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Lee supports Department of Peace 

U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland announced Wednesday that she is joining other members of Congress to introduce legislation to develop a U.S. Department of Peace dedicated to domestic and international peacemaking. 

A Lee spokesperson said the proposed department would promote democratic principles, strengthen non-military means of peacemaking and develop nonviolent dispute resolution.  

In a statement issued Wednesday, Lee said, “Just as we have trained soldiers to wage war in the past, we must begin to raise up a new generation of leaders committed to peace and justice.”  

The proposed Department of Peace would be a cabinet-level department in the executive branch of the federal government, the representative said, and would have a Peace Academy modeled after the military service academies. People attending the academy would receive a four-year concentrated peace education and would be required to serve a minimum of five years in public service programs dedicated to domestic or international nonviolent conflict resolution. 

“We confront new challenges every day in the quest for peace,” Lee said. “This proposal places that quest on an equal footing with the weapons of war.” 

Free compost at farmers’ market 

The Berkeley Community Gardening Collaborative will be giving away compost on Saturday at the Berkeley Farmer’s Market as part of “Sustainable Agriculture “ Day. Berkeley residents can bring a bag or bucket to Center Street and Milvia to be filled with compost from their own yard debris that is collected by the city every other week. 

The compost is made in Modesto by Grover Compost Company. Most is sold, but by request of the city, 15 percent is returned to Berkeley. In past years the compost has been delivered to school and community gardens but will be offered to individuals for the second time this year. 

Wing makes dean’s list 

Teresa Wing of Berkeley was placed on the dean’s list at Tufts University in Massachusetts. Students must have a grade point average of 3.4 or higher to receive this academic honor. 

UCB scientists find new traces of ancient human life 

Scientists working in Ethiopia have found what may be the oldest known traces of human-like life – teeth and bones from up to 5.8 million years ago – in a discovery that challenges the long-held belief that man's earliest ancestors first emerged on the grassy plains. 

The remains are believed to be those of forest-dwelling creatures that walked upright. They are about million years older than any other known fossils definitively identified as those of hominids, the group that includes humans, the researchers said. 

The fossils come from a point in time tantalizingly close to the evolutionary split between the lineage leading to humans and the one that produced chimpanzees. Scientists believe that split took place between 5 million and 8 million years ago. 

“This evidence appears to be on the human line – one of the earliest human ancestors. Not only is the dating very solid, but what the report tells us about the environments of the time is really critical,” said Brian Richmond, an anthropologist at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, who was not connected to the study. “This is a windfall of information compared to what we've had.” 

The bones were found in a remote Ethiopian desert that was wet and forested – and rattled by volcanic eruptions – when the creatures lived there, the researchers reported in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. 

That discovery clashes with the widely held theory that the drying up of forests millions of years ago was critical to human evolution. This theory holds that early human ancestors learned to walk upright, and diverged forever from their apelike cousins, because their forests were gone and they had to survive on the treeless plains. 

Bernard Wood, a human origins professor at George Washington University, said it is not entirely proven that the creatures were hominids or that their habitat was really a forest. “But that doesn't diminish the importance of what they've found,” he said. 

The research team, led by Yohannes Haile-Selassie of UC Berkeley, made the discovery 140 miles northeast of Addis Ababa, and about 50 miles south of where the fossil “Lucy” was found about three decades ago. Lucy is some 3.2 million years old and is believed to be a member of the species from which all modern humans are descended. 

Haile-Selassie and his colleagues found 11 specimens, including a jawbone with teeth, hand and foot bones, fragmentary arm bones and a piece of collarbone. They represent at least five individuals, Haile-Selassie said. 

Dating was done by measuring trapped argon gas in volcanic ash that had been mixed in with the bones. It found the fossils to be between 5.2 million and 5.8 million years old. 

Haile-Selassie said the specimens revealed a primitive version of Ardipithecus ramidus, an early hominid species whose oldest known fossils were previously found in 4.4-million-year-old sediment in Ethiopia. 

He said with further research, the bones might turn out be a new species altogether. 

Civic Center Building wins award 

The Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Building at 2180 Milvia Street won this year’s Savings By Design Energy Efficient Integration award. The building, which was recently renovated by the ELS architectural firm, was honored for having the most energy efficient building design reviewed by the awards jury. The award is co-sponsored by the American Institute of Architects California Council and California’s four largest utility companies – Pacific Gas and Electric, San Diego Gas and Electric, Southern California Edison, and Southern California Gas Company.