Friday, May 16, 2014


News Clips For The Day


Want to Fix VA Health Care? Get Rid of It – NBC
BY COL. JACK JACOBS, U.S. ARMY (RET.)
First published May 15th 2014

The following article is opinion and the views expressed are solely those of the author.

On Thursday VA Secretary Eric Shinseki was grilled by members of Congress about significant and perhaps deadly delays in health care for America’s veterans. Some on Capitol Hill, and some leaders of veterans organizations, have demanded his resignation.

But the problem with the VA is not its boss. It doesn’t matter whether Eric Shinseki stays or goes, or whether he’s done a good job during his five-year tenure in trying to address the VA’s many long-term issues in delivering quality care. The problem is the VA. The medical component of the Department of Veterans Affairs needs to be abolished. We need to shut the doors of the thousands of medical facilities around the country that are failing to serve our veterans.

Eric Shinseki, whom I have known for many years, had an illustrious career as a soldier. A graduate of West Point, he was severely wounded in Vietnam. As Army Chief of Staff in 2003, he warned that the post-combat mission in Iraq would require several hundred thousand troops. He was vilified for his views by some in the Pentagon, and by U.S. officials who had no combat experience to inform their own opinions, but he was proven right.

As VA Secretary, he did not prepare his department for the enormous increase in caseload it has faced because of aging Baby Boom veterans and the influx of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. He bravely – some say foolishly – decided that VA care would be available to all veterans with either post-traumatic stress or illnesses that result from exposure to Agent Orange. As a result, waiting times for evaluation and care stretched to as long as two years, earning him a fresh helping of abuse and probably convincing him that no good deed goes unpunished.

Since then, backlogs have been greatly reduced, and care at many VA hospitals is as good as that at other facilities. But no matter. Gen. Shinseki would be the first to remind his critics and supporters alike that he is responsible for everything that happens, or does not happen, in his department.

It’s a common response in a situation like this to ascribe the failure to leadership and replace the leader. We do this all the time in politics and business, and it’s a measure of our misunderstanding of the nature of bureaucracy that we are shocked when things don’t improve much.

Sometimes, we need to think more strategically about solving problems, and a place to start is by asking ourselves what we want and need from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The relationship between the VA and the American public used to be a very close one. The VA was founded and then expanded to a huge size to serve the needs of veterans at a time when we had lots of them, when nearly every household included someone who wore, or once wore, a uniform.

That’s no longer the case. Most Americans no longer know anyone in uniform, and so for many, military service, and the obligation to take care of those who serve, has become an abstraction. We say we love our troops, but that’s because we don’t have to be the troops.

And now we have a huge bureaucracy that most citizens know little about, and our expectations have been mismanaged. We think this large government structure can take care of our veterans, but it can’t, no matter who is in charge, or how much money we throw at it. Bureaucracies are excellent at doing routine things in a routine way, but as any physician can attest, medicine is not routine.

We have created a large bureaucracy with thousands of hospitals, clinics, waiting rooms and employees to deliver medical care, and it needs to be abandoned. It makes no sense to have a parallel universe to take care of our veterans, separate doctors, separate facilities, equipment and even protocols. There is no reason that veterans who would otherwise wait for months to be seen at a VA health clinic can’t be seen by private doctors, the same doctors who treat everyone else. The procedure doesn’t need to be complicated: patient is seen by private doctor, private doctor treats patient, doctor sends bill to government, government pays doctor.

We already have Medicare and Medicaid, which could serve as templates for a veterans program without facilities or physicians. Maybe the Veterans Health Administration, the medical component of the VA, could be absorbed into those systems, with the proviso that veterans shouldn’t have to pay either a premium or a co-pay. Yes, it would still be bureaucracy, but at least it would be less redundant.

I understand that despite the current sound and fury in Washington, there is little long-term will to treat veterans properly or foot the bill for their medical needs. I also understand that the same politicians who usually give veterans’ needs short shrift would be loath to close down the VA facilities in their districts, no matter how dysfunctional. But if we want to deliver the best possible care to our veterans, if we really want to solve this problem, we should stop trying to repair a broken system and consider closing those doors for good.




About the idea of forcing a replacement of Shinseki as head of the VA, the author states, “We do this all the time in politics and business, and it’s a measure of our misunderstanding of the nature of bureaucracy....” Jacobs states that the burden on the VA was expanded with the Baby Boom veterans, Agent Orange patients and post-traumatic stress disorders. He says Shinseki was an excellent soldier during his stint in Vietnam, and warned against the Iraq War in 2003, for which he was blamed by the Pentagon.

I have often wondered why the President gets blamed for everything that happens under his watch when someone down the line actually caused the problem. Sometimes that person isn't even fired. It's like the Secret Service scandal recently when the men hired prostitutes. They were merely reassigned. No wonder they keep having problems – there's no real discipline.

“Bureaucracies are excellent at doing routine things in a routine way, but as any physician can attest, medicine is not routine....It makes no sense to have a parallel universe to take care of our veterans, separate doctors, separate facilities, equipment and even protocols. There is no reason that veterans who would otherwise wait for months to be seen at a VA health clinic can’t be seen by private doctors, the same doctors who treat everyone else. The procedure doesn’t need to be complicated: patient is seen by private doctor, private doctor treats patient, doctor sends bill to government, government pays doctor.”

This statement by Jacobs is beautifully written and clear, and makes a powerful argument. He suggests that Medicare and Medicaid be expanded to take care of the veterans without charging them a co-pay or premium. That way the veterans get their guaranteed medical treatment, but the US doesn't have to run numerous fully equipped and staffed hospitals. It was only a few years ago when a scandal broke out about the physical condition of one of the VA hospitals, with mold being found growing in the facility. I, for one, would like to see Jacobs' suggestions taken during this examination of Shinseki's performance, and Medicaid/Medicare expanded. I'll continue to follow this subject when I see further articles.




Upstate New York Roommates Find $40K in Couch, Return Cash to Owner – NBC
The roommates got a $1,000 reward for returning the money
Thursday, May 15, 2014

When a couple of roommates living in an upstate college town found more than $40,000 in a secondhand couch they bought from a thrift store, they decided to track down the money’s rightful owner instead of keeping it for themselves, according to a student news blog.

The New Paltz roommates, Reese Werkhoven, Cally Guasti and Lara Russo, picked up the couch at a Salvation Army for $20. They didn't have it for long before Werkhoven found an envelope stuffed with $20 bills under a dingy arm rest, reports the Little Rebellion, a student-run news blog at SUNY New Paltz.

“I almost peed,” he said. “The most money I’d ever found in a couch was like 50 cents.”

The cash added up to $700, and the roommates started looking for more, tearing through the fold-out and sticking their hands in every crevice. They pulled out envelope after envelope filled with cash, the total eventually adding up to more than $40,000.

Werkhoven, a SUNY New Paltz student, and Guasti and Russo, both recent college grads, began to talk about what they’d do with the money. They planned to pay off student loans and take a trip. Werkhoven told the Little Rebellion he wanted to buy his mom a new car.

But when Russo found a woman’s name on one of the envelopes, they told the blog, they stopped making plans.

“We all agreed that we had to bring the money back to whoever it belonged to,” Russo said. “It’s their money – we didn’t earn it.”

Werkhoven’s mom found the woman’s name and number in a phone book the next day, so they gave her a call. Werkhoven told the woman he thought he had bought her couch from the Salvation Army.

“Oh, I left a lot of money in that couch,” she told him.

The students took the money over the elderly woman’s house, and there she told them that she started stashing money from her husband in the fold-out more than 30 years ago. After he died, she kept hiding away money and slept on the fold-out.

When she had to go to rehabilitation after a back surgery, the woman told them, her daughter and son-in-law gave the couch to the Salvation Army not knowing what was hidden in between the cushions, and replaced it with a full-size bed.

“When we handed the money back to the woman, she told us that she felt like her husband was present in the room with us,” Guasti told the Little Rebellion.

The woman then gave the three roommates $1,000 to split as a reward for returning the money.




These two students showed good judgment and good citizenship when they contacted the elderly woman. Many wouldn't have called her and brought the money back. This story is a pleasure to read. College kids are too often known for carousing and rebellion. Congratulations to Werkhoven, Guasti and Russon.




Steelworkers Oust Pro-Russian Separatists from Ukraine City Mariupol – NBC
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
- James Novograd and Alexander Smith
First published May 16th 2014, 6:34 am

Ukrainian steelworkers and police forced separatists from their positions in a key city in the east of the country on Thursday, in what could be a swing in the balance of power between the Kiev government and pro-Russian forces.

A separatist leader in the city of Mariupol, German Mandrakov, told The Associated Press that his associates fled and he was "forced" to leave the area they had controlled for weeks.

"Everyone ran away," he said. "Someone is trying to sow discord among us, someone has signed something, but we will continue our fight."

Steelworkers employed by Ukraine's richest man Rinat Akhmetov bolstered police numbers in Mariupol late Thursday night, according the AP. Around 100 groups, each consisting of two policemen and six steelworkers, were patrolling the streets on Friday, police spokeswoman Yulia Lafazan told the AP.

Akhmetov's mining company Metinvest initiated a deal between the workers, police, and community leaders on Thursday to clear the occupied buildings, the news service added.
Mariupol is one of several across the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that were occupied by pro-Russian separatists in April. The New York Times said that workers had also deployed in five other cities in the eastern part of the country.

Over the weekend, parts of eastern Ukraine voted to become more independent from the rest of the country. TheU.S. government said on Monday it will not recognize theresults of the two sovereignty referendums.

Meanwhile, United Nations monitors said they had found an alarming deterioration in the human rights situation in east Ukraine and serious problems emerging in Crimea.
"Those with influence on the armed groups responsible for much of the violence in eastern Ukraine [must] do their utmost to rein in these men who seem bent on tearing the country apart," U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay said in a statement accompanying a 37-page monitoring report.




Ukrainian steelworkers and police evicted the Pro-Russian group from the city of Mariupol without the help of government troops. According to German Mandrakov, a separatist, “'Everyone ran away,' he said. 'Someone is trying to sow discord among us, someone has signed something, but we will continue our fight.'”

“Steelworkers employed by Ukraine's richest man Rinat Akhmetov bolstered police numbers in Mariupol late Thursday night, according the AP. Around 100 groups, each consisting of two policemen and six steelworkers, were patrolling the streets on Friday, police spokeswoman Yulia Lafazan told the AP....The New York Times said that workers had also deployed in five other cities in the eastern part of the country.”

Meanwhile, the UN monitors said that there has been “an alarming deterioration in the human rights situation” under the Russian backed groups both in the Crimea and in Eastern Ukraine. I'll try to find out more about that in another article.




http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/16/us-ukraine-crisis-un-idUSBREA4F05Y20140516

U.N. monitors warn on human rights in east Ukraine, Crimea

(Reuters) - Human rights violations have escalated in easternUkraine and serious problems are emerging in Crimea, United Nations monitors said in a report released on Friday.

The 34-strong U.N. monitoring mission's report, which covered the period from April 2 to May 6 and which Russia criticized as politically motivated, said police and local authorities in eastern Ukraine connived in illegal acts and the takeover of towns by armed groups, undermining the rule of law.

The U.N. findings echoed a statement published on Monday by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, whose experts had identified "a significant number of serious human rights violations" during a visit to Ukraine in March.

Ukraine is preparing to hold presidential elections on May 25 and the U.N. monitors said a fair and democratic ballot would be an important factor in helping to calm the situation. But several candidates had reported intimidation and attacks and the monitoring mission said it had concerns about their security.

"Those with influence on the armed groups responsible for much of the violence in eastern Ukraine (must) do their utmost to rein in these men who seem bent on tearing the country apart," U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay said in a statement accompanying the report.

The U.N. report also cited a "wave of abductions and unlawful detentions" of journalists, activists, politicians, representatives of international bodies and members of the military.

DISCRIMINATION

Russia's Foreign Ministry said the report lacked any semblance of objectivity, and accused its authors of following "political orders" to whitewash the pro-Western leadership, while ignoring "the crudest violations of human rights by the self-proclaimed Kiev authorities".

The report said the U.N. monitors were trying to verify reports of abuses by Ukrainian  government forces, and said it had credible reports of people being detained by the army in a way that amounted to forced disappearances.

In Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert said the OSCE report did not support Russia's contention that the rights of Ukraine's Russian minority were being violated.

"There is atmosphere of intimidation and discrimination, many people in Ukraine are suffering potentially life-threatening legal problems if they don't take up Russian citizenship," Seibert told a news conference.

Gianni Magazzeni, head of the U.N. human rights office's Americas, Europe and Central Asia branch, said there was no evidence to justify concern for Russian-speaking people in Ukraine and the U.N. report aimed to show where the major human rights concerns were, which was mainly in areas under the power of armed groups in the east of the country.

U.N. Assistant Secretary-General Ivan Simonovic said Russia had presented a "White Book" detailing its concerns about human rights. He said the U.N. was paying equal attention to all allegations, and reported on them if they were considered serious.

Referring to Crimea, the U.N. monitors expressed concern about the treatment of journalists, sexual, religious and ethnic minorities, AIDS patients and citizens who had not applied for Russian citizenship, who faced harassment and intimidation.

The report included recommendations for the government in Kiev and authorities in Crimea, but said nothing about what Russia could do to help calm the situation.

Magazzeni said the monitors were acting in line with a resolution of the U.N. General Assembly, and declined to say what Russia should do.

The report was the second by the UN monitoring mission. The first, released on April 15, found ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine had falsely claimed to be under assault to justify Russian intervention.

(Reporting by Tom Miles, additional reporting by Richard Balmforth in Kiev and Stephen Brown in Berlin, editing by John Stonestreet)





The UN report, which Russia has called “politically motivated,” states that the “police and local authorities in eastern Ukraine connived in illegal acts and the takeover of towns by armed groups, undermining the rule of law.” The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe earlier reported “'a significant number of serious human rights violations' during a visit to Ukraine in March.'”

The upcoming election is also considered compromised, – “several candidates had reported intimidation and attacks and the monitoring mission said it had concerns about their security.” There has also been a '”wave of abductions and unlawful detentions' of journalists, activists, politicians, representatives of international bodies and members of the military.” Of the pro-Russian separatists, UN human rights chief Navi Pillay said that they “seem bent on tearing the country apart.” I have no doubt that is true, because with no power in the Kiev government Russia can simply walk in and take over.

Of the UN report, Russia says it is “following 'political orders' to whitewash the pro-Western leadership, while ignoring 'the crudest violations of human rights by the self-proclaimed Kiev authorities.'” The UN report does say that it has been trying to verify reports of Kiev human rights abuses, and did find that “people [were] being detained by the army in a way that amounted to forced disappearances.”

Steffen Seibert of Germany disputes the Russian claim, but stated that many people in Eastern Ukraine have suffered the threat of “life-threatening legal problems if they don't take up Russian citizenship.” Similarly in Crimea the UN monitors report “concern about the treatment of journalists, sexual, religious and ethnic minorities, AIDS patients and citizens who had not applied for Russian citizenship.” The April UN report earlier stated that Russian minorities in Ukraine had “falsely claimed to be under assault to justify Russian intervention.”

The Russian government simply is not known for sponsoring freedom of the press, political affiliation and religion, only now those familiar repressions are occurring in the glaring eye of the international press and the UN. I have a certain faith that there will be more incidences of Ukrainians grouping together to drive out the Russian separatists and a successful election will be held soon. The Russian speakers may dominate in Eastern Ukraine, but there are still a significant number of Ukrainians there alongside them. In a fair election, they will be heard. I hope that comes to pass.





Second-grader takes the wheel when mom passes out
CBS/AP May 15, 2014

GALENA, Kan. -- An 8-year-old southeast Kansas girl is being hailed for her quick, calm thinking after she grabbed the steering wheel and drove the family's SUV when her mother fell unconscious on their highway ride to school.

Abby Porter and her mom, Shelly, were on Kansas 66 headed to her school in Riverton early Wednesday when Shelly had a medical emergency and passed out behind the wheel, Galena Police Chief Larry Delmont said Thursday.

"I thought I was trying to panic and then I got the idea to grab the steering wheel," Abby told CBS Pittsburg affiliate KOAM-TV.

With her mother slumped over, Abby - a second-grader whose father sometimes lets her steer their tractor and lawn mower - leaned over and took the wheel. Delmont said at some point, Abby even executed a U-turn on the four-lane highway, "because she was going home to her daddy."

"That's at 8:37 in the morning, and there is a lot of traffic, a lot of trucks," Delmont said.

Officer Jimmy Hamilton noticed the SUV going about 20 mph and weaving a bit between the two lanes, and suspected someone was driving under the influence. As he got closer he noticed the woman slumped over in the driver seat and saw Abby at the wheel. The vehicle was also closing in on an intersection.

Hamilton tried to get in front of Abby's car to slow her down, but she kept switching lanes to avoid bumping into his car. Hamilton got alongside her and told Abby to put the vehicle in park, but she didn't know how. He then told her she needed to bump into him to stop the car, but Abby said she didn't want to because she was afraid.

He convinced Abby bumping into his car was OK.

"I never saw her cry," Hamilton said. "It was just the expression on her face and the tone of her voice, you could tell she was scared. But she stayed with it."

Hamilton said he positioned his car in front of the SUV, "and she just steered right into my rear bumper, and I started applying slow pressure on my breaks until both vehicles stopped."

Emergency crews got Abby's mother to the hospital, but Delmont said he didn't know what caused her to lose consciousness. KOAM-TV reports that by Wednesday evening she was at home resting.

But the day was not complete until Abby could return to class.

"I wanted to take my spelling test and tell that everything was OK," Abby told KOAM-TV.

The police department in Galena, a town of about 3,000 residents about 150 miles south of Kansas City, planned to present Abby with a plaque for "outstanding bravery in a life-threatening situation."

The department also plans to honor Hamilton, Delmont said.
"That officer did a perfect job."



Amazingly, this little girl managed to make a U turn in heavy traffic and knew where she was going enough to do that. I think many children that age would be playing around or otherwise not attentive when riding in the car and would be very confused in such an emergency. Maybe I am underestimating the age group. There was a report on the local news recently about a very small girl who called 911 when her mother went into labor and with instructions from the 911 operator, delivered the baby. I think that girl was five.

A couple of things are really lucky in this situation. First, the girl's father “sometimes lets her steer their tractor and lawn mower,” and second that a wonderfully brave and intelligent police officer spotted her weaving around and communicated successfully with her, helping her to get the car stopped. As Police Chief Delmont said, “'That officer did a perfect job.'” The town is planning to have a plaque made honoring both Abby and Officer Hamilton. This incident may work to give Abby a little more self-confidence than some children have, having successfully steered the car until the officer showed up to help her.





Ancient skeleton in underwater cave may be a "missing link" – CBS
By CHARLES Q. CHOI LIVESCIENCE.COM May 15, 2014

The ancient skeleton of a teenage girl found in an underwater cave in Mexico may be the missing link that solves the long-standing mystery behind the identity of the first Americans, researchers say.

These findings, the first time researchers have been able to connect an early American skeleton with modern Native American DNA, suggest the earliest Americans are indeed close relatives of modern Native Americans, scientists added.

The newfound skeleton was named "Naia," after Greek water spirits known as naiads. The bones are the nearly intact remains of a small, delicately built teenage girl who stood about 4 feet 10 inches (149 centimeters) tall and was about 15 or 16 years old at the time of her death, based on the development of her skeleton and teeth. [See Images of the Ancient Human Skeleton Discovery]

Naia reveals that despite any differences in the face and skull between the earliest Americans and modern Native Americans, they were, in fact, significantly related, probably deriving from the same gene pool.

"Naia is a missing link filling in a gap of knowledge we had about the earliest Americans and modern Native Americans,"lead study author James Chatters, owner of Applied Paleoscience, an archaeological and paleontological consulting firm in Bothell, Washington, told Live Science. Chatters is best known for his work on Kennewick Man, an ancient skeleton found in Kennewick, Washington, in 1996, whose origins were debated, because his skull was markedly different from those of modern Native Americans.

Cave discovery

Naia was hidden in a deep submerged pit known as Hoyo Negro. This underwater chamber is reachable only by divers in the Sac Actun cave system, a web of flooded tunnels beneath the jungles of Mexico's Eastern Yucatán Peninsula.

"Hoyo Negro is a more than 100-foot-deep (30 meters), bell-shaped, water-filled void about the size of a professional basketball arena deep inside a drowned cave system," Chatters said. "Only technical cave divers can reach the bottom. First they must climb down a 30-foot (9 m) ladder in a nearby sinkhole. Then they swim along 200 feet (60 m) of tunnel to the pit rim before making a final 100-foot (30 m) drop. The divers are the astronauts of this project; we scientists are their mission control."

Divers first discovered Hoyo Negro in 2007 during their exploration of underwater caves in the region. "We had no idea what we might find when we initially entered the cave, which is the allure of cave diving," said study author Alberto Nava of Bay Area Underwater Explorers in Berkeley, California. "The moment we entered the site, we knew it was an incredible place. The floor disappeared under us, and we could not see across to the other side."

"We pointed our lights down and to the sides -- all we could see was darkness," Nava recalled. "We felt as if our powerful underwater lights were being destroyed by this void, so we called it 'Black Hole' (a cosmic object that absorbs all light), which in Spanish is Hoyo Negro." [Photos: The 7 Longest Caves of the World]

Buried with beasts

Naia was found in 2007 buried alongside the bones of beasts such as saber-toothed cats, coyotes, pumas, bears, sloths and bobcats. "It is like a miniature version of the La Brea Tar Pits, only without the tar and with better preservation," Chatters said. "It is a time capsule of climate, and plant, animal and human life at the end of the last ice age." (Located in Los Angeles, the La Brea Tar Pits hold the world's richest deposits of ice age fossils.)

The scientists think Naia and the animals fell into this cave long ago and died in this "inescapable natural trap," as the investigators called it. As glaciers worldwide started melting about 10,000 years ago, the cave filled with water -- sea levels were as much as 360 feet (120 m) lower then.

Based on direct radiocarbon dating of tooth enamel and indirect uranium-thorium dating of flowerlike crystalline deposits on Naia's bones, the researchers suggest her remains are 12,000 to 13,000 years old. This hinted that she could help reveal a long-standing controversy regarding the mysterious relationship between the earliest Americans and modern Native Americans.

Genetically, modern Native Americans resemble Siberians. This suggests that modern Native Americans are the descendants of people who moved between 26,000 and 18,000 years ago into Beringia, the landmass that once connected Asia and North America and is now divided by the Bering Strait. These people then migrated southward into North America sometime after 17,000 years ago.

Who were the first Americans?

However, despite widespread support for the idea that the earliest Americans are the ancestors of modern Native Americans, the ancestry of the first people to inhabit the Americas was long debated, because the face and head features of the oldest-known American skeletons do not look much like those of modern Native Americans. [Human Origins: How Hominids Evolved (Infographic)]

"Modern Native Americans closely resemble people of China, Korea, and Japan, but the oldest American skeletons do not," Chatters said. The earliest American skeletons have longer, narrower skulls than modern Native Americans, and smaller, shorter faces.

All in all, the earliest Americans more closely resemble modern peoples of Africa, Australia and the Southern Pacific Rim. "This has led to speculation that perhaps the first Americans and Native Americans came from different homelands, or migrated from Asia at different stages in their evolution," Chatters said.

Moreover, it has been very difficult unearthing intact skeletons of the earliest Americans that might help resolve this controversy.

"Paleoamerican skeletons are rare for several reasons," Chatters said. "The people themselves were few; they were highly nomadic and seem to have buried or cremated the dead where they fell, making the locations of graves unpredictable; also, geologic processes have destroyed or deeply buried their graves."

Until now, the skeletal remains of the earliest Americans that scientists discovered were typically only fragments. In addition, most were estimated to be younger than 10,000 years old -- the earliest Americans reached the Americas long before that.

Examining Naia's skull

To help solve the puzzle regarding the origins of the first people to reach the Americas, Chatters and his colleagues retrieved Naia's skull from Hoyo Negro. This operation was complicated by how divers who visited Hoyo Negro without authorization had almost knocked Naia's skull into a deep chasm.

"The floor of that cave is a mess, littered with boulders, some of which are room-sized, and the skull could have dropped another 5 meters (16 feet) into a gap where there would have been no room for a diver," Chatters said. "The area is now fenced off."

Moreover, "the divers had never picked up Naia's skull before, so we didn't know how strong it was," Chatters recalled. "We were praying that it would not just shatter in their hands. It turned out, she's as solid as a rock."

Naia's skull had the face and head features one would expect of the earliest Americans. To learn more about Naia's potential links to modern Native Americans, the scientists extracted DNA from her upper right wisdom tooth. They focused on genetic material from her mitochondria -- the powerhouses of the cell, which possess their own DNA and get inherited from the mother. People have far more copies of mitochondrial DNA than chromosomal DNA, making it easier for researchers to study. [Top 10 Mysteries of the First Humans]

"We tried a DNA extraction on the outside chance some fragments might remain," Chatters said. "I was shocked when we actually got intact DNA.

"We were lucky to find a tooth that did not have an opening in the crown, so DNA still happened to be inside," Chatters added.

This DNA from her molar revealed that Naia possessed genetic mutations common to modern Native Americans. This genetic signature is found only in the Americas, probably first developing in Beringia after populations there split from Asians.

"This project is exciting on so many fronts -- the beautiful cave, the incredibly well-preserved animal skeletons, the completeness of the human skeleton, the success of our innovative dating approach," Chatters said. "But for me, what is most exciting is that we finally have an answer, after 20 years, to a question that has plagued me since my first look at Kennewick Man -- 'Who were the first Americans?'"

"These discoveries are extremely significant," said study author Pilar Luna, director of underwater archaeology at Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History. "Not only do they shed light on the origins of modern Americans, they clearly demonstrate the paleontological potential of the Yucatán Peninsula and the importance of conserving Mexico's unique heritage."

The differences seen in the face and head between the earliest Americans and modern Native Americans are probably due to evolutionary changes that happened during or after the colonization of the Americas.

"The changes that make northernmost Native Americans look most like East Asian people are adaptations to cold environments -- for instance, a flatter face and lower nose means there are less parts of the body projecting out and potentially freezing off," Chatters said. "Afterward, evolutionary changes that were advantageous during the expansion into the Americas were not necessarily so advantageous after people settled down, so other traits came to dominate."

The researchers now hope to sequence Naia's entire genome. "Current technology permits this, but it will still be challenging," said study author Brian Kemp, a molecular anthropologist at Washington State University in Pullman.

The researchers also hope to find more skeletons that support their findings.

"You don't prove an argument based just on one example in science," Chatters said.

The scientists detail their findings in tomorrow's (May 16) issue of the journal Science.

Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.



I would like to say that, though this article is very interesting, Hoyo Negro is not thought to be the oldest site in the Americas and the race of the people is also in question. A television documentary from about five years ago stated that the earliest known human site in the Americas is located on the west coast of South America, and that the DNA from those bones most closely matched a white-skinned minority race in Japan called the Ainu. According to the article on the Ainu below, they are not only not Mongoloid, but not Caucasoid either. They may not even have always been white-skinned. The Australoids are among the earliest groups of Homo Sapiens to colonize Asia and SE Asia, predating the Mongoloids. The Australoids in southern Asia are not white-skinned, but very dark. Australian Aborigines are one commonly known example of SE Asian Australoids, who are thought to have migrated to Australia around 50,000 BP. The site in South America has been dated at 30,000 BP by the cave art found there and some hearths.

See the Discovery article below from the Discovery website – http://news.discovery.com/history/did-humans-arrive-in-americas-30000-years-ago-131014 .The article is titled “Did Humans Arrive in Americas 30,000 Years Ago?” It was published October 14, 2013 by Fox News.com.

The following is a quotation from that article:

“Historians commonly believe that humans first crossed to the Americans from Asia 12,000 years ago. But a new exhibit in Brazil features artifacts dating back as far as 30,000 years ago, 18,000 years earlier than previously believed.

100 items including cave paintings and ceramic art depicting animals, hunting expeditions and even sex scenes of the early Americans are on display in Brasilia, Brazil's capital.

The artifacts were found at the Serra da Capivara national park in Brazil’s northeastern Piaui state, which used to be a popular site for the hunter-gatherer civilization that created the artwork.

"To date, these are the oldest traces of human existence in the Americas," Franco-Brazilian archaeologist Niede Guidon who has headed a mission to carry out large-scale excavation of Piaui's interior since the 1970's told the AFP. "It's difficult to think there exists a site anywhere with a higher concentration of cave art."

In addition to the artwork, Guidon said charcoal remains of structured fires found at the site are among other traces of the Serra dwellers.

Some archaeologists disagree with Guidon that a few burnt flakes are not evidence of man-made fire hearths, but rather the remains of a natural stone formation.

However, Guidon contends the primitive civilization’s cave art provides enough evidence of early human activity.

"When it (cave art) began in Europe and Africa, it did here too," she said.
The paintings date back an estimated 29,000 years.”