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Adoptees use DNA to find surname By Paul Rincon Science reporter, BBC News The tests read a number of genetic markers on the Y chromosome Male adoptees are using consumer DNA tests to predict the surnames carried by their biological fathers, the BBC has learned. They are using the fact that men who share a surname sometimes have genetic likenesses too. By searching DNA databases for other males with genetic markers matching their own, adoptees can check if these men also share a last name. This can provide the likely surname of an adoptee's biological father. The genetic similarities between...

Scientists Reshape Y Chromosome Haplogroup Tree Gaining New Insights Into Human Ancestry ScienceDaily (Apr. 3, 2008) — The Y chromosome retains a remarkable record of human ancestry, since it is passed directly from father to son. In an article published in Genome Research scientists have utilized recently described genetic variations on the part of the Y chromosome that does not undergo recombination to significantly update and refine the Y chromosome haplogroup tree. Human cells contain 23 pairs of chromosomes: 22 pairs of autosomes, and one pair of sex chromosomes. Females carry a pair of X chromosomes that can swap, or...

New Genomics Software Infers Ancestry With High Accuracy ScienceDaily (Mar. 27, 2008) — Some people may know where their ancestors lived 10 or 20 generations ago, but the rest of us can learn our distant biological heritage only from our DNA. New genomics analysis software developed by computer scientists at Stanford appears far more adept than prior methods at unraveling the ancestry of individuals. A new paper describes the HAPAA system, which takes its name from "hapa," the Hawaiian word for someone of mixed ancestry. Going back 20 generations the software can identify what continent or broad global region an...

Britain may abolish ancestry visa By Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor Last Updated: 7:59pm GMT 21/02/2008 Britain is proposing to sever its historic ties to tens of thousands of Commonwealth nationals who have an automatic right through descent to live and work here. The small print of this week’s Home Office green paper charting new pathways to citizenship suggests the ancestry visa might be abolished. The visa enables people aged 17 or over whose grandparents were born in the UK to come for four years and eventually apply to stay. It is used mainly by young Australians, New Zealanders and...

Myths of British ancestry October 2006Stephen Oppenheimer Everything you know about British and Irish ancestry is wrong. Our ancestors were Basques, not Celts. The Celts were not wiped out by the Anglo-Saxons, in fact neither had much impact on the genetic stock of these islands The fact that the British and the Irish both live on islands gives them a misleading sense of security about their unique historical identities. But do we really know who we are, where we come from and what defines the nature of our genetic and cultural heritage? Who are and were the Scots, the Welsh,...

John Hurt admits sadness at his faked Irish ancestry By Tom Peterkin, Ireland Correspondent Last Updated: 2:56am BST 12/09/2007 For years the actor John Hurt took great pride in his Irish aristocratic ancestry, believing that his great-grandmother was the illegitimate child of the Marquis of Sligo. Actor John Hurt admitted that his lack of Irish blood was a great disappointment Much to his disappointment, genealogists have discovered that his Irishness was nothing more than a family myth, perhaps created to give the family tree a spurious link to the upper class. Instead it appears that his family hails from Croydon,...

Source: Massachusetts Institute Of Technology Date: September 11, 2007 New Method Can Reveal Ancestry Of All Genes Across Many Different Genomes Science Daily — The wheels of evolution turn on genetic innovation -- new genes with new functions appear, allowing organisms to grow and adapt in new ways. But deciphering the history of how and when various genes appeared, for any organism, has been a difficult and largely intractable task. A scanning electron micrograph of one of the seventeen fungal species analyzed in the study. (Credit: Image courtesy / Janice Carr, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) Now a team...

Surnames that reveal Pirate ancestry By Nick Britten Last Updated: 1:34am BST 17/08/2007 With all that pillaging and looting, it could be one of the bloodiest reunions in history when descendants of six of Britain's famous pirates are invited to a get-together. People with the surnames Morgan, Rackham, Bonny, Read, Kidd or Teach, are being invited to discover possible connections with the likes of Blackbeard and Calico Jack, in a series of events by English Heritage. Dressing as a sea dog is optional. Proving your lineage with a real-life buccaneer, however, may prove difficult. Abigail Baker, of the genealogy research...

Lithuanian and Latvian languages are not Slavic and not Balto-Slavic. I made a deep esearch and I can say that both Baltic languages are definitely not Slavic, not even close, and neither Balto-Slavic. They should be separated into a very early separation branch similar to Armenian. There are very few Slavic-sounding words in both Baltic languages and those words were borrowed in near modern times. All other words (99,999999%) in both Baltic languages don't even remind of any Slavic language. There are words that sound Arabic, Franco, Latin, Greek, even English and Italiamn and even Pacific, but very few Slavic...

Geneticists re-examining the first settlement of Australia and Papua-New Guinea by modern humans have concluded that the two islands were reached some 50,000 years ago by a single group of people who remained in substantial or total isolation until recent times. The finding, if upheld, would undermine assumptions that there have been subsequent waves of migration into Australia. Analyzing old and new samples of Aborigine DNA, which are hard to obtain because of governmental restrictions, the geneticists developed a detailed picture of the aborigines’ ancestry, as reflected in their Y chromosomes, found just in men, and their mitochondrial DNA, a...

Balthazar Napolean de Bourbon, a jovial Indian lawyer and part-time farmer settled in Bhopal, has been told that he is the first in line to the lost French throne. According to media reports, "Bourbon may soon make his first trip to Paris, after he was visited by a relative of Prince Philip, who told him that he is the first in line to the lost French throne." This Indian father of three is being feted as the long-lost descendant of the Bourbon kings who ruled France from the 16th century to the French revolution. A distant cousin of Louis XVI...

Descendancy stems from the 19th Century Dawes Commission lists Members of the Cherokee Nation of native Americans have voted to revoke tribal citizenship for descendants of black slaves the Cherokees once owned.A total of 76.6% voted to amend the tribal constitution to limit citizenship to "blood" tribe members. Supporters said only the Cherokees had the right to determine tribal members. Opponents said the amendment was racist and aimed at preventing those with African-American heritage from gaining tribal revenue and government funding. The Cherokee Nation has 250,000 to 270,000 members, second only to the Navajo. 'Right to vote' The list...

Native American populations share gene signature 00:01 14 February 2007 NewScientist.com news service Roxanne Khamsi A distinctive, repeating sequence of DNA found in people living at the eastern edge of Russia is also widespread among Native Americans, according to a new study. The finding lends support to the idea that Native Americans descended from a common founding population that lived near the Bering land bridge for some time. Kari Schroeder at the University of California in Davis, US, and colleagues sampled the genes from various populations around the globe, including two at the eastern edge of Siberia, 53 elsewhere in...

Curious about your genealogical origins? UA can help trace them By Dan Sorenson arizona daily star Tucson, Arizona | Published: 12.26.2006 Human history is unfolding one cheek swab at a time in a cluttered, windowless laboratory deep in the University of Arizona's Biological Sciences West Building. Although geneticists and anthropologists long ago determined that we all have origins in Africa, there is much to be learned from our DNA about where we went from there. A cast of about 30 undergraduate UA biology students, technicians and the lab manager deftly dance around one another in the cramped space, like waiters...

People of African origin have lived in Britain for centuries, according to genetic evidence. A Leicester University study found that seven men with a rare Yorkshire surname carry a genetic signature previously found only in people of African origin. The men seem to have shared a common ancestor in the 18th Century, but the African DNA lineage they carry may have reached Britain centuries earlier. The connection was found to date back many generations Details of the study appear in the European Journal of Human Genetics. The scientists declined to disclose the men's surname in order to protect their...

LONDON (Reuters) - People looking to track ancestors who emigrated from British ports will from Wednesday be able to search online passenger lists of the ships that carried them to new lands. Released by Britain's National Archives, the passenger manifests give an insight into all long-distance trips made by 30 million travelers from the country's ports between 1890 and 1960, including that of the Titanic which sank in 1912.

Alan Moldawer's adopted twins, Matt and Andrew, had always thought of themselves as white. But when it came time for them to apply to college last year, Mr. Moldawer thought it might be worth investigating the origins of their slightly tan-tinted skin, with a new DNA kit that he had heard could determine an individual's genetic ancestry. The results, designating the boys 9 percent Native American and 11 percent northern African, arrived too late for the admissions process. But Mr. Moldawer, a business executive in Silver Spring, Md., says they could be useful in obtaining financial aid. "Naturally when you're...

DNA can be used to understand the evolution of modern humans, trace migrations of people, identify individuals, and determine the origins of domestic plants and animals. DNA analysis, as one scholar put it, is "the greatest archaeological excavation of all time." Because ancient DNA molecules are normally so few and fragmented, and preserved soft tissues so rare, scientists had little hope of finding and analyzing it. But two breakthroughs have made this possible: the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a method for copying any fragment of DNA, and the successful recovery of DNA from preserved hard tissues, bones and teeth, that...

Does anyone have a summary of what proportions of Americans with British and Irish ancestry? I'm currently looking at the data for New Zealand and I note that in the 2001 Census, it was recorded 75% of all New Zealanders have majority British/Irish ancestry, and 5% have European ancestry from outside Britain and/or Ireland. Maori comprises 14.7% and Pacific Islanders 6.5%. The definition of British/Irish ancestry that I use is: anyone who has 50% or more ancestral blood who came from what we call the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland today. In addition, does anyone have a comparable...

European Faces Reflect Stone Age Ancestry, Study Says James Owen for National Geographic News December 20, 2005Europeans inherit their looks from Stone Age hunters, new research suggests. Scientists studied ancient skeletons from Scandinavia to North Africa and Greece, comparing ancient and modern facial features. Their analysis suggests modern Europeans are closely related and descended from prehistoric indigenous peoples. Later Neolithic settlers—notably immigrants who introduced farming from the Near East some 7,500 years ago—contributed little to how Europeans look today, the researchers add. The scientists described their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Online Early Edition. The...

"No loyal citizen of the United States should be denied the democratic right to exercise the responsibilities of his citizenship, regardless of his ancestry. The principle on which this country was founded and by which it has always been governed is that Americanism is a matter of the mind and heart; Americanism is not, and never was, a matter of race or ancestry."

If you know your Y-chromosome markers, enter them in the spaces provided in the drop-down menus and it will trace paternal line names and likely countries of origin. Three names popped up in my likely ancestry: Nickle (USA and Scotland), Rogers (USA) and Mahoney (USA). Here is my Place/Time Analysis: Important notes: A match close to 100% for a given time period does not necessarily mean that your paternal-line ancestor lived in that country at that time, only that the closest match in the SMGF database had a paternal-line ancestor living in that place and time. In general, the above...

The United States population of those who identify themselves as from Arab ancestry rose a huge 40% since 1980. Median income for Arab-American households is $5,000 greater than the national average. Mean income is 8% higher than the national average. More than 40% of US citizens of Arab descent have a bachelor's degree or higher versus 24% for the US national average. The percent of those with a post-graduate degree is nearly 100% greater than the national average. The median age of the Arab population was 33, and ranged from 27 for those who said their ancestry was "Arab" or...

One of the most powerful cultural forces shaping America, they've produced great Presidents, soldiers, inventors, actors and writers. But, as a group, they've remained unvisible. The time has come to change that, says the author. snip ... The Scots-Irish are a fiercely independent, individualist people. It goes against their grain to think collectively. But, as America rushes forward into yet another redefinition of itself, the contributions of the Scots-Irish are too great to remain invisible. My culture needs to reclaim itself-stop letting others define, mock and even use it-and is so doing regain its power to shape the direction of...

Papers have been flapping with new headlines about the latest in a long line of alleged dinosaur ancestors of birds. This one is claimed to be a sensational dinosaur with feathers on its hind legs, thus four ‘wings’.1 This was named Microraptor gui—the name is derived from words meaning ‘little plunderer of Gu’ after the paleontologist Gu Zhiwei. Like so many of the alleged feathered dinosaurs, it comes from Liaoning province of northeastern China. It was about 3 feet (1 meter) long from its head to the tip of its long tail, but its body was only about the size...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) -- Four out of five men in Europe share a common male ancestor who lived as a hunter on a wild continent some 40,000 years ago, researchers say.</p> <p>In a study appearing Friday in the journal Science, researchers say an analysis of a pattern found in the Y chromosome taken from 1,007 men from 25 places in Europe shows that about 80 percent of Europeans arose from the Paleolithic people who first migrated to Europe.</p>

<p>Almost from the time he was old enough to read the "whites only" signs on department stores in Montgomery, Ala., Ulysses Moore has been on a quest. Where did I come from? he wondered.</p> <p>He knew he was more than just a "colored" child of the segregated South, that his legacy extended beyond the slave ships that brought 12 million Africans across the Atlantic. Was he descended from Shaka Zulu or the great Mandinka warriors, or the builders of the ancient world's greatest library in Egypt?</p>

And that leads Good Morning America's parenting contributor Ann Pleshette Murphy to her second Murphy's Law: Thou Shalt Give Them Roots. Albert Dehart Washington III, who also goes by DD Washington, is learning from Albert Dehart Washington I, a grandfather who is wisely following Murphy's edict. Freed Slave Gave Family Name "My family originated in Dinwoodie County in Virginia and we can trace the family back to 1808," Washington told his grandson. "My great-great grandfather? Well, he was a slave, and he changed his name to Washington after he was freed." Connecting with their family's past not only helps children...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation of immigrants is again reshaping its identity. While Hispanic immigration surged in the 1990s, new census figures show a decline in the number of people identifying themselves as Irish, German and other European ancestries. More people are simply calling themselves ``American.'' ``When I was younger, my parents explained that you are an American citizen but your heritage was from Ireland,'' said Jim Donohue, a New York City investment banker who has dual citizenship. Some of Donohue's ancestors came to America as early as the 1860s. While he has grown closer to his Irish roots in...