Atlantic Crossings Before Columbus

Helicobacter pylori in North and South America before Columbus.

We present a molecular epidemiologic study, based on an analysis of vacA, cagA and cag right end junction genotypes from 1042 Helicobacter pylori isolates, suggesting that H. pylori was present in the New World before Columbus. Eight Native Colombian and Alaskan strains possessed novel vacA and/or cagA gene structures and were more closely related to East Asian than to non-Asian H. pylori. Some...

ISS: Columbus.

In 2001, a total of 13 assembly and logistic flights to the ISS were made, using both Russian launchers and the Space Shuttle, including flights of the first European astronauts, payloads and Multi-Purpose Logistics Modules (MPLMs). Several US, Russian and Canadian elements have already been assembled in orbit and the fourth Expedition Crew is currently onboard. The cornerstone of ESA's contrib...

Whales before whaling in the North Atlantic.

It is well known that hunting dramatically reduced all baleen whale populations, yet reliable estimates of former whale abundances are elusive. Based on coalescent models for mitochondrial DNA sequence variation, the genetic diversity of North Atlantic whales suggests population sizes of approximately 240,000 humpback, 360,000 fin, and 265,000 minke whales. Estimates for fin and humpback whales...

Africans came before Columbus: Skeletal Evidence of African Olmecs in Ancient America

MSRA Columbus at GeoCLEF2007

This paper describes the participation of Columbus Project of Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) in GeoCLEF2007 (a cross-language geographical retrieval track which is part of Cross Language Evaluation Forum). This is the second time we participate in this event. Since the queries in GeoCLEF2007 are similar to those in GeoCLEF2006, we leverage most of the methods that we used in GeoCLEF2006, includ...