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LONDON (Reuters) - If the numbers 13-3-2-21-1-1-8-5 ring a bell, it might be because you have been reading "The Da Vinci Code". Dan Brown's bestseller uses that series -- a mixed-up version of a sequence of numbers brought to the Western world by a 13th century Italian mathematician -- as a clue to a secret Swiss bank account. As Brown's book, and the film, turned into a global entertainment phenomenon, the work of Leonardo Fibonacci of Pisa was given a new lease of life for millions of people. Not so for Elizabeth Miller. The technical analyst had long been a...

Contact: Maria A. Smit smit@cshl.edu 1-516-422-4013 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Transmission of tuberculosis is linked to historical patterns of human migration St. Petersburg, Russia – Genghis Khan and his troops may have unwittingly used more than just brute military force to conquer entire nations and to establish the infamous Mongolian empire. A report in the October issue of Genome Research suggests that Genghis Khan's invasions spanning the continent of Asia during the 13th century may have been a primary vehicle for the dissemination of one of the world's most deadly diseases: tuberculosis. In this study, a team of scientists led...

CARR CANYON - Public opinion polls show illegal immigration as the chief concern for most Arizonans, but the history of the land now known as Arizona is the history of migration, according to Dr. John Ware, executive director of the Amerind Foundation. "We're a culture of migrants here," Ware told an audience of about 20 people Sunday afternoon at the Carr House Information Center. Not only are we all migrants, we're all of African stock, Ware added. What he described as "genetic markers" prove that modern humans evolved in Africa about 100,000 years ago and gradually spread around the planet,...

As a Criminology Professor, I take every opportunity to attempt to attach one theory of crime causation or another to current events. There are numerous, and often repetitive, theoretical models intended to help us understand and explain criminality. Some of these focus on personality and upbringing. Others look at social conditions and neighbourhood deterioration. Still, others attempt to link criminality to the evils of capitalism (the dinosaurs may be extinct but there’s a whole breed of belly-dragging Criminologist that refuses to make its way to the tar pits). That’s what living in your mom’s basement till you’re thirty-five will do...

George W. Bush was the first sitting president to attend a papal funeral. Such symbolism speaks volumes about the evolution in Catholic America's voting habits during the past quarter-century and about Pope John Paul II's role in that conversion. Catholic voters were historically one of the most reliable Democratic voting blocs. However, Pope John Paul II played a significant role in converting many conservative Catholics into reliable Republican voters. This sea change demonstrated that the contemporary Catholic vote is now the most important swing vote in American politics. Catholics are the bellwether voters: as go Catholics, so goes the nation....

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Undocumented immigrants from Mexico are staying longer and are more likely to bring their families to the United States as a result of stepped border security, experts said at a conference on immigration and homeland security Thursday. "They are staying in the U.S. longer because we've succeeded in making it too costly and dangerous to cross back," Wayne Cornelius, director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego, told the audience of federal and local officials, immigration attorneys and community activists. The conference, hosted by the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute,...

While the State Department's Patterns of Global Terrorism—2003 report [1] labeled Iran "the most active state sponsor of terrorism in 2003," the Bush administration has yet to agree on a national security presidential directive to define U.S. policy toward the Islamic Republic.[2] Meanwhile, Tehran continues to edge closer to nuclear capability.[3]The following are excerpts from the 9/11 Commission Report, an unclassified version of which was released to the public on July 22, 2004.[4] The commission interviewed more than 1,000 people in ten countries and conducted an unprecedented review of U.S. intelligence. Among its findings, excerpted below, was evidence of a...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

Here’s one for Ripley’s Believe-It-Or-Not: The Democrats have spent decades making life miserable for Christians. On Election Day, Christians returned the favor. Since at least the mid-1970s, the Democratic Party and its allies have devoted themselves to alternately sneering at and savaging Christians. They’ve depicted the followers of Jesus – evangelical Protestants and traditional Catholics in particular – as superstitious degenerates, bigots, trailer-park misogynists, both sexually repressed and hypocritically lecherous, and a gang of Torquemada wannabes who constitute a clear and present danger to democracy and the 21st century. The only problem the left seems to have is in deciding...

     Patterns of Global Terrorism   -2003 Released by the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism April 29, 2004 The Year in Review There were 190 acts of international terrorism in 2003, a slight decrease from the 198 attacks that occurred in 2002, and a drop of 45 percent from the level in 2001 of 346 attacks. The figure in 2003 represents the lowest annual total of international terrorist attacks since 1969. A total of 307 persons were killed in the attacks of 2003, far fewer than the 725 killed during 2002. A total of 1,593 persons were wounded in...

ORONTO, Aug. 23 — A document filed at a detention hearing this week for 19 students and other immigrants from Pakistan detained by Canadian security officials for possible ties to terrorism cited a "pattern of fraudulent document use to obtain or maintain immigrant status" by the men, ages 18 to 33.The men were detained on Aug. 14 after an investigation found that one of them was taking flying lessons at a school near an Ontario nuclear power plant. Officials would disclose little about the investigation, but the four-page document sketched a picture of a mysterious group of men living in...

New findings from a Queen's behavioural expert in eye/hand movement provide the first direct evidence that our brain patterns are similar whether we are actually doing something or simply watching someone else do it. It's an insight that could have significant implications for the assessment of people with various movement disorders such as some stroke victims, says Dr. Randy Flanagan, who conducted the study with Dr. Roland Johansson of Umea University in Sweden. The methods employed in the study could be used to determine whether people with impaired movement control also have problems understanding and perceiving the actions of others....

"Americans in ever-larger numbers are leaving most of the states that are premier destinations for immigrants and moving to Southeastern and Western states that are home to most of the white population growth in the nation, according to the first migration analysis of the 2000 census," Newhouse News reports. "[Demographer William] Frey found, as he did in an analysis 10 years ago for Newhouse News Service of 1990 Census data, that people from major urban immigrant hubs were increasingly following their suburban dream not just a few miles but across state and regional lines."

BY JONATHAN TILOVE c.2003 Newhouse News Service WASHINGTON -- Americans in ever-larger numbers are leaving most of the states that are premier destinations for immigrants and moving to Southeastern and Western states that are home to most of the white population growth in the nation, according to the first migration analysis of the 2000 census. The pattern gathered substantial force in the 1990s and offers a revealing look at how the interplay of another decade of record immigration and the growing lure of a baker's dozen of fast-growing states with suburban appeal are transforming the nation's demographic landscape, according to...

Link post: Geopics of the Week, September 15-21, 2002 (amazing!)

Abstract patterns in nature is our theme today: (Go to title link to also see a Space Shuttle photograph of an Aleutian Island volcano that's respectable) Click on this image to go to the current Kilauea update page: