Hasta La Gadget!

DNA is essential to carbon-based life as we know it, but this is one of the few times that I’ve seen it used to create art. An artist created portrait sculptures from the analyses of genetic material that was collected in public places.

Heather Dewey-Hagborg created these portraits from random genetic material left behind in public spaces on everything from cigarette butts to chewing gum and strands of hair. She calls her work Stranger Visions, and it’s supposed to ‘call attention to the impulse toward genetic determinism and the potential for a culture of genetic surveillance’.

She used facial modeling software and a 3D printer to make these samples into sculptures, which were reconstructed from ethnic profiles, eye color, and hair color. Since the samples were randomly collected, we have no idea how accurate the facsimiles faces are compared to their genetic materials’ providers.

What’s even more fascinating is that she perfected her software using open-source DNA profiles available for public download over on github. Yes, you can open source your DNA.

[via designboom]

Don’t you just hate it that technology moves at such a pace where you were once told that 640k would be more than enough for everybody, but it has been pitifully overtaken a long, long time ago. Even when it comes to storage options, we have moved from the 5.25” floppy disc to a 3.25” floppy, onwards to CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs with ever expanding hard drive sizes. It seems that your DNA is going to supercede all these, as it is capable of storing information from a million CDs, taking up an amount of space that is no bigger than your little finger. In terms of longevity, it is also able to keep your data safe for centuries, or in theory, at least.

Researchers claimed that they managed to store the entire 154 Shakespeare sonnets, a photo, a scientific paper, and a 26-second sound clip from Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, into a barely visible bit of DNA located in a test tube. It might take a decade for DNA to become a feasible mass market storage device, although we do wonder just whether we can carry our data in our bodies down the road.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Archos Design Bluetooth Keyboard For iPad, Google Patent Delivers Bone-Conduction Audio ,

This startlingly orange gun isn’t something from a sci-fi film set. Instead, it’s a new firearm, from UK-based Selectamark, that fires non-lethal pellets—and marks its targets with DNA for later identification. More »

SelectDNA, a UK company, has created a non-lethal high-velocity projectile that will leave a DNA marker on a suspect so that he or she can be identified at a later time. At first, it may sound like the projectile marks the suspect’s DNA, but that’s not the case. It’s just that the marker has a DNA nature to make sure that it is unique. That’s not the case for color markers that are in use today.

The goal of the system is to 1/delay the apprehension of suspects when a situation is “less confrontational” 2/ allow an fairly accurate identification of a person. For example, you can imagine that during a riot, it can be extremely volatile to charge and arrest troublemakers and bystanders or peaceful demonstrators can be hurt in the process. Instead, the Police can use pistol or rifle version of SelectDNA to “tag” agitators, and arrest them later.

The pistol looks like an orange plastic toy pistol, but can fire accurately at up to 30-40m. Each projectile weighs less than 1g and a pack of 14 pellet will be encoded with the same unique DNA marker, so it’s may not be used to uniquely identify a single person, but the Police can establish their presence on the scene.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Orangutans Now Use iPads , Brolly Umbrella Makes It Possible To Text With Both Hands During Use,

The Nobel Prize doesn’t win itself, and if you’ve already planned your kids a successful career in science, it’s never too early to introduce them to complex concepts like DNA. And with these stuffed nucleobase characters, learning becomes a heck of a lot less tedious. More »