With the great advances in ancient DNA extraction, genetic data are now obtained from geographically separated individuals from both present and past. However, population genetics theory about the joint effect of space and time has not been thoroughly studied. Based on the classical stepping-stone model, we develop the theory of Isolation by distance and time. We derive the correlation of allel...

Previous research on multiplicative reasoning has shown that for whole numbers, understanding of division is intimately linked to multiplication, as retrieval of division facts is often accomplished through reverse multiplication. We recently extended this research to rational numbers, and found that inverse multiplication problems can serve as primes for one another (e.g., a × b/a = a primes b...

Among the most important Jewish encounters with other cultures and civilizations, the encounter with Islamic culture was, in our view, the most important. This encounter was in some aspects like their encounter with the ancient civilization, but the impacts were more valuable and constructive. Under Islamic rule, the Jews not only had a sense of security but also enjoyed a relatively satisfacto...

This paper describes a system for processing economic documents written in the ancient Sumerian language. The system is application-oriented and takes advantage of the simplicity of ancient economy. We have developed an ontology for a selected branch of economic activities. We translate the documents into a meaning representation language by means of a semantic grammar. The meaning representati...

Our understanding of the evolution of domestication has changed radically in the past 10 years, from a relatively simplistic rapid origin scenario to a protracted complex process in which plants adapted to the human environment. The adaptation of plants continued as the human environment changed with the expansion of agriculture from its centres of origin. Using archaeogenomics and computationa...

The medieval Norsemen or Vikings had an important biological and cultural impact on many parts of Europe through raids, colonization and trade, from about AD 793 to 1066. To help understand the genetic affinities of the ancient Norsemen, and their genetic contribution to the gene pool of other Europeans, we analysed DNA markers in Late Iron Age skeletal remains from Norway. DNA was extracted fr...

Recently, the study of ancient DNA (aDNA) has been greatly enhanced by the development of second-generation DNA sequencing technologies and targeted enrichment strategies. These developments have allowed the recovery of several complete ancient genomes, a result that would have been considered virtually impossible only a decade ago. Prior to these developments, aDNA research was largely focused...

Phylogenetic analyses of ancient DNA data can provide a timeline for evolutionary change even in the absence of fossils. The power to infer the evolutionary rate is, however, highly dependent on the number and age of samples, the information content of the sequence data and the demographic history of the sampled population. In this issue of Molecular Ecology, Sheng et al. (2014) analysed mitoch...

among the most important jewish encounters with other cultures and civilizations, the encounter with islamic culture was, in our view, the most important. this encounter was in some aspects like their encounter with the ancient civilization, but the impacts were more valuable and constructive. under islamic rule, the jews not only had a sense of security but also enjoyed a relatively satisfacto...