DNA evidence produces Probable Phenotypic Mugshots

The police in Columbia, S.C.,  released this sketch of a possible suspect based on DNA left at the crime scene. Parabon NanoLabs, which made the image, has begun offering DNA phenotyping services to law enforcement agencies.

NYT

 

 

"There were no known eyewitnesses to the murder of a young woman and her 3-year-old daughter four years ago. No security cameras caught a figure coming or going.

Nonetheless, the police in Columbia, S.C., last month released a sketch of a possible suspect. Rather than an artist’s rendering based on witness descriptions, the face was generated by a computer relying solely on DNA found at the scene of the crime.

It may be the first time a suspect’s face has been put before the public in this way, but it will not be the last. Investigators are increasingly able to determine the physical characteristics of crime suspects from the DNA they leave behind, providing what could become a powerful new tool for law enforcement.

Already genetic sleuths can determine a suspect’s eye and hair color fairly accurately. It is also possible, or might soon be, to predict skin color, freckling, baldness, hair curliness, tooth shape and age.

Computers may eventually be able to match faces generated from DNA to those in a database of mug shots. Even if it does not immediately find the culprit, the genetic witness, so to speak, can be useful, researchers say.

“That at least narrows down the suspects,” said Susan Walsh, an assistant professor of biology at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis who recently won a $1.1 million grant from the Department of Justice to develop such tools.

But forensic DNA phenotyping, as it is called, is also raising concerns. Some scientists question the accuracy of the technology, especially its ability to recreate facial images. Others say use of these techniques could exacerbate racial profiling among law enforcement agencies and infringe on privacy."

One thing they didn't mention was age. But I guess they can just run with "under 30," using base rates for violent offenders.

 

 



Marva Collins, RIP

10,000 people like her, starting their own private schools, could change the entire country in a single generation.

"Marva Collins, a former substitute teacher whose success at educating poor black students in a private school she founded made her a candidate for secretary of education and the subject of a television movie, died on Wednesday in a hospice near her home in South Carolina. She was 78.

Her death was confirmed by Hospice Care of the Lowcountry in Bluffton, S.C.

After working as a substitute teacher for 14 years in Chicago public schools, Ms. Collins cashed in her $5,000 in pension savings and opened Westside Preparatory School in 1975. The school originally operated in the basement of a local college and then, to be free of red tape (the same reason she said she had refused federal funds), in the second floor of her home.

She began with four students, including her daughter, charging $80 a month in tuition. Enrollment at the school, on Chicago’s South Side, grew to more than 200, in classes from prekindergarten through eighth grade. It remained in operation for more than 30 years.

Ms. Collins set high academic standards, emphasized discipline and promoted a nurturing environment. She taught phonics, the Socratic method and the classics and, she insisted, never expected her students to fail.

“Kids don’t fail,” she once said. “Teachers fail, school systems fail. The people who teach children that they are failures — they are the problem.”

Essay on Man, Epistle II: Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;

The proper study of mankind is man.

Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state,

A being darkly wise, and rudely great:

With too much knowledge for the sceptic side,

With too much weakness for the stoic's pride,

He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;

In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast;

In doubt his mind or body to prefer;

Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err;

Alike in ignorance, his reason such,

Whether he thinks too little, or too much:

Chaos of thought and passion, all confus'd;

Still by himself abus'd, or disabus'd;

Created half to rise, and half to fall;

Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;

Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd:

The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!

 

 

 

 

A link to the rest of the poem.

 

 

 

 

 

Mack the Knife -- Louis Armstrong (1965)

My 9-year old son heard Satchmo singing "Hello Dolly" the other day and commented, "What a peculiar voice." This prompted a brief lesson in American music history from me. Yesterday, he heard the song below and said, "Ah, Louie Armstrong."

Oh, the shark has pretty teeth, dear
And he shows them, pearly white
Just a jackknife has MacHeath, dear
And he keeps it out of sight

 

When the shark bites with his teeth, dear
Scarlet billows start to spread
Fancy gloves though wears MacHeath, dear
So theres not a trace, mmm of red

 

On the sidewalk, Sunday mornin', baby
Lies a body, oozin' life
Someone sneakin' around the corner
Is the someone, Mack the Knife?

 

From a tugboat, by the river
A cement bag's drooppin' down
Yeah, the cement's just for the weight, dear
Bet you Mack, he's back in town

 

Looky here Louie Miller, disappeared, dear
After drawing out his cash
And MacHeath spends like a sailor
Did our boy do somethin' rash?

 

Sukey Tawdry, Jenny Diver
Lotte Lenya, Sweet Lucy Brown

 Oh, the line forms on the right, dears
Now that Mack, he's back in town

 

Take it, Satch

 

Songwriters
BLITZSTEIN, MARC/BRECHT, EUGEN BERTHOLD/WEILL, KURT

 

 

 

"And the ghastly fire in Soho,
Seven children at a go-
In the crowd stands Mack the knife, but
He's not asked and doesn't know.
And the child bride in her nightie,
Whose assailant's still at large
Violated in her slumbers-
Mackie how much did you charge?"

-- from the 1970s Joseph Papp production

 

 

The Scarlet Letter: Hester Prynne ends her days doing psychotherapy

"But there was a more real life for Hester Prynne, here, in New England, that in that unknown region where Pearl had found a home. Here had been her sin; here, her sorrow; and here was yet to be her penitence. She had returned, therefore, and resumed,—of her own free will, for not the sternest magistrate of that iron period would have imposed it,—resumed the symbol of which we have related so dark a tale. Never afterwards did it quit her bosom. But, in the lapse of the toilsome, thoughtful, and self-devoted years that made up Hester’s life, the scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world’s scorn and bitterness, and became a type of something to be sorrowed over, and looked upon with awe, yet with reverence too. And, as Hester Prynne had no selfish ends, nor lived in any measure for her own profit and enjoyment, people brought all their sorrows and perplexities, and besought her counsel, as one who had herself gone through a mighty trouble. Women, more especially,—in the continually recurring trials of wounded, wasted, wronged, misplaced, or erring and sinful passion,—or with the dreary burden of a heart unyielded, because unvalued and unsought,—came to Hester’s cottage, demanding why they were so wretched, and what the remedy! Hester comforted and counselled them, as best she might. She assured them, too, of her firm belief, that, at some brighter period, when the world should have grown ripe for it, in Heaven’s own time, a new truth would be revealed, in order to establish the whole relation between man and woman on a surer ground of mutual happiness. Earlier in life, Hester had vainly imagined that she herself might be the destined prophetess, but had long since recognized the impossibility that any mission of divine and mysterious truth should be confided to a woman stained with sin, bowed down with shame, or even burdened with a life-long sorrow. The angel and apostle of the coming revelation must be a woman, indeed, but lofty, pure, and beautiful; and wise; moreover, not through dusky grief, but the ethereal medium of joy; and showing how sacred love should make us happy, by the truest test of a life successful to such an end!"

Helicopter parents and college students

Did you know that the parents of many college students choose their majors for them? And even plan their course schedules? On the one hand, I can sympathize -- college is insanely overpriced and there must be a strong desire to protect one's investment. But on the other hand, turning college into a four-year extension of high school seems to defeat the purpose.

Globe and Mail

"When I went to university I called home once a week, on Sunday night, on a pay phone at the end of the hall that I shared with 29 other girls. We talked for about three minutes. They knew nothing about my life, and that was fine with me. Today, parents (especially moms) text their kids 20 times a day. They know the smallest details of their children’s lives.

“A lot of parents can’t separate from their kids,” says my friend Barbara Moses, who’s a career counsellor. “Their identity is overly tied to their children’s success and failure. I hear mothers say, ‘We are having trouble finding a job.’ ”

One reason “we” are having trouble finding a job, according to Mr. Laurie, is that expectations are far too high. “Do what you love,” we urge our children, as if there’s a dream job out there just for them. But “do what you love” is probably the worst career advice in the world. It implants the notion that doing what you love can produce a sustainable livelihood – which isn’t always the case, alas. It also sends the message that if you don’t wind up doing what you love, then you’re a flop. That’s how you get freelance writers who are still living in a basement apartment at age 35 and wondering why things haven’t worked out the way they were supposed to.

Sometimes you have to compromise in life, but we don’t want to break this crushing news to our children. Personally, I’ve met far too many young adults who graduate from university with plans to work in development/save the world/find a career in environmental sustainability. There’s nothing wrong with these noble aspirations. What’s amazing is that no adults have ever levelled with them.

Reality will bite soon enough, of course. The idea that your job should be your passion is a misguided romantic notion that only the upper-middle-class can afford to entertain. In fact, most people wind up in areas that nobody ever talks about. “Insurance is a very interesting field,” Mr. Laurie assured me. “But no one says ‘I want to go into insurance.’ ”"

Lethal Aggression in Pan (chimpanzees and bonobos)

This is old news, as old as the Gombe Chimpanzee War reported by Jane Goodall. But most folks still don't want to believe it. Nature is red in tooth and claw.

Nature

"Most victims were members of different communities from the attackers (n = 62 of 99 cases; 63%) and thus not likely to be close kin²⁶. This difference is particularly striking given that chimpanzees could potentially attack members of their own community on a daily basis, but rarely encounter members of other communities (for example, 1.9% of follow days at Kanyawara²⁷).

...

Several robust patterns emerge from these data. Killing was most common in eastern chimpanzees and least common among bonobos. Among chimpanzees, killings increased with more males and higher population density, whereas none of the three human impact variables had an obvious effect. Male chimpanzees killed more often than females, and killed mainly male victims; attackers most frequently killed unweaned infants; victims were mainly members of other communities (and thus unlikely to be close kin); and intercommunity killings typically occurred when attackers had an overwhelming numerical advantage.  

The most important predictors of violence were thus variables related to adaptive strategies: species; age–sex class of attackers and victims; community membership; numerical asymmetries; and demography. We conclude that patterns of lethal aggression in Pan show little correlation with human impacts, but are instead better explained by the adaptive hypothesis that killing is a means to eliminate rivals when the costs of killing are low."