Hitting the Books: The genetic fluke that enabled us to drink milk

It may not contain our recommended daily allowance of Vitamin R but milk — or "cow juice" as it's known on the streets — is among the oldest known animal products repurposed for human consumption. Milk has been a staple of our diets since the 9th century BC but it wasn't until a fortuitous mutation to the human genome that we were able to properly digest that delicious bovine-based beverage. In her latest book, Life as We Made It: How 50,000 Years of Human Innovation Refined — and Redefined — Nature, author Beth Shapiro takes readers on a journey of scientific discovery, explaining how symbiotic relationships between humans and the environment around us have changed — but not always for the better.Basic BooksExcerpted from Life as We Made It: How 50,000 Years of Human Innovation Refined—and Redefined—Nature by Beth Shapiro. Copyright © 2021. Available from Basic Books, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.The first archaeological evidence that people were dairying dates to around 8,500 years ago — 2,000 years after cattle domestication. In Anatolia (present-day eastern Turkey), which is pretty far from the original center of cattle domestication, archaeologists recovered milk fat residues from ceramic pots, indicating that people were processing milk by heating it up. Similar analyses of milk fat proteins in ceramics record the spread of dairying into Europe, which appears to have happened simultaneously with the spread of domestic cattle.It’s not surprising that people... Continue reading at 'Engadget'

[ Engadget | 2021-10-23 15:30:38 UTC ]
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Hitting the Books: AI is already reshaping air travel, will airports themselves be next?

The holiday travel season is once again upon us! It's the magical time of the year that combines standing in airport security lines with incrementally losing your mind as the hands of your watch perpetually tick closer to a boarding time that magically moved up 45 minutes since you left the... Continue reading at Engadget

[ Engadget | 2022-12-04 15:30:19 UTC ]
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Hitting the Books: How Pokemon took over the world

The impact of Japanese RPGs on pop and gaming culture cannot be overstated. From Final Fantasy and Phantasy Star to Chrono Trigger, NieR, and Fire Emblem — JRPGs have spanned console generations, bridged the Japanese and North American markets, spawned entire universes of IP and delivered... Continue reading at Engadget

[ Engadget | 2022-11-06 15:30:37 UTC ]
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Hitting the Books: AI could help shrink America's gender wage gap

Women have faced gender-based discrimination in the workforce throughout history, denied employment in all but a handful of subservient roles, regularly ignored for promotions and pay raises — and rarely ever compensated at the same rates as their male peers. This long and storied socioeconomic... Continue reading at Engadget

[ Engadget | 2022-10-30 14:30:31 UTC ]
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Hitting the Books: The early EVs that paved the way for GM's Ultium success

General Motors has been in business for more than a century, but in its 112 years, the company has never faced such challenges as it does in today's rapidly electrifying and automating industry. The assembly line jobs from Detroit's heyday have been replaced by legions of automated industrial... Continue reading at Engadget

[ Engadget | 2022-10-23 14:30:06 UTC ]
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Hitting the Books: The women who made ENIAC more than a weapon

After Mary Sears and her team had revolutionized the field of oceanography, but before Katherine G. Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson helped put John Glenn into orbit, a cadre of women programmers working for the US government faced an impossible task: train ENIAC, the world's first ... Continue reading at Engadget

[ Engadget | 2022-10-16 14:30:01 UTC ]
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Hitting the Books: What the wearables of tomorrow might look like

Apple's Watch Ultra, with its 2000-nit digital display and GPS capabilities, is a far cry from its Revolutionary War-era self-winding forebears. What sorts of wondrous body-mounted technologies might we see another hundred years hence? In his new book, The Skeptic's Guide to the Future, Dr.... Continue reading at Engadget

[ Engadget | 2022-10-01 14:30:47 UTC ]
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Hitting the Books: What if 'Up' but pigeons?

We all have those thoughts, the ones that come to us in the small hours of the night. Who am I? Why are we here? What if my cellphone ran on vacuum tubes instead? Randall Munroe has the answer to, well, only one of those questions, but also the answers to a whole bunch of others collected... Continue reading at Engadget

[ Engadget | 2022-09-18 15:00:37 UTC ]
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Hitting the Books: Newfangled oceanographers helped win WWII using marine science

Lethal Tides tells the story of pioneering oceanic researcher Mary Sears and her leading role in creating one of the most important intelligence gathering operations of World War II. Languishing in academic obscurity and roundly ignored by her male colleagues, Sears is selected for command by... Continue reading at Engadget

[ Engadget | 2022-09-04 15:00:53 UTC ]
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A Former Nickelodeon Star’s Memoir Has Become the Summer’s Big Hit Book. It’s Very Clear Why.

I’m Glad My Mom Died details the abuse the iCarly actor suffered as a child star. Continue reading at Slate

[ Slate | 2022-08-18 20:31:47 UTC ]
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‘The Crane Wife’ essay hit a nerve. A new book reminds us why.

C. J. Hauser’s memoir-in-essays is a frank exploration of intimacy and romance that doesn’t always lead to a happily ever after. Continue reading at The Washington Post

[ The Washington Post | 2022-07-05 13:21:38 UTC ]
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Hitting the Books: Summer reading list

More than a million new titles are published annually in the US, far more than even the most bibliophilic secret agent could get through. Even with a weekly publishing schedule, we can only bring you 52 Hitting the Books each year. To help shine a spotlight on all the fantastic stories that... Continue reading at Engadget

[ Engadget | 2022-06-22 17:30:23 UTC ]
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Book Biz Stocks Take a Hit

A tough year for the stock market got worse in April, leading the Publishers Weekly Stock Index, now down to only six companies, to drop 8.8%. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

[ Publishers Weekly | 2022-05-06 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Hitting the Books: Dodge, Detroit and the Revolutionary Union Movement of 1968

After decades on the decline intro, America's labor movement is undergoing a massive renaissance with Starbucks, Amazon and Apple Store employees leading the way. Though the tech sector has only just begun basking in the newfound glow of collective bargaining rights, the automotive industry has... Continue reading at Engadget

[ Engadget | 2022-05-01 14:00:34 UTC ]
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Hitting the Books: Lab-grown meat is the future, just as Winston Churchill predicted

From domestication and selective breeding to synthetic insulin and CRISPR, humanity has long sought understand, master and exploit the genetic coding of the natural world. In The Genesis Machine: Our Quest to Rewrite Life in the Age of Synthetic Biology authors Amy Webb, professor of strategic... Continue reading at Engadget

[ Engadget | 2022-02-19 16:30:24 UTC ]
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Hitting the Books: 'Miracle Rice' fed China's revolution but endangered its crop diversity

Feeding the planet's 8 billion people is challenge enough and our current industrialized commercial practices are causing such ecological damage that we may soon find ourselves hard-pressed to feed any more. For decades, scientists have sought out higher yields and faster growth at the expense... Continue reading at Engadget

[ Engadget | 2022-02-05 16:30:43 UTC ]
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Hitting the Books: The decades-long fight to bring live television to deaf audiences

The Silent Era of cinema was perhaps its most equitable with both hearing and hearing-impaired viewers able to enjoy productions alongside one another, but with the advent of "talkies," deaf and hard-of-hearing American's found themselves largely excluded from this new dominant entertainment... Continue reading at Engadget

[ Engadget | 2022-01-29 16:30:45 UTC ]
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Hitting the Books: Amiga and the birth of 256-color gaming

With modern consoles offering gamers graphics so photorealistic that they blur the line between CGI and reality, it's easy forget just how cartoonishly blocky they were in the 8-bit era. In his new book, Creating Q*Bert and Other Classic Arcade Games, legendary game designer and programmer... Continue reading at Engadget

[ Engadget | 2021-12-25 16:30:11 UTC ]
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Books in the Media: The Every by Dave Eggers hits the spot

The Every by Dave Eggers (Hamish Hamilton) took the media by storm this week picking up mentions in The Guardian, Telegraph, Sunday Times, Times, iNews and Scotsman.  Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2021-11-22 14:18:03 UTC ]
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Hitting the Books: How Amazon's aggressive R&D push made it an e-commerce behemoth

Amazon is the Standard Oil of the 21st century. Its business operations and global reach dwarf those of virtually every other company on the planet — and exceed the GDP of more than a few countries — illustrating the vital importance innovation has on the modern economy. In his latest book, The... Continue reading at Engadget

[ Engadget | 2021-10-16 15:30:33 UTC ]
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China crackdown on Apple store hits holy book apps, Audible

Amazon’s audiobook service Audible and phone apps for reading the holy books of Islam and Christianity have disappeared from the Apple store in mainland China Continue reading at ABC News

[ ABC News | 2021-10-15 21:01:46 UTC ]
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