Daily Archives: December 2, 2019

VANCOUVER, Wash. (KING) On Saturday, John Hart prepared to fly back home to Wichita, Kansas after spending Thanksgiving with his family in Vancouver, Washington.

I hadn't had that kind of Thanksgiving in I don't know how many years. It was the best Thanksgiving that I've had in forever, Hart said.

Harts praise is not for the stuffing. It was the best Thanksgiving because it was a celebration nearly 60 years in the making. Or as Hart likes to think of it, divine intervention.

Growing up, Hart always knew he was adopted and loved his parents dearly, but when both his mom and dad passed away within the same year, he had a longing for family.

The year was 1987. That is when he started his search for his biological family.

However, making his way to Vancouver, Washington to find them was not an easy road.

Hart paid a company to find his biological mother. He spent thousands of dollars and years without any real leads.

It's just one wall after the other, Hart said.

Hearing stories of other families finding each other through genealogy websites and kits, Hart eventually turned to ancestry.com. He found a match for a close relative, but it turned into another dead end.

It just seemed that every time I tried to do something there was always a stop, he said.

Little did Hart know, his biological mother, Rosie Ashmore, was looking for him all along.

In 1963, Ashmore was a teenager and living with her mother in Los Angeles. When she was just 17 years old, she was raped and became pregnant.

At that time, if a girl got pregnant, it was her fault no matter what the circumstances were, Ashmore said. So, she said we can't have this, we have to hide this.

Ashmores mother took her away to have the baby in secret.

When I gave him up I thought, 'How do you explain to a child, who doesn't understand language at this point, that it's out of your hands? Ashmore said. It's out of your control and so, I gave him up.

Life continued to move forward for Ashmore. She went on to get married and raised two children: Steve and Julie. But the son she gave up never left her mind or her heart.

I wanted to find him, I needed to find him to tell him that I know in my heart I always did love him and that it was out of my control that I could not find him, she said.

Ashmore too turned to ancestry.com, where she also found a match her son, John Hart. She immediately tried to contact him, but Hart never got the message.

Finally, about one month ago there was a break. That close relative Hart found on ancestry.com more than a year ago told the family about the connection, not knowing Ashmore was looking for her son.

Ashmore had told her children about the son she gave away, but her other family members did know what she was searching for.

Thats when Ashmores granddaughter got to work on social media. Harts two daughters back in Kansas did the same. Within days, the mystery was solved: mom and son had found each other.

To have all this come through my children was it was very overwhelming, John said.

Hart flew into PDX just ahead of Thanksgiving for a very emotional reunion with the mother he hadnt seen since birth.

It's like the puzzle. There's all these pieces of puzzle out there that have finally started to be put together, Ashmore said. And him coming through the airport and me seeing him, it's like the last piece of the puzzle in place. It was just meant to be.

The way that they welcomed me and have accepted me and loved me -- it's more than any one man deserves. A second chance at love and life, Hart said.

Hart not only found his mother, but his brother and sister as well. They say they plan to talk just about every day and are already looking ahead to the next visit.

Go here to see the original:
DNA site helps reunite Washington woman with her son after nearly 60 years - WTHR

Could a new wristband that offers bespoke dietary advice also solve the obesity crisis? Victoria Lambert gives the DnaNudge a whirl

Red, green, red, green, red, red, red The light emitting from my new black wristband keeps changing as I hold my wrist up to the foods in our fridge, letting me know whether Ican eat them (green) or not (red). Hellmans mayonnaise: red. Greek yoghurt: red. Tomato ketchup: green.

Lets move over to the pantry, shall we? Mince pies? Hmm - red. No surprises there. But look - Arborio rice: green. Pickled onions: green. Peanut butter, Kenco coffee, Manuka honey all green, green, green. Glenfiddich: green. Yes! And Bisto Best Vegetable Gravy granules: red.

Wait, what? Forget the traffic lights in supermarkets that reveal the nutrient value of foods in general. My new dnanudge wristband which will be available in John Lewis, White City and Waitrose, Canary Wharf, from Monday - is telling me in no uncertain terms what is healthy specifically for me, according to my DNA profile. In particular, its on the lookout for foods high in salt which, I am to learn, are absolute verboten for this Lambert a possibility I had never considered before agreeing to take the latest weapon in the battle to stay healthy: the dnanudge test.

Originally posted here:
Can this wristband create your own bespoke DNA diet? - The Telegraph

The remains of thousands of Aboriginal Australians are scattered around the world in museums and universities. Many institutions accept these remains should be returned to descendant communities, but its not always easy to do.

A major problem is that we often lack detailed information about where in Australia the remains came from. It has been estimated that up to a quarter of the human remains in Australian museums have poor contextual information.

Recently, we completed an Australian Research Council-funded project project that focused on human remains from the Cape York Peninsula of Queensland, in collaboration with several local Aboriginal communities.

What we found suggests no single method such as DNA testing or using geological clues will be enough to reliably determine the origin of remains an interdisciplinary approach using all available evidence will be required.

Read more: Mungo Man returns home: there is still much he can teach us about ancient Australia

Over the past few years there has been considerable interest in the possibility that genetic testing can solve the repatriation problem. One aim of our project was to see if this approach would work in the Australian context.

In a study reported last year, we extracted genetic information from ancient human remains of known provenance and compared them to genomes obtained from living Aboriginal Australians.

We looked at two different kinds of DNA: nuclear DNA (this is the DNA that contains the genetic code for building your body) and mitochondrial DNA (the DNA of the tiny cell units called mitochondria that help to power your bodys cells).

When we used nuclear DNA, we were able to link ancient remains and living individuals from the same area with a high degree of accuracy. But when we only employed mitochondrial DNA from the ancient remains, the accuracy dropped markedly. The nuclear DNA analyses had a success rate of 100%, whereas the mitochondrial DNA analyses failed to identify a region of origin for 31% of the individuals and suggested the wrong region for 7% of them.

This is an issue because, for very old remains, its much more likely that we will be able to recover mitochondrial DNA than nuclear DNA. The reason is simply numbers: each cell contains hundreds or thousands of copies of the mitochondrial DNA but only one or two of the nuclear DNA.

There are other problems with relying solely on DNA for repatriation. The complexities of human social life (such as inter-tribal marriage) and the impacts of colonisation on Aboriginal Australians (such as displacement) mean that even full genome comparisons may not correctly identify an individuals tribal affiliation.

Another way to get information about where human remains are from is to measure the strontium in their bones and teeth.

Strontium is a common element, and our bodies use it as a building block. There are different types of strontium, called isotopes, and the ratio of these isotopes in the ground varies from place to place. So, if you measure the strontium isotope ratios in some remains and have a map of the different ratios at different places, it can help you work out where the remains came from.

Strontium isotope ratios have been used to guide repatriation elsewhere in the world, but our research in Cape York suggests this approach also wont solve the problem of repatriating Australian Aboriginal remains by itself.

In the course of our Cape York project, we completed the first regional scale analysis of strontium isotope variability in Australia. This involved collecting a large number of water, soil, and plant samples and creating a strontium isotope map or isoscape.

We found that locations often did not have unique values. This suggests that strontium ratios can narrow down the range of possible areas to which a set of remains could be returned, but on their own they are unlikely to pinpoint the exact area.

Read more: Where did you grow up? How strontium in your teeth can help answer that question

Based on the results of our studies with genomes and isotopes, we think a reliable protocol for repatriating Aboriginal remains will take more than one scientific technique. Genomics alone wont solve the problem. Nor will isotope geochemistry.

Instead, we need to develop an integrated interdisciplinary approach using DNA, isotopes, and whatever other lines of evidence are available (such as detailed analysis of bones, and even linguistics).

In order for this approach to work, we need to avoid creating a hierarchy among the scientific disciplines involved and focus instead on how they complement each other. In addition, we need to devise mechanisms that encourage sustained interaction and knowledge transfer between scientists from different disciplines.

We drew another major conclusion from our Cape York project: those of us involved in repatriation projects should aim higher. We need to put more time and energy into developing new techniques and assessing the accuracy of existing ones.

Equally importantly, we need to seek new ways of fostering collaboration among scientists from different fields and between scientists and Aboriginal communities.

Lastly, the repatriation of Aboriginal remains deserves the same level of rigour as the repatriation of historical military remains and modern missing person cases. Crucially, this means that we should employ the standard of proof for coronial investigations, which is on the balance of probabilities.

Read the original here:
Returning to country: we should use genetics, geology and more to repatriate Aboriginal remains - The Conversation AU