a

The first monetary settlement for misuse of DNA sample has been payed after  four years court battle by the Arizona State University.
The beneficiaries of the $700,000 fine are 41 members of the ancient Indian Tribe Havasupai, who have been living in almost complete isolation for centuries in an enchanted corner deep in the Grand Canyon. What brought the two counterparts together was a cry for help from the Havasupai people: the tribe had been struck by an devastating rate of diabetes for years and asked the University to run DNA tests to spot the causes of the epidemic.

It is only years later that one of the few members of the tribe to have attended College, Carletta Tilousi, 39, a member of the tribal council, learned that heir blood samples had been used to study many other things, including mental illness and theories of the tribe’s geographical origins that contradict their traditional stories.

The case raised the question of whether scientists had taken advantage of a vulnerable population, and genetics experts and civil rights advocates say it may also fuel a growing debate over researchers’ responsibility to communicate the range of personal information that can be gleaned from DNA at a time when it is being collected on an ever-greater scale for research and routine medical care.
“I’m not against scientific research,” said Mrs. Tilousi. “I just want it to be done right. They used our blood for all these studies, people got degrees and grants, and they never asked our permission.”

Researchers and institutions that receive federal funds are required to receive “informed consent” from subjects, ensuring that they understand the risks and benefits before they participate. But such protections were designed primarily for research that carried physical risks, like experimental drug trials or surgery. When it comes to mining DNA, the rules — and the risks — are murkier.

Is it necessary, for instance, to ask someone who has donated DNA for research on heart disease if that DNA can be used for Alzheimer’s or addiction research?

Many scientists say no, arguing that the potential benefit from unencumbered biomedical research trumps the value of individual control.

As for any new discipline, the legal system is showing its flaws in terms of proper DNA use regulation.

T-Mobile UK experienced earlier this week a massive breach into its data base: a yet undisclosed number of customers records have been stolen and, most likely, sold to an unidentified third party.

“The number of records involved runs into the millions and it appears that substantial amounts of money changed hands”, said in a document Britain’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) acknowledging the breach. The data included customers’ personal information and contract expiration dates. The UK’s Data Protection Act prohibits the selling of data without prior permission from the owner. The ICO said in its report that it believes T-Mobile competitors used the information to call customers prior to the expiration of their contracts and offer them deals with a new operator.

Well. guess what: the thief was a T-Mobile UK insider, not some random hacker looking for easy money. This fact highlights the problem of the threat posed by insiders, especially during an uncertain global economy, which has resulted in layoffs and mergers.

When Swiss DNA Bank’s storage system was designed, one of the questions was: who can access the data our uses will upload? The answer we came up with was no one except its legitimate owner. Our service provides a digital safety box only the user can access. There is no way an insider could ever enter a Forever account and share its content with a third party. It is just impossible.

That is because there are three separate keys to decrypt the information and each one is in a different Swiss DNA Bank’s trustee hands. Because your privacy is always our priority.

Last week an every-day matter such as a Facebook status turned into something more: a rock-solid alibi. It happened to a 19-year-old Newyorker, who has been identified by a robbery witness during a police line-up.

After a couple of weeks in jail, his attorney submitted his computer’s activity record to the court. His Facebook status was updated from his 12-miles-away home computer just one minute after the crime was committed.

The case of course raised both eyebrows and approvals. The important aspect we want to focus on is the increasing credibility on-line records are gaining even on the legal side. If something like a status update on a social network can get you out of jail, we believe that on-line digital document storage is getting closer and closer to becoming tomorrows one and only document storage solution.

If you think about it, the judge ruled the Facebook records as more reliable compared to an eyewitness deposition. So why should an on-line stored will, for instance, be less valid than a regular one. Nothing can be more precise and trackable than a computer record, leaving little chance a fraud is taking place.

At Swiss DNA Bank we believe firmly in the value of the data you store securely and forever in our nuclear shelter. The extra assurance that comes from the DNA sample storage makes it impossible to fake one’s identity.

We believe we were actually able to set the most effective and safe data storage and the the strongest link between the information and its owner.

The rules that regulate data storage vary around the world. A hot topic on the web. How long exactly data processing and storage companies have to keep them in their facilities before deleting them? This is an open issue not only to smaller data centers, but to big Internet players such as Google and Microsoft as well.

While researching on this core topic for Swiss DNA Bank, I stumbled across a statement by Brad Smith, senior vice president for Microsoft, who claims that a major overhaul in the way that electronic data is stored is needed. The problem roots in diverging ruling from country to country. Whilst one could only ask for data to be saved for six months, another could rule for a year’s storage. “If that’s the case, it’s very difficult to locate a data centre in one country and provide that service to consumers in another country” he explained.

There are too many standards around the world, making the situation confusing and leaving users with little, if none, assurance on how long their data will be preserved.

Of course, at Swiss DNA Bank we solved the problem by giving our users the unique Forever Storage guarantee thanks to our Perpetual Financial Engine. But I’ll definitely keep an eye on the subject and keep you posted.

Luca Boschin

COO Swiss DNA Bank

The beginning of this week left many Americans stranded without any sidekick support. More specifically, I’m talking about T-Mobile’s phone data backup failure.

“Sidekick” is a celebrity’s-pick telephone and e-mail device distributed by T-Mobile, brought to fame by a very-out-there advertising campaign which featured Paris Hilton, Snoop Dogg and other big celeb names.

The data stored in these phones was actually remotely hosted by Microsoft’s servers, which means that users’ phonebooks, SMS, e-mails, etc.,  were not stored inside the phones themselves but rather, on cloud servers. Very convenient at first glance: you could have hundreds of names, numbers, addresses and messages handy without actually over-challenging your device. All you needed to retrieve data was an Internet connection.

But apparently, the servers crashed. And for some reason, still undisclosed, the backup servers crashed as well. Or at least someone forgot to press the “Save” button.

So, thousands of users woke up to a blank phone.

T-Mobile stated there is apparently nothing they can do to retrieve the lost data, and it is refunding a paltry $20 to those struck by the Web lightening.

What does that tell us?

It tells us that there is no such thing as a too-expensive or over-protected data backup system. Knowledge, information and contacts are some of our most precious assets and must be regarded as such.

This is why we here at Swiss DNA Bank never get tired of stressing the fundamental importance of safe and guaranteed backup.

The idea of the revolutionary storage of data forever came from my personal need to feel secure about information storage. I wanted to know that my memories and my biological mark were in a safe place that my heirs could access one day.

There are many other backup services out there. But where are their servers physically located? Who is managing them? What happens in case a disaster hits the storage location?

These are questions that we should ask ourselves when we put our data in someone else’s hands.

Can they provide you with straight answers and Swiss-quality assurances?

Well, we certainly can.

Luca Boschin

COO Swiss DNA Bank

There are some things in life we just take for granted and feel are absolutely necessary. Life insurance is one of them. No one would take the chance of leaving their family in financial difficulties should something happen to them.

But where does the concept of life insurance originate?

Apparently, the first form of life insurance was developed in ancient Rome and in ancient India. People would form what they called “burial clubs”, which, in the event of any unexpected death of one of their members, would pay for the funeral expenses and help the family with some money. After the fall of the Roman empire in 450 A.D., life insurance was long forgotten, most likely because it was incompatible with the religious fanaticism of the time and because of the lack of a solid social structure. Nevertheless, some forms of insurance were in existence during the Middle Ages to cover risks like fire, flood, theft or imprisonment.

Modern life insurance was developed in Britain in the 17th century, as it was the only European country where this activity was legal. Lloyd’s of London, or as they were known at the time, Lloyd’s Coffee House, was the place where merchants and ship owners met to discuss business. And it was where the concept was developed.

The subsequent US life insurance business was built on the British model. The Presbyterian Synod of Philadelphia sponsored the first life insurance corporation in America in 1759, benefiting its ministers and their dependents.

The many American religious groups strongly opposed life insurance until about 1840. After that date the market flourished. Disasters such as the 1835 New York fire or the 1871 disaster in Chicago raised awareness for the need for a strong insurance system.

But what about an insurance on afterlife? What about insuring not only your financial possessions, but also you entire life’s experience? Today you pay a regular monthly policy and you know that one day your heirs will benefit from a certain amount of money. But another very important thing we risk is losing is all the knowledge that we have gained over time, all the pictures of the places we have been to, all the experiences we have lived.

These are very important and valuable assets that you will want future generations to benefit from.

Swiss DNA Bank service is the ultimate life insurance. You can literally store your entire life in Swiss DNA Bank’s secure server, knowing that the subscription fee you initially paid is invested in order to generate annual revenue which will cover  the expenses…Forever.

What is experience? According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, experience means the conscious events that make up an individual life, the events that make up the conscious past of a community or nation or humankind generally, the direct observation of or participation in events as a basis of knowledge or the fact or state of having been affected by or gained knowledge through direct observation or participation.

These are the most significant definitions of this everyday word that we often use, not being truly aware of the amount of knowledge, emotions and memories it refers to. Huge amounts of data that we store in our head as we live our lives.

Each and every one of us has a constant need to share his or her experiences and memories with the people around us, our beloved ones or just someone we happen to connect with for whatever reason. Books, movies and music are the most common and oldest means with which humans have shared their experiences and thoughts with others.

Browsing the Internet, one comes across thousands of blogs, a little window we decide to open to the world to let everyone know what we did yesterday or show our the pictures from our vacation.

Because what we need to remember is that our need to express ourselves and tell our story applies to little everyday things as well.

I came across an interesting website called Experience project, where anyone can subscribe and write a down a moment of their life, share a secret or a thought over a random topic. At humanexperience.stanford.edu, people’s lives and stories are told with a different, more academic approach, but with the same deep-down need to tell, remember, teach and learn from others.

But where does this need to share and perpetuate our experience actually come from? As doctor Robert Firestone, from Psychology Today, states that “human beings, unlike other species, are cursed with a conscious awareness of their own mortality.”

Knowing that we are on this planet for only a limited period of time, we feel a need to leave traces of our passage. Often we don’t get enough time with our children or grandchildren or friends to tell our story in the way we would like to, to show them all our pictures, to read aloud all our notes.

Tools like Swiss DNA Bank, a secure data storage that provides a will service in order to pass on all information to generations to come, is the ultimate answer to human fear of disappearing and being forgotten.

The US House Financial Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations just concluded the hearings on how technology can be the ultimate tool to improve financial services and TARP, the American government program to purchase assets and equities from financial institutions in order to strengthen a crippled financial sector.

The focus of the discussion was on the need for a stronger database and transparency. “All around us, we see evidence that the proper use of technology can generate immensely valuable results while at the same time improving efficiency and reducing costs,” said Dilil Krishna, a specialist in risk and financial management for Teradata financial services, during his testimony. “Technology has advanced to the point where the oversight of large, complex financial enterprises is now feasible,” Krishna said. “In fact, large organizations around the globe routinely use technology for financial risk management. One of the key areas in this regard is in the management of risk data and analytics.”

Unfortunately, strong data management skills were not enough. Financial institutions and data recovery firms must guarantee another key factor in the game: transparency and trust. Without these two elements, there is no way financial data can be put to good use. What happened in the 2008 financial meltdown was that banks stopped trusting each other because of the unveiling of plies of fake analytic results, of fake or blown-up financial data and information. At the height of Lehman Brothers’ collapse, no one trusted the financial products of others any more. Every bank, every find, every asset manager was just trying to sniff out what other surreal inventory or toxic asset they will have to face around the next corner. Credit stopped flowing and the whole system basically seized, and licked its wounds.

By employing technology that can deliver greater transparency, financial regulators will be able to have a better feeling and stronger monitoring over the real situation, and spotting irregularities and scams will eventually become easier.

Krishna adds that building greater transparency is not as far away and unachievable as it sounds: “Examples of relative transparency are all around us. Every day, financial analysts and ordinary investors rely on financial reports issued by companies. An even more practical example is the implicit belief we all have that the account statements we receive from our bank accurately reflect the balance of all our transactions.”

Keeping up with issuing and demanding clear statements and balances is every player’s right and responsibility. And will always be cheaper and easier to handle than multi-billion dollar cracks and hundreds of people being fired overnight. Again, proper data management seems to become the focus of more and more core fields of today’s world.

Just when you thought the over 70,000 phone apps on the market covered every single entertainment, scientific or news-spreading purpose possible, the need for new applications grows.

Last week, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology hosted a scientific convention focused on a new field: the human-environment mobile-based interactions.

Cell phones, iPods and any other portable computing device are about to become the ultimate low-budget environmental monitoring tool for researchers worldwide.

Dale Joachim, a visiting scientist at MIT’s Media Lab, organized the event, with funding from the National Science Foundation. “How do we rethink human-environment interactions in light of these mobile devices?’’

For instance, Carlos Corrada-Bravo, director of the Computer Science Program at the University of Puerto Rico, programmed his iPod Touch to record birds and frogs in remote areas of Puerto Rico and Hawaii. He modified the consumer device by adding an extra battery and an off-the-shelf microphone. A less than $20 investment allows professor Corrada-Bravo to record the sounds of the forest and study the fauna.

Richard Fletcher, a Media Lab research scientist, envisions instead a cheap low-wattage system incorporating sensors in order to detect soil moisture or pH, wired to data-storage hubs with Bluetooth radios. Field assistants will be able to collect and forward scientific data using just a cell phone.

The era of scientific expeditions with porters carrying heavy machinery deep into the forest may soon come to an end.

As fascinating as the new technological frontiers may seem, the scientific community raised some concerns, such as a potential lack of bandwidth in remote areas, battery supplies, waste of electricity, etc.

Joachim, one of the strongest supporters of this direction, does not dismiss the challenges, but believes they can be overcome. In this new “digital ecology’’ approach, millions of cell phones can interact with powerful servers and provide a never-before-seen flow of data. “Now we have a different beast,’’ Joachim said. “We have a beast with a thousand eyes.’’

On-line archives are just blossoming and increasing in number. Since the Internet became the number one source of information on the planet, new web sites telling us fascinating stories are continuously flourishing.

The latest on-line historic archive was made in the UK and features the names of over 100,000 British prisoners of war during WWII.

The details of the Brits captured by the Nazis where until now held at the National Archives in London, after being compiled by the Germans under the 1929 Geneva Convention.

The name of the web site, specialized in family trees, genealogy and census records, is Ancestry.co.uk.

Daniel Jones from Ancestry.co.uk comments: “The unwavering spirit of British Prisoners of War was astounding, with many trying to escape their captors at every opportunity in order to rejoin the war effort. This collection of records will be a way for people to find out more about the heroes in their family.”

The list includes some well-known names, such as Welsh actor Lieutenant Desmond Llewelyn, better known for playing Q in the James Bond movies. He was imprisoned from 1940 to 1945 at Oflag IX-A/Z in Rotenburg, Germany.

Other notable prisoners whose records are now online include, blue blood George Henry Hubert Lascelles. Lascelles – known as Viscount Harewood – was seventh in line to the throne when he was caught in 1944. He was sent to Colditz until the end of the war. He is now 40th in line.

Ancestry.co.uk is now offering a 14 day free trial to the service to get the general public to know more about the fascinating stories on WWII and its soldiers. The site claims to be the first-ever to open such archives to the public.