Word: dna
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Disputed Remains "Bones of Contention" [April 4] reported that the North Korean government returned to Japan the cremated ashes and bone fragments of Megumi Yokota, a Japanese girl who was kidnapped by the North Koreans in the 1970s and later committed suicide. After running DNA tests, Japanese officials said the remains were not Yokota's, and they blocked North Korean rice shipments in protest. But now they have announced that the remains might be Yokata's. I am deeply shocked that I have heard nothing of that in the Japanese media. From the very beginning, Japan has handled the case...
Then, too, some of the plants may have as yet undiscovered characteristics important to agriculture: for example, resistance to disease or drought. Using new recombinant DNA techniques, scientists look forward to identifying the genes that confer these traits and transferring them from wild plants to crop plants. By preserving the endangered species, says Falk, "we're building a genetic library." Thibodeau considers the library essential "even if it turned out that these plants have no other identifiable value. They would still be worth saving, just as it is worth preserving old manuscripts...
France is counting on modern science to catch the impostors. The National Institute of Agricultural Research (INRA) has developed a type of DNA analysis to distinguish French fungi from Chinese without a taste test. Although French regulations call for a truffle's origins to be clearly marked, truffle experts say many vendors either ignore the rules or engage in outright mislabeling. France's fraud-control directorate carries out random DNA testing to flush out faux-truffle dealers. Anyone caught intending to deceive the consumer with a Chinese truffle may be fined $1,300. Still, there are few inspectors and many...
...field of grass sways in the wind, each blade clearly defined in yellow and green. A molecule of DNA, its 65,000 atoms represented by gleaming spheres, twists and folds into a thick, knotty ring. Oversize baseballs zoom by at impossible speeds, trailed by surrealistic soda fountains and eerily chattering teeth...
Last week's SIGGRAPH attendees got a taste of that insight during a 3-min. film sequence, produced at Lawrence Livermore Labs, that showed in a few seconds what biology teachers have labored for years to make clear: the precise mechanism by which molecules of DNA fold upon themselves to form thick strands of chromosomes. "It's something you could never do with a camera," says Livermore's Nelson Max. The audience at SIGGRAPH greeted his technological tour de force with enthusiastic applause...