future of cloning animals and rich people

DNA Testing May Unlock Secrets of Medieval Manuscripts

North Carolina's Assistant Professor of English Timothy Stinson works to perfect techniques to reveal the DNA contained in the skins of books written in medieval Europe. Timothy Stinson is a Professor of English at North Carolina State University who has spent years trying to figure out who had written books dating back to medieval Europe. He says that "genetic testing could resolve resolve these issues by creating a baseline using DNA of parchment found in the relatively small number of manuscripts that could be dated and localized." the issues would be based on the handwriting and dialect of the people who had created the manuscripts - "techniques that have proven unreliable for a number of reasons" he says. After a while of research he says that this will "provide a wealth of data on the evolution of the book industry during the middle ages." Stinson will finally be presenting the findings of his early research in this area at the annual meeting of Bibliographical Society of America in New York City. Jan. 23, 2009

Lucy the Chimpanzee

Lucy the Chimpanzee

CJ Harrison

Lucy was born in a circus and was taken out by a couple scientists for an experiment they were conducting. Lucy was put inside a house and taught how to live like a human. She had used sign language to communicate her thoughts out for the scientists. As she grew up she gradually learned about the way of life and how to interact with people in different ways. She learned how to make coffee, play with the pet cat, be able to tell human emotions, and how to play with pets. Although she had learned all of those things, after she grew to become bigger that the humans and stronger than them she started to act up and break things, get angry all the time, and be dominant over the humans. Finally, the scientists had taken Lucy to an island were they released her to be free with the other apes which was hard for Lucy to do since she had never really been around other apes.

The Transition from a human to the wild for Lucy was hard for the scientist to do. Since Lucy was getting out of control, they had no other choice than to mix her with her own kind. Once Lucy had gotten to the island one scientist had stayed for a while just to monitor Lucy’s progress. For a while Lucy had stuck around the scientist and it got to the point where the scientist asked a group of people to make a cage not for Lucy, but for her. She put the cage in the middle of the jungle. The scientist had lived in there for a while and Lucy continued to try to get attention from the scientist but the best way for the scientist to help Lucy move on was to ignore her. Lucy would jump up and down on the cage and do everything that she could but the scientist kept ignoring her. After a period of 1-2 years the transition was hard for both Lucy and the scientist because they had such a great bond it was hard for the scientist to break it.

I think It was a good idea for the scientists to let Lucy be with her own type and see what they are like but the way they did it way a little harsh in my opinion. I guess it was good to stay with Lucy to help her transition, but the transition probably would have gone a lot faster if they would have let Lucy on the island and flew away. To me that would have made more sense and then Lucy probably would have been able to live longer and learn from the other apes.

Kathy Gonzales: 

Exonerated from aiding and abetting second degree murder

An old woman at the age of 68 was raped and murdered in 1994. Her family had visited her the night before the crime and when her sister came back the following morning she found the body lying on the floor and had been sexually assaulted, stabbed and chocked to death. After the Crime, Kathy Gonzales had been taken to jail for a crime she did not commit, but that confessed to.

Kathy Gonzalez was about 35 when she was convicted of the murder. She was accused of aiding and abetting second degree murder where her and six others had sexually assaulted an old woman and stabbed her while chocking her to death. The reason Kathy was sent to jail is because when she went to court she had pleaded guilty to her partners and had said she lived in an apartment close to the lady and that she heard people breaking into her apartment and went over to see what had happened. The Police thought this was mysterious and thought that she had gone in and helped with the murder so they threw her in jail. Kathy was sentenced to 10 years in prison and she was taken out after 5 years because the DNA showed that she was not guilty.

We learned from a lab we did about how to tell who did the crime and whose finger print was whose. We were able to make a gel-like substance to get the smaller DNA out first and then the Larger DNA last. Throughout time, starting from the 1950’s till now we have grown more understanding of DNA fingerprinting and how we can use it to tell who did what or how this happened.

I definitely take away that I get the idea of how hard it is or how frustrating it is to live a normal life then get accused of something you didn’t do and go to jail for it. I definitely know that Kathy was wrongfully convicted because she lived in the same building as the lady who got killed and Police thought that was weird so they sent her to jail. So I will take away that when your accused of something plead against it and have it tested because if you know in your heart that you didn’t do it then you surely didn’t do it. One thing I did notice though was how many years it took them too actually find out if she really did or not was interesting. I took them about half her jail sentence which was 5 years in prison when It should have only taken about a year to match her with the DNA. It has altered my view of the justice system a little bit just in the way that I know it takes time to figure out who actually did it, but if they’re  going to take half of someone’s jail time to do it then it doesn’t make sense to me. This also kind of ties into the science part of it because in the story they had a bad forensics lab to compare the DNA and they compared it wrong, so I guess what I can say is that you shouldn’t have bad forensics labs to do the work for you because you know they are no good and you know it won’t turn out great but you still do it anyway and guess what, an innocent woman is in jail because of you, great job. So over all, I really think the justice system should improve given the information that I read from Kathy’s conviction and what all they went through to figure out if she actually did it or not.