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An end to traditional crime dramas? New DNA technology could reveal who committed a crime in less than an HOUR
Suspects could be identified within minutes of committing a crime thanks to new technology developed by forensics experts.
The portable, high-speed equipment uses specially developed rapid profiling techniques to identify DNA from blood or tissue samples at the scene of a crime in a matter of minutes.
Currently, DNA samples have to be carefully lifted from any crime scene and transferred to a laboratory. The National DNA Database can then take several days to match a sample with a suspect.
No time for a getaway: The new technique means suspects could be identified within minutes (Posed by model)
LGC Forensics, which has developed the speeded-up technique, said it will give detectives a vital head start in their hunt for criminals.
Company managing director Dr Steve Allen told the Daily Telegraph: ‘Within 60 minutes of taking a sample it can produce a profile which can be transmitted to Read more…
Efficient DNA-Based Computing Could Replace Silicon
“DNA is the future of computing,” Jian-Jun Shu tells PhysOrg. And why not? Silicon is slow by comparison, computes in a binary system, creates waste heat, and is not particularly easy on the environment. DNA-based computing can perform better than silicon in several respects, Shu says, and he and a few of his students at Nanyang Technical University in Singapore have set out to prove it.
The general idea: the human body performs computations all of the time, and does so far faster than even the fastest silicon-based supercomputer. Moreover, it does so in a parallel fashion, working with more breadth, speed, and agility than the ones and zeros of silicon computation. For massive parallel problems, artificial intelligence problems, and combinatorial problems, DNA-based computing could be far more efficient.
How does it work? Shu and company are just starting to scratch the surface of what DNA computing could do, he admits, but in the lab he and his students have manipulated strands of DNA to do all kinds of things. They have fused strands together, broken them apart, snipped them, and Read more…
Nuclear plant workers release unknown amount of radioactive tritium into Mississippi River
(NaturalNews) Workers at the Grand Gulf Nuclear Plant in Port Gibson, Miss., last Thursday released a large amount of radioactive tritium directly into the Mississippi River, according to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and experts are currently trying to sort out the situation. An investigation is currently underway to determine why the tritium was even present in standing water found in an abandoned unit of the plant, as well as how much of this dangerous nuclear byproduct ended up getting dumped into the river. Many also want to know why workers released the toxic tritium before conducting proper tests.
The Mississippi Natchez Democrat reports that crews first discovered the radioactive water in the plant’s Unit 2 turbine building after heavy rains began hitting the area last week. Unit 2 was a partially-constructed, abandoned structure that should not have contained any radioactive materials, let alone tritium, which is commonly used to manufacture nuclear weapons and test atomic bombs (http://www.nirs.org/radiation/triti…). Read more…
Bacteria on the Radio: DNA Could Act as Antenna
Theoretical physicists have proposed an explanation for how bacteria might transmit electromagnetic signals: Chromosomes could act like antennae, with electrons traveling gene circuits to produce species-specific wavelengths. It’s just a hypothesis, and the notion that bacteria can generate radio waves is controversial. But according to Northeastern University physicist Allan Widom, calculations based on the properties of DNA and electrons square with what’s been measured. “For a long time, there have been signals in water. Something is happening around a Read more…How Our Government is Tracking and Databasing Your Every Move
Big Brother is Watching
The war on terror and cybersecurity are excuses that have spurred huge investments into the surveillance industry, which has become a war on “liberty and privacy.”
The Obama administration has moved forward with a Bush regime program to screen state computer traffic on private-sector networks, including those connecting people to the Internet, The Washington Post revealed July 3.
That project, code-name “Einstein,” is related to the much-larger, Read more…
Is this how Eve spoke? Every human language evolved from ‘single prehistoric African mother tongue’
Every language in the world – from English to Mandarin – evolved from a prehistoric ‘mother tongue’ first spoken in Africa tens of thousands of years ago, a new study reveals.
After analysing more than 500 languages, Dr Quentin Atkinson found compelling evidence that they can be traced back to a long-forgotten dialect spoken by our Stone Age ancestors.
The findings don’t just pinpoint the origin of language to Africa – they also show that speech evolved at least 100,000 years ago, far earlier than previously thought.
Scientists have found that every language can be traced back to a Read more…Genetically modified cows produce ‘human’ milk
The scientists have successfully introduced human genes into 300 dairy cows to produce milk with the same properties as human breast milk.
Human milk contains high quantities of key nutrients that can help to boost the immune system of babies and reduce the risk of infections.
The scientists behind the research believe milk from herds of genetically modified cows could provide an alternative to human breast milk and formula milk for babies, which is often criticised as being an inferior substitute.
They hope genetically modified dairy products from herds of similar cows could be sold in supermarkets. The research has the backing of a major biotechnology company.
The work is likely to inflame opposition to GM foods. Critics of the technology and animal welfare groups reacted angrily to the research, questioning the safety of milk from genetically modified animals and its effect on the cattle’s health.
But Professor Ning Li, the scientist who led the research and director of the State Key Laboratories for AgroBiotechnology at the China Agricultural University insisted that the GM milk would be as safe to drink as milk from ordinary dairy cows.
He said: “The milk tastes stronger than normal milk.
“We aim to commercialize some research in this area in coming three years. For the “human-like milk”, 10 years or maybe more time Read more…
Scientists Create Animals That are Part-Human – stem cell experiments leading to genetic mixing of species
Source: MSNBC, April 29, 2005
Sheep that have partially human livers, hearts, brains and other organs are shown here at the University of Nevada, in Sparks, Nev., on April 27.
RENO, Nev. — On a farm about six miles outside this gambling town, Jason Chamberlain looks over a flock of about 50 smelly sheep, many of them possessing partially human livers, hearts, brains and other organs.
The University of Nevada-Reno researcher talks matter-of-factly about his plans to euthanize one of the pregnant sheep in a nearby lab. He can’t wait to examine the effects of the human cells he had injected into the fetus’ brain about two months ago.
“It’s mice on a large scale,” Read more…
Nuclear nightmare: Japanese reactor meltdown could propel ‘death cloud’ to US West Coast
Some Japanese officials have admitted that Tokyo Electric’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi atomic reactor No. 1 may experience a total meltdown. That disaster would be followed by the release of a deadly radioactive death cloud that would drift over the Pacific and poison the people of the U.S. West Coast.
A worried Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency spokesman Yuji Kakizaki warned:“If the fuel rods are melting and this continues, a reactor meltdown is possible,” Kakizaki said.
A core meltdown of the nuclear pile occurs from an intense build-up of heat Read more…
Human Achievement of the Day: Nanospiders in Your Blood
In his writings, noted futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil has said that he believes human technology will one day reach a point where the human life expectancy will be radically extended, resulting in near immortality. In a 2009 interview with Computerworld, Kurzweil put the date at which immortality could be achieved somewhere around 2040 or 2050 thanks to the ever-quickening pace of technological development and the rise of nanotechnology that will repair or even replace parts of the human body. Kurzweil may have overshot that date by a few decades, as today’s human achievement is the invention of nanospiders that can crawl along human DNA and change it.
DNA nanospiders, created by Columbia University scientists, are small Read more…
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