Invisible Histories

A random selection from recent stories of interest in the news and on the blogs; some fascinating stories this week!

• For starters, I am (not surprisingly) more comfortable with the idea of having some Neanderthal DNA than that of a blood-sucking bug. [h/t Mike]
• Ancient plumbing, Mayan style. Perhaps back in the day wait times for plumbing repairs were a little shorter than they are now?
• Spike Lee was the guest for last Friday’s alternately painful and moving season finale episode of NBC’s “Who Do You Think You Are.”
• The latest on bog bodies in the Netherlands and Denmark.
• A mayor in England hopes to prove via DNA that emigrants from Devon were the original colonists of the Lost Colony of Roanoke. Good luck with that. [h/t CeCe]
• Interesting, if brief, commentary at 23andMe’s blog The Spittoon on the diversity of Latino DNA in The Widely Whirled New World: A Fresh Look at Latino Genetic Ancestry.
• Scientists may have found the location of memory loss in your DNA. I’m thinking my own is in the couch cushions, behind the fridge or in the junk drawer.
• No link but Megan Smolenyak won the NGS Award of Merit. Well deserved.
• And last but most definitely not least, we are all Neanderthals now. [h/t Mike]

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A random selection from recent stories in the news and on the blogs.

• ‘Informed Consent’ and the Ethics of DNA Research – New York Times article examining the difficult questions involved in the issue of informed consent and the use of DNA samples for medical research. How much consent is needed, what shape does it take and how far does it go? Once consent is given, is it then ethical to use those samples for other studies – whether medical or not – even if it’s of potential benefit to the group studied?
• In case you missed Friday’s broadcast of “Who Do You Think You Are?” you can watch the full episode on Susan Sarandon and her quest to solve the mystery of her maternal grandmother here.
• A new open access paper is published by Malyarchuk et al. studying the phylogeny of mtDNA haplogroup U5, The Peopling of Europe from the Mitochondrial Haplogroup U5 Perspective. 19% of Finland DNA Project members are U5, the largest sub-clade so far within the project (if all the Hs had sub-clade testing done, H1 would be the second largest sub-clade). [h/t Ilmari]
• Pondering the value in studying Neanderthal DNA? An interview in today’s Archaeology Daily News with biologist Webb Miller proposes some reasons why it’s a good thing to be doing.
• “Forgotten Gateway” is an exhibit running through mid-September in Galveston, Texas highlighting Galveston’s largely forgotten role as another major point of immigration between 1845 and 1924.
• At the Huffington Post, Megan Smolenyak writes about her experience attending this year’s Ellis Island Awards. 2010’s award recipients were Andrea Jung, Dikembe Mutombo, Peter G. Peterson and The Boss, Bruce Springsteen. Another article (via CBS) on the ceremony is here.
• With that in mind, Life magazine’s poignant and thought-provoking selection of Ellis Island photos (with commentary) from their archives is well worth revisiting.

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