Category Archives: Technology

Arts, Research, Science, Technology, United States

DNA Phenotyping…

FORENSIC COMPUTER SCIENCE

Intro: DNA Phenotyping is the prediction of physical appearance from DNA

Until now, DNA left at the scene of a crime only proved useful if it was already stored in a database and could be matched to a suspect.

A team of forensic experts, however, have now devised a way to recreate the face of a person, including eye and skin colour, using as little as 50 picograms (0.05 nanograms) of extracted DNA.

Called DNA phenotyping, the tests also determine the person’s ancestry, if they have freckles and can be used to match with distant relatives.

DNA phenotyping is the prediction of physical appearance from DNA and is a technique being pioneered by Virginia-based Parabon Nanolabs (example pictured). The technology can be used to generate leads in cases where there are no suspects or database hits, or to help identify remains, for example.

DNA phenotyping is the prediction of physical appearance from DNA and is a technique being pioneered by Virginia-based Parabon Nanolabs (example pictured). The technology can be used to generate leads in cases where there are no suspects or database hits, or to help identify remains, for example.

DNA phenotyping is the prediction of physical appearance from DNA and is a technique being pioneered by Virginia-based Parabon Nanolabs.

The technology can be used to generate leads in criminal cases where there are no suspects or database hits, or to help identify remains, for example.

Samples can be potentially taken from as little as a fingerprint.

Parabon’s Snapshot Forensic system is said to be able to accurately predict genetic ancestry, eye colour, hair colour, skin colour, freckling, and face shape in individuals from any ethnic background.

Each prediction is presented with a ‘measure of confidence’.

As an example, the test can say a person has green eyes with 61 per cent confidence, green or blue with 79 per cent confidence, and that they definitely don’t have brown eyes, with 99 per cent confidence.

Based on ancestry, and other markers, the test also creates a likely facial shape.

From all of this information, it builds a computer generated e-fit.

And the test will predict how two people are related, as distant as third cousins, and great-great-great-great-grandparents.

‘DNA carries the genetic instruction set for an individual’s physical characteristics, producing the wide range of appearances among people,’ explained Parabon Nanolabs.

‘By determining how genetic information translates into physical appearance, it is possible to “reverse-engineer” DNA into a physical profile.

‘Snapshot reads tens of thousands of genetic variants from a DNA sample and uses this information to predict what an unknown person looks like.’

The project was supported with funding from the the US Department of Defense (DoD).

Samples can be taken from as little as a fingerprint. Parabon's Snapshot Forensic system is said to be able to accurately predict genetic ancestry, eye colour, hair colour, skin colour, freckling, and face shape in individuals from any ethnic background (example pictured).

Samples can be taken from as little as a fingerprint. Parabon’s Snapshot Forensic system is said to be able to accurately predict genetic ancestry, eye colour, hair colour, skin colour, freckling, and face shape in individuals from any ethnic background (example pictured).

Each prediction is presented with a ‘measure of confidence’. As an example, the test can say a person has green eyes with 61 per cent confidence, green or blue with 79 per cent confidence, and that they definitely don’t have brown eyes, with 99 per cent confidence. A series of example charts is pictured.

Each prediction is presented with a ‘measure of confidence’. As an example, the test can say a person has green eyes with 61 per cent confidence, green or blue with 79 per cent confidence, and that they definitely don’t have brown eyes, with 99 per cent confidence. A series of example charts is pictured.

Ellen McRae Greytak, Parabon’s director of bioinformatics told Popular Science that the system has been used in 10 cases across the US, and the first department to release a Snapshot report was the Columbia Police Department.

It produced a profile for a ‘person of interest’ in the murder of 25-year-old Candra Alston and her daughter Malaysia Boykin in 2011. (Investigators in South Carolina are hoping the DNA technique could lead to to a breakthrough in the unsolved murder case of Malaysia Boykin, three, (left) and her mother Candra Alston (right) in 2011).

The only piece of evidence left at the scene was an unspecified DNA sample.

There were no witnesses to the murder, so the local authorities turned to the forensic phenotyping and found the person was a male with dark-skinned, brown hair and brown eyes (profile pictured).

There were no witnesses to the murder, so the local authorities turned to the forensic phenotyping and found the person was a male with dark-skinned, brown hair and brown eyes (profile pictured).

There were no witnesses to the murder, so the local authorities turned to the forensic phenotyping and found the person was a male with dark-skinned, brown hair and brown eyes.

Mark Vinson, a cold case investigator with the Columbia police department, said that more than 200 people were interviewed in connection with the deaths.

Around 150 of them submitted their DNA – but none matched the sample left at the scene.

 

Ancillary:

FIND LONG-LOST RELATIVES USING YOUR DNA

Family history site Ancestry has extended its AncestryDNA service – a home testing kit that unlocks the secrets of a person’s genetic ethnicity – to the UK.

The results can be cross-checked with millions of family trees to help people discover unknown relatives.

It uses microarray-based autosomal DNA testing, which looks at person’s entire genome at more than 700,000 locations using saliva.

Since it was released in 2012, AncestryDNA has been used by around 700,000 people.

All of these results have been stored on a secure, encrypted database, and each set of results is linked to a person’s individual Ancestry account and subsequent family tree.

AncestryDNA can help people identify relationships with unknown relatives through a list of possible DNA member matches.

 

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Science, Society, Technology

Questions of Science: The Large Hadron Collider…

Why does the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have to be so physically large, when it is only designed to detect particles that are extremely tiny?

The LHC is a synchrotron, a circular accelerator that uses carefully synchronised electromagnetic fields to accelerate particles to very high speeds. When this involves charged particles on a curved path they release synchrotron radiation, which wastes energy. This is not desirable because most of the particles that physicists are looking for, such as the recently discovered Higgs boson, have large masses and can only be created in high-energy collisions.

The large radius of the LHC’s track is big enough to limit the radial acceleration given to the particles, thus minimising the loss of energy the particles suffer as synchrotron radiation. The superconducting magnets used to control the flow and direction of the particles can accelerate them up to speeds in excess of 99.99 (but less than 100) per cent of the speed of light.

The magnets lie central in answering the question. The size of the LHC is actually a trade-off between three things: the magnets that are available; the energy (or velocity) it is necessary to give the particles; and, the feasible dimensions of the structure.

The faster the particles are moving, the more likely you are to see something interesting happen in a collision. So, it’s important to accelerate the particles, mainly protons, as much as possible.

The protons need to follow a circular path so they can be continuously accelerated by an electric field, and this is done using magnets positioned around the tunnel. The faster the protons travel, the stronger the magnetic fields need to be to keep them on track.

To increase energy there are two possible choices: make the magnets stronger or the accelerator ring larger, so that the particles’ path does not need to be bent so much. At some point there is either a technological or financial limit on the strength of the magnets, leaving the ring size as the only remaining variable.

However, to keep the costs of the project manageable, the LHC was built in an existing tunnel that housed a previous experiment, called the Large Electron-Positron Collider. So the energy to which protons can be accelerated was actually predetermined by limits of technology and funding.

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Google, Government, Human Rights, Society, Technology

Google’s buyout of drones raises privacy fears…

GOOGLE X

Intro: The addition of drones to Google’s robot army marks the outbreak of aerial combat in its battle for global internet supremacy

The internet giant Google has purchased a company that develops military-style drones in a controversial £36million deal.

Titan Aerospace makes unmanned aircraft that run on solar power and can remain airborne for five years at a time.

Google claims the technology will provide internet access to remote corners of the world. But the move has provoked privacy concerns over the internet company’s ability to snoop on people from great heights. The drones fly at 65,000ft – almost twice as high as passenger planes.

Because the drones are solar powered and always above the clouds they do not need to land to refuel, so the drones are able to cover up to 3million miles before needing to land for maintenance.

However, critics have raised fears over the company’s newly-acquired powers of mass global surveillance. Titan is merely the latest addition to its growing arsenal of robotics firms, and Google is highly secretive about its technological ambitions – all of its projects are run by a closely-guarded division mysteriously known as ‘Google X’.

A spokesperson for Big Brother Watch, a privacy campaign group, said:

… The regulation of drones is something that urgently needs addressing. Given Google’s track record is littered with overstepping the line and infringing people’s privacy, combining their hunger for data with drone technology is a mind boggling proposition.

COMMENT & ANALYSIS

Google’s multi-million dollar bid for a company that makes solar-powered drone aircraft marks the outbreak of aerial combat in its battle with Facebook for global internet supremacy.

The search engine giant has bought Titan Aerospace, a New Mexico start-up that previously caught the eye of Mark Zuckerberg, for an undisclosed price thought to be in the region of £36m ($60m).

Zuckerberg opted instead to snap up Ascenta, a tiny British engineering company based in rural Somerset – which is also working on solar-powered drones – for $20m.

The deals take both companies, which are dabbling in areas such as robots, driverless cars and contact lens cameras, even further into the realms of science fiction.

Despite mounting fears on stock markets over the bursting of a new tech bubble, in similar style to the early 2000s dotcom boom and bust, the Californian colossi remain ready to pay millions of pounds of investors’ money on futuristic technology.

Why, though, some may ask, the sudden interest in aviation? The answer is that Google and Facebook are vying to gain a stranglehold on potentially lucrative new online markets as some of the world’s poorest countries begin to be connected to the internet. Laying cables in the ground, they reckon, will take too long and cost too much, so they are trying to beam out signals from on high instead.

In their eyes, this is an altruistic enterprise, giving poor people cheap access to the internet. The drones, it is claimed, could also provide invaluable data on climate change, environmental damage and natural disasters. Google is excited in welcoming Titan Aerospace to the ‘Google family’.

Behind the gushing, however, critics perceive this new bonding as a highly dysfunctional one. The Titan deal is certain to ignite fresh fears over the internet giants’ power to pry into every aspect of people’s lives once they are equipped with robotic aircraft that can conduct surveillance from a high altitude.

It will also raise further questions among investors who are growing increasingly sceptical of tech stocks. Splashing millions on Titan, even though the company’s drones are still at the prototype stage, will be grist to the mill for the doubters. Eyebrows were previously raised following Google’s takeover of robotics company Boston Dynamics.

Facebook, for its part, has come under fire for its recent acquisition of WhatsApp in a $19bn deal, and its $2bn purchase of Oculus Rift, a virtual reality headset maker.

Google’s takeover of Titan promises to put at its disposal a swarm of dragonfly-shaped planes that can encircle the globe, staying aloft for up to five years, without ever having to refuel, since they are run on power generated by sunlight.

Titan’s Solara 60 drone has a 60 metre wingspan and is covered in around 3,000 solar panels generating electricity to power its flight. Its cruising speed is around 65mph and it has a range of more than 2.8miles.

The Solara 60 and another model, the smaller Solara 50, is a prototype but commercial versions are expected to be delivered next year.

The lightweight aircraft will be deployed as part of Google’s ‘Project Loon’. The name refers to balloons, rather than lunacy, but the idea stemmed from Google’s launching in 2013 of a number of large, high altitude balloons over the Southern Hemisphere to transmit internet signals.

The company’s growing robotic arsenal includes the sinister-looking Atlas, one of the terrifying looking robots acquired in the takeover of Boston Dynamics, a military manufacturer that produces animal-like and humanoid machines for the battlefield.

Google’s founders, Page and Sergey Brin, claim their mission is ‘to organise the world’s information and to make it universally accessible and useful’, which sounds innocuous enough.

Yet the very idea of two young billionaires who invented a clever algorithm and went on to command their own robot army and a fleet of drones would, until recently, have sounded like the tale of a Bond villain.

Still, to many, the prospect will be more than a little disquieting.

 

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