The Hobbits of Flores: An Update

Lian Bua -- the cave on Flores Island where the Hobbit fossils were unearthed

In January, we reviewed Mike Morwood and Penny van Oosterzee’s A New Human, subtitled “The Startling Discovery and Strange Story of the ‘Hobbits’ of Flores Indonesia.” (The controversy engendered by this amazing new discovery was further updated in Hobbit Update and Hobbit as a Separate Species: Update.)

Now, additional evidence accumulates. The “Hobbit” (Homo floresiensis) is indeed a new human species, according to a statistical analysis of “Flo”, an especially complete fossil skeleton of the diminutive hominids, reported in Science Daily and via EurekAlert!. The conclusion? According to Dr. Karen Baab, one of the authors of the study, “attempts to dismiss the hobbits as pathological people have failed repeatedly because the medical diagnoses of dwarfing syndromes and microcephaly bear no resemblance to the unique anatomy of Homo floresiensis.”

Everyday Mysteries

Milking it for all it's worth: a man squirts milk to a cat while milking a cow (Library of Congress, circa 1898)

Are black-eyed peas really peas? What’s the difference between sweet potatoes and yams? Why do turkeys have white and dark meat? Does your heart stop when you sneeze? What’s the smallest flower in the world? How does sunscreen work? What’s freezer burn? Who invented the TV dinner? Why don’t I fall out when a roller coaster goes upside down? How high can a nine-banded armadillo jump?

The answers to these and many other questions from Agriculture and Astronomy through Biology and Botany to Technology and Zoology can be found at the website Everyday Mysteries: Fun Science Facts from the Library of Congress. Everyday Mysteries poses interesting questions, then answers them with the best scientific information available.

Small Area Income & Poverty Estimates Released

Yesterday, the US Census Bureau released their latest (2008) income and poverty estimates for every school district and county in the nation. The data are part of the Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates (SAIPE) program and represent the only source of Census Bureau income and poverty data for each of the nation’s 3,142 counties and nearly 14,000 Title I-eligible school districts.

In the press release announcing release of the data, the Census Bureau declares that “state and county estimates are provided for the total number of people in poverty, the number of children under age 5 in poverty (for states only), number of related children age 5 to 17 in families in poverty, number of children under 18 in poverty and median household income.
“School district estimates, produced in order for the Department of Education to implement provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, are available for the total population, number of children age 5 to 17 and number of related children age 5 to 17 in families in poverty.
“These tabulations, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, are used as one of the criteria to allocate federal funds to local jurisdictions. In addition, state and local programs use these data for distributing funds and managing school programs.”
You’ll find the SAIPE data here and a series of maps summarizing the data for counties and states here.

Red Cosmos

The Space Review features a brief review of Red Cosmos, a new biography of Konstantin Tsiolkovskii, father of Soviet rocketry and visionary space scientist.

My-Oh-Myopia: The Dog in Hindsight

Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Steven Pinker offers Malcolm Gladwell, Eclectic Detective, a review of What the Dog Saw– and Other Adventures.