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ref on DNA databases
by Subcommander Bob 27 Jul '01

27 Jul '01

Estonia, a country of 1.5 million in Northern Europe, launches a project building a national health and DNA database (see Science, Oct. 6 2000, Nature Biotech Nov 2000). This database will bring direct benefits to the Estonian people and to their healthcare. In addition to that, at the global level, it will offer a tremendously valuable tool for datamining to find disease susceptibility markers or disease genes. Above all, these databases could serve as an example of emerging foundations of the future personalized medicine through the use of information and gene technologies in the healthcare. I would like to introduce you the project, the legal, ethical and educational homework that has been done during the past one and a half years. Furthermore, I would like to draw your attention to technological requirements concerning information technology (incl. Databases) and genotyping that still need to addressed to make a full use of that information. http://www-smi.stanford.edu/events/abstracts/abstract_2000111393000563.html

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not just iceland: more refs on more countries w/ DNA db
by Subcommander Bob 27 Jul '01

27 Jul '01

http://www.genomics.ee/media/scientprindi.html A good gene pool, like love, is where you find it. Now genomics researchers have two new ones to swoon over: one from Estonia, a crossroads of Scandinavian cultures and the northernmost of the former Soviet Union's Baltic republics; and from Tonga, an island kingdom half a world away where a Polynesian people has lived in near-perfect isolation se to 3,500 years. Tonga and Estonia laid final plans last November and December, respectively, for national gene pool exploration programs aimed at discovering disease-associated genes and developing therapies based on the discoveries.  They follow the trail blazed by Iceland,1 where for several years the gene pool of 275,000 Icelanders has been the fishing preserve of Reykjavik-based deCODE Genetics which is hunting for gene variants that affect serious, often chronic diseases by finding statistical links between Icelanders' genotypes and their inherited illnesses. The Tongan project will be a commercial affair run by AutoGen Ltd. of Melbourne, Australia, with permission of the Tongan Ministry of Health. Two organizations, one nonprofit, the other for-profit, will control Estonia's project; both are property of the Estonian government.  Eesti Geenivaramu <table BORDER=0 WIDTH="100%" > <tr> <td>Prior to the Estonian parliament's action of December 13, only the nonprofit Eesti Geenikeskus (the Estonian Genome Center Foundation) was in place; now it will be joined by Eesti Geenivaramu (the Estonian Genebank Foundation), the engine of the venture. Eesti Geenivaramu will carry out the project; Eesti Geenikeskus will own the data.  The project enjoys enormous popular support. A poll indicates 90 percent of 1.4 million Estonians like the idea of a big project with potential benefits to themselves, and that also helps the country's fledgling biotech industry. Individuals may freely access their own data, otherwise strictly secret, and get word if project research yields treatments that might be beneficial. If 1 million Estonians are genotyped within five years, as officials predict, Estonia will own the behemoth of population genotyping projects, the only one with a database sized in terabytes. </td> <td><img SRC="andreas.jpg" height=311 width=250> Andres Metspalu <hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="100%"></td> </tr> </table> The Estonian Genebank Foundation officially opens in March in the city of Tartu. Kickoff money of 20 million kroons (US$1.3 million) funds a pilot genotyping project scheduled to begin in the fall. But the real money--$100-150 million over five years--will come from payments for nonexclusive licenses for data access and intellectual property rights to drugs and diagnostics resulting from research. Part of the genebank foundation's mission is to sign up international partners, chiefly research institutes and biotech and pharmaceutical companies. Which diseases the 10,000-patient pilot project will focus on hasn't been decided, but the search for volunteers will take advantage of patient group registries for cancer, Parkinson's disease, osteoporosis, and diabetes. Patients in for checkups will be invited to participate (strictly on a voluntary basis) by filling out extensive health questionnaires and donating 50 ml blood samples for DNA extraction.  When many genes influence an illness, as in heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, population genotyping is preferable to family studies. Family studies work well when a single gene underlies a disease. They rely on linkage analysis, where researchers find genetic markers matching disease inheritance patterns, and then use the markers to map the chromosomal region containing the gene as the first step toward its isolation. With polygenic diseases, where individual alleles seldom sharply increase the relative risk of disease, correlating genetic markers and inherited predisposition to disease requires genotyping hundreds or thousands of people. When gene hunting becomes a game of sifting through massive amounts of data, the Estonian project "will show strength through numbers," says Andres Metspalu, the driving force of Estonia's gene pool expedition.  Estonians (average life span: 70 years) see themselves as representative westerners; they suffer the same diseases prevalent elsewhere in the West, in similar proportions. Ensconced by the Baltic Sea for some 5,000 years, they have not been isolated; crisscrossing contacts with neighboring nations have made their gene pool more heterogeneous than Iceland's or Tonga's. "Estonia has been sort of a highway," says Kalev Kask, a Stanford neuroscientist who acts as the project's U.S. representative, "Everybody has come and downloaded their genotype there."   deCODE navigates the Icelandic gene pool aided by the country's unprecedented genealogies, recorded meticulously for more than a thousand years, back to days when lineages were set down in blood on scraps of leather. "Though many Estonian genealogies go back to the 1600s, we'll take a more ad hoc approach using them," Metspalu says. De-emphasizing those records is in part because nearly 30 percent of Estonia is Russian speaking, reflecting recent era immigration and family records carrying back only a generation or two.  Finding genes exerting relatively small effects on diseases means scanning the entire genome. Estonian genotyping will employ single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) assays, where SNP oligonucleotide hybridization probes detect single base sequence differences between DNA molecules. (deCODE genotypes with microsatellites.) There is no lack of SNPs to choose from--Public databases span the genome with hundreds of thousands of SNP sequences. What is lacking is consensus on which ones to use, a matter of economic as well as scientific importance.  Depending on how completely the chosen SNPs cover the genome, genotyping most of Estonia could conceivably require billions of assays. Even at a penny apiece (Metspalu estimates a SNP assay now costs about 20 cents), that could send the project's cost soaring into hundreds of millions of dollars. So automated, high-speed SNP testing must drastically cut per-assay price, and judicious choices will have to be made about which SNPs to use. These decisions will depend heavily on the preferences and resources of the eventual commercial partners.      <table BORDER=0 WIDTH="100%" > <tr> <td><img SRC="collier.jpg" height=270 width=180> Greg Collier <hr SIZE=1 NOSHADE WIDTH="100%"></td> <td></td> <td>Genes in Paradise A South Pacific archipelago situated just west of where the international dateline cuts across the Tropic of Capricorn, Tonga's only significant immigration occurred when it became the home of the Polynesians who first found it centuries before the appearance of Alexander, Caesar, and Christ. AutoGen's project in Tonga grows out of the diabetes studies it has done there for several years. The primary thrust of its research will be discovery of genes involved in diabetes and obesity, major health concerns among Tonga's 108,000 inhabitants. AutoGen will establish a research lab at a hospital in Nuku'Alofa, the constitutional monarchy's capital, provide annual research funding to the health ministry, and pay royalties to the government if any drugs are developed as a result of the project. </td> </tr> </table>  As in Estonia, research participation is purely voluntary. DNA samples will belong to Tonga; AutoGen may use the data to create new therapies. "Initially we'll use traditional genome scans with microsatellites to localize areas of interest, and then use SNP approaches for fine mapping," says Greg Collier, AutoGen's chief scientific officer. The Tongan family structure should make correlating genotypes and phenotypes somewhat easier; in most small Tongan villages inhabitants are blood relatives.  The project comes just as some researchers have changed their minds about the advantages of studying isolated homogenous gene pools instead of heterogeneous gene pools in America and Europe. A few years ago, it was believed that disease-associated genes would stand out more clearly against the simpler genetic backgrounds of isolated populations such as those of Tonga and Iceland. But standing out depends on the frequency of the allele and how much it raises the relative risk of disease. Recent theoretical and experimental results suggest genes with weak effects on relative risk may be no easier to find in a small isolated population than in a large heterogeneous one.  This finding may bear on scientific and financial decisions about which gene pools to explore next. Undoubtedly, so will deCODE's demonstration that isolated gene pools yield rich finds. Over the past year, deCODE isolated a gene linked to schizophrenia, mapped genes linked to stroke and late-onset Alzheimer's disease, and pinpointed chromosomal regions containing genes contributing to osteoporosis and peripheral arterial occlusive disease.  In any event, once a population has been chosen and monetary commitments made, what counts are results--and getting them before anyone else. Pressure to set a breakneck pace is mounting as new competitors join in; for this is not a three-way race. Last year, Newfound Genomics began to study Newfoundland Canadians for genes contributing to psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, and diabetes. Myriad Genetics is at work in Utah, Sardinia, and Quebec. One thing they all know is that finding a gene connected to an important disease can be a tremendous thrill, but little more if it turns out that somebody else found it first.

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The most ridiculous computer application in the world
by Jim Choate 27 Jul '01

27 Jul '01

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/20703.html James Choate Product Certification - Operating Systems Staff Engineer 512-436-1062 jchoate(a)tivoli.com

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Airline passengers, revisited
by Aimee Farr 27 Jul '01

27 Jul '01

Passenger Processing Using Biometrics To Be Unveiled EyeTicket Corporation, the leader in high volume public processing and access control using biometric identification, will hold a news conference on Thursday, July 26, to announce a groundbreaking new program to expedite airline passenger processing. This announcement represents the first large-scale application of passenger processing relying solely on biometrics. Details of the evaluation program, being conducted in cooperation with BAA, British Airways, UK Immigration Service and Virgin Atlantic Airways, will be unveiled during the news conference. Source: Biometric Digest ~Aimee

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turning off your computer turns away hackers
by Subcommander Bob 27 Jul '01

27 Jul '01

"turning off your computer turns away hackers" ---from the banner ad of the 'privacy leadership initiative' as seen on drudgereport.com "Yep"

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File-trading pressure mounts on ISPs
by Eugene Leitl 27 Jul '01

27 Jul '01

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/cn/20010725/tc/file-trading_pressure_mounts_… Wednesday July 25 05:00 PM EDT File-trading pressure mounts on ISPs By John Borland CNET News.com Record companies have joined the movie industry in trying to root out post-Napster file trading, putting new pressure on ISPs to clamp down on subscribers' actions. ISPs say the last few weeks have seen a sharp uptick in the number of requests they're getting to pull the plug on subscribers who are using file-trading software such as Gnutella or iMesh. Driven by a combination of high-profile summer movie releases and a growth in the business of independent piracy hunters, these requests are putting service providers in an awkward position. Even as they avoid facing media-industry lawyers, these ISPs risk losing their customers to competing Internet access companies that may be less aggressive about curtailing the use of file-trading software. High-speed Internet provider Adelphia, a cable company based in Pennsylvania, is one of the latest to join the list of ISPs cracking down on file swapping in the post-Napster world. Like many other ISPs, it has started suspending accounts of people who have been identified by record companies or movie studios as file swappers. "Over the past several weeks the Adelphia Internet Abuse Investigation Team has seen a dramatic increase in the number of reports of copyright infringement," Michael Healy, the company's senior Internet abuse investigator, wrote in an e-mail to CNET News.com. "While Adelphia values its relationship with our customers, we must also take appropriate action when necessary to safeguard our interests in the global Internet community." Adelphia, like other ISPs offering high-speed Net service, is increasingly caught in a bind between protecting their customers and responding to the growing demands of copyright holders. Privately, ISP executives say that Napster and its rivals have been one of the biggest drivers of high-speed Internet use, a part of their business that most big ISPs are desperately trying to improve. But as decentralized swapping services like Gnutella, Music City's Morpheus and Kazaa emerge, copyright holders are leaning on ISPs to cut off file swapping at the source. Rise of the bounty hunters ISPs have long received letters from record companies or movie studios about pirated works on their networks. But until the rise of Napster and similar services, the way to handle these was clearer. Under federal copyright law, an ISP is not liable for any copyright content posted on its network as long as it removes the content as soon as the owner points it out. Traditionally, movies, songs and software have been posted on the ISP's servers in the forms of pirate FTP sites or Web sites, and the ISP could simply pull these down. In the file-swapping world, the law has become murkier. People using Napster, Gnutella or the others keep all content on their hard drives, and the only way to block their actions is to turn off their connections. Some ISPs, such as Verizon Communications (NYSE:VZ - news), have refused to go this far, calling it a "drastic remedy that infringes on people's rights and speech." The Motion Picture Association of America has been one of the biggest forces using these tactics. But individual studios are also boosting their efforts with ISPs. Twentieth Century Fox, for example, recently sent a notice telling service providers that distribution of any "Planet of the Apes" movie clips would be unauthorized, and that ISPs should pull them down. ISPs say this kind of announcement before the release of a movie is unusual, indicating just how seriously Hollywood is beginning to take online piracy. But the recent growth in threatening letters from the media industry is also coming from independent piracy hunters, such as MediaForce and Copyright.net, which contract with individual artists, labels or studios to hunt down versions of copyrighted works online. "We've sent out substantially more letters over the last several weeks, as more customers are interested in protecting their copyrights online," said MediaForce Chief Executive Aaron Fessler. He declined to give his customers' names, saying that most wanted to keep their involvement "hush-hush," leery of the backlash that met rock band Metallica after it publicly took a stand against Napster. But he said that one of the five largest major record labels has recently begun using his company's services. These independent companies operate automated systems that can troll file-swapping networks looking for their clients' work. Once they find it, it is a simple task to figure out the Internet address of the computer that is offering the content to the world. The companies then cross-reference this information with the ISP that owns that Internet address and send a letter showing exactly which files are being shared, demanding that the subscriber be stopped. Using this information, ISPs can figure out who was using that address at that time. Some, like Verizon, are resisting the demands, saying that copyright law does not force them to monitor or respond directly to content that is on their subscribers' hard drives. Others, like Adelphia, quickly cut off their subscribers' connections. Many, including DirecTV Broadband and Excite@Home, issue warning letters to their subscribers. If there is a second violation, the subscribers' accounts may be terminated for violating the ISPs' terms-of-service agreements, which generally bar using the networks for copyright violations. Excite@Home says most cases have stopped short of pulling the plug, and that only one person has been terminated. "It turns into an education opportunity," said Harris Schwartz, director of network policy and standards for Excite@Home. "In many cases subscribers had no idea that they were doing anything wrong." Adelphia's Healy said the Recording Industry Association of America, the trade group that has pursued Napster and its rivals most vigorously in court, has not been as visible as the independent piracy hunters. But subscribers are nevertheless being targeted for trading songs. Former Adelphia customer Tyrone Martin was one of those targets. He had used Bearshare, a popular program that taps into the Gnutella network, to trade audio files online. Two weeks ago he found his connection turned off and got a letter from his ISP saying the service had been suspended. Like many other customers receiving similar notices, Martin simply went elsewhere. "I told them where they could stick their modem and cable equipment and proceeded to cancel my cable TV and modem accounts," Martin wrote in an e-mail to CNET News.com. "They are a communications provider. They are not censors or a government agency! Adelphia will never get another penny from me and I hope others follow suit."

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Privacy rights protected in western Australia
by Declan McCullagh 27 Jul '01

27 Jul '01

Western Australian authorities persecute gun owners ---------- Police in West Australia will force gun owners to bring their weapons and ID to police stations in an effort to track down illegal firearms. There's no word yet on how harassing registered and cooperative gun owners will turn up black market guns. (07/26/01) http://www.thewest.com.au/20010725/news/state/tw-news-state-home-sto17350.h…

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Congressmen tell kids how to find P2P porn
by Subcommander Bob 27 Jul '01

27 Jul '01

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010727/tc/online_pornography_2.html Friday July 27 11:08 AM ET Congressmen Warn About Online Porn By D. IAN HOPPER, AP Technology Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - The same technology that allowed Internet users to swap music can be used by children to locate hard-core pornography, and two congressmen are providing parents with some tips to keep it from happening. The programs, which have become popular since the legally embattled Napster (news - web sites) began its decline and was finally knocked offline, can transfer much more than the music files that Napster was famous for. They can help users share any type of file, including pornographic movies. Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Steve Largent, R-Okla., released a report Friday alerting parents. ``It's not a question of gratuitous violence or bad language or bad taste,'' Waxman said. ``It's an explosion of the most demeaning and dehumanizing exhibitions imaginable, and it can appear on our children's computer screens whether they ask for it or not.'' Waxman and Largent aren't yet calling for legislation, but want parents to be aware of the programs and realize that most Internet filtering software doesn't stop them. Internet filters are designed to block Web pages, but most can't scan movies or block sharing programs. The design of sharing networks like BearShare, Aimster and LimeWire complicates the matter further. Unlike Napster, the individual users contact directly, instead of using a central computer. This is also a headache for copyright holders including the music and movie industries, which can't file suit to close down the network because in many cases no company exists to sue. Since Napster's fall, the upstart decentralized file-sharing networks have flourished. They are some of the most downloaded programs on the Internet, dwarfing Napster's popularity during its heyday. The lawmakers said parents shouldn't rely on the effectiveness of filters and should talk frequently with their children about how they use the computer. Putting the children's computer in a common room may also help, they said. The report, prepared by a House committee, says pornography is both popular and prevalent on the networks, and that children may accidentally stumble upon it when looking for something else. The search term ``porn'' ranks second only to a word for pirated movies on the Gnutella (news - web sites) network, and various other adult terms dominate the Top 30 list. Even if children search for other popular downloads, like typing in the names of pop stars Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera, they can find surprising results. ``When the Special Investigations Division used the popular file-sharing program Aimster to search for videos of Britney Spears, over 70 percent of the results were pornographic files,'' the report states.

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by Join4Free.Com 27 Jul '01

27 Jul '01

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