Genetics testing company 23andMe received Food and Drug Administration clearance for its prostate cancer risk test. It’s 23andMe’s third clearance for a cancer risk report — the company also has tests for genes that predict breast and colorectal cancer risk.

The test screens for a specific mutation on the HOXB13 gene linked with an increased risk of developing prostate cancer. Men with the mutation, the G84E variant, have around a three-fold higher chance of developing prostate cancer than men without, one study found. Around one in 70 people of European descent have the variant, according to a statement from 23andMe.

The prostate cancer risk report is not yet available to 23andMe customers, the company said. Customers will be able to choose whether or not they want to see their results. Those that choose to see it will also get access to an “educational module” to give them information about how to interpret the results.

Details may be found in an article by Nicole Wetsman in The Verge web site at: https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/10/22876615/23andme-fda-prostate-cancer-risk-test.

Legal scholar Anita Hill take journeys through their family trees on the eighth season of the acclaimed PBS show “Finding Your Roots,” which premieres this week.

Hosted by Henry Louis Gates Jr., a historian and Harvard University professor, the show takes notable people on a quest to learn more about their ancestry.

In the season's second episode, Hill learns of her great-great-grandfather, who resided in Bowie County, Texas, in 1850. At the time, Bowie County was one of only three known counties — including Utah County, Utah, and Scott County, Tennessee — that documented the names and information of its enslaved residents.

“This is like winning the lottery here,” Hill said on the show.

Before emancipation, enslaved people were not documented by name in the U.S. census, making it difficult for genealogists and family record-keepers to find enslaved Black ancestors in the country before the 1860s. They were typically listed without their names but instead by age and gender as property in county documents.

You can learn more in an article by Claretta Bellamy published in the NBC News web site at: https://nbcnews.to/3FiuYeu.

Arizona State University Libraries is seeking a Digital Archivist in the Phoenix area. The help wanted ad states:

"Under the direction of the Archivist of the Senator John S. McCain Papers, this position leads the planning, management, description, reformatting, and preservation program for the Senator John S. McCain Papers digital content within the context of the entire collection and the collections at ASU in alignment with University technology standards and security requirements. This position provides expertise in the handling of unique digital records, including digital forensics work and preservation activities."

Details may be found at: https://jobs.chronicle.com/job/430459/digital-archivist

The following is a press release written by FamilySearch:

FamilySearch expanded its free online archives this week with nearly 3 million new indexed family history records added to New Zealand Electoral Rolls, plus church records added to country collections from Brazil, Puerto Rico, Spain, Venezuela and elsewhere.

Discover missing facts about your ancestors in historical records from the United States in Alaska Vital Records, Georgia Tax Digests, Iowa Delayed Birth Records, South Carolina (Charleston District) Bill of Sale of Negro Slaves, Virginia and Washington County Death Registers, plus expanded collections for Hawaii and Illinois.

Millions of new genealogy records are added each week to make your searches more successful. Find your ancestors using the latest collection expansions listed below.

Don’t see what you’re looking for? Check back next week and, in the meantime, search existing records on FamilySearch. For other exciting genealogy content, peruse over 1,000 free, on-demand sessions from RootsTech Connect 2021.

The list of newly-added records this week is long, too long. to fit here. You can view the entire list at:  https://bit.ly/3thIGMm.

I just moved a few weeks ago. As tiring and expensive as that was, I cannot imagine the effort required for a €90 million ($ 102,000,000+ U.S. dollars) move!

Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland is preparing to move its treasury of 750,000 books prior to the restoration of the 300 year old building. The library contains some of Europe's most treasured volumes, including the ornately decorated ninth-century Book of Kells.

Plans for the five year restoration set the price at €90 million.

"Moving 750,000 vulnerable books is quite an undertaking, so we are having to pilot everything to see what is involved," said Trinity College librarian and archivist Helen Shenton.

Officials note that every book must be examined, dusted, carefully cleaned and repaired, if required.

You can read more at https://www.bignewsnetwork.com/news/272130238/ireland-trinity-college-dublin-begins-90m-euro-renovation.

Microsoft Office is by far the most popular office suite (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) of programs in the world. It is used by millions of people around the world. There is but one problem: it is overpriced at $100 for a one-year subscription (to $160 for the full version). Indeed, there are dozens of free and low-cost competitors to Microsoft Office and most of the competitors work just as well as the marketplace leader: Microsoft Office.

However, if you want the real thing, it is also available free of charge although the free version is missing a few things.

Obtaining the free version is simple:

1. Go to Office.com.

2. Log in to your Microsoft account or create one an account for free. (If you already have a Windows, Skype or Xbox Live login, you have an active Microsoft account.)

3. Select the app (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) you want to use, and save your work in the cloud with OneDrive.

That's it! It will work forever.

What's The Catch?

OK, so there are a few drawbacks.

1. First of all, the free versions want you to save your output in OneDrive. It is possible to save it someplace else but the programs default to OneDrive and saving it elsewhere requires a number of extra mouseclicks.

2. The free versions only run in your web browser, and you can only use them when you're online.

3. The free versions also have fewer features than the full Microsoft 365 versions. To be sure, all the features used by the majority of users are fully functional. However, that is not very reassuring when the "missing features" include one that you really, really want to use.

My recommendation?

Obtain the free (online) version and use it for as long a it meets your needs. If it doesn't work for you, you can always later purchase the full version of Microsoft Office or obtain one of the competitive free products (LibreOffice, Apache Open Office, WPS Office, SoftMaker FreeOffice, Apache Open Office, ONLYOFFICE Personal, Polaris Office, SSuite Office, Google Docs, DropBox Paper, or any of several other products. I recommend LibreOffice).

However, if you're looking for basic versions of Word, Excel, and/or PowerPoint, the free version should work well for you.

The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman. 

Do you have boxes of old 8-millimeter home movies? If so, I'd suggest you copy them immediately to more modern media. Those movies started to deteriorate within a few days after they were developed. The colors started to fade and the film itself started to become brittle. To be sure, the changes were not visible to the human eye for a number of years. Nonetheless, the process started almost immediately. Now, a few decades later, the films undoubtedly have faded a noticeable amount and the film itself has lost flexibility.

If you procrastinate even longer, there is a risk the movies will not be useable or viewable at all. If so, the images of an entire generation of your relatives may be lost.

Reel-to-reel 8-millimeter film has an expected shelf life of about twenty to forty years, although some films probably will last much longer than that. The difficulty is in guessing which films will last a long time: there are no guarantees. Some will survive for decades, others will not. You cannot easily guess in advance which will be which.

Once converted to digital video files, degradation of the images will cease. While you cannot easily restore what has already faded, you can easily prevent further degradation at any time. Even better, by making multiple backups and storing them in different locations, you can easily preserve and even share these movies with other relatives who may be interested, something that is difficult to do with film.

There are two different methods of converting old movie film to video files. However, the results produced by these two methods are radially different from each other in quality and even in "watchability," if that is a word.

The remainder of this article is reserved for Plus Edition subscribers only. If you have a Plus Edition subscription, you may read the full article at: https://eogn.com/(*)-Plus-Edition-News-Articles/12247587.

If you are not yet a Plus Edition subscriber, you can learn more about such subscriptions and even upgrade to a Plus Edition subscription immediately at https://eogn.com/page-18077. 

FindmyPast has announced that the 1921 Census of England and Wales, containing information about nearly 38 million people, is now available on that site. (See https://eogn.com/page-18080/12243959 for the details.) Several people have written to me asking why it isn't available on Ancestry.

The quick answer is because the National Archives has signed an EXCLUSIVE deal with Findmypast.

Researchers from Findmypast have spent three years delving into and digitising the findings of the 1921 census, which consists of 28,000 physical volumes. It isn’t yet known when, or whether, the 1921 census will eventually be released on Ancestry. I cannot speculate on just when that will be. Given the National Archives’ exclusive contract with Findmypast, it may be some time.

In other news, the 1921 Scottish census will be released via ScotlandsPeople, the Scottish government’s official archive site, in the second half of this year.

According to an article written by Patricia Claus and published in the Greek Reporter web site:

"Greek Ancestry and the Hellenic Genealogy Geek are sponsoring the second annual online conference on Greek genealogy later this month, viewable for free on YouTube.

"Taking place on January 29 to 30, 2022, the conference will offer invaluable insights and techniques for those who are on the sometimes difficult path of searching for their ancestors in Greece.

"The conference will be live-streamed on the Greek Ancestry YouTube channel and all sessions will be recorded and available within 24 hours after the presentation, so that anyone can review the information."

You can read the entire article at: https://greekreporter.com/2022/01/07/greek-ancestry-genealogy-conference/.

"Many digital collections documenting the history of the Upper Peninsula are now freely accessible and searchable on the U.P. Digital Network (UPLINK) website hosted by the Central U.P. and Northern Michigan University Archives.

"Collections already online or soon to be available include the following: newspapers such as The Mining Journal and Grand Marais Gazette; business records from the Copper Range Company and others; lighthouse records from Ontonagon; and oral history collections related to Italian Americans, the Marquette Women's Center and more. NMU digitized materials, ranging from yearbooks and historical photos to audio interviews and videos, are also accessible online.

"UPLINK began in 2021 with a two-year implementation grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. It is a consortium of heritage organizations—archives, libraries, museums and historical societies—intended to pool resources and skills to make digitization and digital preservation affordable. In addition to hosting the project website, the Central U.P. and NMU Archives is the principal service site in the region."

You can learn more in an article in the Northern Today web site at: https://news.nmu.edu/uplink-website-history-active.