Study: Bigger eyes at higher latitudes
OXFORD, England, July 27 (UPI) -- Poor light in long winters and cloudy days in Earth's higher latitudes have given people who evolved there bigger eyes and bigger brains, U.K. researchers say.
However, they say, bigger brains do not make people smarter because the extra size is almost all made up of larger vision processing areas.
Scientists at Oxford University measured the size of eye sockets and the brain volumes of 55 museum skulls from 12 indigenous populations ranging from Scandinavia to Australia, Micronesia and North America, the BBC reported Wednesday.
The results were plotted against the latitudes occupied by each population.
"We found a positive relationship between absolute latitude and both eye socket size and cranial capacity," Eiluned Pearce said. "Both the amount of light hitting the Earth's surface and winter day-lengths get shorter as you go further north or south from the equator.
"We found that as light levels decrease, humans are getting bigger eye sockets, which suggests that their eyeballs are getting bigger," she said.
The largest were found in skulls from Scandinavia while the smallest were from Micronesia, the researchers said.
"Humans have only lived at high latitudes in Europe and Asia for a few tens of thousands of years, yet they seem to have adapted their visual systems surprisingly rapidly to the cloudy skies, dull weather and long winters we experience at these latitudes," study co-author Robin Durbar said.
Russia: ISS to be 'crashed' after 2020
MOSCOW, July 27 (UPI) -- The International Space Station will be de-orbited and crashed into the Pacific Ocean after 2020 like its Russian predecessor Mir, Russian space officials say.
"We will be forced to sink the ISS," Russian Space Agency Deputy Head Vitaly Davydov said Wednesday.
"We cannot leave it in orbit as it is a very complicated and a heavy object. There must be no space waste from it."
The ISS has been in operation for 13 years, serviced and supplied by numerous international space expeditions, RIA Novosti reported.
"We have agreed with our partners that the ISS would function roughly until 2020," the Roscosmos head said, noting the station's life was initially estimated at 15 years.
The agreement to construct the ISS was signed Jan. 29, 1998, in Washington by representatives from Canada, members of the European Space Agency, Japan, Russia and the United States.
The Mir space station operated from 1983 to 1998 before being crashed into the Pacific Ocean in a "spacecraft cemetery" in 2000.
Canada said to be silencing scientists
OTTAWA, July 27 (UPI) -- A leading fisheries scientist studying why salmon stocks have been crashing off Canada's West Coast has been muzzled by a government department, documents show.
The documents show the Privy Council Office, which supports the prime minister's office, stopped Kristi Miller, who heads a $6 million salmon genetics project at the federal Pacific Biological Station on Vancouver Island, from talking about her work published in the research journal Science, Postmedia News reported.
The journal notified journalists worldwide and encouraged Miller to "please feel free to speak with journalists."
Documents obtained by Postmedia News under the Access to Information Act show major media outlets were making arrangements to speak with Miller but the Privy Council Office said no to the interviews.
The office also blocked a Fisheries Department news release about Miller's study, saying the release "was not very good, focused on salmon dying and not on the new science aspect," the documents show.
The Harper government has been reining in federal scientists whose work is financed by taxpayers and is often of significant public interest, Postmedia said.
Researchers are now required to submit to a process that includes "media lines" approved by communications officers, strategists and ministerial staff in Ottawa, Postmedia said.
The government's control over communication is "really poisoning the science environment within government," said Jeffrey Hutchings, a senior fisheries scientist at Halifax's Dalhousie University.
"When the lead author of a paper in Science is not permitted to speak about her work, that is suppression," he said. "There is simply no ifs, ands or buts about that."
Calorie info on menus said helpful
NEW YORK, July 27 (UPI) -- Printing calorie information on restaurant menus can encourage healthy eating habits, but only in a limited way, a U.S. study says.
While just 15 percent of people who buy fast-food in New York read the calorie information required on menus, customers using the information tended to buy foods with fewer calories, the study by the New York Health Department found.
New York has required chain restaurants with 15 or more locations nationally to print calorie information on menus and menu boards since 2008, WebMD reported Tuesday.
People who reported using the information labels purchased 106 fewer calories than customers who did not use or see them, the study found.
The findings come as U.K. restaurants prepare to introduce a similar scheme, the BBC reported.
Thirty-two companies have agreed to display calorie information in their U.K. outlets, including McDonald's and KFC.
"One in six meals in the United Kingdom eaten away from home so it's essential we know what's in the food we're buying in restaurants and cafes," Beatrice Brooke of the British Heart Foundation said. "The New York research shows us just how valuable calorie labeling in fast food restaurants can be."
