Free Republic

Indiana University has faced criticism after abruptly firing Professor XiaoFeng Wang on the same day FBI agents executed search warrants at his home. The university also removed the couple’s online profiles, causing concern among academics regarding their due process. Federal authorities have confirmed the investigation is ongoing. Wang has brought approximately $23 million in federal grants to the university. However, Wang was barred from his office and denied access to university resources prior to his dismissal. Veracity IIR president Doug Kouns said, “He’s right there on the cutting edge of this kind of research as far as data privacy, cybersecurity...

VlincRNAs Provide Clues to Genomic Dark Matter by Jeffrey Tomkins, Ph.D. * Scientists have known for several years that the human genome is pervasively copied into various RNA molecules (transcripts), although scientists have been unsure about what much of it actually does. New research shows that about 10 percent of the genome encodes a newly characterized type of regulatory molecules called "vlincRNAs."1 When scientists first completed a draft of the human genome, they discovered that it only contained about 20,000 to 25,000 protein-coding genes.2 However, researchers soon discovered that these protein-coding genes produced a vast array of RNA transcript variants...

Source: Public Library of Science Date: October 14, 2007 Inconsistencies With Neanderthal Genomic DNA Sequences Science Daily — Were Neanderthals direct ancestors of contemporary humans or an evolutionary side branch that eventually died out? This is one of the enduring questions in human evolution as scientists explore the relationship of fossil groups, such as Neanderthals, with people alive today. Two recent papers describing the sequencing of Neanderthal nuclear DNA from fossil bone held promise for finally answering this question [1, 2]. However, the two studies came to very different conclusions regarding the ancestral role of Neanderthals. Jeffrey D. Wall and...