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I am interested in finding out more about the origins of prescription and over-the-counter drugs. I notice that most OTC drugs do not give a country of manufacture but instead tell where the distributor is located. The drug itself could come from anywhere. I have not found the country of origin on any prescription drug in any of the literature. I think that this is important as we bring in more of our drugs from Asia and now that we have established the poor quality control in China that consumers know where their drugs are originating from.

Key To Life Before Its Origin On Earth May Have Been DiscoveredFragment of the Murchison meteorite (at right) and isolated individual particles (shown in the test tube). (Credit: DOE/Argonne National Laboratory) ScienceDaily (Feb. 29, 2008) — An important discovery has been made with respect to the mystery of "handedness" in biomolecules. Researchers led by Sandra Pizzarello, a research professor at Arizona State University, found that some of the possible abiotic precursors to the origin of life on Earth have been shown to carry "handedness" in a larger number than previously thought. Pizzarello, in ASU's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, worked...

You are reading these words right now because 600 million years ago, an aquatic animal called a Hydra developed light-receptive genes—the origin of animal vision. It wasn't exactly 20-20 vision back then though. Hydras, a genus of freshwater animals that are kin to corals and jellyfish, measure only a few millimeters in diameter and have been around for hundreds of millions of years. Scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara studied the genes associated with vision (called opsins) in these tiny creatures and found opsin proteins all over their bodies.

On the Origin and Nature of Things THE CELEBRATED PRAYER of the great German astronomer, Kepler, has been a benediction to many: "O God, I thank Thee that Thou hast permitted me to think Thy thoughts after Thee." This prayer is theologically sound because it acknowledges the priority of God in the universe. "In the beginning God" is undoubtedly the most important sentence in the Bible. It is in God that all things begin, and all thoughts as well. In the words of Augustine, "But Thou, O Lord, who ever livest, and in whom nothing dies, since before the world...

An ordinary trip to the supermarket meat department could turn into an experience in international comparison-shopping under House legislation scheduled to be debated today that for the first time would require meat products to be labeled by their country of origin. The farm bill House members will consider includes a provision mandating that meat -- including beef, pork and lamb -- include a label stating where it came from. Only meat from animals born, raised and slaughtered in the United States would be eligible for a domestic label. The measure aims to enforce a five-year-old law that has already been...

Mystery 'pilot' cannot tell police his origin By Petra Krischok in Berlin Last Updated: 2:17am BST 12/07/2007 German police are trying to identify a man they believe to be British, who has a detailed knowledge of military planes but cannot tell them where he comes from. Karl has been named 'the pilot' The man, who calls himself Karl, has been cared for in a nursing home. He was found in a confused state in the city of Heidelberg three days ago. Echoing the case of the "piano man" in England, Karl is known as "the pilot" to staff because of...

Source: American Society of Agronomy Date: May 16, 2007 Biotechnology Solves Debate Over Origin Of European Potato Science Daily — Molecular studies recently revealed new genetic information concerning the long-disputed origin of the "European potato." Scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of La Laguna, and the International Potato Center used genetic markers to prove that the remnants of the earliest known landraces of the European potato are of Andean and Chilean origin. They report their findings in the May-June 2007 issue of Crop Science. Americans each eat about 140 pounds of potatoes a year in fresh and processed...

The origin of the human brain has been traced back to primitive central nervous systems in worms and bugs, researchers now say. Humans and other vertebrates evolved from an ancient common ancestor that also gave rise to insects and worms, scientists have long known. But they're of course quite different today. Vertebrates have a spinal cord running along their backs, but insects and annelid worms such as earthworms, which have simple organs that barely resemble a brain, have clusters of nerves organized in a chain along their bellies. So biologists have long assumed these systems—key to ultimately putting a brain...

Native American populations share gene signature 00:01 14 February 2007 NewScientist.com news service Roxanne Khamsi A distinctive, repeating sequence of DNA found in people living at the eastern edge of Russia is also widespread among Native Americans, according to a new study. The finding lends support to the idea that Native Americans descended from a common founding population that lived near the Bering land bridge for some time. Kari Schroeder at the University of California in Davis, US, and colleagues sampled the genes from various populations around the globe, including two at the eastern edge of Siberia, 53 elsewhere in...

On the origin of the Etruscan civilisation 00:01 14 February 2007 NewScientist.com news service Michael Day Etruscan cippus (grave marker) in the shape of a warrior head. Found in Orvieto, Italy One of anthropology's most enduring mysteries - the origins of the ancient Etruscan civilisation - may finally have been solved, with a study of cattle. This culturally distinct and technologically advanced civilisation inhabited central Italy from about the 8th century BC, until it was assimilated into Roman culture around the end of the 4th century BC. The origins of the Etruscans, with their own non-Indo-European language, have been debated...

Harvard University is launching a broad initiative to discover how life began, joining an ambitious scientific assault on age-old questions that are central to the debate over the theory of evolution. The Harvard project, which is likely to start with about $1 million annually from the university, will bring together scientists from fields as disparate as astronomy and biology, to understand how life emerged from the chemical soup of early Earth, and how this might have happened on distant planets. Known as the ''Origins of Life in the Universe Initiative," the project is still in its early stages, and fund-raising...

Origin of the Celts - Caucasian, not European The Celts are Circaesir from Circaesya, who lived on the Sea of Grass in what is now west Kazakhstan until late in the second millennium B.C. They were by their own definition a linguistic group, but now they are a culture. Contrary to popular belief, they had nothing to do with European inhabitants known to archaeologists as the 'Beaker folk' and 'Battle Axe people'. The 'Urnfield people' farther east were Circaesir, and obviously related to the Celts. Their descendants integrated with Celts in central Europe. Tradition suggests that the Celts left the...

Russian archaeologist says Merv was origin of Zoroastrianism TEHRAN, June 10 (MNA) – Russian archaeologist Victor Sarianidi believes that Merv, a province in southern Turkmenistan, was the cradle of Zoroastrianism, the Persian service of Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported here Saturday. According to Sarianidi, his archeological team has recently discovered some Zoroastrians’ temples in the region. Each has two fire temples -- one was presumably used for religious ceremonies and one for cooking, he added. The temples date back to some 3,000 years BC, estimated the archaeologist. Sarianidi had already named the legendary land of Margush as the origin...

HIV origin 'found in wild chimps' This mother chimp is SIV positive The origin of HIV has been found in wild chimpanzees living in southern Cameroon, researchers report. A virus called SIVcpz (Simian Immunodeficiency Virus from chimps) was thought to be the source, but had only been found in a few captive animals. Now, an international team of scientists has identified a natural reservoir of SIVcpz in animals living in the wild. The findings are to be published in Science magazine. It is thought that people hunting chimpanzees first contracted the virus - and that cases were first seen in...

Chinese archaeologists probe origin of domestic horses through DNA www.chinaview.cn 2006-04-01 15:55:19 BEIJING, April 1 (Xinhua) -- Chinese archaeologists are studying the DNA samples extracted from the bones of horses unearthed from ancient sites to probe the origin of domestic horses in China. It's still a mystery to archaeologists when and where horses were first tamed in China, said Cai Dawei, a researcher with the center of archaeological research for China's border area under the Jilin University in Northwest China. The DNA research will offer valuable clues on the study of migration, spread and domestication of horses, Cai said. A...

Pottery offers clues to origin of Chinese characters www.chinaview.cn 2006-03-22 21:10:18 HEFEI, March 22 (Xinhua) -- Chinese archaeologists claim that pottery utensils dating back 7,000 years ago which bear inscriptions of various symbols are probably one of the origins of Chinese characters. They made the conclusion on the basis of several years' study into the symbols carved on over 600 pottery ware items unearthed from the New Stone Age site in Shuangdun village, Xiaobengbu town of Bengbu, a city in East China's Anhui Province. The symbols include rivers, animals and plants, and activities such as hunting, fishing and arable farming,...

A small comment from the article: "If chemistry is unavailing and Darwin indisposed, what is left as a mechanism? The evolutionary biologist’s finest friend: sheer dumb luck."

Researchers Shed New Lights on Origin of Ancient Chinese Civilization Chinese ancients living 3,500 to 4,500 years ago already had many choices for meal, including millet, wheat and rice, which are still the staple food of the Chinese. They also compiled calendars according to their astronomical observation, which is regarded as one of the symbols of the origin of civilization. They made exquisite bronze vessels to hold wine and food, and some of the bronze vessels were later developed into symbol of the supreme imperial power. But how the Chinese civilization started and evolved remains a magnetic topic that has...

"We at Wal-Mart believe this e-mail between a temporary associate and one of our valued customers was entirely inappropriate. Its contents in no way represent the policies, practices or views of our company. This associate, who was hired less than three weeks ago, is no longer employed by our company."

Charles Darwin, the 19th century geologist who wrote the treatise 'The Origin of Species, by means of Natural Selection' defined evolution as "descent with modification". Darwin hypothesized that all forms of life descended from a common ancestor, branching out over time into various unique life forms, due primarily to a process called natural selection. However, the fossil record shows that all of the major animal groups (phyla) appeared fully formed about 540 million years ago, and virtually no transitional life forms have been discovered which suggest that they evolved from earlier forms. This sudden eruption of multiple, complex organisms is...

Does that mean that if fruitflies "do it," humans can do it too?Folks, the New York times published back on June 3 an article entitled For Fruit Flies, Gene Shift Tilts Sex Orientation, commenting on research that supposedly demonstrates the genetic ground for homosexuality. Dr. Barry Dickson, senior scientist at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna and other researchers warned that:All the researchers cautioned that any of these wired behaviors set by master genes will probably be modified by experience. Though male fruit flies are programmed to pursue females, Dr. Dickson said, those...

Am I the only one who marvels at the futility of Man as he tries to explain the origin of the universe? The time and effort expended upon this pursuit could be far better spent upon issues that actually lack an answer. Trying to find a new explanation for the cosmos via science is like trying to reinvent the wheel. For the sake of argument let’s assume that the universe happened by accident just as many so-called scientists claim. With this as a starting point we can make the assumption that there was a source of crude matter from which...

Origin of new British Museum exhibit looks a bit wobbly By Nigel Reynolds, Arts Correspondent (Filed: 19/05/2005) Visitors to the British Museum unfamiliar with the date of the wheel's invention may have been puzzled by a primitive painting in the Roman Britain gallery this week, showing a caveman pushing a supermarket trolley. The earliest recorded wheels, as every schoolboy knows, are from Mesopotamia around 5,500 years ago. Trolleys were first used in the Piggly-Wiggly Supermarket chain [really], Oklahoma City, in 1937. The bizarre exhibit, stuck to a wall with double-sided tape and labelled "Early Man Goes to Market" was, of...

House Bill 1525, which is endorsed by Gov. Mike Huckabee, now goes to the AR Senate. This would allow the children of undocumented Arkansas residents(illegals) to be eligible for state-sponsored scholarship opportunities. It got a 63-31 vote. It appears that HB1525 will probably pass. If we cannot stop it, I have an idea of how we can lessen its damage. I am proposing this amendment to Jim Holt supporters and immigration reform people. I propose that either Jim Holt or Denny Altes make an amendment that would require the nations these illegals come from to co-pay %50 of the tuition...

Sakakawea: Myths abound about origin, death of woman who aided Lewis & Clark By Patrick Springer, The Forum Published Sunday, January 09, 2005 Sakakawea ambled into recorded history one "clear and pleasant" morning in a way that endeared her to an explorer still getting acclimated to the harsh plains weather. Sgt. John Ordway noted in his journal that two American Indian women visiting the Lewis and Clark Expedition's winter camp, still under construction, came with welcome gifts - four buffalo robes. "I Got one fine one myself," Ordway wrote on Nov. 11, 1804, at Fort Mandan in what is now...

Scientists Find Clue to AIDS Origins, New Therapy Mon Jan 10,12:02 PM ET By Patricia Reaney LONDON (Reuters) - A single change in a human gene may hold the key to preventing people living with HIV (news - web sites) from progressing to full-blown AIDS (news - web sites), researchers said on Monday. They found a crucial difference between a gene in humans and one in rhesus monkeys that blocks infection of the virus in the animals -- a finding that offers new insights into the origins of AIDS and gene therapy. Had the gene been the same in humans,...

He is loveable, congenial, giving and jolly. What's more he knows everything, as any child will readily testify. He is a colorful old man, whose visits are eagerly awaited by millions of children each year and who, for a little while, makes the world a much happier place. Is Santa Claus a good influence on children, or a bad influence whose image merely commercializes Christmas and who takes the reason out of the season, as some charge? Where did Santa come from? It will surprise many to learn that Santa Claus (as we know him today) came out of the...

When did political correctness started? I generally hear between 1960s to 1980s.

Ancient vessel retraces voyages of the past By Stefanos Evripidou IT LOOKS like a tree house stuck on a bamboo banana. In reality it's the incarnation of a pre-Pharaonic reed boat, designed and built to unravel the mysteries of prehistoric navigation. The Abora II drifted in to Larnaca marina yesterday. Weighing in at six- tonnes, the vessel is a totra-reed boat. It is 11.5 metres long, 3.5 metres wide and 1.5 metres deep. The man responsible for building the huge boat is Dominique Goerlitz, a biology teacher at a school in Germany. As a student, Goerlitz was fascinated by the...

The Mars rover Opportunity's examination of Martian rocks last week provided the first convincing evidence that our neighbour world was once "awash" in water, as one NASA scientist described it. But where did the water come from? And why does Mars have no liquid water now, while Earth apparently has been covered with the stuff for 4 billion years? Scientists are just beginning to piece the story together, and it goes right back to the beginning. Mars, like Earth, was formed from dusty and rocky debris left over after the sun was born 4.57 billion years ago. Initially, there were...

CAIRO, Egypt (Reuters) -- Egypt's ancient pyramids are probably a byproduct of a decision to build walls around the tombs of kings, a leading expert on early Egyptian royal burials said on Wednesday. Guenter Dreyer, director of the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo, said he based his theory on similarities between Egypt's first pyramid, built at Saqqara south of Cairo for the Pharaoh Zozer in about 2650 BC, and the structure of the tomb of one of his immediate predecessors. The Saqqara pyramid, known as the Step Pyramid because of its unique shape, began as a flat mound about 25...

The Oiling of America by Mary Enig, PhD, and Sally Fallon In 1954 a young researcher from Russia named David Kritchevsky published a paper describing the effects of feeding cholesterol to rabbits.1 Cholesterol added to vegetarian rabbit chow caused the formation of atheromas—plaques that block arteries and contribute to heart disease. Cholesterol is a heavy weight molecule—an alcohol or a sterol—found only in animal foods such as meat, fish, cheese, eggs and butter. In the same year, according to the American Oil Chemists Society, Kritchevsky published a paper describing the beneficial effects of polyunsaturated fatty acids for lowering cholesterol...

<p>One of FDR's most notorius appointments to the United States Supreme Court was a Justice by the name of Hugo Black a Democrat Senator from Alabama ironically, who was a Ku Klux Klan member and a rabid Anti-Semite, Anti-Catholic, Racist Justice. But few people know that, or that he conjured up the Term "Separation of Church and State" in his opinion in 1947's Everson vs Board of Education as a way to try to punish religious groups that he hated.</p>

The Kennedy Hate Crimes Bill introduced earlier this year, which I mentioned in this space on Tuesday, is a dangerous piece of legislation. Not only will the bill create a type of "thought police" by criminalizing an offender's perceived mindset during the commission of a crime (and giving future justification for criminalizing the thoughts of law-abiding citizens), but also the bill is unconstitutional, unnecessary, and will damage law enforcement efforts. Its unconstitutionality comes in two forms. First, the bill will attempt to regulate some hate crimes by claiming a right to do so based on those crimes' alleged effect on...

July 24 — In a new study, researchers speculate that a towering undersea hot-water chimney laden with microbes is just the sort of place that might have spawned life on Earth or even other planets. THE HYDROTHERMAL VENT SYSTEM discovered two years ago has now been found to have endured for 30,000 years. Researchers said similar setups — on Earth and possibly on other worlds — might last millions of years and could have been incubators for the first life. The Lost City, as it has been named, is a craggy column of minerals and microbes sitting 2,500 feet below...

Extra Dimensions Showing Hints Of Scientific Revolution Chicago - Feb 19, 2003 The concept of extra dimensions, dismissed as nonsense even by one of its earliest proponents nearly nine decades ago, may soon help solve seemingly unrelated problems in particle physics, cosmology and gravitational physics, according to a panel of experts who spoke Feb. 15 at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Denver. "It doesn't happen often that you get a confluence of ideas and experiments that come together and it's something that obviously would change your whole way of looking at the universe,"...

Contact: Dr. Dolores Pipernopipernod@tivoli.si.edu 011-507-212-8101Smithsonian Institution An origin of new world agriculture in coastal Ecuador New archaeological evidence points to an independent origin of agriculture in coastal Ecuador 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Suddenly, the remains of larger squash plants appear in the record. The Las Vegas site, described by Dolores Piperno of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) and Karen Stothert, University of Texas at Austin in the February 14th issue of Science, may predate plant domestication sites in the Mesoamerican highlands. The fertile and amazingly diverse lowland tropics seem like a likely place for agriculture to develop. But...

UNSOLVED MYSTERY: ORIGIN OF 800-YEAR-OLD ARTIFACTS ELUDES EXPERTS Sunday, October 6, 2002 By DEAN BAKER, Columbian staff writer With almond-shaped eyes and dreadlocked hair, the faces on the 800-year-old clay amulets have been a mystery since they were first discovered on the banks of the Columbia River more than 80 years ago. Who were these guys who lived around modern Ridgefield at the time Genghis Khan conquered Persia and King John of England signed the Magna Carta? "They were not Chinook Indians," said David Fenton, executive director of the Clark County Historical Museum. "Where they came from and where they...

Source: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center (http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/) Date: Posted 9/9/2002 NASA Scientists Determined To Unearth Origin Of The Iturralde Crater NASA scientists will venture into an isolated part of the Bolivian Amazon to try and uncover the origin of a 5 mile (8 kilometer) diameter crater there known as the Iturralde Crater. Traveling to this inhospitable forest setting, the Iturralde Crater Expedition 2002 will seek to determine if the unusual circular crater was created by a meteor or comet. Organized by Dr. Peter Wasilewski of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., the Iturralde Crater Expedition 2002 will be led by...

August 6, 2002 Skulls Found in Africa and in Europe Challenge Theories of Human OriginsBy JOHN NOBLE WILFORD wo ancient skulls, one from central Africa and the other from the Black Sea republic of Georgia, have shaken the human family tree to its roots, sending scientists scrambling to see if their favorite theories are among the fallen fruit. Probably so, according to paleontologists, who may have to make major revisions in the human genealogy and rethink some of their ideas about the first migrations out of Africa by human relatives. Yet, despite all the confusion and uncertainty the skulls...

Researchers to Seek Origin of Ancient Chinese Civilization 2001.03.29 22:15:00 BEIJING, March 29 (Xinhuanet) -- A grand archaeological project will be launched in China in the coming five years, aiming to seek the origin of ancient Chinese civilization, the world's only ancient civilization that has been developing for 5,000 years without interruption. Researchers will try to find answers to such questions as whether Huangdi and Yandi, two legendary ancestors of the Chinese nation, really existed in history, and whether there were any Chinese characters even older than the inscriptions on animal bones and tortoise shells discovered in the famous...