Author: Tracy R. Walsh

by Tracy R. Walsh

We’re one step closer to it:

Sometime in the future, technicians will go over the scene of the crime. They’ll uncover some DNA evidence and take it to the lab. And when the cops need to get a picture of the suspect, they won’t have to ask eyewitnesses to give descriptions to a sketch artist – they’ll just ask the technicians to get a mugshot from the DNA.

That, at least, is the potential of new research being published [yesterday] in PLOS Genetics. In that paper, a team of scientists describe how they were able to produce crude 3D models of faces extrapolated from a person’s DNA. “We show that facial variation with regard to sex, ancestry, and genes can be systematically studied with our methods, allowing us to lay the foundation for predictive modeling of faces,” the researchers wrote in their paper. “Such predictive modeling could be forensically useful; for example, DNA left at crime scenes could be tested and faces predicted in order to help to narrow the pool of potential suspects.”

Sara Reardon explains:

[Mark] Shriver and his colleagues took high-resolution images of the faces of 592 people of mixed European and West African ancestry living in the United States, Brazil and Cape Verde. They used these images to create 3D models, laying a grid of more than 7,000 data points on the surface of the digital face and determining by how much particular points on a given face varied from the average: whether the nose was flatter, for instance, or the cheekbones wider. They had volunteers rate the faces on a scale of masculinity and femininity, as well as on perceived ethnicity.

Next, the authors compared the volunteers’ genomes to identify points at which the DNA differed by a single base, called a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP). … Then, taking into account the person’s sex and ancestry, they calculated the statistical likelihood that a given SNP was involved in determining a particular facial feature. This pinpointed 24 SNPs across 20 genes that were significantly associated with facial shape. A computer program the team developed using the data can turn a DNA sequence from an unknown individual into a predictive 3D facial model.

Peter Aldhous notes the research opens up “the intriguing possibility of producing facial reconstructions of extinct human relatives”:

Even for Neanderthals, where there are numerous fossil skulls, palaeoanthropologists have little idea about the soft tissues of the face. “We don’t know how far out their noses extended,” says Shriver. This means that artists’ impressions of what the species looked like are partly guesswork. Shriver hopes that there will be enough overlap between the Neanderthal and modern human genomes for variants that influence face shape to start filling in such gaps.

(Image via PLOS Genetics)

by Tracy R. Walsh

Andrew Cohen applauds the coalition of animal rights groups, civil liberties organizations, and media groups challenging Idaho’s three-week-old “ag-gag” bill:

The statute creates the crime of “interference with agricultural production” by punishing anyone who makes an unauthorized “audio or video recordings” of what transpires inside food processing facilities in Idaho with up to one year in prison. It is designed, as its lengthy legislative record suggests, to help Big Ag prevent the public dissemination of images of animal abuse or unsafe conditions. Images like those posted in April 2011 as part of an award-winning investigation into the state’s dairy industry by the Boise Weekly. Or the video of farm workers in Idaho kicking and stomping on cows that the Boise Weekly posted in October 2012. It was this investigative work that caused one concerned lawmaker to lament recently not the cruelty, or unclean food, but the injustice of these farm operators being “tried and convicted in the press or on YouTube.”

Ken Paulson of the First Amendment Center weighs in:

There is a certain redundancy to all the ag-gag bills. They invariably try to limit investigative work by criminalizing things that already are criminal. …  You violate the law if you enter a farm by “force, threat, misrepresentation or trespass.” Each and every one of those is already prohibited by multiple statutes. If you were trying to eliminate coercion and fraud and trespass, you would not need to pass this bill. If you were trying to limit the scrutiny of the agriculture industry, you would need to pass this bill.

It is not only constitutionally suspect, it’s terrible public policy on the part of the legislature. Give me the very best argument for why this needs to be in place and then tell me why you wouldn’t then pass similar legislation for day-care centers. Would anyone suggest that you would send someone to prison for documenting child abuse? Is there anyone who is going to run on that platform?

Katie Valentine argues such laws have already had a chilling effect elsewhere:

In the six other states that have ag gag laws on the books, activists and journalists have said they’ve stopped attempting to document abuse on farm operations for fear of prosecution. This chilling effect means that the public in these states has little chance of seeing footage that can expose cruel and dangerous practices on agricultural operations and lead to major change in the agriculture industry. In 2008, for instance, an undercover video exposed “downer” cows, which can’t stand on their own and are sometimes diseased, being used for beef. The video led to the largest meat recall in US history and prompted the US to ban the use of downer cows for meat.

by Tracy R. Walsh

In some cities, at least:

When you factor in all the expenses for training, feeding, stabling, and outfitting, funding a single police horse is decidedly expensive. And horse units, usually deployed at large public events, perform poorly on typical accountability metrics like arrest rates. With so many more cost effective alternatives, mounted police have been forced to make the case that their units still belong.

Last month, Portland, Oregon, became the latest city to consider dropping its horse program. City Commissioner Steve Novick, hoping to redirect the $860,000 the city chips in annually to other budget concerns, had some harsh words for the department’s fleet:

“The mounted patrol is largely ornamental.” He explained to his fellow commissioners, “The primary justification for the unit, as I understand it, is ‘crowd control.’ But marauding crowds have not seemed to be a major source of crime in Portland for quite some time.” In Waterloo, Ontario, budgetary concerns similarly led to the disbanding of its program. And in New York City, there are signs Mayor Bill de Blasio’s high-profile campaign against the city’s “inhumane” horse-drawn carriages could extend to the NYPD’s mounted unit.

Blake Zeff thinks de Blasio would be foolish to push the carriage issue so soon after winning a battle over pre-K funding:

Like President Obama, the mayor expended a tremendous amount of chits early in his first term on an enormous new social program that looks likely to pass by a hair, with alterations to the initial design. … If you’re the City Hall senior staff right now, you could sure use a steady, stable few months of quiet, if you can control it. It’s not the time for more fights.

(Photo by Flickr user Campra)

by Tracy R. Walsh

Sophie Quinton looks at an attempt to simplify the notoriously complex Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA):

The Education Department has made it easier for students and families to fill out the FAFSA on their own by removing repetitive questions and streamlining the online application using methods common to tax-preparation software. The online form—which almost all students now use – skips questions that don’t apply to that student, alerts them to glaring errors, and will automatically input tax information from the Internal Revenue Service. It takes most students about a half-hour to complete.

But Laura M. Colarusso isn’t too impressed with the new form:

[T]here are still 100 questions on the FAFSA’s six pages, many of which have several parts and ask for sensitive financial data beyond what’s required even on a tax return. Some are straightforward, but many are so convoluted they require their own separate sections of instructions.

Take, for example, Question 45, which has 10 parts.

It requires that students list any “untaxed income not reported in items 45a through 45h, such as workers’ compensation, disability, etc. Also include the untaxed portions of health savings accounts from IRS Form 1040—line 25. Don’t include extended foster care benefits, student aid, earned income credit, additional child tax credit, welfare payments, untaxed Social Security benefits, Supplemental Security Income, Workforce Investment Act educational benefits, on-base military housing or a military housing allowance, combat pay, benefits from flexible spending arrangements (e.g. cafeteria plans), foreign income exclusion or credit for federal tax on special fuels.”

And that’s just Part I.

Update from a reader:

My kids are hopefully college bound in the next couple years, and after doing the research on funding college tuition, I am currently engrossed with rearranging my assets just so that I won’t have to spend a big chunk of my savings on tuition. If you own anything – a vacation home for instance, that was part of my retirement plan – you get nothing, nada. The colleges might just as well be raiding your retirement fund. So now I have to sell real estate, pay off debt, find alternative investments, make big changes in my portfolio just so that I can send my kids to college without wrecking my retirement plans or sending them into a debt spiral.

We have to jump through so many hoops just for affordable health care and education. Is this what America has become? Every man for himself? I envy the citizens of other nations – even if they do have to pay higher taxes – because they don’t have to worry so much, or expend so much energy, to take care of their health and education needs.

An expected update from another:

Really? This person is upset at the idea that he/she might have to spend savings to pay for the kids’ college education? Really??? Might I suggest that paying for your child’s education is something you should do if you can? Financial aid is there for families that do not, in fact, have second homes waiting for them when they retire; people without substantial real estate holdings and stock portfolios; people who might hold jobs well into their 70s just to pay off the loans they take to ensure their kids get the college education they did not?

Is filling out the FAFSA a pain in the tail? Sure. Most “help” comes at the cost of time and effort. Streamlining would be a good thing, but making it easier for wealthy kids to get aid so their parents don’t have to use their savings? Not really what the whole thing is about.

by Tracy R. Walsh

In an excerpt from his new book Caffeinated, Murray Carpenter reveals how military researchers are developing various alternatives to coffee:

One of the buildings at Natick has a brightly lit room called the Warfighter Cafe. That’s where Betty Davis, who leads the Performance Optimization Research Team, showed me a small table covered with snack foods – applesauce, beef jerky, energy bars, and nutritious “tube foods,” which taste like pudding but come in a package that looks like a large tube of Crest. The products have two things in common. They are formulated for soldiers (“warfighters” in the current Department of Defense lexicon). And they all contain added caffeine.

Davis showed me a plastic-wrapped ration, about the size of a small hardcover book. It’s called a First Strike ration, a concentrated package of nutrition designed for soldiers moving quickly with minimal gear. The First Strike rations include plenty of caffeine. For starters, there is Stay Alert gum, with five pieces per pack, each piece containing 100 milligrams. This was originally developed by a subsidiary of Wrigley, working with researchers at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. And there is Zapplesauce, caffeinated applesauce. It comes in a plastic pouch and packs 110 milligrams of caffeine. There is a mocha-flavored First Strike Nutritious Energy Bar, also packing 110 milligrams of caffeine. Some of the rations also include instant coffee (which soldiers sometimes put between their cheek and gum, like a dip of Skoal, a sort of do-it-yourself version of the Grinds Coffee Pouches) or caffeinated mints.