Category Archives: Transhuman News

DNA kits are useful, popular ways for discovering your roots, as well as identifying potential health conditions. AncestryDNA and 23andMe are the most well-known consumer DNA services, and they cost roughly the same amount of money. So, which DNA kit should you pick to learn more about your family history and genetics? We pit the DNA giants against each other to help you make an informed decision.

OnceAncestryprocesses your DNA sample, your dashboard displays an interactive map of your ethnicity estimate, possible DNA matches, and a map of where your ancestors lived. If you cancel your account, you can download your raw DNA report and take it with you.

Ancestry continually updates your results as the company collects more reference samples and builds better tools. My profile was last updated in September 2021. Subscribers can access an array of historical records, including Census data; create family trees; and contact other Ancestry members.

The company offers three subscription options: AncestryDNA (the original version), AncestryDNA + World Explorer Membership, and AncestryDNA Traits + All Access Membership. The World Explorer Membership opens up access to international records, and the All Access Membership includes access to Fold3 and Newspapers.com. Fold3 has over half a million military records and millions of nonmilitary. A membership to Newspapers.com comes with more than 2 billion articles that go back to the 1700s.

The third-tier plan includes AncestryDNA Traits, which tests for more than 30 traits. These tests reveal many traits, including eye color, vitamin levels, and muscle fatigue. You can view how AncestryDNA determined your results, and learn which factors besides genetics affect those traits, such as diet.

23andMereports cover a few categories: Ancestry Composition, DNA Relatives List, Neanderthal Ancestry, and Maternal and Paternal haplogroups. You unearth more detail by interacting with the map on the ancestry composition page, including the exact heritage percentages. You can also see the last time when that information was updated (our data was refreshed in June 2021).

Based on your mitochondrial (maternal) DNA, the maternal haplogroup section shows which haplogroup you belong to, as well as subgroups. People in the same haplogroup have a common ancestor. For example, the haplogroup T2b shares an ancestor who lived 10,000 years ago; most people in this haplogroup live in Europe. The Y chromosome determines paternal haplogroups.

If you're genetically male (as in, you have an X chromosome and a Y chromosome), you can view both your maternal and paternal lines. People with two X chromosomes can't access this data unless their father or brother submits their DNA.

23andMe offers three options: Ancestry + Traits Service; Health + Ancestry Service; and 23andMe+ membership, including the Health + Ancestry kit. The membership includes more in-depth health information, advanced DNA Relative filters, and access to more than three times the DNA Relatives.

Winner:23andMe

AncestryDNA briefly offered DNA-based health testing starting in 2019, but discontinued the service in winter 2020 to focus on its core products. Members who used this product during its brief lifespan had a chance to download their results in 2020, but they're no longer available in their profiles.

23andMe's Health and Traits reports are available in several categories, such as Health Predisposition, Carrier Status, and Wellness. The company tests for many conditions, including Celiac disease, macular degeneration, and Type-2 diabetes. As mentioned earlier, it also tests for traits like your alcohol flush reaction, muscle composition, and even asparagus odor detection (very likely in our case). The company continues to add new reports.

Even if you've opted out of health testing, you can optionally fill out 23andMe's health questionnaires to help with company research. You can also choose to save your saliva samples at 23andMe's labs for future testing. Otherwise, 23andMe will destroy your sample once it's processed (Ancestry will destroy your sample on request).

Winner:23andMe

AncestryDNA searches its database for matches using the service's DNA Matches feature. Only your username, possible relationship, and genetic ethnicity are visible to other members. AncestryDNA continues to search for matches as its database grows.

Ancestry started as family tree software, and it incorporates your AncestryDNA results into your existing family trees. Aside from that, AncestryDNA has a feature called ThruLines, which uses public Ancestry family trees and your private trees to show common ancestors you share with your matches. It also displays potential ancestors from your grandparents to multiples of great grandparents. If you mouse over a probable ancestor, AncestryDNA shows you how many DNA matches are in its system. You can view as much information about your matches as the matches allow, which can be as little as their relationship to you.

Like AncestryDNA, 23andMe looks for DNA matches among its other members, but only if you opt-in to its DNA Relatives program. You'll get email alerts about possible matches and their relationship with you. You can turn on open sharing to make specific details available for other members, such as your full name. If you leave this off, other users must send you a share request. Depending on profile settings, you can either send a message or an introduction.

Winner:Ancestry

AncestryDNA and 23andMe are both excellent DNA testing services, but they have different focuses. The former is a good choice if youre building a family tree, but the latter has robust health-testing capabilities, and rich reports on maternal/paternal lines and Neanderthal ancestry.In short, 23andMe is the DNA kit you should buy if you're looking for a wide view of your genetics.

Overall Winner:23andMe

Note that it's not just your family's human members whose ancestry might interest you.The best dog DNA test kitscan help you tell a Maltese from a mutt, and we've reviewed the top choices in that category.

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AncestryDNA vs. 23andMe: Which DNA Kit Delivers the Best Genetic Information? - PCMag.com

Walmart Inc. says it is prepared to overcome widespread COVID-related challenges this holiday season thanks to its long history dealing with similar problems and some new tools that are keeping its systems running smoothly.

Walmart WMT, -0.71% reported third-quarter earnings and revenue that beat Street estimates on Tuesday, and raised its full-year profit guidance. And while supply chain bottlenecks have delayed the movement of goods around the world, Walmart says its U.S. inventory is up 11.5% ahead of the holidays.

Fighting inflation is in our DNA, said Doug McMillon, chief executive of Walmart, on the earnings call, according to a FactSet transcript.

Walmart has served customers across economic cycles for more than 50 years.

McMillon highlighted Walmarts efforts to maintain speedy delivery, and its broader initiatives, like Walmart GoLocal, the delivery-as-a-service business that counts Home Depot Inc. HD, +0.56% as a partner.

See: Home Depot teams up with Walmarts GoLocal for speedy delivery service

Walmart was among the large retailers like included Home Depot, Target Corp. TGT, -4.82% and others that chartered their own ships to transport merchandise as bottlenecks snarled traffic at ports and elsewhere in the supply chain.

Also: Walmart, Target, Home Depot and other large retailers are chartering ships to bypass supply chain problems. Will the strategy save Christmas?

In addition, the company has an advertising arm and Walmart Luminate, which launched in the U.S. and provides data and insight to merchants and suppliers, that it says are showing results.

Stores and fulfillment centers are well staffed, and ourpriceposition remains strong, said Brett Biggs, Walmarts chief financial officer, on the call.

Customers should expect to find the items they want at great values, and we are ready to serve them however they want to shop.

Even with these additional areas of business, Walmarts bread and butter remains robust.

Grocery sales were up nearly 10% as strong unit growth and low-to-mid-single-digit inflation benefited results, Biggs said.

In fact, food sales grew $3.6 billion during Q3 which is the strongest quarterly growth in six quarters.

BMO Capital Markets analysts highlighted the grocery market share gains in its post-earnings note. BMO rates Walmart stock outperform with a $170 price target.

Read: U.S. retail sales jump 1.7%, but high inflation plays role

Brent Ramos, director of product and services at marketing insight and analytics firm Adswerve, says the retail giants focus on data is helping it to grow.

From shoppable live streams this holiday season to sponsored recipes on social media platforms and upgrading its online holiday delivery services, Walmart has been able to drive a constant stream of traffic and engagement to its site and app, Ramos said.

CFRA rates Walmart stock buy with a $169 price target.

Walmart is navigating the tough supply chain environment well[] which should result in a strong holiday season, Arun Sundaram wrote.

We expect market share gains to continue since Walmarts price gap versus competition typically widens during periods of heightened inflation.

Despite the positive results, Walmart shares slipped 2.6% in Tuesday trading. The stock is down 0.7% for the year to date.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.49% has gained 18.1% for 2021 so far.

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'Fighting inflation is in our DNA': Walmart says its pricing and inventory can deliver for the holidays - MarketWatch

The DNA Doe Project says forensic investigators determined woman was between 30-50 years old, who stood 4'-5'2 and weighed 115 pounds.

KILGORE, Texas The DNA Doe Project has taken on the case of identifying the body of a woman who was found in the Kilgore area on Dec. 23, 2000.

According to the group, a Native American woman was found between railroad tracks and a creek along Spinks Chapman Rd., about five miles northeast of Kilgore.

The woman was wearing a white Adidas shirt with black stripes on the sleeve, blue jeans, white undergarments and brown leather shoes from Mexico.

The DNA Doe Project says forensic investigators determined woman was between 30-50 years old, who stood 4'-5'2 and weighed 115 pounds.

"While initially thought to be African American, DNA results from Parabon Nano Labs, Inc. indicate she was almost entirely Native American," the DNA Doe Project said. "The analysis also showed the woman had black hair, brown or dark eyes, and light brown skin."

Officials believe the woman died sometime between 1999-2000.

In Jan. 2019, the DNA Doe Project helped identify the body of another woman who was found in Kilgore, formerly known as "Lavender Doe."

Lavender Doe's charred body was found on Oct. 29, 2006, just north of Kilgore, in a heavily wooded area off of Frtiz Swanson Rd.

In August 2018, Joseph Wayne Burnette, of Longview, confessed to "Lavender Doe's" murder after he was arrested in connection with the death of Felisha Pearson, to which he also admitted he was responsible.

After 15 years, "Lavender Doe" she was identified as Dana Lynn Dodd.

Burnette was later sentenced to prison for Dodd and Pearson's murders.

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DNA Doe Project seeking to identify woman in 21-year-old East Texas cold case - CBS19.tv KYTX

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June Lindsey, who died in Ottawa earlier this month at the age of 99, is considered by some to be one of the unsung heroes of science.

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When Ottawa scientist Dr. Alex MacKenzie met June Lindsey at a family birthday party in 2017, he politely asked what kind of science she had studied as a young woman.

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Her answer, and his subsequent research into her work, stunned MacKenzie and led him on a quest to have Lindseys pivotal contribution to the discovery of DNA recognized.

Lindsey, who died in Ottawa earlier this month at the age of 99, is considered by some to be one of the unsung heroes of science. Born and educated in England, she spent most of her life raising a family and living quietly in Ottawa.

Her death has renewed calls that she be formally recognized both at Cambridge University and in Canada for her contribution to one of sciences greatest discoveries: DNA.

I would love, ultimately, for her to be known, never mind plaques and prizes, said MacKenzie, a molecular biologist at the CHEO Research Institute. Just if, when one speaks about the double helix, people were aware of her contribution.

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That contribution is significant. The structural work she completed for her PhD thesis was seen as essential to the discovery of the double helix by James Watson and Francis Crick just four years later in 1953.

When MacKenzie Googled Lindseys doctoral work, soon after meeting her, the hair stood up on the back of his neck. I knew that was a central piece in the double helix. He found others over the years who were concerned that she had not been recognized.

Publicly, Lindsey tended to be self-effacing about her work, saying during a 2019 interview : I dont think about it.

But in the weeks before her death, she told MacKenzie that his efforts to shine light on the significance of her work had changed her life.

Born in a small Yorkshire village, June Broomhead, as she was then, was the first girl from her school to attend Cambridge University on a full scholarship. She excelled at physics and math, but since girls were not taught Latin at the time, she needed tutoring from a teacher at the local boys grammar school in order to qualify.

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She completed her undergraduate studies in 1944 at Cambridges Newnham Womens College, but it would be 50 years before she was granted a BA. When she finished school, Cambridge did not grant degrees to women. She later said that her heart was in Cambridge.

After a stint teaching, Lindsey returned to her beloved Cambridge to pursue a PhD, working in the storied Cavendish Laboratory where Crick and Watson would discover DNA for which they won a Nobel Prize in 1962.

Using a technique called X-ray crystallography, she worked out the physical structures of adenine and guanine, two chemical compounds known as purines, which are the largest and most complex of the four nucleic acids that make up DNA.

That structural information proved to be essential for the later discovery of the zipper-like structure of DNAs double helix.

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In fact, her doctoral work described an interaction known as a hydrogen bond. In his book The Double Helix, Watson describes how looking at her work led to his epiphany about the structure of DNA.

I was drawing the fused rings of adenine on paper. Suddenly I realized the potentially profound implications of a DNA structure in which the adenine residue formed hydrogen bonds similar to those found in crystals of pure adenine. Watson had realized the hydrogen bonds could serve as the zipper for the two nucleic acid strands, making up the double helix.

Over the following three days, using metal models based in part on Lindseys molecular dimensions, Watson arrived at the final double helix structure.

Lindsey also worked at Oxford University and the National Research Council in Ottawa, discovering the structures of vitamin B12, morphine and codeine.

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She met her husband, Canadian George Lindsey, at the Cavendish Laboratory when they were both working on PhDs. He was studying nuclear physics. A polymath, George Lindsey, who was related to William Lyon Mackenzie, did military defence work during the Cold War and, among other things, helped to create sabermetrics, featured in the movie Moneyball.

June Lindsey, who firmly believed women could either have a career or a family, but not both, gave up work to concentrate on raising their children, Robin and Jane. Robin is a professor in the operations and logistics division of the University of British Columbias Sauder School of Business. Jane is a senior research scientist at Harvards T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

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Jane Lindsey said her mother didnt think what she did was that special. She was just doing her PhD. I dont think she thinks she deserved any recognition.

But many others do.

And while Lindseys contemporary at Cambridge, Rosalind Franklin, has now been recognized for her contribution to the discovery of DNA with plaques and buildings and prizes named after her, Lindsey has not. MacKenzie and others maintain Lindseys work was more crucial to the discovery of DNA.

A cameo of June Broomhead has, however, been written into a script for a movie about Franklin, should that ever be made, say her children.

MacKenzie said it is difficult to overstate how critical Lindseys work was to the discovery of DNA and how egregious it is that she has not been recognized.

The double helix was one of the most important puzzle-solvings of the 20thcentury, potentially in all of history, he said. And June Lindsey described the pieces of that jigsaw puzzle and showed how they might be linked together.

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Obituary: 'Unsung hero' of science laid the ground work for epoch DNA discovery - Ottawa Citizen

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Here's a roundup of top stories from the world of politics, business, sports, and entertainment, which grabbed the spotlight and trended the most on various social media platforms on November 17 (Wednesday).

Continued here:
DNA: Top News of the Day | November 17, 2021 - DNA India

Humans have been space exploration for a quite long time, which is resulting in growing pollution in space. Thousands of dead satellites circle our globe, as well as with pieces of metal from all the rockets we've fired throughout the years. It might become a concern in the future. Russia's test to blow up one of its own satellites in space on Monday drew outrage for jeopardizing the International Space Station crew and, according to experts, creating wreckage that has heightened threats to space activities for years.

What is space debris?

Space debris, often called space garbage or trash, is made up of discarded launch vehicles or spacecraft pieces that float hundreds of miles above the Earth. Debris can also be produced by a space explosion or when governments test missiles to destroy their own satellites. With the deployment of more spacecraft from businesses like Elon Musk's Starlink and OneWeb, there will most likely be more space debris in interplanetary space. Aside from Russia, China, the US, and India have all fired satellites, resulting in orbital waste. Due to the high speeds at which space junk orbits the globe that is roughly 15,700 miles per hour (25,265 kilometres per hour) in low Earth orbit,it might inflict considerable damage to a satellites or spaceship in the event of a collision.

Is there a solution to space debris?

To assist in the removal of orbital debris, Japan's Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the European Space Agency have collaborated with start-ups. According to NASA, waste in the solar system less than 600 kilometres will fall down to Earth in a few years, whereas junk in orbits greater than 1,000 kilometres will circle the Earth for a century or more. Space debris is not just a concern; it also raises the expense of satellite operations. According to an OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) study, spacecraft operators in geostationary orbit calculatedthat protective and preventive techniques contribute to around 5-10% of project expenses, while the cost is higher for lower-Earth orbits.

Increasing possibilty of collision?

About 23,000 fragments of particles bigger than a softball circle the Earth, according to the US government. The probability of a collision increases as debris around the International Space Station orbits the Earth 15 to 16 times each day. The overall mass of all accumulated space debris in planetary orbit, according to the European Space Agency, is more than 9,600 tonnes. If the accumulation of space debris persists, some regions of space may become useless within the next few years, according to Holger Krag, head of the ESA's Space Safety Programme Office, in an interview.

The Kosmos 1408 satellite, deployed in 1982 and weighing more than 2,000 kilogrammes, was destroyed on Monday. More than 1,500 pieces of "trackable orbital debris" were created during the test, with hundreds and thousands of small chunks spawned as well. After the test, the crew of the space station was told to take refuge in their connected spacecraft capsules for 2 hours. Although space debris is unlikely to impede space travel, it could cause serious problems for flying around the Earth. Objects orbiting at a height of roughly 1,000 kilometres (620 miles), which are utilised for communications and Earth monitoring, would be the most vulnerable.

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DNA Explainer: Know what is space debris and why it is dangerous for satellites and astronauts - DNA India

If not for the well-deserved but still incredible success of the C8 Chevy Corvette, one might easily assume that affordable mid-engine sports cars are a mere chimera. Then again, not everyone has GMs courage.Sure, one can say that given the latest evolution of the 2022 model year prices and the expected quotation for the Z06 flat-plane crankshaft gem, Chevy is slowly but steadily exiting the affordable zone. But come on, an $87k starting price doesnt sound like that much considering the supercar-toting 670-horsepower level.

Anyway, this pixel master didnt have that kind of power in mind when he/she proposed another potentially affordable entry into the mid-engine sports car segment for 2023. Instead, the virtual artist behind the superrenderscarsaccount on social media probably noticed the tremendous C8 success and decided to have a VW swing at the idea based on a forgotten prototype.

Interestingly, this is the second time a CGI expert resurrects the 2009 NAIAS-introduced Volkswagen Concept BlueSport in a matter of weeks. The first time it was used as the base for an unofficial MR2 Spyder return as a mid-engine GR-S roadster. On this occasion, though, it keeps the VW badges and comes back to life with modern family DNA.

More than a decade has passed since its unveiling, so the unofficial 2023 Volkswagen Blue Sport production version has relied on a couple of contemporary models for a genetical upgrade. The front end is clearly inspired by the Golf 8 GTI while the rear takes ample inspiration from the sporty-yet-elegant Arteon liftback.

The three-way mashup has also sparked mostly positive reactions from the virtual artists loyal fanbase. If our own two cents are also allowed, although this little mid-engine VW looks rad its probably forever destined to remain mere wishful thinking. No matter how much wed like to dream of such a sporty car from the German automaker, the sad reality is they are way too traditional to even consider attempting such an open-top mid-engine excess.

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Mid-Engine 2023 VW Roadster With GTI and Arteon DNA Is Sadly Just a Cool Dream - autoevolution