“Mammoth species interbred, perhaps extensively”


A new study of mammoth DNA suggests that mammoths mated outside of their species. Mammoth tissue specimens reveal that woolly mammoths of cold regions in North America bred with temperate climate Columbian mammoths. The news is surprising to me given the social cohesion of mammoth herds. I would have thought that herds would have resisted advances by bull mammoths with distinctive phenomes.

Phys.org sums up the study:








Book review: how tech enables smart cities

Rio de Janiero's control room

Rio de Janiero’s control room










Review: BitCon makes the case against bitcoin










Book review: cold case heats up in Atlanta







Mammoth skull unearthed in Oklahoma


A construction worker in Oklahoma recently found part of a skull and tusk of a Columbian mammoth.  Mammoth remains are found a couple of times per year in that part of the country.  They must have been plentiful back then.  From the Spanish wire service EFE:

Archaeologists have found a mammoth skull and two tusk fragments in a sand pit in northeastern Oklahoma, media reports said.

The Oklahoma Archeological Survey, or OAS, identified the animal as a Columbian mammoth, one of the last species of that giant mammal to inhabit both North America and Central America, ranging between what are today the United States and Costa Rica.

“The exact age of the deposit has not yet been determined,” the OAS said in a post on its Facebook page.

Archaeologists went to the scene after receiving images of part of a skull being dug out of the sand near Alva, located 240 kilometers (150 miles) northeast of Oklahoma City.

Before becoming extinct more than 11,000 years ago, mammoths were common during the Pleistocene epoch in this central area of the United States, where two or three mammoth remains are found every year, archaeologists say.

The Columbian mammoth could reach a shoulder height of 4 meters (13 feet), weigh 8 to 10 tons and have a life span of 80 years…

General Assembly creates fintech study group

Atlanta's Transaction Alley

Map of Atlanta-area fintech companies

On the final day of the legislative session last month, the Georgia House of Representatives approved the creation of a new financial technology committee.  The study committee will examine possible incentives such as tax breaks for financial technology companies and payment processors in Georgia.

Lawmakers noted in the text of Senate Resolution 883 that over 70 percent of all financial transactions processed in the United States are actually processed by companies headquartered in Georgia.  Georgia’s “Transaction Alley” is responsible for 40,000 jobs plus another 40,000 related support jobs.  Sen. Brandon Beach (R-Alpharetta) and Elena Parent (D-Atlanta)—the senator for the district I live in—were among the cosponsors.

Study committees like this tend to schedule a few hearings where they talk to industry experts and a couple of state government officials.  They come up with reports that often become the basis of legislation in the upcoming year.  I would predict that this study committee may come up with some tax incentives for financial technology companies to locate or remain in Georgia.  They could design these along the lines of Georgia’s successful film tax credit.  The committee may also encourage venture capital investments into fintech startups.

Book review: Invasive Species gets under your skin


Invasive Species, an ecological thriller by Joe Wallace, crawls under your skin from the outset.  A large and seemingly intelligent wasp in Senegal bores into hominid hosts like a tumbu fly.  Getting stung is almost always fatal to humans.  The wasps are nicknamed majizi, meaning thieves, by the locals.  What exactly the majizi are stealing from their hosts, other than their lives, is unclear at first.

Trey Gilliard, a globetrotting biologist, scurries across borders from Africa to the U.S. to Central America and back in an effort to collect specimens and prove the gravity of the threat to a skeptical American government.  At his side are Sheila, a medical doctor and daughter of one of the first American victims of the majizi, and Jack, a loudmouthed New York wasp expert.

The first half of Invasive Species is marvelous.  The majizi are ominous.  Trey, Sheila, Jack, and a curiously insightful Senegalese woman named Mariama are sympathetic because they are alone in attempting to sound the alarm bell.  Like a Crichton novel, the biological explanations and descriptions of the threatening species are convincing without being overly technical.  The well-crafted prose is enjoyable.

About half of the way through, the book shifts toward political themes.  Mariama is implausibly “disappeared” to a Caribbean island by the U.S. government, apparently because her knowledge is a threat to officials who are trying to minimize publicity about the wasps.  Scattered wasp attacks in the U.S. become the subject of debates during a presidential campaign.  At this point, Invasive Species begins resembling the 1980s alien invasion book, Footfall, where government officials become embroiled in reacting to an aggressive, otherworldly species threatening to annihilate humanity.

Like the herd mentality of the Fithp elephants in Footfall, the majizi exhibit a collective awareness.  The human team learn the hard way that the wasps’ hive mind makes them an even more dangerous foe.  Star Trek fans will detect parallels between the majizi and the Borg, the aggressive species of invaders that absorb their victims in order to expand the collective.

Although the book is on firmer footing when dealing with scientific rather than political topics, the novel is well worth a read.  Fans of Crichton or the pulp horror animal attack books of the 1980s will love this more contemporary, globalized heir to the genre.  Students of disease outbreaks and readers of books like the Hot Zone will appreciate the disturbing trends of international pandemics that Wallace highlights.