Drones And West Fargo, ND -- March 2, 2017

Over at "the next big thing," I track "drones." Prairie Magazine has another overview of the sector. This explains why West Fargo is one of the fastest growing cities in North Dakota, and has been for quite some time:

When GPS became available for surveying in engineering, it changed the industry, says Brady Woodard, construction engineering specialist for Moore Engineering Inc. in West Fargo, North Dakota. “I don’t think there was anyone who didn’t grasp onto it. It was just the new way of the industry.” Woodard and many of his counterparts see potential for unmanned aerial systems to bring a similar transformation to the engineering field.

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Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes

Svante Paabo

c. 2014

DDS: 569.986 PAA

Chapter Two.

The author, as a teenager, wanted to become an Egyptologist ... but the more he became involved, the more he became disenchanted. 

This disenchantment threw me into a crisis of sorts. In response, and inspired by my father, who had been an MD and later became a biochemist, I decided to study medicine, with a view to doing basic research. I entered medical school ... and after a few years surprised myself by how much I enjoyed seeing patients. It seemed to be one of the few professions in which you not only met all sorts of people but could also play a positive role in their lives. 

How viruses evade human immune system: p. 24.

How the author ended up working with Allan Wilson, at Berkeley.

Chapter Three.

1986 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Long Island, NY: the Mecca of molecular genetics.

Berkeley: 

Kary Mullis had been there as a graduate student before moving to Cetus Corp, where he invented PCR

Quagga: the extince South African zebra, p. 40

Thylacinus cynocephalus, a marsupial native to Australia, Tasmania, and New Guinea -- looks very much like a wolf but was a marsupial, like kangaroos and several other Australian animals; therefore, a textbook example of convergent evolution (this will become important later on when studying the Neanderthal)

DNA studies revealed that wolf-like animals had evolved not only twice but three times, once among placental mammals and twice among marsupials

Chapter Four

full professorship, early in career; University of Munich; Institute of Zoology

issue of contamination

DNA from bone: relies on fact that DNA binds to silica particles -- essentially a very fine glass powder; the author discovered/refined the silica extraction method, published it in 1993

used Pleistocene horses; bones were 25,000 years old

1994: DNA extracted from Siberian mammoths, 50,000 years old

around the same time, UC Irvine; DNA from leaves of Magnolia latahensis, Miocene deposit in Clarkia, Idaho, and were 17 million years old

the story of insects encased in amber -- page 58

super-old DNA: antidiluvian DNA -- page 58

decided to concentrate on relationships of extinct animals and their present-day relatives