The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), a UK-based not-for-profit organisation with the National Archives and the British Library among the membership, issued a report in which it called for PDF/A to be employed by organisations wanting to "be sure that their documents will be preserved for the long term".

However, Fanning warned: "While PDF/A may be a suitable file format today for long-term preservation of electronic documents, it should be noted that there may be other file formats introduced in the future that may better serve the needs of an organisation. Therefore, organisations should be continually reviewing the available file formats to ensure they have selected the best format for their purposes."

"This report highlights the challenges we all face in a digital age," said Adrian Brown, head of digital preservation at the National Archives. "Using PDF/A as a standard will help information officers ensure that key business data survives. But it should never be viewed as the Holy Grail. It is merely a tool in the armoury of a well-thought-out records-management policy."

Scientists have found 17 living relatives of a centuries-old “iceman,” whose remains were discovered in a melting glacier in northern British Columbia nine years ago.

The remains of a young aboriginal man were found frozen inside a glacier in the Champagne-Aishihik territory in August 1999. Scientists gave the man the nickname Kwaday Dan Ts’inchi, which means “long-ago person found” in the southern Tutchone language.

DNA testing has now connected the iceman to a number of people living in the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations in the North. The results were unveiled Friday at a science conference in Victoria, where all aspects of the discovery are being discussed.

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More than 8,000 Chinese from home and abroad gathered Friday morning at the tomb of Huangdi, the legendary Yellow Emperor who is considered the common ancestor of all Chinese.

The memorial ceremony started in Huangling County, Shaanxi Province at 9:50 a.m. That's an auspicious time because of the digits' association with the imperial line in ancient Chinese culture. The number nine is the biggest single-digit number, while five lies in the middle.

A drum was struck 34 times, once for each of China's 34 provinces, municipalities, autonomous regions and special administrative regions

The Yellow Emperor, a sovereign and cultural hero in Chinese mythology, is believed to have reigned from 2,697 BC to 2,598 BC. Although he was an actual ruler, his deeds have been embellished with time: for example, he has been credited with introducing the systems of government and law to human kind, civilizing the Earth, teaching people many skills and inventing all manner of items.

China has commemorated the Yellow Emperor since the Spring and Autumn Period around 8 BC.

"Kindred or family lines are especially honored in Chinese culture," said Zhang Jingkui, a former professor at Xiamen University who now lives in Hong Kong. "Each spring when smoke from joss sticks rises in Chinese communities around the world, it is a unique event."

When "Aunt Pete" wrote to her soldier nephew in France in 1918, she had no idea what she was starting.

The letter – almost perfectly preserved – gave a jaunty account of the mood in the midwest of the United States four months from the end of the First World War. But who was Aunt Pete? And who was her nephew soldier, Sgt Morres Vickers Liepman, of D Battery of the 130th Field Artillery?

It was known that Sgt Liepman survived the war but little else emerged from US government records.

Morres Liepman went on to serve as a Major in the US air force in the Second World War. He became a commercial artist and devised – among other things – the arrow that appears on all packets of Wrigley's chewing gum.

"Aunt Pete" was Sgt Liepman's mother's youngest sister, Luna Vickers, daughter of Congressman Andrew J Vickers of Kansas – part of family which traces its ancestry back to the American Revolution, the Mayflower and the Vickers engineering company in Sheffield. Aunt Luna's nickname was "Sweet Pete". By the time she wrote the letter, she was married to Robert M Scott, owner of a drugstore in Oklahoma City.

Cecil Liepman said the early part of the letter should not be seen as racist. The comments reflected attitudes at the time. Aunt Pete's family had, in fact, been anti-slavery and funded schools for black children.

Why did Sgt Liepman place his aunt's letter in a beer bottle and bury it? When found, the bottle was still equipped with its mechanical closing system. The tightly rolled up envelope and four pages were almost perfectly preserved.

Mr Liepman believes his grandfather buried the letter as a "time capsule". "He must have guessed it would be found one day and stand as a memorial of that terrible war," he said.

Letter transcription:

GeneaNet users had, until now, the ability to build their online family tree using GeneWeb, a free interface created by Daniel de Rauglaudre, research engineer for INRIA .

GeneWeb is a powerful genealogy web interface but we know how difficult and frustrating it can be to some of the GeneaNet users. That's why we have added a new Simplified Online Family Tree Editor.

Simplified Online Family Tree Editor

This new feature is mostly aimed at new users and first-time visitors. You couldn't take advantage of it if you already built your online family tree.

It will be your default family tree editor when you will register to GeneaNet but you will be able to switch to GeneWeb at anytime.

What can you do on this editor?

- Add/modify/delete individuals
- Link individuals
- Add pictures and create a slideshow
- Add notes
- List individuals in alphabetical, ascendant or descendant order
- Show your family on Google Maps

GEDCOM File Test

You can now upload GEDCOM files up to 10 MB.

The interface shows a progress bar while uploading and your file is automatically checked.

When successfully done, the number of individuals in your family tree and the number of entries in your GeneaNet Index are displayed.

If there was an error in your GEDCOM file, you will be notified to correct it and try again.

For 94 years Lillian Asplund refused to speak about the tragedy that claimed the lives of her father and three brothers.

Instead, the spinster kept the final moments of her family locked in her memory and the poignant possessions of her father Carl hidden in a shoebox in her bureau.

It was only after her death aged 99 the box was found along with the collection of Titanic-related items that, pieced together, tell the tragic story of the family's demise.

Among them were notes Mr Asplund had copied from a flyer promoting the benefits of living in California, an American dream that enticed the family to set sail for a new life.

An incredibly rare and water-stained ticket for the luxury liner was also found. Only a handful of Titanic tickets are in existance as most of them sunk with the ship.

The paper documents recovered from his body miraculously survived for 12 days after the disaster because Mr Asplund's lifejacket kept his coat's breast pocket out of the water.

His pocket watch which stopped at 19 minutes past two - the exact time the liner sank - was also found on him. And a heart-rending note written by his grief-stricken mother in which she wrote of how she hoped to see her son again in heaven formed part of the collection.

The stunning archive includes a sad photograph of Lillian, her mother Selma and three-year-old brother Felix, who both survived, at her father's grave in 1912.

New genomics analysis software developed by computer scientists at Stanford appears far more adept than prior methods at unraveling the ancestry of individuals. A new paper describes the HAPAA (HMM-based Analysis of Polymorphisms in Admixed Ancestries) project, which takes its name from “hapa,” the Hawaiian word for someone of mixed ancestry.

Going back 20 generations the software can identify what continent or broad global region an individual’s ancestors were from. But going back about 10 generations the software can be much more precise, making distinctions as fine-grained as the traditional gene pools of nearby population groups—hypothetically differentiating Greek from Italian, or Russian from German.