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September 1st 2009 is a very important day in Swiss DNA Bank’s history. It’s the day the staff finally pulled the strings on a very intensive two-years project development. Everything came together and the “put-the-web-application-on-line-button” was pushed.

The dream of creating the first data and DNA forever banking service came to life.

The idea was always to create a bank, a Swiss bank, which followed each and every security and privacy policy of our country. But what was going to be sheltered in this bank was not money or bonds. Was something much more precious and unique: it was people’s memories and DNA.

As Swiss DNA Bank’s website often states, one’s life experience, knowledge and memories are the most important asset we have. It takes a lifetime to build them.

On the other hand, our DNA trace is something that belongs only to ourselves. The health information contained are crucial not only for the carrier, but also for it’s family. Knowing your biological ancestry can help you prevent or cure many disease. But at the end of one’s life these assets are most likely going to be lost. Our children, our grandchildren and the ones that will come after them are deprived of the chance of getting to know who we where, what we’ve done and what we’ve learned.

This is where the idea of the Perpetual Financial Engine comes from.

The Perpetual Financial Engine feature is the reason why Swiss DNA Bank’s service is Forever. As of today, there is no technological support that you are sure it will be readable in even just 10 or 15 years time. Think about a floppy disc or an audio cassette.

So we figured that the solution to perpetual data storage is not technological, but financial.

The Perpetual Financial Engine, together with a long-lasting and safe structure of a Swiss bank, is the key to being able of founding tomorrow’s technological support renewal.

The user’s subscription fee is partially invested in safe assets, such as Swiss government bonds, in order to guarantee a small revenue, year after year, which allows to keep our storing facilities up to date.

When this whole picture came together, it was time to think of a safe way to store it all. The solution fort the physical storage of the servers which contain the data came from the heart of the Swiss Alps, from a former military nuclear shelter which was converted into server hosting facility.

Once Swiss DNA Bank’s servers were safe behind closed steel doors, the attention turned to on-line security.

The web-development team figured that username and password were not enough to protect such sensible data. So each Swiss DNA Bank user is provided with a Swiss DNA Card, a credit card sized one-time access code generator. The one-time access code is the third field one has to fill to enter the Swiss DNA Bank web application, an amazing tool to organize memories, pictures, documents, and any other file you can think of.

Take a look at your desk. Open some drawers randomly. Check your computer’s desktop. And what about the office’s shelves? Unless you are one of those people naturally gifted with full organizational skills, at least one of those places is a real mess.

And if you are organized, this will be your ultimate tool!

Now you can store it all, safely and Forever.

http://www.swissdnabank.com/

Internet surfers and social network addicts: take a moment to thank Canada for fighting and winning a privacy battle for us all.

Ever took a closer look at that little box you tick before starting the “Which Famous Rock Star are You” or the “How Karmic are You” test on Facebook?

Don’t if you don’t want to feel exposed, naked and cheated on. Data exposed, naked and cheated on, that is.

Because what happens is that in exchange for vital information such as who your superhero twin is you allow “third parties”, typically the application’s (test’s) developer, to access your personal information, letting you wonder what they are going to do with it.

I’m thinking targeting the ads upon your profile, but maybe I’m just being malicious.

Being most of us users reckless and carefree about our info, Canada decided to do something about it. One year ago an Internet policy group at the University of Ottawa filed a complaint about Facebook’s privacy policies, which now resulted in Facebook having 12 months time to do something major about it.

The well-know social network will have to make significant changes to the software code it shares with third-party developers, in order to warn users about which bits of information are being disclosed and to whom exactly.

Dave Morin, senior platform manager at Facebook, sympathizes with the developers who are now facing software-changing issues.

“These changes mean that the privacy of 200 million Facebook users in Canada and around the world will be far better protected,” Jennifer Stoddart, Canada’s privacy commissioner, said in a statement.

Another important thing is that the mystery over deactivating and deleting one’s account will be unveiled. If you decide not to use the Facebook application anymore you will most likely bounce into the “deactivate account” option. This only blocks your account temporarily, leaving all your information in their Palo Alto servers. If you want to delete it, it gets more complicated. To find the right option I had to access the Help Center, type “delete” and scroll down the FAQ quite a bit. The link to delete was, in my opinion, kind of hidden. Maybe there’s another easier way but I guess I was not Internet-savvy enough to figure it out

Today personal information is like cash, only (or shall we say, plus?) without inflation: it is precious, it is hard to get, it is desirable. If you must give yours up and spill the beans about your age, lifestyle and interests, at least make it worth your while!

Unless you really need to know who your celebrity boyfriend is.

Just when you taught things were getting a little shaky for world-renowned Swiss privacy, Bern’s government reminds everyone that it’s not that easy to lay hands on the country’s most valuable asset.

After recent settlements between the US, Switzerland and UBS to disclose Irs cheaters, Bern backfires on Google. Well, it’s not really backfire, it’s more about reminding who is in charge for Swiss privacy on Swiss soil, i.e. the Swiss government.

Switzerland has recently signed an agreement with the US government to disclose about 4.500 names of American citizens UBS account holders because of tax evasion charges.

It is important to understand that this is an agreement, meaning that when the most powerful and pushy government in the world attacked the Swiss banking system, Switzerland was nevertheless able to answer back to America.

So some names will be disclosed but strictly after Bern analyzes the paperwork that proves these US citizens with Swiss bank accounts guilty as charged.

But there was no settlement when Google’s Swiss mapping service failed to obscure faces and plates properly yesterday. After the Swiss Street View was released on-line, Hanspeter Thur, from the federal bureau of data protection, required the Mountain View-based giant to stop the service immediately as Swiss privacy laws have not been respected.

The reason was that Google failed to warn citizens about the Google Car transit dates and time and, worst of all, failed to obscure people’s faces and car’s plates.

This has nothing to do with the service’s ban, it is all about respecting local privacy laws and regulations.

One of the biggest scandals was that the face of a Swiss Government’s member was actually photographed while walking around town with his assistant.

Google acted surprised by Switzerland’s reaction, even though it had to admit that the obscuration software is still failing to do its job once in a wile.

While engineers work on getting that one fixed, Switzerland decided it is better to shield its citizens and visitors from Big brother’s indiscrete eye.

Maybe we are one step closer to break the ultimate tabu. Maybe some researchers actually feel the mystery of life is about to be unveiled.

At least according to Dr. Craig Venter, an independent and controversial scientist who announced some sort of artificial life will be ready to be presented to the world in four months time.

By artificial life he means a man-made organism. Verner has been working on the project for about ten years now and feels he is about to reach the finish line. The project is very complex and consists in transplanting DNA into bacteria.

Last January Dr. Verner’s team built a whole bacterium’s genome form scratch. This man-made DNA was than transferred in a host cell. These experiments have been proven ineffective, at least until now. The reason for failure was that these synthetic genome was not able to develop the natural barriers against viruses. This process is called methylation.

This time the Verner team actually managed to remethylate the genome before placing it in the host cell.  And the experiment was a success.

This experiment raised many eyebrows, of course. The main objection was that calling this process “artificial life” was taking it too far: researchers are rebooting a new DNA code into a host cell, not creating a living organism from scratch.

Any interpretation you want to give to Dr. Verner’s research, it is sure the latest proof that science and medical science are reaching new turning points faster and faster.

Are we looking into a scientific boundaries-less future?

Visiting Swiss Fort Knox, Swiss DNA Bank’s storage partner

First comes a nice walk in Gstaad, one of the best-known and more exclusive skiing resorts in Switzerland.

Than comes a short and charming car ride.

Than comes a tiny iron door on the wall of the mountain next to Gstaad’s airport.

And then it’s like being in a James Bond movie. It’s a petty comparison, ok, but it gives the idea.

When Swiss DNA Bank’s officials where looking for a strong data storage partner the key world was: high standard Swiss security.

What can be more Swiss and more secure than a nuclear shelter embedded in the Swiss Alps?

Yes, Swiss Fort Knox data storage center happens to be located inside a former military nuclear shelter. Mr. Christoff Oschwald, one of the two parters which own the company, blended his IT and military background and created this unique server hosting facility.

Prior to the visit, which is privilege for customers and selected press, one must fill a request form. Than getting in is an experience in between boarding an airplane and waiting in line for an adventure Disneyland ride. Only this is for real.

A security guard, which accompanies the visitors throughout the tour, is in charge for ID checking, metal-detector inspection and weighting you. A strange but important procedure: it is the safest and fastest way to check wether you are heavier on your way out - that is, are taking something away from the facility.

Than the James Bond-like part starts: long corridors dug in the bare mountain’s rock lead the way to some times small, some times huge chambers. The servers are located at the heart of the facility and the number of half-a-meter- thick iron doors is impressive.

Swiss DNA Bank’s servers are located in the main server storage area. The environment is constantly cooled down by the water that flows from the glacier on top of the mountain, keeping the the inside temperature ideal for the machine’s well-functioning.

Swiss Fort Knox is a veteran in secure data storage providing, so together with such an infrastructure was Swiss DNA Bank’s obvious partnership choice.

If you are lucky enough to enter the facility, you’ll most likely receive the ultimate treat after the tour: a drink at the sky bar: Gstaad’s airport former control tower, which sticks out of the mountain’s side. Even the finale was really James Bond. I wanted to ask for a Martini, “shaken, not stirred”.

For further information on Swiss Fort Knox’s facility: www.swissfortknox.ch

No matter how much you paid your computer, how carefully, you store your CDs, how gentle you treat to your pen driver, sooner or later they’re going to break down, blow up or become obsolete support.

Take a regular sunday night home cinema experience: just a few years ago it was totally different. Not only because we had to wait the late Eighties for microwave popcorn, but also because our movies came in a big black box. The videotape.
Try find a VCR today to watch the kid’s first trip to Disneyland or that 1985 Back to the Future cassette. That recorder will play hard to get hiding in grandma’s cellar.

Personal information value is skyrocketing: any company today is ready to trick you into controversial terms of use to grant themselves access to your data and make it valuable B to B currency. So the key world to data storage is… professional data storage.

Surfing the web you realize that many companies are offering this kind of service. But what is it you need to look for to get good service and conditions? Here are the top features to look for in a data storage service:

Feature Set Practical features make uploading, storing, accessing and sharing your files easy. Online storage services should offer remote access, public and private file sharing, scheduled backup. All in an easy-to-use and clear layout.

Security Security is exceptionally important when storing data. Online storage services should offer encrypted file transfer and password protection. Latest technologies provide one-time-access code generator devices, more popular in e-banking than data storage. Technology is always improving, so it is important to choose the latest features available and not to compromise. Especially when it comes to your data’s privacy!

Service fees The top online storage services are not the free ones. Many big names free-of-charge services are shutting down because of the collapse of the ads market, which provided the cash to keep the services up and running. In order not to risk losing you data, it is safer to rely on a provider that charges you for the service. Hardware update is also crucial for good data maintenance. This can be done only by a company that has an steady income from its users. Advertisment is not someting you can relyon nowadays. Yahoo learned it the hard way: its GeoCities service, which provided free websites to its users, will be shut down Oct. 29th 2009 for this reason. users have been advised to move all their data on Yahoo’s pay-for service.

Ease of Use Online storage services should be user–friendly and not require a lot of instruction in order to upload and access files. Anyone should be able to learn the basic functions of the service in minutes.

Help/Support Good help and support is necessary with any service. Online storage services should provide self–help through FAQs, user manuals and tutorials. They should also provide customer support through email.

It took Christopher Columbus 36 days to reach America. Now you fly to New York in about 8 hours. The first commercial computer, the UNIVAC I costed about $1,550,000 and weighed 13 tons. How much did you spend for your laptop?

Tech devices have been getting smaller, faster and cheaper. We all noticed that. This development is becoming reality in the DNA research field as well, as Dr. Stephen Quake, a Stanford engineer, has recently proven the world.

He recently decoded is own genome sequence with less than $50,000 and just a three-member staff thanks to his Heliscope Single Molecule Sequencer. This innovative machine can sequence a human genome in four weeks with a small technical staff. Companies and labs who have been providing this service relied on hundreds of machines and large staff to get the job done. The most recently sequenced human genome before Dr. Quake’s costed about $250,000 to be decoded, and his machine brings the cost to less than a fifth of that. Not to mention that it is much faster. He said the much-discussed goal of the $1,000 genome could be attained in two or three years. That is the cost at which genome sequencing could start to become a standard part of medical practice. Once again, we are watching modern technology became obsolete live.

We are driving fast down the road of routine full genome sequencing. This will lead to a better understanding of our personal disease risk-factors and prevention.

“You have to have a strong stomach when you look at your own genome,” Dr. Quake said. Looking at his own, he discovered a variant associated with heard disease. Luckily he inherited only from one parent, which leaves him with another healthy gene copy.

The cost of the device is “about $1 million, depending on how hard you bargain,” Dr. Quake said. Funny enough it is about the same as the UNIVAC I. Will genome sequencing devices become part of household first-aid kits in a decade time?

The genome of the HIV virus, responsible for AIDS and AIDS-related infections, has been entirely decoded by a team of researchers at the University of North Carolina lead by professor Kevin Weeks. This is a huge step forward towards understanding how this deadly virus attacks the human body and, consequently, how it can be cured.

Prior to this scientific achievement retroviral drugs, the only known cure to HIV’s symptoms, not to the disease itself, where shaped to attack only few decoded parts of the virus’ genome. HIV, like many other viruses, is composed of a single stranded RNA, some sort of single-stranded DNA molecule. While DNA contains fixed and sequenced genetic information, the RNA is able to fold into complicated patterns. This makes the molecule much more difficult to analyze.

The next step in HIV RNA research will be to change its sequence in order to understand how this affects the virus and discover its weak sides.
“We are also beginning to understand tricks the genome uses to help the virus escape detection by the human host”, said Weeks.

This will help in starting antiretroviral treatment (ART) as early as possible in HIV positive people. A recent study conducted by professor Matthias Egger of the University of Berne in sub-Saharan Africa has shown that mortality rates of people starting HIV treatment are not much different than those of the general population if treatment is started before the immune system has been severely damaged.

According to the latest UNAIDS report on the global AIDS epidemic, released in July 2008, there have been significant gains in preventing new HIV infections worldwide, especially in heavily-plagued countries. But if HIV infections have globally dropped from 3 to 2.7 million, the rates of infections are rising in countries such as China, Indonesia, Kenya, Mozambique, Papua New Guinea, the Russian Federation, Ukraine, and Vietnam.
Some so-called first-world countries are experiencing a rise in infection as well, such as Germany, the United Kingdom and Australia.

Perpetual data storage will save the world lots of tomorrow’s hassles. NASA knows why.

The first lunar explorations date back to the end of the Sixties and have of course been recorded and photographed and shown to the world.
But where are those tapes today? What crucial data are they hiding and how could we access it today? A new professional figure is recently born and it specializes in… jurassic data recovery, so to speak. One of the leading experts in the field is Dennis Wingo, head of Skycorp Inc., an aerospace engineering company based in Huntsville, Ala. His later efforts have been put into running the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif. The goal is to recover and put to use as many of the original lunar landing images as possible.
Between 1966 and 1967 , the moon’s surface has been mapped inch-by-inch by the Lunar Orbiters probes with a resolution varying from one to 40 meters. Having the chance to recover these images today is of great scientific value: NASA’s goal is to compare this older data with recent one, in order to understand the number and size of meteor impacts that have occurred in the meantime and consequently calculate impact threats to Earth.
But doing this was all but easy: the images were shot on 70 mm. film that was automatically developed and scanned within the robot spacecraft. So Wingo’s work was first to find these 2-in tapes and than reconstruct the drivers to read them. These machinery was in fact mostly dumped in the ocean and is now covered in coral reef.
The task was not easy: this is half a ton refrigerator-resembling analog Ampex FR-900 reel-to-reel units we are talking about. Spare parts and components are no less than archeological findings, since these drivers have not been manufactured since 1975.
Wingo was able to obtain $250,000 from NASA to get the Ampex back from the dead. “We had to pay big bucks to get the bearings replaced, the motors rebuilt and rubber parts cast. We had to dip the motors in liquid nitrogen to get the bearings off,” he recalls. Having learned his lesson, what Wingo delivered to NASA was not the images themselves, but the raw data he was able to extract from the tapes.
“They would rather have the raw data so that someone even a thousand years from now could do their own processing,” he says.
Lots of work, lots of money and lots of time was invested in this recovery project, making it a great example of how we should treat data with respect and be sure to both update its format and save older supports for future studies and knowledge.
There is one important question to keep in mind after we snap a picture, write an e-mail, sign a document or listen to a song: will I be storing this data properly and safely afterwards? Otherwise… what’s really the point?