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The Newborn Screening Saves Lives Reauthorization Act is waiting in the US Senate for a vote. Last week, before the House voted on it, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann went to the floor of the House and said parent consent should be required. But it passed without consent requirements. Now, the U.S. Senate is planning to vote on the Houseʼs newborn screening bill and send it to the President. The Senate wants to hotline it, but we want to stop it unless it has written informed parent consent for the government storage, use, analysis, and sharing of newborn DNA. Call your Senators...

In the Altay Mountains of southern Siberia, some 200 miles from where Russia touches Mongolia, China, and Kazakhstan, nestled under a rock face about 30 yards above a little river called the Anuy, there is a cave called Denisova. It has long attracted visitors. The name comes from that of a hermit, Denis, who is said to have lived there in the 18th century. Long before that, Neolithic and later Turkic pastoralists took shelter in the cave, gathering their herds around them to ride out the Siberian winters. Thanks to them, the archaeologists who work in Denisova today, surrounded by...

It looked bad for homeless alcoholic Lukis Anderson when DNA evidence tied him to a Silicon Valley millionaire's 2012 murder. But when Anderson's lawyer proved that paramedics who had treated him on the streets of downtown San Jose inadvertently transferred his DNA to the Monte Sereno murder scene, she didn't just clear him. The case is believed to be the first in California and perhaps the nation in which DNA evidence was shown to have falsely placed an innocent person at the scene of a crime, lending credibility to defense lawyers who struggle to convince jurors to view DNA evidence...

Chimp DNA Mutation Study--Selective Yet Surprising by Jeffrey Tomkins, Ph.D. * A popular evolutionary belief is that humans and chimps shared a common ancestor 2 to 6 million years ago. Apparently, evolutionists still aren't too sure of their own theory: now they've more than doubled that timeline. Scientists just published a study describing chimp DNA mutation rates and compared a number of cherry-picked genomic regions to human—and this research doubled their evolutionary timeline.1 However, the selective data did not account for the vast chasm of documented genome differences that were not included in the analyses. Heritable mutations are the rare...

Former Clinton aide Kiki McLean defended Hillary Clinton's claim that she was "dead broke" and "struggled" after leaving the White House by saying that the Clintons "have a life and a set of expectations that are different" from middle class Americans. McLean made the comments on CNN:(VIDEO-AT-LINK)"I suppose when you heard that comment you knew full well that that was going to be fodder for the Republicans," the CNN host said today referring to the comments Clinton made in an interview that aired last night. "Mrs. Clinton used the word 'houses' -- the plural version, which many Americans would hear...

When politicians have trouble spinning their own glories, that’s a problem. So it was bizarre that Hillary Rodham Clinton, asked at a forum in April about her legacy at the State Department, had trouble articulating it. That feeds into a narrative — awaiting her memoir on Tuesday — that she may have been glamorous as secretary of state but didn’t actually accomplish much. In fact, that’s dead wrong, for Clinton achieved a great deal and left a hefty legacy — just not the traditional kind.... No, her legacy is different. For starters, Clinton recognized that our future.... More fundamentally, Clinton...

Hillary Clinton drew a "Harry Potter" sized line of fans waiting to get an autographed copy of her new memoir "Hard Choices" at a Manhattan bookstore today. Hundreds of Hillary fans have camped out for hours, many overnight, outside the Union Square Barnes and Noble store to get one of the coveted wristbands which would allow them access to her first book tour stop today. By the time people were allowed to inside the store around 8:30 a.m., the line was wrapped around an entire city block -- up Park Avenue, around 18th Street, and all the way to Broadway.

Reporters who showed up to cover the first signing of Hillary Clinton's book tour in Manhattan on Tuesday faced strict restrictions that led to what one veteran correspondent called a "media mutiny." Barnes & Noble Corporate Communications Director Carolyn Brown addressed the assembled reporters and briefed them on the restrictions. Brown said Clinton would "hold the book and pose" before going "behind the desk" to sign copies. "No questions: She's not taking any questions," Brown said. "She's not making remarks." Many reporters griped about the situation. Print reporters were told they would be kept at least 20 feet away from...

A 2005 Senate trip to Canada opened Hillary Clinton’s eyes to the dangers of climate change and inspired her to push for aggressive actions to fight it, the former secretary of state wrote in her book released Tuesday. Clinton described flying over the Yukon Territory with three Republican senators and seeing large areas of spruce trees that had been killed by beetles driven north temperature changes. “A tribal elder recounted how he had returned to a lake where he had fished as a boy only to find it dried up,” Clinton said in her second book, “Hard Choices.” “I met...

'Junk' DNA Keeps Your Heart Beating by Jeffrey Tomkins, Ph.D. * A new research study has shown that large regions of the human genome, once thought to be useless junk, work to keep your heart functioning properly.1 When these areas of the genome malfunction, cardiovascular failure is often outcome, showing the importance of every piece of God's handiwork. The human genome is composed of more than just DNA sequences that produce proteins. In fact, only about 2% to 3% of the genome directly encodes information specifying the sequence of proteins. Despite this small percentage, about 80 to 90% of the...

Hillary Clinton touted the economic growth seen during the last two Democratic presidencies during a speech before the New America Foundation on Friday, and she warned that the U.S. risks falling behind global competitors if policymakers do not do more to revive the middle class by generating broad-based economic growth. Clinton, a former secretary of state who's eyeing a presidential bid in 2016, praised both President Obama and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, for their economic stewardship. And she contrasted their years in the White House with the tenure of former President George W. Bush, saying eight years of...

One of the oldest human skeletons in North America has been discovered by a team of international scientists in an underwater Yucatán Peninsula cave............... ...................... The girl's skeleton is exceptionally complete because of the environment in which she died -- she ended up in the right water and in a quiet place without any soil. Her pristine preservation enabled our team to extract enough DNA to determine her shared genetic code with modern Native Americans," she added. The skeleton, which is now covered in water, is estimated to be between 12,000 and 13,000 years old, suggesting Naia lived in the...

Remains Found in Mexico Connect Earliest Settlers With Continent's Natives She was just a teenager when she died alone in the dark. The scientists who analyzed her bones said Thursday that she is the oldest nearly complete, genetically intact human skeleton in the New World. Her remains—discovered deep within a flooded cave in Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula—cement the connection between the earliest settlers of the Americas and modern Native Americans. A unique genetic marker exhumed from her 12,000-year-old skeleton offers evidence that the first hunter-gatherers who crossed the Bering Sea from northeast Asia on a now-submerged territory called Beringia belonged to...

Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute, or TSRI, in San Diego, California, have created a new living organism whose genetic code includes six letters, instead of four, and that added pair of DNA letters, researchers say, is “not found in nature.” In a study, published in Nature on Wednesday, scientists described the new bacterium as the first life form to contain artificial genetic building blocks. According to them, the new finding could lead to organisms that might help scientists develop medicines or industrial products that are impossible to produce using cells containing only natural genetic code, The New York Times...

Researchers for the first time created microbes containing artificial DNA, expanding the universal genetic code that guides life. The advance one day could lead to new antibiotics, vaccines and other medical products not possible with today's bioscience. In a report published Wednesday in Nature, the scientists said they created two additions to the normal genetic code, and then prompted bacteria to incorporate these pieces of man-made DNA with few ill effects. "The cells recognized it as natural," said chemical biologist Floyd Romesberg at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., who led the research group.

In a paper published in the journal Nature, bioengineers at The Scripps Research Institute in the San Diego neighborhood of La Jolla said they had successfully inserted two synthetic molecules into the genome of an Escherichia coli bacterium, which survived and passed on the new genetic material. In addition to the naturally occurring nucleotides adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine, which form the rungs of DNA’s double-helix structure, the bacterium carried two more base-pair partners, which study authors have dubbed d5SICS and dNaM. For more than a decade, scientists have been experimenting with so-called unnatural base pairs, or UBPs, saying they...

We leave traces of ourselves everywhere we go, thanks to DNA. But an artist's new invention that claims to let you erase all evidence of your personal data could change that. ‘Invisible' is a spray from BioGenFutures that claims to delete 99.5% of your DNA from everyday objects. This includes the data you leave behind via your saliva, fingernails and strands of hair. The spray comes with a mysterious partner product called Replace, which apparently obscures the 0.5% of data remaining, allowing users total anonymity. The ‘genetic privacy' project is the brainchild of artist and BioGenFutures founder Heather Dewey-Hagborg, who...

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Minnesota would be permitted to retain blood samples from newborn babies under a bill that passed the state House Thursday, potentially restoring a valuable research tool despite privacy concerns from some parents. The bill that passed 69-58 would let parents opt out of having their child’s sample kept. Lawmakers also added an amendment banning sale of the samples and related test results and data. The bill now moves to the Senate. Supporters say keeping the samples can save lives by helping researchers develop tests for new disorders. Opponents say they amount to giving ownership of...

New York (Reuters) - How can creatures as different in body and mind as present-day humans and their extinct Neanderthal cousins be 99.84 percent identical genetically? Four years after scientists discovered that the two species' genomes differ by a fraction of a percent, geneticists said on Thursday they have an explanation: the cellular equivalent of "on"/"off" switches that determine whether DNA is activated or not. :snip: Calling the work "pioneering," and "a remarkable breakthrough," paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London said in an interview that the HOXD gene finding "may help to explain how these ancient...

An email from Monica Lewinsky was omitted from the Clinton library’s latest document dump for privacy reasons. Every two weeks this spring, the National Archives has been releasing documents from Clinton’s presidency through The William J Clinton Presidential Library & Museum in Little Rock, Ark. Included in a list of withdrawn/redacted documents, midway through a batch of documents concerning Gen. Wesley Clark, is an email from Monica Lewinsky’s Pentagon email address. Vaguely referenced as concerning a “medical record,” the omitted email is listed as four pages long.

Hillary Rodham Clinton's new book on her time as President Barack Obama's secretary of state will be released on June 10, her publisher says. Publisher Simon & Schuster said Wednesday that Clinton would share "candid reflections about key moments during her time as Secretary of State as well as her thoughts about how to navigate the challenges of the 21st century." Clinton's book has been widely anticipated as she considers another presidential campaign in 2016. The former first lady and New York senator is already a best-selling author: Her 2003 memoir, "Living History," sold more than 1 million copies.

British scientists have announced that they have successfully clone a dinosaur, according to a spokesman from Liverpool’s Jon Moore University... They’ve cloned an Aparosaurus by extracting DNA from a well-preserved fossil, then injected it into a fertile ostrich womb. The dinosaur, nicknamed “Spot” is currently being incubated at the university’s College of Veterinary Medicine. “Ostriches share a lot of genetic traits with dinosaurs,” said Dr. Gerrard Jones, a biology professor at LJMU and the project’s leading scientist. “Their eggshell microstructures are almost identical to those of the Apatosaurus. That’s why the cloning worked so perfectly.” Religious groups and animal rights...

A pair of advocates—they do legitimate research too, but their ardor is so intense, it’s hard to call them scientists—believe that they will, within their lifetimes, make ours the first generation of humans to live forever. + Their quest is elegantly laid out in The Immortalists, a new documentary making its way around the film festival circuit. The Immortalists follows the triumphs and tragedies of three years in the lives of William H. Andrews and Aubrey de Grey, two men who prove just as interesting as the work they’re doing. The Immortalists is really a film about death, not life,...

During a two-day meeting in the last week of February, the Food and Drug Administration debated regulating a new technique that combines DNA from three people that would, in theory, create children free of certain inherited diseases. Scientists say these genetically modified embryos, made with the DNA from two biological mothers and one biological father, would potentially allow mothers who carry DNA mutations for conditions like blindness and epilepsy to have children without passing on these defects.The technique — nicknamed “three-parent in vitro fertilization� — is the latest in a long line of controversial scientific procedures regarding fertility and...

Sometime in the future, technicians will go over the scene of the crime. They’ll uncover some DNA evidence and take it to the lab. And when the cops need to get a picture of the suspect, they won’t have to ask eyewitnesses to give descriptions to a sketch artist – they’ll just ask the technicians to get a mugshot from the DNA. That, at least, is the potential of new research being published today in PLOS Genetics. In that paper, a team of scientists describe how they were able to produce crude 3D models of faces extrapolated from a person’s...

A MURDER has been committed, and all the cops have to go on is a trace of DNA left at the scene. It doesn't match any profile in databases of known criminals, and the trail goes cold. But what if the police could issue a wanted poster based on a realistic "photofit" likeness built from that DNA? Not if, but when, claim researchers who have developed a method for determining how our genes influence facial shape. One day, the technique may even allow us to gaze into the faces of extinct human-like species that interbred with our own ancestors. It's...

Woolly mammoths are coming back, say cloning scientists In what sounds like it could be the plot for the next Jurassic Park movie, a team of scientists in Siberia says there's a 'high chance' that they will be able to clone a woolly mammoth. The breakthrough comes as a result of last year's discovery of an incredibly well-preserved mammoth carcass, frozen in the permafrost of Siberia's Malolyakhovskiy island. The scientists estimate that the animal is about 43,000 years old, and was 50-60 years old when it died in distress after getting stuck in the ice. In the ten months since...

"I was in shock. I was outraged and I just assumed kits were being tested," said actress Mariska Hargitay about the thousands of rape kits in Detroit and across the country that have been left sitting in storage without being processed, allowing rapists to remain free to attack again. And they often do. Hargitay joined Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy to announce legislation that will soon be introduced to state lawmakers that is aimed at setting guidelines and deadlines for rape kits tests to be processed. "Testing rape kits is vital for keeping rapists off the street," said Hargitay during...

Bringing extinct animals back to life is really happening — and it’s going to be very, very cool. Unless it ends up being very, very bad. The first time Ben Novak saw a passenger pigeon, he fell to his knees and remained in that position, speechless, for 20 minutes. He was 16. At 13, Novak vowed to devote his life to resurrecting extinct animals. At 14, he saw a photograph of a passenger pigeon in an Audubon Society book and “fell in love.” But he didn’t know that the Science Museum of Minnesota, which he was then visiting with a...

Miraculous claims surrounding the coming forth of the Book of Mormon are an evidence of the prophetic calling of Joseph Smith. Critics intent on discrediting the Restoration point to DNA studies on indigenous American peoples in an attempt to expose Joseph, the Book of Mormon, and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as frauds. Claiming that scientific evidence excludes any possibility that Middle Eastern or ancient Jewish travelers came to the Americas in antiquity, such critics attempt to sow seeds of doubt in the minds of Latter-day Saints and those of other faiths concerning the authenticity of the...

WILMINGTON, N.C. — A Wilmington apartment complex will soon be running DNA tests on dog poop to identify owners who don't clean up after their pooches do their business. The StarNews of Wilmington reports The Reserve at Forest Hills will ask the complex's 100 dog owners to have their pets swabbed for a DNA sample. Then, if poop found in the complex matches a pet, the owner will be fined and also will have to pay for the DNA testing which can cost up to $50.

Researchers say they’ve found more DNA evidence that possibly shows gay men don’t have a choice — that their biological makeup drives them to homosexuality. In a study at Chicago University, researchers looked at DNA chains of 400-plus pairs of gay brothers and found what they said were two distinct bits of genetic material that they claim are linked to homosexuality, The Daily Mail reported. The gay brothers were identified and recruited to help with the study over the course of several years’ worth of Gay Pride festivals and marches. The research was highlighted during the recent annual American Association...

What a treat for all medieval historians! More than 500 years after he was killed, the skeleton of Richard III is giving them much more reliable biographical information than they acquired over the previous half a millennium. Henry VII, his successor, and opponent at Bosworth, encouraged his court historians to produce a warped picture of Richard. Thank God, then, for the miraculous discovery of his body in a Leicester car park in 2012, and the undeniable truths it provided. Analysis of his skeleton showed the king didn’t have a hunchback exactly; he suffered from scoliosis of the spine, meaning his...

The Black Death of the 14th century may be written into the DNA of survivors' descendants, new research finds. The study reveals that Roma people (sometimes known as gypsies, although this is considered a derogatory term) and white Europeans share alterations to their genetic code that occurred after the Roma settled in Europe from northwest India 1,000 years ago. The plague of the 1300s, which killed at least 75 million people, is a likely candidate for forcing this evolutionary change. "We show that there are some immune receptors that are clearly influenced by evolution in Europe and not in northwest...

hat caused the fall of the Roman Empire? A devastating plague that struck during the reign of Emperor Justinian in 541 AD, killing a quarter of the population, seems to have landed the final blow, but the identity of the infection was a mystery. Now sequencing of DNA taken from two skeletons buried in Bavaria, Germany, in the 6th century has uncovered the complete genome of Yersinia pestis, the bacteria also blamed for the Black Death that struck Europe in 1348. The find suggests that Y. pestis may have emerged to ravage humanity several times. Hendrik Poinar at McMaster University...

Here's What Happened When Neanderthals And Ancient Humans Hooked Up 80,000 Years Ago Dina Spector Jan. 29, 2014, 1:49 PM     Neanderthal REUTERS/Nikola Solic Hyperrealistic face of a neanderthal male is displayed in a cave in the new Neanderthal Museum in the northern Croatian town of Krapina February 25, 2010 By comparing the Neanderthal genome to modern human DNA, the authors of two new studies, both published on Wednesday, show how DNA that humans have inherited from breeding with Neanderthals has shaped us. Modern humans, Neanderthals, and their sister lineage, Denisovans, descended from a common ancestor. The...

The headlines about this individual having dark skin are well founded, like the Luxembourg hunter-gatherer the sample has ancestral “non-European” copies of most of the major loci which are known to have large effect sizes (SLC24A5, which is now fixed in Europeans, SLC45A2, which is present at frequencies north of 80% in most of Europe, and KITLG, a lower frequency variant known to have a major impact on skin and hair). Additionally, this individual is related to the Ma’lta individual, just like the Swedish hunter-gatherers, but unlike the Luxembourg male (which did predate the Spanish samples by 1,000 years). Lots...

The blood in Irish veins is Celtic, right? Well, not exactly. Although the history many Irish people were taught at school is the history of the Irish as a Celtic race, the truth is much more complicated, and much more interesting than that ... Research done into the DNA of Irish males has shown that the old Anthropological attempts to define 'Irish' have been misguided. As late as the 1950s researchers were busy collecting data among Irish people such as hair colour and height, in order to categorise them as a 'race' and define them as different to the British....

Police presence is often all it takes to make voluntary experiences seem mandatory. Ricardo Nieves, one of those flagged down by Reading police officers, felt the experience was anything but voluntary, and that attempting to leave would have been greeted by a possible arrest.  The Reading city council and the mayor himself also expressed concern about the use of police officers to acquire "voluntary" blood and saliva samples. For his part, Chief Heim appears to be ready to just ride out this outrage without offering any concession towards the offended public.  But if that's what Heim had planned, Nieves just threw...

In 2012, a variety of research papers associated with the ENCODE project (Encyclopedia Of DNA Elements) described how the human genome was pervasively copied—transcribed—into an amazing array of functional RNA molecules that regulate how genes and the genome function.1 Much of the pervasive transcription is based on long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) that have the same control features as protein-coding genes but with other functions.2 A large group of lncRNAs stay in the cell’s nucleus, where some directly regulate how genes are expressed while others help modify chromosome structure. Some lncRNAs are exported into the cell’s cytoplasm to regulate the production...

After Osama Bin Ladin was killed, someone on our side released the name of the doctor who, with DNA tests verified that OBL was in the compound. Who did it and why?

It is one of the most unusual evolutionary ideas ever proposed: humans are amphibious apes who lost their fur, started to walk upright and developed big brains because they took to living the good life by the water’s edge. This is the aquatic ape theory and although treated with derision by some academics over the past 50 years, it is still backed by a small, but committed group of scientists. From next Wednesday through Friday, they will hold a major London conference when several speakers, including British naturalist and broadcaster, David Attenborough, will voice support for the theory. “Humans are...

Drivers in a southeastern Pennsylvania town were forced off a local street and into a parking lot, so a federal contractor – aided by local police --could quiz them about their road habits and ask for a cheek swab, in a replay of an incident last month in Texas. The checkpoint, in downtown Reading, was one of several conducted by the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, which was hired by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Although the questioning and cheek swab were voluntary, local residents said they were...

A private firm with a federal contract - and backed up by city police - forced motorists off Laurel Street and into a private parking lot Friday to question them about their driving habits and ask for a swab of their mouth. "I feel this incident is a gross abuse of power on many levels," Reading resident Ricardo Nieves, one of those stopped, told City Council Monday. He said federal and local tax dollars were being used to stop innocent people without probable cause, and allow a private company to hire uniformed police to force citizens to listen to their...

U.S. geneticists say a second code hiding within DNA changes how scientists read its instructions and interpret mutations to make sense of health and disease. Since the genetic code was deciphered in the 1960s, scientists have assumed it was used exclusively to write information about proteins, but University of Washington scientists say they've discovered genomes use the genetic code to write two separate "languages." One, long understood, describes how proteins are made, while the other instructs the cell on how genes are controlled. One language is written on top of the other, which is why the second language remained hidden...

Scientists have discovered a second code hiding within DNA. This second code contains information that changes how scientists read the instructions contained in DNA and interpret mutations to make sense of health and disease. UW scientists were stunned to discover that genomes use the genetic code to write two separate languages. One describes how proteins are made, and the other instructs the cell on how genes are controlled. One language is written on top of the other, which is why the second language remained hidden for so long. The genetic code uses a 64-letter alphabet called codons. The UW team...

Scientists have found the oldest DNA evidence yet of humans’ biological history. But instead of neatly clarifying human evolution, the finding is adding new mysteries. In a paper in the journal Nature, scientists reported Wednesday that they had retrieved ancient human DNA from a fossil dating back about 400,000 years, shattering the previous record of 100,000 years. The fossil, a thigh bone found in Spain, had previously seemed to many experts to belong to a forerunner of Neanderthals. But its DNA tells a very different story. It most closely resembles DNA from an enigmatic lineage of humans known as Denisovans....

Full Title is "Holiday Celebration: Robot Turtles, Poop-Snooping DNA Detectives" “Robot Turtle Will Help Underwater Archeologists Inspect Shipwrecks,” for example, has some obviously worthwhile things to point out about the development of autonomous unmanned underwater vehicles to explore dangerous environments more cheaply and safely than humans can manage. The saving grace for this report from The Robot Safari in the London Science Museum, however, is the effort the announcement goes to – and trouble the designers obviously did as well – to not only build an autonomous underwater vehicle that swims like a turtle, but justify having done so (paddle-like...

The A3/02 strain combines the two most common HIV strains in Guinea-Bissau and develops into AIDS within five years, up to two-and-a-half years faster than either of its parent strains, said Angelica Palm, one of the scientists behind the study published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases. This type of strain, a recombinant, appears when a person becomes infected by two different strains, allowing DNA to fuse and create a new one.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov. 28 (UPI) -- Humans lived for thousands of years in small, isolated populations and resulting inbreeding shaped the course of human evolution, a U.S. researcher says. Research suggests the severe inbreeding may have created many health problems and the small populations were likely a barrier to the development of complex culture and technologies, NewScientist.com reported Thursday. David Reich of Harvard Medical School in Boston -- who has sequenced the genome of Neanderthals and that of another extinct human, the Denisovans -- said both species were severely inbred due to small populations. "Archaic populations had low genetic diversity,...