Every Man is a Book

History written in our genes

For most of our genome we receive a half of our genes from our father and a half from our mother. Each half represents shuffled combination of DNA passed down to us from our ancestors. This recombination process makes it difficult to study lines of descent - it creates a genetic mix of everyone who has come before. Fortunately for anthropological geneticists there are parts of the genome that are passed down unshuffled from parent to child... full story


By MARIJA MITROVIĆ
from Belgrade, SERBIA

The fast-growing GeoWeb

A New World Where Everyone is a Cartographer

Already there are maps of biodiesel fueling stations in New England, yarn stores in Illinois and hydrofoils around the world. Many maps depict current events, like the path of two whales that swam up the Sacramento River in California in May. Increasingly, people will be able to point their favorite mapping service to a specific location and discover many layers of information about it: its hotels and watering holes, its crime statistics and school rankings, its weather and environmental conditions, the recent news events and the history that have shaped it. A good portion of this information is being contributed by ordinary Web users... full story


By MIGUEL HELFT
Story from The New York Times