DNA is the building block of life, and the genetic alphabet comprises just four letters or nucleotides. These biochemical building blocks comprise all types of DNA, and scientists have long wondered whether creating working artificial DNA would be possible. Now, a breakthrough may finally provide the answer.

The main goal of a new study, the findings of which were published in Nature Communicationsthis month, shows that scientists may finally be able to create new medicines for certain diseases by creating DNA with new nucleotides that can create custom proteins.

Being able to create artificial DNA could open the door for several important uses. Being able to expand the genetic code could very well diversify the “range of molecules we can synthesize in the lab,” the study’s senior author Dong Wang, Ph.D., explained (via Phys.org).

Wang helped lead the study alongside Steven A. Benner, Ph.D., and Dmitry Lyumkis, Ph.D.. Together, the three authors have shown that you can not only create artificial DNA but that the artificial nucleotides may also be able to help create custom proteins we could use to target specific diseases that are hard to combat.

You can read more in an article by Joshua Hawkins published in the BGR web site at: https://tinyurl.com/26n5zff9.

Here is an article that is not about any of the "normal" topics of this newsletter: genealogy, history, current affairs, DNA, and related topics. However, I believe it is very important to the victims of this abuse and therefore should be publicized in all sorts of online places.

Kurt Rupprecht was elated last spring when the Maryland attorney general’s office went public with its report on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. But it left the Harford County victims’ advocate, a survivor of childhood sexual assault, wanting more.

The “Attorney General’s Report on Child Sexual Abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore” was just that: though it listed 156 clergy and staff who abused more than 600 children over eight decades, it covered only the church’s Baltimore jurisdiction, the largest of the three in the state. It did not address the Archdiocese of Washington, a territory that includes the Maryland suburbs of the nation’s capital and southern Maryland, or the Diocese of Wilmington, Delaware, which includes Maryland’s Eastern Shore counties.

“People who don’t follow this story closely may think of the attorney general’s report as ‘The Maryland Report.’ But it’s not,” says Rupprecht, 53, who was abused in 1979 in Salisbury, which is part of the Wilmington diocese. “It’s crucial to the survivor community that people be able to grasp the statewide scope of the tragedy.”

The Baltimore Sun has built the largest and only searchable database in the state, publishing Friday a list of 309 people with ties to the church who were accused of child sexual abuse or misconduct and lived or worked anywhere in Maryland, regardless of where the alleged acts occurred. It adds 107 names, researched by Sun reporters, to the people listed in the attorney general report issued in April.

Since the crisis emerged into the public view more than 20 years ago, church officials and authorities have established policies to better investigate and hold offenders responsible. But amid efforts to heal, the church continues to be rocked by new revelations even as gaps in transparency persist, some stemming from church and law enforcement criteria about how to address information about accusations.

Former first lady Melania Trump spoke in uncharacteristically personal terms Friday about her experience becoming a US citizen and the challenges she faced traversing a complicated legal system as she made a rare public appearance during a naturalization ceremony at the National Archives in Washington.

The former first lady applauded the 25 immigrants sitting before her who were poised to be sworn in as US citizens and outlined the many hurdles immigrants have to overcome to secure citizenship. She made no mention of her husband, former President Donald Trump, who has pledged a widespread expansion of hard-line immigration policies if elected again in 2024 that would restrict both legal and illegal immigration.

“My personal experience of traversing the challenges of the immigration process opened my eyes to the harsh realities people face, including you, who try to become US citizens,” the Slovenian-born Melania Trump said.

The former first lady, who became a US citizen in 2006, described the difficulties of trying to familiarize herself with immigration law, conducting research and painstakingly gathering information and paperwork.

“The pathway to citizenship is arduous,” she said, adding that during that time, “My life turned into labyrinth of organizing paperwork.”

Melania Trump’s appearance at the National Archives comes nearly two years after the agency asked the Justice Department to investigate her husband’s handling of White House records. The probe led to an indictment of the former president, who has pleaded not guilty to 37 federal charges. The trial in this case is expected to start in Florida in May.

Despite this, a source close to the former president insisted that he was supportive of his wife’s decision to take part in the event.

You can read more in an article by  Kristen Holmes and Kate Sullivan published in the http://kten.com/ web site at: https://tinyurl.com/2x9rcjjr.

Human sex chromosomes originated from a pair of autosomes, the ordinary or non-sex chromosomes that contain the majority of our genome and come in identical pairs. That ancestral pair of autosomes diverged to become two different chromosomes, X and Y. Even though X and Y have grown apart from each other and taken on unique functions—namely, determining sex and driving sex differences in males and females—they also retain shared functions inherited from their common ancestor.

New research from Whitehead Institute Member David Page, who is also a professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator, and postdoc in his lab Adrianna San Roman sheds light on the sex chromosomes' shared role as influential gene regulators.

The research, published in Cell Genomics on December 13, shows that genes expressed from the X and Y chromosomes impact cells throughout the body—not just in the reproductive system—by dialing up or down the expression of thousands of genes found on other chromosomes.

Furthermore, the researchers found that the gene pair responsible for around half of this regulatory behavior, ZFX and ZFY, found on the X and Y chromosome respectively, have essentially the same regulatory effects as each other. This suggests that ZFX and ZFY inherited their role as influential gene regulators from their shared ancestor and have independently maintained it, even as their respective chromosomes diverged, because that regulatory role is critical for human growth and development. The genes regulated by ZFX and ZFY are involved in all sorts of important biological processes, showing that the sex chromosomes contribute widely to functions beyond those related to sex characteristics.

You can read the full story in an article by Greta Friar published in the phys.org web site at: https://phys.org/news/2023-12-sex-chromosomes-responsible.html. 

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

For 50 to perhaps 75 years, many genealogists have provided a valuable “cottage industry” of publishing genealogy information. Sometimes this information is in the form of reprinting old, out of copyright family history books. Other services include the publishing of local tax lists, school records, census extracts, histories of towns or counties, and much more. Sometimes these publishing efforts are done by private individuals while others are offered as public services or money-making activities by local genealogy societies. Whatever the source, the goal of these efforts has always been to publish valuable genealogy information that is of interest to others.

Many of these publications have been low-budget efforts, often photocopied manually and bound together with hand-stapled covers. Over the years, I have purchased a number of such publications and have found most of them to be valuable for finding information about my ancestors. Many times, I was able to find information in these “home productions” that was not easily found anywhere else.

As the world moves to more and more of an online environment, we shouldn't be surprised to see many of these “cottage” publishers moving to an online environment. In some cases, the publishers continue to produce paper documents but have opened online “catalogs” that anyone can easily search. You place an order, and a book arrives in your mailbox a few days later.

Perhaps even better, some producers of these small books have moved to online publishing. In this case, you can place an order and then receive access to the book within seconds. With books published online, you can read the pages online or save the entire book to your computer's hard drive or even print some of the pages of interest or perhaps print the entire book or a combination of these options. The choice belongs to the buyer.

If you are a publisher of genealogy information or if you wish to become such a publisher, you may wonder, “Can I sell information online?” The answer is, “Yes, you can.” Self-publishing online can work both for you as an individual and for you as a member of a local genealogy society that has a fund-raising idea of publishing and selling local historical information. In both cases, the means exist for you to reach a much larger audience with less time, labor, and expense.

I have been publishing information (this newsletter) and selling it online for years. During this time, I have experimented with several solutions and have talked with other publishers about their methods. Some methods worked well. Some did not. In this article I will share some of the lessons I have learned about what works and what doesn’t.

I will assume that you have already acquired the material to be sold and that you already know how to create both paper and electronic versions. Those electronic versions might be on CD-ROM or on a web site – the choice is yours. I will focus on how to accept orders and deliver the information. 

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/13291573.

OK, this sounds creepy. However, anyone who owns an Amazon Echo device (often referred to as “Alexa”) will understand how it works.

The Here After company in California has announced it is working on an Alexa-style “bot” that uses artificial intelligence (AI) software to let people “talk” with deceased friends and relatives. The device uses voice recordings made before a person dies to create the bot. Loved ones later can talk, joke, and reminisce with the bot, as if the friend or relative is still alive.

The company begins by conducting interviews with clients, in which they are encouraged to talk about their lives. Simply by speaking, Here After users can hear the recorded replies of loved ones—their real stories, songs, and sayings; their actual voices. (Check out the video at https://youtu.be/bFR1BJGi6PU.)

The Here After company states, “Our goal is to capture the true spirit of people and to enable their stories to become immortal.”

Their responses are then edited, categorized and divided into sections such as “falling in love” or sentiments such as “happy” or “story about stressful moment”. This data is transferred to an app, which friends and family can access via a phone or smart speaker.

You can learn more at Here After’s web site at: https://www.hereafter.ai.

Transcribing BillionGraves records on a mobile phone makes it possible for you to serve while you are on the go! Transcribing used to be done only on computers but now you can also transcribe names and dates from gravestones on your iOS or Android phone! 

This is awesome news for those planning large group projects such as service organizations, church activities, youth groups, and employee team-building retreats. No more rounding up dozens of laptops to transcribe, just have everyone bring their own phone or tablet.

Even for individuals, it frees you up to transcribe while you are waiting for appointments or traveling as a passenger in the car. You can transcribe while resting in bed or while commuting on public transportation.

You can read more at: https://blog.billiongraves.com/transcribing-billiongraves-records-on-a-mobile-phone/.

The following book review was written by Bobbi King:

Genealogical Research in Ohio. 3rd Edition.

by Kip Sperry. Published by Genealogical Publishing Co. 2023. 351 pages.

Mr. Sperry, the author of two previous editions of Research, the last one having been published in 2003, writes this volume to include internet and computer resources, as well as updated information following twenty years of changes, with a bountiful array of new material added upon the historic data written into the previous works.

This book is rich in resource material. Each record type is introduced with a description of its genealogical importance, followed by listings of reference books, articles, urls for websites, and comments helpful in evaluating their usefulness to the researcher. It appears all record types are presented: birth and death, cemetery, naturalizations, military, photographs, and more than twenty more record types.

This book is rich in Ohio information. First chapters include a detailed timeline of Ohio events, the story of its early settlement years, followed by an extensive listing of libraries and archives, their addresses, urls, and descriptions of their holdings, with footnotes that name even more available resources and comments on direction for further research.

This book is rich in data. “Ohio County Records” catalogues every county and the years its records begin for birth, death, marriage, land, probate, and court records. One chapter titled “Addresses-Ohio” lists 35+ pages of Ohio societies, libraries, and associated resources. 

And don’t we all love maps. There are numerous maps: ten old maps of Ohio, two maps of canals, a road map from 1810, a map of 18 land grants, and several county maps, all reproduced images to fit the pages and a little hard to read, but discernible with a magnifying glass with readable place names and features.

The word “comprehensive” comes to mind on the contents of this book. This is an all-you-need type of manual for Ohio family history research.

Dr. Sperry’s tenure as Outstanding Educator is secure and his popularity as a lecturer is confirmed. It’s nice to see he has not ceased his efforts to keep us informed and disciplined.

Genealogical Research in Ohio may be purchased from Genealogical.com (the publisher) at https://genealogical.com/store/genealogical-research-in-ohio-third-edition/ as well as  from Amazon at: http://tinyurl.com/yjvwx3jn.

39% of workers in the US are freelancers. This isn’t necessarily your full time job, but can also be your passion project, your hobby, your second job, your side hustle or other. The rise in remote work and the creator economy have made freelancing easier than ever.

But with freelancing, solopreneurs are spending significant time setting up tools when they would rather run their business. At Mozilla and our commitment to a healthier internet, we believe that exploring ideas that can enable solopreneurs an admirable vision. Today we are excited to introduce a new Mozilla Innovation Project, Solo, an AI website builder for solopreneurs.

If you scour Yelp, it appears a third of businesses lack a website. However, building a website not only provides you with a presence that you own and control but it is also good for business. Whether launching a chess coaching or pet walking business, Solo helps the solopreneur generate their business website and provide them the basic tools to grow their business. 

Solo automatically composes your site for your business from which you can personalize

Why Choose AI for Website Building?

In 2023, website creation is still hard. While choosing a template is straightforward, sourcing images, writing content, and making a visually appealing site are really time-consuming. Add the requirements for showcasing reviews, scheduling, and providing a customer contact form, and the process becomes even harder and a lot more expensive.

Our survey data shows that the majority of solopreneurs rely upon their “tech buddy” to help build their website. As a result, the websites become stale and harder to maintain as it relies on a call to their buddy. Others without a “tech buddy” try popular website authoring tools and then abandon because it’s simply too hard to author and curate content.

Using AI to generate the content of your site and source your images, which a solopreneur can then revise into their own unique voice and style levels the playing field. Solo takes this a step further and can also scrape your existing business Yelp or other page so you have an online presence that is totally authentic to you.

How Do I Get Started?

It’s really simple. Visit Solo, provide some basic details about your business or point us at your existing website or Yelp page and watch Solo use AI to generate a website for you. From there, you further personalize and then publish. The entire experience can be completed in literally just a few minutes.

You can read. more in an article by Raj Singh in the http://mozilla.org/ web site at: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/introducing-solo-ai-website-builder/ 

The following  is a press release issued by Library and Archives Canada:

Library and Archives Canada (LAC) is pleased to announce that in collaboration with Ancestry® and FamilySearch International, we are providing a free, searchable index of the 1931 Census of Canada through Census Search. This marks the completion of phase two of the plan to make the census accessible to Canadians on our website following the initial release of the census earlier this year.

The value of this census to Canadians whose families were in the country at the time and to other researchers is significant. The 1931 Census is a snapshot of a time of tumultuous change in Canada. It is the first census in which more than 50% of Canadians lived in urban centres, rather than rural areas. It is also the first census to consider how many Canadians had radios in the home, indicating an interest in learning how Canadians were integrating technology in their homes. Furthermore, it is the first mass release of Depression-era employment data, which makes it a significant milestone in such research.

This searchable index of the census replaces the temporary database of images that we published in June, so you may need to update your bookmarks and favourites. Using Census Search makes it much easier to locate individuals and offers features such as being able to move from page to page within a subdistrict. LAC is very pleased with the progress we are making on improving access, but this isn’t a finish line for us. We will be making updates and correcting data issues as we continue to fulfill our mandate to preserve Canada’s documentary heritage and make information—like this census—available to everyone.