Free Republic

EXPERTS FIND RARE ROMANI DNA IN NORWICH ANGLO SAXON SKELETON By Sarah Morley 12/05/2006 The recent discovery of Romani DNA in an Anglo Saxon skeleton has made experts re-think the nature of the city's early population. Picture courtesy Sophie Cabot. © HEART Experts from Norfolk Archaeology Unit based at Norwich Castle have discovered a rare form of mitochondrial DNA identified as Romani in a skeleton discovered during excavations in a large area of Norwich for the expansion of the castle mall. The DNA was found in an 11th century young adult male skeleton, and with the first recorded arrival of...

Rats in the Ruins My Two Cents on Cable TV By David J. Aland 5 May 2006 Do you remember when HBO first aired on the local cable television network? What an idea – to get recent boxoffice films by television, relatively soon after their release. This was genuine out-of-the-boxoffice thinking, and it caught on fast. But somewhere along the line, it looks like either Hollywood couldn’t produce enough movies, or the cable channels couldn’t afford to buy enough Hollywood distribution rights. HBO gave way to CINEMAX, and STARZ, and other movie channels, and splintered into more than a few...

Researchers Reconstruct Parts Of The Genome Of A Common Mammalian Ancestor A group of researchers has re-created with remarkable accuracy part of the genome of the common ancestor of all placental mammals, a small shrew-like creature that prowled the forests of what is now Asia more than 80 million years ago. By comparing DNA sequences of 19 species of existing mammals, including humans, the researchers have reconstructed a large segment of DNA in the species from which all of today's placental mammals arose. They estimate that the reconstruction is 98 percent accurate. The project, which was led by David...

April 2, 2004: For a long time is was said, only half in jest, that you built a new warplane by finding the most powerful engine you could and then building an airplane around it. That has changed in the last two decades. The engine and the airframe are now easy, the software to make everything work together is the hard part. The F-22 software comprises some two million lines of source code (the text and numbers that are converted, or "compiled', into computer readable instructions). This code is complex, and it must work reliably for long periods of time,...