News I found interesting

Idaho town asks residents to own guns    After seeing the chaos of Hurricane Katrina, a city councilor in this Idaho town  came up with a novel idea.  Ordinance 208, passed by the City Council on Tuesday, asks Greenleaf's 862 residents who do not object on religious or other grounds to keep a gun at home in case they are overrun by refugees from the Gulf Coast.

Heart 'can carry out own repairs'   Scientists have shown that cells in the heart's outer layer can migrate deeper into a failing organ to carry out essential repairs.The migration of progenitor cells is controlled by a protein called thymosin beta 4, already known to help reduce muscle cell loss after a heart attack. Progenitor cells are similar to stem cells, in that they have the potential to turn into different types of adult tissue.

Neanderthal DNA secrets unlocked  Scientists have reconstructed a chunk of DNA from the genome of a Neanderthal man who lived 38,000 years ago.  The two teams basically agree, within their margins of error, that the evolutionary lineages of Neanderthals and modern humans split somewhere around 500,000 years ago. This fits with previous estimates from mtDNA and archaeological data. 
The team also show that Neanderthals came from a very small ancestral population of about 3,000 individuals. Modern humans entered Europe about 40,000 years ago; and within 10,000 years, the Neanderthals had largely disappeared from the continent. By 24,000 years ago, the last survivors had vanished from their refuge in the Iberian Peninsula.  The question of whether modern humans and Neanderthals mated when they encountered each other 40,000 years ago is highly controversial.