tisiwoota

1. “The Risk Pool” (Gladwell on the pension predicament)

2. Patent Review goes Wiki

3. Wiki textbooks for developing countries

4. Global Water Scarcity comes 20 years earlier than expected

5. New brain cells die without a job to do (communication is essential for survival )

Annnd DNA testing gets ever more ubiquitous– see the new(-ish) issue highlighted by Genetics and Health Blog:

To speed up the citizenship process, starting in the 90’s, some immigrants to the U.S. began paying for DNA testing to prove family relationships. Costs range from $300-500 per person on average.

Genetic tests are playing a larger role in the U.S. immigration process. In some cases, the government is asking for DNA proof of a family connection; in other cases, applicants are offering to undergo testing in hopes of speeding up a process that often takes years. Either way, the applicant must bear the cost.

This brings up several questions to mind:
Will these tests become mandatory for immigration at some point in the future?
The article states that the government is not keeping the information right now– but how long before pressure from security hawks changes that?
Are there yet any nonprofit organizations that are sponsoring funding for these tests?

Also I wonder whether the testing companies take on any pro bono cases?
Since a) they should and b) it would be a great PR opportunity to bring their name to the attention of genealogy hobbyists.

DNA Test, DNA

via Wall Street Journal:

Frustrated that over two decades of research have failed to produce an AIDS vaccine, Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates is tying his foundation’s latest, biggest AIDS-vaccine grants to a radical concept: Those who get the money must first agree to share the results of their work in short order.

Now, Mr. Gates’s family foundation is putting $287 million new, five-year grants behind the notion that pooling results can surmount the massive technical hurdles that have hindered individual, sometimes-competing efforts.

The California Justice Department and the University of California, Berkeley, Human Rights Center have created a DNA database to reunite families torn apart by El Salvador’s civil war:

DNA Data May Reunite War-Torn Families

Hundreds of children disappeared in El Salvador during the country’s 1980-92 civil war, some stolen, some voluntarily put up for adoption.

…It is not the first time DNA has been used to reunite families separated by war. It has been done in North and South Korea and in Guatemala.

DNA Test, DNA

Speaking of Genghis Khan, if Douglas Adams were still alive he would no doubt be tickled by the news that a DNA search for a modern descendant of Genghis Khan “from outside the Mongolian warlord’s ancient empire” has turned up… an accountant.

Well, accounting professor to be exact. With, as the article points out, a receding hairline.

The professor was quoted as saying, “I think I do have a certain number of administrative skills,” but “I haven’t done any conquering, per se.”

Curiously, the article notes that “No one has tested Genghis’ actual DNA because his tomb has never been found.” So it’s not clear what they’re basing the comparison off of. His sons? Common markers in the regions he ruled? The article doesn’t spell it out.

Wow. Lactic acid has been exonerated. It’s not a “foe” but a “fuel.”

Lactic acid will be gone from your muscles within an hour of exercise… You get sore one to three days later. The time frame is not consistent, and the mechanisms have not been found.

The understanding now is that muscle cells convert glucose or glycogen to lactic acid. The lactic acid is taken up and used as a fuel by mitochondria, the energy factories in muscle cells.

Not that I’d ever known the slightest bit about whatever biochemical mechanism it was purported to work through– but it was one of those thoroughly ingrained accepted bits of wisdom such that because “everybody knew it” you just assumed someone somewhere had actually gone and proven the process step by step.

It brings to mind an episode from my time as a barista in a coffee shop: a patron wanted to know whether our beans had been chemically treated, and was aghast to find we had only one blend that was water-processed. She launched into a tirade as she made her way out of the shop: “Do you know what they use to process that? [Chemical X!] That’s the same thing they use in [some vile toxic product]!” Of course, what it was impossible to get in edgewise was that it was only something on the order of 1 part-per-million of Chemical X was used in the process, and all of that would be burned off by roasting temperatures far higher than Chemical X could withstand. Funny how people can think merely knowing the name of a chemical is enough of an explanation to know that that’s what’s causing Y effect.

But wow. Lactic acid. Now the ultimate example of just how powerful the echo chamber of folklore chemistry can be…

Man [to take] DNA tests to ‘prove’ Hitler and Himmler were forebears

[T]he department of forensic medicine at the University of Granada has taken his theory seriously enough to do the DNA tests on both him and the exhumed remains of his father and grandparents. . . . The university forensic team has previously worked on other high-profile identifications, including bodies from unmarked civil war graves, and the remains of Christopher Colombus.

*~*~*

Irreverently, this somehow reminds me of the opening chapter of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, where the meek and muddled foreman of a construction project turns out to be “a direct male-line descendant of Genghis Khan, though intervening generations and racial mixing had so juggled his genes that he had no discernible Mongoloid characteristics, and the only vestiges left in Mr. L. Prosser of his mighty ancestry were a pronounced stoutness about the tum and a predilection for little fur hats. . . .

[H]is mind was for a moment filled with inexplicable but terribly attractive visions of Arthur Dent’s house being consumed with fire and Arthur himself running screaming from the blazing ruin with at least three hefty spears protruding from his back. Mr Prosser was often bothered with visions like these and they made him feel very nervous.”
…
{Googling, btw, leads to this interesting tidbit: “in the lands conquered by Genghis Khan, 8% of the people are his direct descendants. In fact, world-wide, one in every 200 men is related to the mighty Khan - which works out to about 16 million men.”}

Here:

Vaughn Pedersen recently received some family news he’s been waiting at least six years to hear. For him, it was a matter of history finally being set straight.

But new DNA evidence shows almost certainly that Blue Jacket was in fact an American Indian and not white, as the myth had it.

DNA Test, genetic genealogy, genography

This was bound to happen as public consciousness about DNA testing for racial heritage expanded:

>>
Alan Moldawer’s adopted twins, Matt and Andrew, had always thought of themselves as white. But when it came time for them to apply to college last year, Mr. Moldawer thought it might be worth investigating the origins of their slightly tan-tinted skin, with a new DNA kit that he had heard could determine an individual’s genetic ancestry.

The results, designating the boys 9 percent Native American and 11 percent northern African, arrived too late for the admissions process. But Mr. Moldawer, a business executive in Silver Spring, Md., says they could be useful in obtaining financial aid.
>>

The article gives no statistics on the frequency of such (ab)use, but seems convinced DNA testing has sparked a significant trend.

[The tests’ speculative nature…] has not stopped many test-takers from adopting new DNA-based ethnicities — and a sense of entitlement to the privileges typically reserved for them.

“This is not just somebody’s desire to go find out whether their grandfather is Polish,” said Troy Duster, a sociologist at New York University who has studied the social impact of the tests. “It’s about access to money and power.”
>>

Who knows how widespread such practices are, but they’re surely bound to raise challenges to the rationale behind affirmative action programs. It will be interesting to see how universities and employers will respond to any resulting increases in such “false” claims to minority status. Perhaps this will end up bolstering the case for class-based affirmative action. Something to keep an eye on…

genetic genealogy, genetic testing, DNA Test

Here: In the past six years, genetic genealogy has become a booming business, doubling nearly every year.

And here: Discount retailer Target Corp. now sells DNA collection and profile kits online. Some specialty drug stores have begun stocking DNA-based nutritional tests. (and, interesting: a company that sells a line of tests designed to help people match their diet with their genetic predisposition).

I know the results are over-interpreted and all, but man it would be nice to get in on the ground floor of this shiz. If only the hotspots weren’t only in places (Utah, Iowa, Florida, etc) I don’t want to live in…

gene, genetic genealogy, genetic testing

Back in college, I found it amusing that someone would come up with as random a juxtaposition of merchandise as Soda and Pet Food– only those two categories of products– and have such a business model succeed.

Now that store has been exponentially one-upped in odd marketing combinations– somewhere in New Jersey, there is a coffee-house that offers DNA tests:

>>
For around $550, coffee house employees will swab your mouth and send the samples on to a Texas lab. Results are available within one week.

And that’s not all this guy has going on:

>>
Ford works several businesses at once. He runs Ronald Ford Inc., a 20-employee mini-conglomerate that offers business consulting, real estate and accounting services, and provides copying and fax services _ in addition to the coffee and the DNA tests. Ford plans to add pre-employment drug testing and a photography studio to take pictures for aspiring actors in his two-story building across from City Hall.

Um, wow. He’s got all his bases covered, that one…

DNA+test, genetics