered in the cave.
鈥淭he Neanderthal DNA in these small samples of plastic-embedded sediment was far more concentrated than what we typically find in loose material," said lead author Diyendo Massilani in a news release. "It is amusing to think that this is presumably so because they used the cave as a toilet tens of thousands of years ago.鈥
The findings show that the vast stockpiles of archeological sendiments stored in labs all over the world could be a new frontier for discovery as a "a vast untapped repository of genetic information."
"The study opens up a new era of ancient DNA studies that will revisit samples stored in labs, allowing for analysis of sites that have long since been back-filled, which is especially important given travel restriction and site inaccessibility in a pandemic world," said geologist Mike Morley in a news release.
Transport Canada has issued a recall for 38,000 General Motors (GM) vehicles for safety risks related to a software glitch, the agency reported in a notice on Wednesday.
About 10 senior Hezbollah commanders were killed along with Ibrahim Aqil, leader of the movement's Radwan special forces unit who was attacked in an Israeli air strike in Beirut on Friday, Israel's military spokesperson said.
An 11-year-old boy died Monday after subway surfing in New York City. He's the fourth person to die from subway surfing in the city this year.
Since she was a young girl growing up in Vancouver, Ginny Lam says her mom Yat Hei Law made it very clear she favoured her son William, because he was her male heir.
Communication breakdowns with local law enforcement hampered the Secret Service's performance ahead of a July assassination attempt on former U.S. president Donald Trump, according to a new report that lays out a litany of missed opportunities to stop a gunman who opened fire from an unsecured roof.
An Ontario man says he鈥檚 still waiting for a vehicle he purchased on Kijiji to be delivered to his home. But after more than a month, he says he鈥檚 losing hope that the car will arrive and believes that he is a victim of a scam.
An Ontario man says it is 'unfair' to pay a $1,500 insurance surcharge because his four-year-old SUV is at a higher risk of being stolen.
Israel鈥檚 military has struck the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon鈥檚 capital, in a dramatic escalation in a year-long period of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.
The province's public security minister said he was "shocked" Thursday amid reports that a body believed to be that of a 14-year-old boy was found this week near a Hells Angels hideout near Quebec City.
They say a dog is a man鈥檚 best friend. In the case of Darren Cropper, from Bonfield, Ont., his three-year-old Siberian husky and golden retriever mix named Bear literally saved his life.
A growing group of brides and wedding photographers from across the province say they have been taken for tens of thousands of dollars by a Barrie, Ont. wedding photographer.
Paleontologists from the Royal B.C. Museum have uncovered "a trove of extraordinary fossils" high in the mountains of northern B.C., the museum announced Thursday.
The search for a missing ancient 28-year-old chocolate donkey ended with a tragic discovery Wednesday.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police is celebrating an important milestone in the organization's history: 50 years since the first women joined the force.
It's been a whirlwind of joyful events for a northern Ontario couple who just welcomed a baby into their family and won the $70 million Lotto Max jackpot last month.
A Good Samaritan in New Brunswick has replaced a man's stolen bottle cart so he can continue to collect cans and bottles in his Moncton neighbourhood.
David Krumholtz, known for roles like Bernard the Elf in The Santa Clause and physicist Isidor Rabi in Oppenheimer, has spent the latter part of his summer filming horror flick Altar in Winnipeg. He says Winnipeg is the most movie-savvy town he's ever been in.
Edmontonians can count themselves lucky to ever see one tiger salamander, let alone the thousands one local woman says recently descended on her childhood home.