Collaborate Disseminate
I understand his frustration, but this is extreme: When police asked Cryptopay what could have motivated Salonen to send the company a pipe bomb or, rather, two pipe bombs, which is what investigators found when they picked apart the explosive package the only thing the company could think of was that it had declined his request for a… Continue reading Mailing Tech Support a Bomb
[Justin] from The Thought Emporium takes on a common molecular biology problem with these homebrew heating instruments for the DIY biology lab.
The action at the molecular biology bench boils down to a few simple tasks: suck stuff, spit stuff, cool stuff, and heat stuff. Pipettes take care of the sucking and spitting, while ice buckets and refrigerators do the cooling. The heating, however, can be problematic; vessels of various sizes need to be accommodated at different, carefully controlled temperatures. It’s not uncommon to see dozens of different incubators, heat blocks, heat plates, and even walk-in environmental chambers in the …read more
Continue reading Hacked Heating Instruments for the DIY Biology Lab
If you have European ancestry, there’s a 60% chance that somebody vaguely related to you can be used to find out who you are. Continue reading You don’t have to sequence your DNA to be identifiable by your DNA
The body of a 10-year-old child who died in the 5th century had a rock inserted into its mouth to prevent undead attacks. Continue reading Archeologists Discover ‘Vampire’ Child Who Died 1,500 Years Ago
If you’re an American of European descent, there’s a 60% chance you can be uniquely identified by public information in DNA databases. This is not information that you have made public; this is information your relatives have made public. Research paper: "Identity inference of genomic data using long-range familial searches." Abstract: Consumer genomics databases have reached the scale of millions… Continue reading How DNA Databases Violate Everyone’s Privacy
Networking giant Cisco has released patches for several of its products, warning that the updates are for critical bugs found during internal testing. Labeled CVE-2018-15379, a vulnerability in Cisco Digital Network Architecture (DNA) Center could allo… Continue reading Cisco patches critical flaws in DNA Center and Prime Infrastructure
Spotify and Ancestry have teamed up to let you use your real DNA to tell your “musical” DNA. Continue reading Spotify offers playlists tailored to your DNA
Scientists have created a novel DNA mapping tool that has exposed the secretive web of ivory trafficking in Africa. Continue reading DNA Forensics Is Helping Authorities to Catch Elephant Ivory Cartels
While we know early humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans interbred, this specimen is a unique first-generation Neanderthal-Denisovan offspring. Continue reading A Hybrid of Humanity’s Closest Relatives Has Been Identified From 50,000-Year-Old Bone
Improvements in methodology have dramatically dropped the cost of DNA sequencing in the last decade. In 2007, it cost around $10 million dollars to sequence a single genome. Today, there are services which will do it for as little as $1,000. That’s not to bad if you just want to examine your own DNA, but prohibitively expensive if you’re looking to experiment with DNA in the home lab. You can buy your own desktop sequencer and cut out the middleman, but they cost in the neighborhood of $50,000. A bit outside of the experimenter’s budget unless you’re Tony Stark.
But …read more