Category Archives: Transhuman News

With the aid of DNA evidence, a North Side man has been charged in a string of brutal sexual assaults across Chicago that stretched back to 2003 and included two he allegedly committed with his brother, authorities said Tuesday.

Leondo Joseph, 38, and his brother LB Joseph, 29, appeared in bond court over the weekend, where they were ordered held without bail for their alleged roles in the case which experts said illustrates the potential and the shortcomings of the state's DNA evidence collection and testing.

Women were terrorized and sexually assaulted in their apartments or forced into vehicles by threat of violence in the six attacks, which occurred in the city's Lakeview and Brighton Park neighborhoods and the community areas of North Lawndale and Belmont Cragin, court documents reveal.

Leondo Joseph, arrested Saturday night at his home in the 2500 block of North Halsted Street, is charged in all six attacks, according to records. LB Joseph is charged in the two most recent attacks in 2011 and 2012. Both brothers also face aggravated kidnapping charges.

Chicago detectives linked the brothers to the assaults through Illinois State Police crime lab examinations of all six assaults, prosecutors said in court at the bond hearing. In addition, some victims have identified the brothers, and Leondo Joseph gave statements regarding some of the cases, prosecutors said.

The number of years covered by the assaults nine was noteworthy, though victim's advocates point out that rapists, including in acquaintance assaults, are often repeat offenders.

But the experts also pointed to the fact that Chicago police were not notified by the crime lab until this year that the 2012 case was linked to the other five attacks, which was critical information because in the 2012 attack, Chicago police stopped a vehicle carrying the two brothers, though they were not charged.

"With a stranger case, DNA has a different kind of function, to identify and to connect cases to each other," said Sharmili Majmudar, executive director of Rape Victim Advocates. "Then the question becomes are we allocating enough resources to address and process the DNA we do receive through these kits in keeping with the trust the survivors are placing in the system.

"The crime lab is not resourced fully. There is definitely not a 'Law and Order: SVU' turnaround," she said, referring to the police procedural TV drama. "It is nowhere near what people expect."

Officials at the crime lab were not available Tuesday afternoon to answer questions about the case. The turnaround time at the lab has long been a concern of police, who rely on the work-ups.

Go here to see the original:
DNA leads to charges in 6 rapes dating back to 2003

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

2-Oct-2014

Contact: Beth Parada apps@botany.org American Journal of Botany @Botanical_

Molecular studies of plants often depend on high-quantity and high-quality DNA extractions. This can be quite difficult in plants, however, due to a diversity of compounds and physical properties found in plants. "Tannins, tough fibrous material, and/or secondary compounds can interfere with DNA isolation," explains Dr. Thomas Givnish, principal investigator of a new study published by Jackson Moeller et al. in the October issue of Applications in Plant Sciences (available for free viewing at http://www.bioone.org/doi/pdf/10.3732/apps.1400048).

This is further complicated by the fact that different plant groups have different compounds and, therefore, different DNA extraction methods may be necessary to obtain sufficient high-molecular-weight DNA depending on the species you are working with.

Moeller, Givnish, and their colleagues at the University of WisconsinMadison evaluated a new DNA isolation technique and compared it to two often-used DNA extraction methods for plant tissues. The new technique is based on MagnaCel paramagnetic cellulose particles (PMC), and was originally designed and developed for forensic applications in which only minute amounts of DNA are present.

The utility of the PMC method was compared with both a silica column technique (DNeasy Plant Mini Kit) and the cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) method. This comparison was done across a wide range of flowering plants, from lilies to sunflowers. The PMC method was found to be more efficient and, unlike the CTAB technique, does not involve the use of hazardous chemicals. Most important, DNA yield from PMC was double that of either DNeasy or CTAB.

"We were eager to explore techniques that might reduce the amount of time and labor required to obtain genomic DNA reliably from leaf samples from taxa with a very wide range of leaf chemistries," says Givnish.

Statistical analyses were conducted to test for significant differences in quality and quantity of DNA obtained between extraction techniques and the different species tested. "We feel this study provides a telling test of the efficacy of paramagnetic cellulose DNA isolation relative to other techniques. We found that Promega's MagnaCel DNA extraction kit substantially outperformed CTAB and DNeasy extractionsproviding an average of twice the DNA yield across 25 plant species in 21 families and producing more consistent DNA purity based on absorbance ratios at 260 nm vs. 280 nm and 230 nm," explains Givnish. "The advantage of the MagnaCel approach is especially high at low DNA concentrations."

###

The rest is here:
Twice the DNA yield in less time

LEIPZIG, Germany, Oct. 1 (UPI) -- Throughout human history monogamy has been a sexual philosophy largely eschewed by men, yet demanded of women. This was especially so for men of early human societies, who preferred the company of numerous wives.

We know this much thanks to the research skills of several generations of anthropologists. And now, this understanding has been confirmed by DNA analysis and the work of researchers in the field of human evolution. As a recent study of human DNA revealed, humanity has absorbed the genetics of many more mothers than fathers -- further proof the men of early societies fathered children with multiple women.

"[Historically] more of the women were reproducing than the men," Mark Stoneking, a biological anthropologist at Germany's Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, told Live Science. "This often happens in human societies, because not all men are able to afford wives, or sometimes a few men will have many wives."

Stoneking and his colleagues used a new technique for observing the variances within the paternally inherited Y chromosome, passed down from father to son, and the mitochondrial DNA, the genes inherited from mothers. After collecting DNA samples of 623 males sourced from 51 populations around the world, including Australian, European, and American populations, researchers were able to show that females not only reproduced more frequently than males, but that women also migrated more often.

Because women of early societies often traveled for marriages, moving in with their husbands in a faraway village, females spread their DNA around geographically, resulting in fewer variances from population to population. Men and their sons, on the other hand, tended to stay put, enabling male DNA to remain more distinct from place to place.

Researchers hope these new DNA analysis techniques can continue to be used to learn more about the history of humanity's fathers and mothers.

The study was published last week in the journal Investigative Genetics.

2014 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Any reproduction, republication, redistribution and/or modification of any UPI content is expressly prohibited without UPI's prior written consent.

Go here to read the rest:
DNA suggests humanity has more mothers than fathers