Dna Test Quotes

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If by 'miracle kids' you mean innocent test-tube babies whose DNA was forcibly unraveled and merged with two percent avian genes, yeah, I guess that would be us," I said. "Because it's a miracle that we're not complete nut jobs and mutant disasters.
James Patterson (The Final Warning (Maximum Ride, #4))
Be yourself-- Matthew Clairmont. Complete with your sharp vampire teeth and your scary mother, your test tubes full of blood and your DNA, your infuriating bossiness and your maddening sense of smell.
Deborah Harkness
If Rosie’s mother had known that eye colour was not a reliable indicator of paternity, and organised a DNA test to confirm her suspicions, there would have been no Father Project, no Great Cocktail Night, no New York Adventure, no Reform Don Project—and no Rosie Project. Had it not been for this unscheduled series of events, her daughter and I would not have fallen in love. And I would still be eating lobster every Tuesday night. Incredible.
Graeme Simsion (The Rosie Project (Don Tillman, #1))
The fact is, no man can ever know whether a child is his. A woman knows a child is hers, but a man can never know whether it is his, not even with a DNA test. A DNA test can only tell you if the child is not yours, but if your DNA matches, it only indicates ‘a high statistical probability’ that it is your child. As they say, ‘Motherhood is a biological fact, fatherhood is a sociological fiction.’ It is this knowledge that creates permanent anxiety for patriarchy, an anxiety that requires women’s sexuality to be strictly policed.
Nivedita Menon (Seeing Like a Feminist)
Why do you like show jumping?" "... Beauty and excitement. The elements of trust, talent, training, love, and danger make show jumping a thrilling and aesthetic experience. It's really the ultimate test of two nervous systems--the kinetic transfer of the rider's muscle to the horse's muscle enables them to clear those jumps. And there's nothing like it--horse and rider forming an arc of beauty, efficiency, and power, like a double helix." "DNA," "Yes, DNA, the code to life.
Ainslie Sheridan
Why bother taking a DNA Test to discover your genealogy? Just go buy a lottery ticket, and if you win, all your distant relatives will find you.
Jarod Kintz (94,000 Wasps in a Trench Coat)
Would a DNA test for love take a sample from the heart or the mind?
Dean Cavanagh
The acknowledgement of White cowardice has driven literally tens of millions of White Americans to try to escape it by undergoing a voluntary human metamorphosis and becoming "part-Indian." 95% would become proven liars by a simple DNA test, but their children grow up believing the lie. Abandoning the White race means not having to fight for it or defend it in any way.
Frazier Glenn Miller
And for the record, Tristan, this baby is yours. I will have DNA testing done just as soon as possible-" "Gina - that is not necessary, baby," he interrupted, trying to quiet me. "Let me finish, Tristan. I will have DNA testing done so that there is never any doubt. And when those results come in, I will personally have the pleasure of shoving them up your ass, do you understand?
Andrea Smith (Baby Come Back)
The fundamental lesson of the DNA age is that the past is not over. We may feel we are leading modern lives, having left behind certain tragedies and injustices, certain mistakes and anachronisms, but it is all still there.
Libby Copeland (The Lost Family: How DNA Testing Is Upending Who We Are)
A Dick and Jane story written in blood and battered bone. See Spot. See Spot run. See Spot run from a gaping chest wound. Run Spot run. See Detective smear Spot into a baggy for DNA testing.
J.E. Mac (Damaged Good)
We are connected to other human beings on this earth– genetically, historically,' Winn says. 'It's like magnets, I may not know where the other end of the magnet is, but I'm being pulled to it. How can we answer anything about ourselves if we don't know what our roots are, if we don't know who are people are?
Libby Copeland (The Lost Family: How DNA Testing Is Uncovering Secrets, Reuniting Relatives, and Upending Who We Are)
And you expect us to take the word of your … very pregnant wife, over a DNA test? No offense, but pregnancy tends to lower a female’s IQ.” Burnett turned to the warlock, but before he could add his two cents— which didn’t look as if it would be pleasant— Holiday added her own. “That’s funny,” she said, but without humor. “I’ve heard it also makes us vicious if provoked. And for your information, I’d be happy to put my IQ up against yours, pregnant or not.” Hunter, C. C. (2014-05-20). Reborn (Shadow Falls: After Dark) (p. 336). St. Martin's Press. Kindle Edition.
C.C. Hunter
And for several years the public has been sending samples by the millions to personalized DNA testing companies like 23andMe, which only provide customers with their personal medical or genealogical information if they first sign a form granting permission for their samples to be stored for future research.
Rebecca Skloot (The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks)
DNA testing poses questions that people in the adoptee community have thought about far longer than such testing has been around. Will my birth mother/father/half-sister be happy to know me? And more broadly, what is that person to me? What do we mean when we speak of 'family'? How much does genetics get to tell us about who we are?
Libby Copeland (The Lost Family: How DNA Testing Is Uncovering Secrets, Reuniting Relatives, and Upending Who We Are)
I sat down on the sofa, surrounded by years of coffee rings and sandwich stains. If the police ever did a DNA test on this sofa, it would be ninety per cent disappointment.
Danny Wallace
We went to bed at a normal time, and then I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of him fucking some guy!" "Are you sure you're related? Can we get a DNA test?
Marshall Thornton (My Favorite Uncle)
Today police have new tools for old crimes. DNA testing offers seemingly magic solutions to decades-old mysteries as long as physical evidence has been preserved.
Mark Bowden (The Last Stone)
In theory, Jefferson could have fathered all of Sally Hemings’s children. Fawn M. Brodie has written, “Jefferson was not only not ‘distant’ from Sally Hemings but in the same house nine months before the births of each of her seven children and she conceived no children when he was not there.”54 Jefferson freed only two slaves in his lifetime and another five in his will, and all belonged to the Hemings family, though he excluded Sally. On her deathbed, Sally Hemings told her son Madison that he and his siblings were Jefferson’s children. In 1998, DNA tests confirmed that Jefferson (or some male in his family) had likely fathered at least one of Sally Hemings’s children, Eston. Reading between the lines of “Phocion,” one surmises that Hamilton knew all about Sally Hemings, quite possibly from Angelica Church.
Ron Chernow (Alexander Hamilton)
We’ve got DNA tests; we can convict someone by his saliva. Hell, if the killer had farted in that house the forensic team would probably have some gadget that could pick it up. How can the crime scenes be so clean?
Chris Carter (The Crucifix Killer (Robert Hunter, #1))
The rise of genealogy and DNA testing may be making it increasingly difficult for white Americans to engage in historical amnesia, to fantasize about their own family histories without ever considering how slavery might have figured into them.
Libby Copeland (The Lost Family: How DNA Testing Is Upending Who We Are)
Hayden, as the first girl to take pity on my brother, let me offer my condolences. Suggestion? You might want to kick the tires and check the motor before you take him for a test drive. Number four. Just saying. All our parents’ good DNA went to us first. He got the leftover scraps.
Nicole Williams (Roommates with Benefits)
In the human body, each of approximately a trillion cells holds within its nucleus a complete and identical sequence of DNA. That is about 1.5 gigabytes of genetic information, and it would fill two CD-ROMs, yet the DNA sequence itself would fit on the point of a well-sharpened pencil.
Walter Mischel (The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control)
Distinctive facial features of a parent are poor people’s paternity test.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana (N for Nigger: Aphorisms for Grown Children and Childish Grown-ups)
Like the tapestry, God has intentionally placed each of us in our exact spot to make His world just how he needs it to be.
Wendy Batchelder (Finding Family: How Deeply Rooted Faith Grew Our Family Tree)
Time is the enemy of secret-keepers, because with time comes the inevitable revelation, one way or another.
Libby Copeland (The Lost Family: How DNA Testing Is Uncovering Secrets, Reuniting Relatives, and Upending Who We Are)
…forensic science was facing a sudden reckoning. The advent of DNA analysis in the late 1980s had not only transformed the future of criminal investigations; it also illuminated the past, holding old convictions, and the forensic work that helped win them, up to scrutiny. Rather than affirming the soundness of forensic science, DNA testing exposed its weaknesses. Of the 250 DNA exonerations that occurred by 2010 throughout the United States, shoddy forensic work — which ranged from making basic lab errors to advancing claims unsupported by science — had contributed to half of them, according to a review by the Innocence Project. The sheer number of people who were imprisoned using faulty science called into question the premise of forensics itself.
Pamela Colloff (Blood Will Tell)
But the Orange County Crime Lab had recently integrated a new technique, PCR-STR (polymerase chain reaction with short tandem repeat analysis), which was much faster than RFLP and is the backbone of forensic testing today. The difference between RFLP and PCR-STR is like copying down numbers in longhand versus using a high-speed Xerox machine. PCR-STR worked particularly well for cold cases, in which DNA samples might be minuscule or degraded by time.
Michelle McNamara (I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer)
What was once an anonymous medium where anyone could be anyone—where, in the words of the famous New Yorker cartoon, nobody knows you’re a dog—is now a tool for soliciting and analyzing our personal data. According to one Wall Street Journal study, the top fifty Internet sites, from CNN to Yahoo to MSN, install an average of 64 data-laden cookies and personal tracking beacons each. Search for a word like “depression” on Dictionary.com, and the site installs up to 223 tracking cookies and beacons on your computer so that other Web sites can target you with antidepressants. Share an article about cooking on ABC News, and you may be chased around the Web by ads for Teflon-coated pots. Open—even for an instant—a page listing signs that your spouse may be cheating and prepare to be haunted with DNA paternity-test ads. The new Internet doesn’t just know you’re a dog; it knows your breed and wants to sell you a bowl of premium kibble.
Eli Pariser (The Filter Bubble)
Some of the stigmas seem so dated that you'd think these secrets couldn't hurt anymore, but they do. Because, in fact, out of those secrets came people– people who can sometimes still sense the shame that surrounded their hidden identities.
Libby Copeland (The Lost Family: How DNA Testing Is Uncovering Secrets, Reuniting Relatives, and Upending Who We Are)
More long non-coding RNAs are expressed in the brain than any other tissue (with the possible exception of the testes).26 Some have been conserved from birds to humans, with expression patterns that occur in the same regions and at the same developmental stages. These
Nessa Carey (Junk DNA: A Journey Through the Dark Matter of the Genome)
I have often wondered whether the white people who know we are kin actually see us as family. It's critical for me to think about the possibilities of every Southern white family connected to African Americans on DNA tests truly reaching out and vice versa, to create a dialogue. Would we be better off if we embraced this complexity and dealt with our pain or shame? Would we finally be Americans or Southerners or both if we truly understood how impenetrably connected we actually are? Is it too late? Maybe I'll just invite everyone to dinner one day and find out.
Michael W. Twitty (The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South)
He acknowledged that the reliance on racial and ethnic categories is useful given our poor present knowledge, but predicted that the future will involve testing individuals directly for what mutations they have, and doing away altogether with racial classification as a basis for making individualized decisions about care.
David Reich (Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past)
But even if we were entirely successful at eliminating inequalities of outcome associated with being born into wealth or privilege, the inequalities that remain would not be purged of luck. There would still be another type of luck lurking in the background: genes. This is true not only of standardized test performance and IQ scores. Even appealing to so-called “character” traits (grit, perseverance, resourcefulness, motivation, curiosity, or any other non-cognitive skill) doesn’t get you out of grappling with genetics. These traits, too, are shaped by genetic differences between people. There is no measure of so-called “merit” that is somehow free of genetic influence or untethered from biology.
Kathryn Paige Harden (The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality)
You’re lucky enough to have an ephemeral piece of light as a part of your life, aware of its impermanence from the beginning and loving it wholly anyway. Knowing someone who is only good, and getting to be their caretaker. Letting this dog believe that you are the sun and the moon, even though you are just a human. Protecting them until you no longer can.
Kelly Conaboy (The Particulars of Peter: Dance Lessons, DNA Tests, and Other Excuses to Hang Out with My Perfect Dog)
The cure for HIV?” “In 2007, a man named Timothy Ray Brown, known later as the Berlin patient, was cured of HIV. Brown was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. His HIV-positive status complicated his treatment. During chemotherapy, he battled sepsis, and his physicians had to explore less traditional approaches. His hematologist, Dr. Gero Hutter, decided on a stem cell therapy: a full bone marrow transplant. Hutter actually passed over the matched bone marrow donor for a donor with a specific genetic mutation: CCR5-Delta 32. CCR5-Delta 32 makes cells immune to HIV.” “Incredible.” “Yes. At first, we thought the Delta 32 mutation must have arisen during the Black Death in Europe—about four to sixteen percent of Europeans have at least one copy. But we’ve traced it back further. We thought perhaps smallpox, but we’ve found Bronze Age DNA samples that carry it. The mutation’s origins are a mystery, but one thing is certain: the bone marrow transplant with CCR5-Delta 32 cured both Brown’s leukemia and HIV. After the transplant, he stopped taking his antiretrovirals and has never again tested positive for HIV.
A.G. Riddle (The Atlantis Plague (The Origin Mystery, #2))
The power of the DNA revelation is that it provokes questions about the past, which seems suddenly not like the past at all. It makes you question fundamental truths. It provokes an accounting—of a life in an orphanage, or a time when a couple was having trouble conceiving, or when a young unmarried woman went off for a mysterious vacation and returned many months later. It invites revisions to things we long ago analyzed and incorporated into our personal narratives. It suggests the past is never over, but a living thing that can be amended.
Libby Copeland (The Lost Family: How DNA Testing Is Upending Who We Are)
Let’s say you are 31 and you undergo the cell-free fetal DNA screening. With a good result on this, the baby’s risk of having Down syndrome is around 1 in 100,000. The risk of miscarriage from the amniocentesis or CVS test is around 1 in 800. What you need to decide for yourself is whether having a baby with Down syndrome unexpectedly would be more than 125 times worse than having a miscarriage (that is, 100,000 divided by 800). If yes, then skip right to the invasive test—probably CVS given the timing. If no, then stick with the noninvasive screen.
Emily Oster (Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom Is Wrong-and What You Really Need to Know)
On February 14 Jefferson accepted the post. On February 23, 1790, Jefferson’s daughter Martha was married at Monticello to a third cousin, Thomas Mann Randolph Jr. Presumably, on the scene was her youthful aunt the slave Sally Hemings, daughter of Martha’s grandfather, John Wayles. The fact that Jefferson would have six children by Sally (half-sister to his beloved wife, another Martha) has been a source of despair to many old-guard historians, but, unhappily for them, recent DNA testings establish consanguinity between the Hemingses and their master, whose ambivalences about slavery (not venery) are still of central concern to us. If all men are created equal, then, if you are serious, free your slaves, Mr. Jefferson. But they were his capital. He could not and survive, and so he did not. He even transferred six families of slaves to daughter Martha and her husband. It might be useful for some of his overly correct critics to try to put themselves in his place. But neither empathy nor compassion is an American trait. Witness, the centuries of black slavery taken for granted by much of the country.
Gore Vidal (Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson)
As to the central fact in the case, it is my view that Simpson murdered his ex-wife and her friend on June 12. Any rational analysis of the events and evidence in question leads to that conclusion. This is true whether one considers evidence not presented to the jury—such as the results of Simpson’s polygraph examination and his flight with Al Cowlings on June 17—or just the evidence established in court. Notwithstanding the prosecution’s many errors, the evidence against Simpson at the trial was overwhelming. Simpson had a violent relationship with his ex-wife, and tensions between them were growing in the weeks leading up to the murders. Simpson had no alibi for the time of the murders, nor was his Bronco parked at his home during that time. Simpson had a cut on his left hand on the day after the murders, and DNA tests showed conclusively that it was Simpson’s blood to the left of the shoe prints leaving the scene. Nicole’s blood was found on a sock in his bedroom, and Goldman’s blood—as well as Simpson’s—was found in the Bronco. Hair consistent with Simpson’s was found on the killer’s cap and on Goldman’s shirt. The gloves that Nicole bought for Simpson in 1990 were almost certainly the ones used by her killer.
Jeffrey Toobin (The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson)
But what is “natural”? I wonder. On one hand: variation, mutation, change, inconstancy, divisibility, flux. And on the other: constancy, permanence, indivisibility, fidelity. Bhed Abhed. It should hardly surprise us that DNA, the molecule of contradictions, encodes an organism of contradictions. We seek constancy in heredity—and find its opposite: variation. Mutants are necessary to maintain the essence of our selves. Our genome has negotiated a fragile balance between counterpoised forces, pairing strand with opposing strand, mixing past and future, pitting memory against desire. It is the most human of all things that we possess. Its stewardship may be the ultimate test of knowledge and discernment for our species.
Siddhartha Mukherjee (The Gene: An Intimate History)
Eu me pergunto: o que é “natural”? Por um lado, variação, mutação, mudança, inconstância, divisibilidade, fluxo. Por outro: constância, permanência, indivisibilidade, fidelidade. Bhed. Abhed. Não seria de surpreender se o DNA, a molécula das contradições, codificasse um organismo de contradições. Procuramos constância na hereditariedade e encontramos seu oposto, a variação. Os mutantes são necessários para manter a essência do nosso eu. Nosso genoma conseguiu chegar a um frágil equilíbrio entre forças contrapostas, pareando fita com fita, misturando passado e futuro, opondo memória a desejo. Essa é a coisa mais humana que possuímos. Seu manejo pode ser o supremo teste de conhecimento e discernimento para nossa espécie.
Siddhartha Mukherjee (O gene: Uma história íntima)
But what *is* "natural"? I wonder. On one hand: variation, mutation, change, inconstancy, divisibility, flux. And on the other: constancy, permanence, indivisibility, fidelity. Bhed. Abhed. It should hardly surprise us that DNA, the molecule of contradictions, encodes an organism of contradictions. We seek constancy in heredity—and find its opposite: variation. Mutants are necessary to maintain the essence of our selves. Our genome has negotiated a fragile balance between counterpoised forces, pairing strand with opposing strand, mixing past and future, pitting memory against desire. It is the most human of all things that we possess. Its stewardship may be the ultimate test of knowledge and discernment for our species. 
Siddhartha Mukherjee (The Gene: An Intimate History)
Another example is tamoxifen, which is used for treatment of endocrine responsive breast cancer. Tamoxifen is given to patients postsurgery and dramatically reduces the rate of cancer recurrence. This drug is metabolized by cytochrome P450 2D6, the product of the CYP2D6 gene. Based on their DNA, there are patients with little CYP2D6 activity who are poor metabolizers and others with high activity who are extensive metabolizers. An FDA-approved genetic test exists for finding the variants of the CYP2D6 gene to help guide tamoxifen administration, but the lack of study data demonstrating its role in improving patient outcomes has, to date, led insurance companies to refuse to cover the test. Beyond having ramifications for drug efficacy, genetics also may play a role in the side effects of drugs.
Michael Snyder (Genomics and Personalized Medicine: What Everyone Needs to Know®)
Okay, Dr. Milligan," he says. "Go ahead." "Well, my boy, I just wanted to let you know that I received the results back for the DNA tests. Emma is definitely half human." Galen winks at me. "You don't say?" I cover my mouth to stifle a giggle. Rudeness should never be contagious. "Yes, I'm afraid so. That said, I'm not sure if she even has the capability of forming a fin." Galen laughs. "We sort of already went along with that assumption, Dr. Milligan. Then the Archives confirmed it. There's a painting of people who look just like Emma in Tartessos." Dr. Milligan sighs. "You could have called me." "I'm sorry, Dr. Milligan. I've been...busy." "Did Emma figure out her lineage, then?" Galen shakes his head, though the reaction is lost on Dr. Milligan in Florida. "As far as we can tell, Emma's father was a Half-Breed. He's got the coloring, he wore contacts, he loved seafood and the ocean. He obviously knew about Emma's physical issues." He tells Dr. Milligan about his theory that some of the half-breeds survived the destruction of Tartessos. Dr. Milligan is quiet for a few seconds. "What else?" Galen gives me a quizzical look. I return a shrug. "What do you mean?" he says. "I mean, my boy, what other evidence do you have to go on? The man you just described could be me. I used to have blond hair before the gray took over. I wear contacts. I happen to love seafood and the beach, if where I live is any indication. I also know about Emma's physical issues. Emma could be my daughter then. Is that what you're saying? If that's all you're basing it on, Emma could be almost any man's daughter in the Panhandle here. Not very scientific." Galen frowns. "You there, Galen?
Anna Banks (Of Poseidon (The Syrena Legacy, #1))
Kennewick Man is a skeleton discovered in Washington State in 1996, carbon-dated to older than 9,000 years. Anthropologists were intrigued by anatomical suggestions that he might be unrelated to typical Native Americans, and therefore might represent a separate early migration across what is now the Bering Strait, or even from Iceland. They were preparing to do all-important DNA tests when the legal authorities seized the skeleton, intending to hand it over to representatives of local Indian tribes, who proposed to bury it and forbid all further study. Naturally there was widespread opposition from the scientific and archaeological community. Even if Kennewick Man is an American Indian of some kind, it is highly unlikely that his affinities lie with whichever particular tribe happens to live in the same area 9,000 years later. Native Americans have impressive legal muscle, and ‘The Ancient One’ might have been handed over to the tribes, but for a bizarre twist. The Asatru Folk Assembly, a group of worshippers of the Norse gods Thor and Odin, filed an independent legal claim that Kennewick Man was actually a Viking. This Nordic sect, whose views you may follow in the Summer 1997 issue of The Runestone, were actually allowed to hold a religious service over the bones. This upset the Yakama Indian community, whose spokesman feared that the Viking ceremony could be ‘keeping Kennewick Man’s spirit from finding his body’. The dispute between Indians and Norsemen could well be settled by DNA comparison, and the Norsemen are quite keen to be put to this test. Scientific study of the remains would certainly cast fascinating light on the question of when humans first arrived in America. But Indian leaders resent the very idea of studying this question, because they believe their ancestors have been in America since the creation. As Armand Minthorn, religious leader of the Umatilla tribe, put it: ‘From our oral histories, we know that our people have been part of this land since the beginning of time. We do not believe our people migrated here from another continent, as the scientists do.’ Perhaps the best policy for the archaeologists would be to declare themselves a religion, with DNA fingerprints their sacramental totem. Facetious but, such is the climate in the United States at the end of the twentieth century, it is possibly the only recourse that would work.
Richard Dawkins (Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder)
At different times in the past, there were companies that exemplified Silicon Valley. It was Hewlett-Packard for a long time. Then, in the semiconductor era, it was Fairchild and Intel. I think that it was Apple for a while, and then that faded. And then today, I think it’s Apple and Google—and a little more so Apple. I think Apple has stood the test of time. It’s been around for a while, but it’s still at the cutting edge of what’s going on. It’s easy to throw stones at Microsoft. They’ve clearly fallen from their dominance. They’ve become mostly irrelevant. And yet I appreciate what they did and how hard it was. They were very good at the business side of things. They were never as ambitious product-wise as they should have been. Bill likes to portray himself as a man of the product, but he’s really not. He’s a businessperson. Winning business was more important than making great products. He ended up the wealthiest guy around, and if that was his goal, then he achieved it. But it’s never been my goal, and I wonder, in the end, if it was his goal. I admire him for the company he built—it’s impressive—and I enjoyed working with him. He’s bright and actually has a good sense of humor. But Microsoft never had the humanities and liberal arts in its DNA. Even when they saw the Mac, they couldn’t
Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs)
Even human bones are not exempt from male-unless-otherwise-indicated thinking. We might think of human skeletons as being objectively either male or female and therefore exempt from male-default thinking. We would be wrong. For over a hundred years, a tenth-century Viking skeleton known as the ‘Birka warrior’ had – despite possessing an apparently female pelvis – been assumed to be male because it was buried alongside a full set of weapons and two sacrificed horses.11 These grave contents indicated that the occupant had been a warrior12 – and warrior meant male (archaeologists put the numerous references to female fighters in Viking lore down to ‘mythical embellishments’13). But although weapons apparently trump the pelvis when it comes to sex, they don’t trump DNA and in 2017 testing confirmed that these bones did indeed belong to a woman. The argument didn’t, however, end there. It just shifted.14 The bones might have been mixed up; there might be other reasons a female body was buried with these items. Naysaying scholars might have a point on both counts (although based on the layout of the grave contents the original authors dismiss these criticisms). But the resistance is nevertheless revealing, particularly since male skeletons in similar circumstances ‘are not questioned in the same way’.
Caroline Criado Pérez (Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men)
The key point is that these patterns, while mostly stable, are not permanent: certain environmental experiences can add or subtract methyls and acetyls, changing those patterns. In effect this etches a memory of what the organism was doing or experiencing into its cells—a crucial first step for any Lamarck-like inheritance. Unfortunately, bad experiences can be etched into cells as easily as good experiences. Intense emotional pain can sometimes flood the mammal brain with neurochemicals that tack methyl groups where they shouldn’t be. Mice that are (however contradictory this sounds) bullied by other mice when they’re pups often have these funny methyl patterns in their brains. As do baby mice (both foster and biological) raised by neglectful mothers, mothers who refuse to lick and cuddle and nurse. These neglected mice fall apart in stressful situations as adults, and their meltdowns can’t be the result of poor genes, since biological and foster children end up equally histrionic. Instead the aberrant methyl patterns were imprinted early on, and as neurons kept dividing and the brain kept growing, these patterns perpetuated themselves. The events of September 11, 2001, might have scarred the brains of unborn humans in similar ways. Some pregnant women in Manhattan developed post-traumatic stress disorder, which can epigenetically activate and deactivate at least a dozen genes, including brain genes. These women, especially the ones affected during the third trimester, ended up having children who felt more anxiety and acute distress than other children when confronted with strange stimuli. Notice that these DNA changes aren’t genetic, because the A-C-G-T string remains the same throughout. But epigenetic changes are de facto mutations; genes might as well not function. And just like mutations, epigenetic changes live on in cells and their descendants. Indeed, each of us accumulates more and more unique epigenetic changes as we age. This explains why the personalities and even physiognomies of identical twins, despite identical DNA, grow more distinct each year. It also means that that detective-story trope of one twin committing a murder and both getting away with it—because DNA tests can’t tell them apart—might not hold up forever. Their epigenomes could condemn them. Of course, all this evidence proves only that body cells can record environmental cues and pass them on to other body cells, a limited form of inheritance. Normally when sperm and egg unite, embryos erase this epigenetic information—allowing you to become you, unencumbered by what your parents did. But other evidence suggests that some epigenetic changes, through mistakes or subterfuge, sometimes get smuggled along to new generations of pups, cubs, chicks, or children—close enough to bona fide Lamarckism to make Cuvier and Darwin grind their molars.
Sam Kean (The Violinist's Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code)
DISTINCTIVENESS is the quality that causes a brand expression to stand out from competing messages. If it doesn’t stand out, the game is over. Distinctiveness often requires boldness, innovation, surprise, and clarity, not to mention courage on the part of the company. Is it clear enough and unique enough to pass the swap test? RELEVANCE asks whether a brand expression is appropriate for its goals. Does it pass the hand test? Does it grow naturally from the DNA of the brand? These are good questions, because it’s possible to be attention-getting without being relevant, like a girly calendar issued by an auto parts company. MEMORABILITY is the quality that allows people to recall the brand or brand expression when they need to. Testing for memorability is difficult, because memory proves itself over time. But testing can often reveal the presence of its drivers, such as emotion, surprise, distinctiveness, and relevance. EXTENDIBILITY measures how well a given brand expression will work across media, across cultural boundaries, and across message types. In other words, does it have legs? Can it be extended into a series if necessary? It’s surprisingly easy to create a one-off, single-use piece of communication that paints you into a corner. DEPTH is the ability to communicate with audiences on a number of levels. People, even those in the same brand tribe, connect to ideas in different ways. Some are drawn to information, others to style, and still others to emotion. There are many levels of depth, and skilled communicators are able to create connections at most of them.
Marty Neumeier (The Brand Gap)
An unusually clear statement of the secular view of evil and suffering is made by Richard Dawkins in his book "River out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life"- He writes: “The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation....In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.” This is a complete departure from every other cultural view of suffering. Each one sees evil as having some purpose as a punishment, or a test, or an opportunity. But in Dawkin's view, the reason people struggle so mightily in the face of suffering is because they will not accept that it never has any purpose. It is senseless, neither bad nor good- because categories such as good and evil are meaningless in the universe we live in. "We humans have purpose on the brain," he argues. "Show us almost any object or process and it is hard for us to resist the 'Why' question...It is an almost universal delusion...The old temptation comes back with a vengeance when tragedy strikes..."Why oh why, did the cancer/earthquake/hurricane have to strike my child?" But he argues that this agony happens because "we cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous-indifferent to all suffering, lacking purpose....DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.
Timothy J. Keller (Walking with God through Pain and Suffering)
I find that while each partner might have needed some specific coaching, the real tests we faced were basically the same, season after season. We had to learn to move as a team. We had to master complex, carefully timed choreography. We had to face the hot lights and live action and the idea that millions of eyes were upon us. But beyond that, I needed to inspire and instill confidence in each person I coached and danced with. I needed to communicate with an open heart and empathetic, encouraging words. I had to critique usefully and praise strategically. I also needed to be my authentic self--exposing my personal vulnerabilities to win their trust. Ultimately, I had to make each of my partners embrace not just me, but also her own sill and power. Every partner I’ve danced with has it within them to kick ass and climb mountains. When you put yourself in a situation when you’re vulnerable, that’s when your power is revealed. And it’s always there; it’s part of your DNA. It’s like a woman walking into a room looking for the diamond necklace and realizing it’s around her neck. I’m not changing any of these ladies; I’m helping them rediscover themselves. And truth be told, that was never my goal. I never walked into a studio thinking, I’m going to transform this person’s life. I’m no therapist! I was just trying to put some damn routines together! But I realized after all these seasons that the dance is a metaphor for the journey. Every one of my partners has had a very different one. What they brought to the table was different; what they needed to overcome was different. But despite that, the same thing happens time and time again: the walls come tumbling down and they find their true selves. That I have anything at all to do with that is both thrilling and humbling. In the beginning, I thought I was just along for the ride--army candy. To touch a person’s life, to help them find their footing, is a gift, and I’m thankful I get to do it season after season.
Derek Hough (Taking the Lead: Lessons from a Life in Motion)
Pit Bull bans are enormously expensive and ineffective. And if breed discriminatory ordinances are passed, people who love their pets will fight the arbitrary identification of their dog, making them more difficult to enforce. If you take someone's property away, the burden of proof is on the government to prove the pet is subject to the law, which means you must prove it is a pit bull. That becomes an extensive, costly battle that could require DNA testing to see if the dog actually is subject to a ban.
Ledy Van Kavage
Superfecundation is the term used when twins are conceived from sperm from different men if a woman has had more than one partner during a menstrual cycle. It is not known how often this happens, but if suspected, then paternity can be checked by DNA testing (Terasaki et al 1978).
Diane M. Fraser (Myles' Textbook for Midwives)
which “houses” about twenty thousand genes. Each book in this DNA library contains words arranged into sentences. These DNA sentences are genes.
Walter Mischel (The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control)
The discovery that Father Sánchez’s paternal line is haplogroup J1 is somewhat surprising, as Spain has no large population group from within that subhaplogroup—in fact, only about 7 percent of the Spanish population tests as J1. Given the relatively small percentage of this lineage in the rest of Europe, it can safely be assumed that many J1’s from Spain share a crypto-Judaic past, which is probably true of Father Sánchez. It is also interesting to note that the signature of the Cohanim—descendants of Jewish priests—is also found in haplogroup J1.
Jon Entine (Abraham's Children: Race, Identity, and the DNA of the Chosen People)
It’s believed that the man who originated the J lineage lived in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent thousands of years before some of his descendants migrated to the Middle East 7,500 years ago. It is found at its highest variety in the Zagros Mountains in western Iran and in Iraq, where 60 percent of the population test positive for it. One branch of J, designated by geneticists as J1, is restricted almost exclusively to Middle Eastern populations, and this is where the CMH marker is most commonly found. Another clade, J2, which also includes Ashkenazi Jews, is also common throughout the Mediterranean countries and into India.
Jon Entine (Abraham's Children: Race, Identity, and the DNA of the Chosen People)
Nature provides many examples of this incredible discrepancy between who we appear to be and who we truly are. Consider the caterpillar. If we brought a caterpillar to a biologist and asked him to analyze it and describe its DNA, he would tell us, "I know this looks like a caterpillar to you. But scientifically, according to every test, including DNA, this is fully and completely a butterfly." Wow! God has wired into a creature looking nothing like a butterfly a perfectly complete butterfly identity. And because the caterpillar is a butterfly in essence, it will one day display the behavior and attributes of a butterfly. The caterpillar matures into what is already true about it. In the meantime, berating the caterpillar for not being more like a butterfly is not only futile, it will probably hurt its tiny ears! So it is with us. God has given us the DNA of righteousness. We are saints. Nothing we do will make us more righteous than we already are. Nothing we do will alter this reality. God knows our DNA. He knows that we are "Christ in me." And now He is asking us to join Him in what He knows is true!
John S. Lynch (The cure)
Recent research conducted on a beach in Washington state indicates that the sentinel behavior exhibited by what researchers had assumed was an altruistic member of the flock might very well be scouting by a larcenist noting his comrades’ cache sights for future retrieval. It was previously believed that crows posted guards to watch for predators while members of the flock were feeding. But researchers James and Renee Ha watched for thousands ofhours while crows stole food from each other. Some birds they banded and observed were honest and never stole from each other, preferring instead to find their own food supplies. Other crows’ food sources, however, contained up to 65 percent swiped merchandise. Pushing their conclusions even further, they tried to find DNA links between the birds to test whether crows steal from their own relatives. If the early conclusions from this research are correct, not only can crows recognize close relatives, but they are less likely to steal from them as well.
Barb Kirpluk (Caw of the Wild)
it. I had to take a DNA test and everything to prove that I was, in fact, her birth mother. Thank God I never turned over my parental rights to my daughter when I left her with Darro. That’s why she is now in my custody and living with us.
Mz. Lady P. (Thug Mansion (Thug Passion Book 8))
Despite the availability of testing, at least half of the population at risk for Huntington’s disease still has children without making use of the new technologies. Even some of the people who have prenatal testing for Huntington’s still have a profound reluctance to learn their own status. Couples who try preimplantation genetic diagnosis may even conceive a child and choose not to find out if the parent at risk has the mutation. Deciding
Christine Kenneally (The Invisible History of the Human Race: How DNA and History Shape Our Identities and Our Futures)
As of 2014 a small handful of well-known companies—Family Tree DNA, 23andMe, and AncestryDNA.com, as well as National Geographic’s Genographic Project—and services offer a selection of DNA tests and genealogical connections to the general public.
Christine Kenneally (The Invisible History of the Human Race: How DNA and History Shape Our Identities and Our Futures)
Me and Zy still hadn’t spoken since and I had no idea if he even wanted to have a DNA test, or relationship with me. In
Nika Michelle (Forbidden Fruit 4: The Last Drop)
formed theories about the residents of Pontypandy. (Could Norman Price be Fireman Sam’s secret love child? There’s no sign of Mr Price, Sam is always far too forgiving about the fact that Norman’s a total arsehole and they are both ginger. Definite grounds for a DNA test.) Don
Sarah Turner (The Unmumsy Mum)
Sector Human Registry is the database that keeps track of everyone’s identity. It involves DNA testing as an infant, and then constant, weekly monitoring of growth, emotional and intellectual intelligence, hormone levels, personality tests—basically everything that’s possible to know about an individual.
K. Makansi (The Sowing (Seeds #1))
WITH THEIR CASUAL ACQUIESCENCE to the DNA tests, Lucas was left stranded. He asked some perfunctory questions—where were you last night at one o’clock? (At our apartments.) Did anyone see you there? (No.) Any proof that you were there? (Made some phone calls, moved some documents on e-mail.) Can we see those? (Of course.) Did you know either Tubbs or Roman? (No.) Lucas walked away and made a call, asking them to wait, got hold of a crime-scene specialist, and made arrangements for Carver and Dannon to be DNA-typed.
John Sandford (Silken Prey (Lucas Davenport #23))
A series of checks and balances ensures that neither the maternal nor the paternal genome gets the upper hand. We can get a better understanding of how this works if we look once again at the experiments of Azim Surani, Davor Sobel and Bruce Cattanach. These are the scientists who created the mouse zygotes that contained only paternal DNA or only maternal DNA. After they had created these test tube zygotes, the scientists implanted them into the uterus of mice. None of the labs ever generated living mice from these zygotes. However, the zygotes did develop for a while in the womb, but very abnormally. The abnormal development was quite different, depending on whether all the chromosomes had come from the mother or the father. In both cases the few embryos that did form were small and retarded in growth. Where all the chromosomes had come from the mother, the placental tissues were very underdeveloped1. If all the chromosomes came from the father, the embryo was even more retarded but there was much better production of the placental tissues2. Scientists created embryos from a mix of these cells – cells which had only maternally inherited or paternally inherited chromosomes. These embryos still couldn’t develop all the way to birth. When examined, the researchers found that all the tissues in the embryo were from the maternal-only cells whereas the cells of the placental tissues were the paternal-only type3. All these data suggested that something in the male chromosomes pushes the developmental programme in favour of the placenta, whereas a maternally-derived genome has less of a drive towards the placenta, and more towards the embryo itself.
Nessa Carey (The Epigenetics Revolution: How Modern Biology is Rewriting our Understanding of Genetics, Disease and Inheritance)
Our unfortunate dog walker had been out walking her dog when she had been hit in the face by a bag of dog faeces hanging from a tree branch. What upset her most was that it was still warm. No, I informed her, I wouldn’t be conducting DNA tests on the contents, no matter how many episodes of CSI she’d seen.
John Donoghue (Police, Lies and Alibis: The True Story of a Front Line Officer)
I think the unsaid truth about adoption for most is that it wasn’t the first choice. It’s hard for me to type these words and put them on this page because I know they hurt.
Wendy Batchelder (Finding Family: How Deeply Rooted Faith Grew Our Family Tree)
At the sight of my newly found family packed into my living room as if it were the most natural thing in the world, people I had only known a few months were gathered in my home on Christmas Eve, from four states and made up four generations.
Wendy Batchelder (Finding Family: How Deeply Rooted Faith Grew Our Family Tree)
Could that test be the answer to some of my lifelong questions about who I was? Could I really get the answer about my ethnicity or where I came from? Would I find people I was related to?
Wendy Batchelder (Finding Family: How Deeply Rooted Faith Grew Our Family Tree)
It is because of this process, drawing near to God through prayer and through reading His Word, that I finally began to understand and accept that God loved me, for me.
Wendy Batchelder (Finding Family: How Deeply Rooted Faith Grew Our Family Tree)
A letter from my grandmother. A woman I had never thought about. I couldn’t get any of my thoughts to make sense . . . no questions would come together. I felt paralyzed.
Wendy Batchelder (Finding Family: How Deeply Rooted Faith Grew Our Family Tree)
I was only six weeks pregnant but already found myself thinking about my birth mother and what it was like for her, knowing she was carrying a baby and was going to give her away—give me away. I couldn’t imagine what that must have felt like. I already felt so connected to my baby. For the first time, I found myself wondering about her.
Wendy Batchelder (Finding Family: How Deeply Rooted Faith Grew Our Family Tree)
To this day I will never forget the exact words they used, but for the sake of staying on the G-rated side of things, let’s just paraphrase: no one must like me, especially my parents, since they “got rid of me.
Wendy Batchelder (Finding Family: How Deeply Rooted Faith Grew Our Family Tree)
I’d found my birth family.
Wendy Batchelder (Finding Family: How Deeply Rooted Faith Grew Our Family Tree)
The questions of what makes a family are as old as families themselves; only now, in this new era, many more families than before are grappling with them.
Libby Copeland (The Lost Family: How DNA Testing Is Upending Who We Are)
What happens when the seeker finds? When an adoptee or another seeker has identified her long-lost kin, what does she do with that information? No chart or browser extension can answer this question, nor can algorithms predict how the people she’s identified will react to being found. This is when some seekers prowl the Internet, looking for clues into whether they want to know these strangers in all but blood. It is, of course, breathtakingly easy to figure out your father’s career on LinkedIn, his political leanings on Facebook. Social media makes it possible—once you’ve discovered who your father is—to learn what he is.
Libby Copeland (The Lost Family: How DNA Testing Is Upending Who We Are)
Recreational genetic testing can suggest ancestral homelands and migration patterns that point to a family’s true history, hidden for decades or centuries, prompting testers to reexamine not only their own families but their beliefs about race and ethnicity, too.
Libby Copeland (The Lost Family: How DNA Testing Is Upending Who We Are)
I’m going to guess that you’ve not had a DNA test, nor do you see any reason why you should. That’s doubtless a sound belief, but nevertheless a belief that in a small number of cases is dead wrong. Paternity is almost always an assumption, not a fact. That’s an unsettling thing to consider, so maybe it is best ignored. Just like so many bigger, unsettling possibilities mentioned in The Orphan Conspiracies.
James Morcan (The Orphan Conspiracies: 29 Conspiracy Theories from The Orphan Trilogy)
These potential advantages of DNA computing over the traditional approach and the seminal experimental work of Adleman, demonstrating the practical in vitro implementation of a DNA algorithm for solving an instance of the Hamiltonian path problem, caused a strong increase of interest in DNA computing over the past years. Although the set of “bio-operations” that can be executed on DNA strands in a laboratory (including operators such as synthesizing, mixing, annealing, melting, amplifying, separating, extracting, cutting, and ligating DNA strands) seems fundamentally different from traditional programming languages, theoretical work on the computational power of various models of DNA computing demonstrates that certain subsets of these operators are computationally complete. In other words, everything that is Turing-computable can also be computed by these DNA models of computation. Furthermore, it has also been shown that universal systems exist, so that the programmable DNA computer is theoretically possible. The algorithms for DNA computing that have been presented in the literature use an approach that will not work for NP-complete problems of realistic size, because these algorithms are all based on extracting an existing solution from a sufficiently large initial population of solutions. Although a huge number (≈ 1012) of DNA molecules (i.e., potential solutions to a given problem) can be manipulated in parallel, this so-called filtering approach (i.e., generate and test) quickly becomes infeasible as problem sizes grow (e.g., a 500-node instance of the traveling salesman problem has > 101000 potential solutions).
Laura F. Landweber (Evolution as Computation)
I was the one.” He points at his chest. “Not some man who shares your DNA. Me.” The hurt roars through him. “I’m your father. I don’t care what any DNA test says. I’m the one who’s fucking loved you unconditionally your whole life.
Natasha Madison (Southern Sunrise (Southern, #4))
Linda would say that she was so excited to have half-sisters that she didn't fully appreciate how her story posted a fundamental threat to their story.
Libby Copeland (The Lost Family: How DNA Testing Is Uncovering Secrets, Reuniting Relatives, and Upending Who We Are)
People thought they could get away with everything, she says– and indeed, they did until genetic genealogy came along. In Moore's view, DNA is an equalizer, a revelatory force with the power to right past wrongs.
Libby Copeland (The Lost Family: How DNA Testing Is Uncovering Secrets, Reuniting Relatives, and Upending Who We Are)
Seeking out genetic information... may allow adult adoptees, who had no choice in whether to be adopted, or by whom, to exercise their autonomy in making meaning out of it.
Libby Copeland (The Lost Family: How DNA Testing Is Uncovering Secrets, Reuniting Relatives, and Upending Who We Are)
Should parents have an expectation of privacy if they relinquished their children decades ago when the culture was radically different, when psychologists said the best thing for a child was not to know his or her biological family?
Libby Copeland (The Lost Family: How DNA Testing Is Uncovering Secrets, Reuniting Relatives, and Upending Who We Are)
The concept of race as distilled into popular culture is the product not only of scientific research but of history, culture, and politics as well– the product, in other words, of flawed human beings. Columbia University sociologist Alondra Nelson has described the concept of race as “a way to sort human communities in such a way to justify social inequality; this sorting is neither natural nor inevitable.” [Boldface added]
Libby Copeland (The Lost Family: How DNA Testing Is Uncovering Secrets, Reuniting Relatives, and Upending Who We Are)
...if the philosopher Françoise Baylis is right– if identity is something we work out in constant conversation with the rest of the world, a kind of story we tell, shaped by our beliefs and desires and fact-checked and validated by others–then the only person who could have said who [anyone] is [that person].
Libby Copeland (The Lost Family: How DNA Testing Is Uncovering Secrets, Reuniting Relatives, and Upending Who We Are)
Unfortunately life is not about buying away your guilt; it’s about holding your guilt on your back until it crushes you.
Kelly Conaboy (The Particulars of Peter: Dance Lessons, DNA Tests, and Other Excuses to Hang Out with My Perfect Dog)
The tests you’d need to perform to confirm ricin poisoning are really specific. You can’t even test it in fluids. You have to do polymerase chain reactions with DNA to confirm it’s there. And it’s so rare your toxicologists wouldn’t even think to screen for it, and even if they did, they still might not pick it up if enough molecules aren’t there.” Yardley had dealt with a couple of poisonings before and had come across a bit of research that suggested if a person wanted to kill using poison, ingestion was not the best method, as traces of the poison would be found in the stomach or intestines. Injection was cleaner and less detectable, and the areas of the body that were best for injection, that had the least chance of being noticed in an autopsy, were the tongue and eyes.
Victor Methos (Crimson Lake Road (Desert Plains, #2))
The rest of us get to have lives full of friends and loved ones and all of these people who get to really know us, or at least attempt to, but our dogs pretty much only have us.
Kelly Conaboy (The Particulars of Peter: Dance Lessons, DNA Tests, and Other Excuses to Hang Out with My Perfect Dog)
He is beautiful; it would be a sin of omission to withhold it. His black hair is very shiny—strangers are sometimes irritated that I won’t tell them what they presume to be my secret about what I feed him to get his coat so lustrous, but I’m sorry, it is proprietary information. (The secret is that he’s constructed entirely from eyelash wishes.)
Kelly Conaboy (The Particulars of Peter: Dance Lessons, DNA Tests, and Other Excuses to Hang Out with My Perfect Dog)
When he’s feeling uncertain, Peter does not like to eat treats. Sadly, he tends to feel uncertain whenever a stranger gives him a treat. I think this is very sweet, and that it shows an incredible survival instinct, and I’m proud of him for it, but it makes for some awkward encounters, as he is very cute, and, you see, people with treats are generally excited to give him one. He isn’t rude to them. He allows them the pleasure of placing a treat in his mouth, accepts it gingerly, and delicately places it on the ground in front of him. Very polite. Thank you, but no thank you; I do not know you and furthermore I prefer to take all treats in my treat spot at home, which is the couch.
Kelly Conaboy (The Particulars of Peter: Dance Lessons, DNA Tests, and Other Excuses to Hang Out with My Perfect Dog)
Forensic DNA Expert Anil Gupta offer a variety of DNA forensic testing systems including STR, Y-STR, and mitochondrial DNA. The DNA Sample in Forensic Analysis can be collected from blood, saliva, perspiration, hair, teeth, mucus, finger nails, semon and these can be found almost anywhere at crime scence. Anil Gupta is here to help make sense of this complex scientific issue and to testify before the court on these issues when necessary. Initial Consultation is FREE – If you send us the report we will lend you our expertise to help you understand your situation. Written Reports and Affidavits Discovery Documents – free by request, all you need to obtain the entire laboratory case file Mike is a leading forensic DNA expert with considerable experience in forensic biology. He is a clear and balanced expert opinion highly qualified provider to help lawyers, attorneys and lawyers support their clients and the criminal justice system. He is a very experienced scientist, whose career has focused on developing the ability to DNA analysis, defining standards, interpreting results, explaining evidence and providing advice to help both the defense and Processing equipment. Mike has a great depth of technical knowledge. As the chief DNA scientist (head of discipline) with the former Forensic Science Service (FSS), he established technical standards for DNA analytical processes, staff competencies and training. He was head of the Specialist Unit at FSS DNA and led the creation of the first dedicated facility of ultra-clean low template DNA. He has led the validation and implementation of several important new DNA processes. Through audit and process review, it can provide an effective and risk-based quality assurance, as it has for many years to the FSS, to the National DNA Database and to the courts.
Anil Gupta
DNA test at a private lab back in the States would provide final confirmation of the news she and her family had been expecting to hear for three long years. As she turned away to exit the morgue’s presentation room, eyes streaming, she realized that even though she and her family had been preparing for this moment for years she still wasn’t ready for it. Three hours later, Maggie sat in the terrace café of the Carlton Hotel and tried to process all that had happened in
Susan Kiernan-Lewis (Murder in the South of France (Maggie Newberry Mysteries, #1))
I am on a train passing through Baltimore, where I grew up. I can see vacant lots, charred remains of burned buildings surrounded by rubbish, billboards advertising churches, and other billboards for DNA testing of children’s paternity. Johns Hopkins Hospital looms out of the squalor. The hospital is on an isolated island situated slightly east of downtown. The downtown area is separated from the hospital complex by a sea of run-down homes, a freeway, and a massive prison complex. Eastern Europe and the Soviet bloc come to mind. Failed industry and failed housing schemes and forced relocation disguised as urban renewal.
David Byrne (Bicycle Diaries)
New York Times article from March 8, 1953, titled “Looking Back Two Billion Years.” “Obviously,” Edmond said, “this experiment raised some eyebrows. The implications could have been earth-shattering, especially for the religious world. If life magically appeared inside this test tube, we would know conclusively that the laws of chemistry alone are indeed enough to create life. We would no longer require a supernatural being to reach down from heaven and bestow upon us the spark of Creation. We would understand that life simply happens…as an inevitable by-product of the laws of nature. More importantly, we would have to conclude that because life spontaneously appeared here on earth, it almost certainly did the same thing elsewhere in the cosmos, meaning: man is not unique; man is not at the center of God’s universe; and man is not alone in the universe.” Edmond exhaled. “However, as many of you may know, the Miller-Urey experiment failed. It produced a few amino acids, but nothing even closely resembling life. The chemists tried repeatedly, using different combinations of ingredients, different heat patterns, but nothing worked. It seemed that life—as the faithful had long believed—required divine intervention. Miller and Urey eventually abandoned their experiments. The religious community breathed a sigh of relief, and the scientific community went back to the drawing board.” He paused, an amused glimmer in his eyes. “That is, until 2007…when there was an unexpected development.” Edmond now told the tale of how the forgotten Miller-Urey testing vials had been rediscovered in a closet at the University of California in San Diego after Miller’s death. Miller’s students had reanalyzed the samples using far more sensitive contemporary techniques—including liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry—and the results had been startling. Apparently, the original Miller-Urey experiment had produced many more amino acids and complex compounds than Miller had been able to measure at the time. The new analysis of the vials even identified several important nucleobases—the building blocks of RNA, and perhaps eventually…DNA. “It was an astounding science story,” Edmond concluded, “relegitimizing the notion that perhaps life does simply happen…without divine intervention. It seemed the Miller-Urey experiment had indeed been working, but just needed more time to gestate. Let’s remember one key point: life evolved over billions of years, and these test tubes had been sitting in a closet for just over fifty. If the timeline of this experiment were measured in miles, it was as if our perspective were limited to only the very first inch…” He let that thought hang in the air. “Needless to say,” Edmond went on, “there was a sudden resurgence in interest surrounding the idea of creating life in a lab.” I remember that, Langdon thought. The Harvard biology faculty had thrown
Dan Brown (Origin (Robert Langdon, #5))
We do DNA sequencing to work out family ties. If we are to understand past lives and reincarnation then we must also map brain activity. This would need to be done using a set of standard tests which would include current affairs and musical stimuli from certain eras. I believe that music would be the best bet because it would use a familiar brain pattern. If you use both then we have a way to either confirm reincarnation and/or time between life, death and life again. The DNA would help narrow the search, but as we all know hereditary factors are bias towards family members. Thoughts, however are energy and they may still be embedded in the brain to some degrees. This is why children can remember things that they don't even know. The downside is that we would need to DNA sequence everyone and also give them a brain scan to collate results. A big task and the question would be how big a sample would we need to make it viable? And would mankind be ready to believe in something that they would be willing to debunk quite easily?
Anthony T. Hincks
The DNA is made up of two opposite spirals, positive and negative, which can easily be considered isomorphic to I Ching's yin () and yang (), or Leibniz's 0 and 1, or Joyce's and . These are bonded by four amino acids—adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine, which are usually abbreviated A, G, C, T. If one dares to consider these isomorphic with active yang (), passive yang (), active yin () and passive yin (), or Leibniz's 01,11,10 and 00, or Joyce's and , then the parallel becomes staggering. In forming RNA messages—the genetic code—the T (thymine) drops out to be replaced by U (uracil) but we still have four elements—A, G, C, U—and if we permutate them by the now-familiar rule, making all possible combinations of three out of these basic four "letters," we get again 43 or 64 "words," which are the 64 elements of the genetic language.
Robert Anton Wilson (Coincidance: A Head Test)
Many scientists and researchers themselves now advocate these methods, most prominently the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. There is no longer any rational basis, they tell us, for the Draize test, dripping chemicals and personal-care products into the eyes of immobilized rabbits. We can now test for eye irritancy by use of human tissue systems mimicking characteristics of the eye. We can stop pouring commercial and industrial chemicals into animals. Acute toxicity is determined more accurately by in vitro methods using human cell cultures obtained from cadavers. Damage to DNA can be studied in bacteria, as in the Ames assay developed thirty years ago, adopted slowly by the EPA and yet now internationally accepted. Further experiments on animals for diseases of the heart, nicotine addiction, obesity, and many other disorders are unwarranted because we have already identified their primary causes by studying human populations.
Matthew Scully (Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy)