When it comes to storing images, DNA strands could be a sustainable, stable alternative to hard drives. Researchers at EPFL are developing a new image compression standard designed specifically for this emerging technology.

Within a few years, we'll collectively be taking more than 2 trillion pictures each year. Some of the images will remain on our smartphones, but many of them will be stored in the cloud, filling up data centers' magnetic tapes and hard drives. Yet these systems have limits in terms of how much data they can store and for how long—not to mention their environmental impact.

One alternative could be to store images on DNA. "We estimate that a single gram of DNA could hold around 215 million gigabytes of data," says Touradj Ebrahimi, an image processing expert and head of EPFL's Multimedia Signal Processing Group. "That's the equivalent of 860,000 external hard drives with a capacity of 250 Gb—or enough to store around 50,000 pictures—each."

Thousands of years of data storage

DNA contains all the information that organisms need to live, grow and reproduce. And it can store this information for a very long time. In 2022, scientists discovered DNA in the Greenland ice sheet that was 2 million years old.

Today, scientists are able to read and write this "code of life" thanks to advances in DNA sequencing and synthesis. DNA strands encode genetic information through specific sequences of four nucleotides: adenine (A), thymine (T), cytosine (C) and guanine (G).

When DNA is used for data storage, the first step is to convert the binary format (0, 1) into DNA sequences (A, T, C, G). These sequences are then synthesized into DNA strands and kept in suitable environments. When it comes time to read the data, the DNA strands are decoded by going through the same process in reverse.

JPEG DNA, the next-generation standard

This approach holds vast potential for long-term archiving, but several hurdles remain. One is the high cost; another is the considerable amount of time needed to both archive and recover the data. Yet DNA offers major advantages in terms of its high storage density, long lifespan and low power requirement. This technology is being explored by researchers worldwide—including those in Ebrahimi's lab.

As the head of the Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) committee, a position he's held since 2014, Ebrahimi is helping to anchor the JPEG format as the main image-storage standard by adapting it to new technology and societal shifts.

His most recent project is JPEG DNA, carried out in association with the International Electrotechnical Commission, Takushoku University in Japan and other organizations. The project aims to develop an image-compression standard for use with synthetic DNA. "It's a real challenge to recreate images accurately after they've been encoded, synthesized, stored, amplified and then sequenced," says Ebrahimi. "But with a widely adopted standard to draw on, engineers will be able to develop effective coding and image-compression methods."

As part of this project, Ebrahimi's research group designed a coding procedure that can be used to evaluate different DNA-based storage methods. The procedure includes a set of predefined images for running tests, criteria for comparing different methods, error correction mechanisms, and techniques for handling biochemical constraints such as the frequency and order of the DNA symbols produced by the image, which can destabilize the DNA strands.

Coding for DNA

To handle particularly large multimedia files, the research team developed a novel image-compression algorithm that can efficiently encode binary data into DNA sequences. Images provided in .jpg format don't need to be decoded beforehand. Their new algorithm is not only fast and reliable, but it also produces less synthetic DNA, requires less processing power and delivers better image quality.

The EPFL engineers worked with the JPEG committee to incorporate both source code (for image compression) and noisy-channel coding (to make the program more robust to errors and adapted to the biochemical constraints of DNA) into the JPEG DNA standard.

Thanks to recent advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning, we should be able to refine the JPEG DNA standard by improving the encoding and error correction mechanisms while keeping them compatible with the standard's syntax and source decoding procedure," says Ebrahimi.

More than 500 cultural heritage sites have been damaged in Ukraine since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, EU Commissioner for Intergenerational Fairness, Youth, Culture and Sport Glenn Micallef said at a press briefing in Brussels.

According to him, citing UNESCO, Russian attacks have already damaged 485 cultural sites in total.

“Estimates for recovery and reconstruction needs in the culture and tourism sectors alone have already exceeded nine billion euros,” the Commissioner added.

In addition, according to him, the attacks are not limited to Ukraine’s tangible cultural heritage.

“Ukraine’s intangible cultural heritage is being subjected to organised disinformation campaigns on an ongoing basis. It is a barbaric attack on Ukrainian sovereignty. It is a conscious decision to destroy the identity, unity, and morale of Ukraine and its people,” Micallef said.

In turn, Ukraine’s Minister of Culture and Strategic Communications of Ukraine Mykola Tochytskyi said Russia had damaged or completely destroyed 2,333 cultural infrastructure facilities.

He said 1,482 cultural heritage sites have been destroyed in Ukraine in total, including historical monuments, churches, theaters, museums, libraries.

“Many of them are of national or even global significance, including UNESCO cultural heritage sites such as Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv and the historic center of Odesa, which was damaged yet again just two days ago. And of course the Derzhprom building in Kharkiv, which has been targeted multiple times over these three and a half years of war,” Tochytskyi noted.

The officials said they have established the Ukraine Heritage Response Fund — a coordination mechanism aimed at ensuring long-term assistance in preserving and restoring Ukraine’s cultural heritage.

The official presentation of the Fund is scheduled to be held at the Ukraine Recovery Conference on July 10–11, 2025 in Rome.

Russia is destroying Ukraine’s cultural heritage 

Several years ago, Russian missiles hit the historic center of Odesa. In particular, the Transfiguration Cathedral was partially destroyed.

At that time, UNESCO strongly condemned the Russian attack on cultural sites in central Odesa, where the World Heritage Site “Historic Center of Odesa” is located.

In addition, as Tochytskyi said earlier, around 2 million cultural valuables are under occupation.

Earlier this year, Ukraine’s parliament released a report on what is stopping it from fully protecting its cultural heritage sites.

A nearly 25-year-old case is one step closer to being solved.

According to the Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office, detectives have identified the remains of a man found north of the Pueblo City Limits in 2000. The Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office says the remains of the man found in 2000 have been identified as Marvin Majors of Oklahoma.

Majors was 34 years old at the time of his suspected death. The Sheriff’s Office reports that Majors’ body was found in 2000 when a woman walking her dog north of the Walking Stick development.

Officers with the Sheriff’s Office attempted, without success, to identify Majors from the skeletal remains after they were found. A sculptor with the University of Colorado was called in the following year to make a clay sculpture to help with identification.

The sculpture brought forth a lead from a rancher who said the man in the clay sculpture was someone he had encountered camping on his property in August 2000. At the time, the rancher told the sheriff’s office that the man he believed was Marvin Majors, had told him that he was traveling from New Mexico to Denver.

In 2021, the Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office reopened the case after being notified that the FBI had completed a DNA profile from Majors’ remains.

That DNA profile, along with a DNA sample from items of evidence found at the campsite in the area where Majors’ remains were found, was sent to the CBI and a new sample was submitted to a genetic genealogy database in 2023.

In November 2024, that sample came back, and a sample in the data set from a distant family member of Majors matched. DNA was collected from a suspect sibling of Majors and came back just last week as a positive match. A Forensic Investigative Genetic Genealogist then verified the match.

Detectives with the Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office then moved forward with a strong indication that the man found was Marvin Majors.

Sheriff’s Office staff contacted distant family members of Majors who said he was from Los Angeles, CA, and had lived a transient lifestyle. Distant family members of Majors said they had not heard from or seen Majors since 1998 or 1999 and were unsure as to his whereabouts after that time.

“Through modern science and teamwork, our detectives were able to get the breakthrough they needed to identify this person,” said Lucero. “The years of dedication, diligence and perseverance by our detectives demonstrate that no matter how old a case is, they are committed to solving it. This was somebody’s family member, and our team went above and beyond to identify him and to bring some closure to his family.”

Majors’ family was appreciative of the work put in by the sheriff’s office over the past 25 years, and were glad that this case has finally been solved. The cause of death for Majors was never determined, but the sheriff’s office said foul play was not suspected.

The Foley Public Library in Alabama is renaming its History and Genealogy Division after years of visitors getting confused.

Per a City of Foley press release, the new name of the department is The Cultural and Heritage Collection. The old name had become “confusing” according to the head of the collection Paul Leonard. The department can help people know more about their family tree and its history, but the “genealogy” division had confused visitors.

“Genealogy implies that we are just genealogists, and you could come and we would do your family tree for you.” Leonard said. “We are certainly happy to assist with that, but we don’t just do that. It was a narrow name for the department.”

The department also deals in history. There is a large part of the collection available for people to know more about Foley. Their collection includes records, newspapers, photographs and books for anyone who is interested in the history of Foley. In addition to digital records, the department houses over 13,500 physical copies.

“Included in that we have a Heritage Series of books that were published over a course of years. There’s one for every county that was assembled where people contributed stuff about their families to it.” Leonard said. “We also have family history files and then also files on research, files on facilities or structures of communities within the county. It’s a broad topic of things that people have come in and asked about over the years.”

“Individuals may come in and say, ‘I bought this building. What did it used to look like? What was it before then?’ That’s going to be an ongoing, probably never ending process, because as things come up or we come across them, we add to it,” Leonard said.

The files and research at the library are extensive but also constantly growing.New photos of purchased buildings can be brought in for scanning. The library owns museum grade scanners that are open and available for the public to use.The Library also has readers which can be used to access military records received in Microfiche.

The following is an announcement written by DigitalNC:

• Black Mountain News (Black Mountain, N.C.): 888 issues ranging from 1984-2000
• Alleghany News and Star-Times (Sparta, N.C): 1,353 issues ranging from 1948-1985
• Watauga Democrat (Boone, N.C.): 493 issues ranging from 1971-1975

A Norfolk and Western Railway ad from the Alleghany News and Star-Times (Sparta, N.C.)

More information about our partner, Watauga County Public Library, can be found on their website here. More materials, including more issues of the Watagua Democrat (Boone, N.C.), another newspaper title, yearbooks, and photographs, can be found on Watauga County Public Library’s contributor page, which is linked here.

More information about our partner, State Archives of North Carolina, can be found on their website here. More materials, newspaper titles, yearbooks, and moving images can be found on the State Archives of North Carolina’s contributor page, which is linked here.

More information about our partner, Western Regional Archives (Asheville, N.C.), can be found on their website here. More issues of The Black Mountain News (Black Mountain, N.C.) can be found on the Western Regional Archive (Asheville, N.C.) contributor page, 

Jurors on Thursday found a 67-year-old Stafford County man guilty of the 1986 rape and murder of a Drug Enforcement Administration agent’s wife who was working late one evening at a real estate office in Stafford County.

“It took the efforts of numerous law enforcement agencies, lab technicians and prosecutors, but justice was served this afternoon with a guilty verdict in Stafford County Circuit Court,” the Stafford County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.

Harrison was indicted for Lard’s murder in March 2024 after forensic evidence collected nearly 40 years ago was matched to Harrison’s DNA.

The physical evidence also connected Harrison to the 1989 murder of Stafford teen Amy Baker in Fairfax County, authorities said. Police believe 18-year-old Baker, who recently moved with her family from Falls Church to Stafford County, ran out of gas on Interstate 95 in Springfield the night of March 29, 1989, as she was driving home from visiting an aunt. Her body was found later in the woods nearby, sexually assaulted and strangled.

Harrison’s jury trial began on June 16 and concluded on Thursday with jurors finding him guilty on charges of second-degree murder, abduction with intent to defile, rape, aggravated malicious wounding and breaking and entering with intent to commit murder, rape or robbery.

He will be sentenced Oct. 10.

On Nov. 14, 1986, Jacqueline Lard was abducted from the office of Mount Vernon Realty on Garrisonville Road. She was beaten, sexually assaulted and strangled. Her body was dumped on the railroad tracks along U.S. 1 at the Fairfax-Prince William County line.

Lard, 40, was killed while her husband was on a DEA mission in Costa Rica. Her 13-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son were staying overnight with family friends. She was due to work that night, a Friday, until 9 p.m., when the office closed.

After her murder, a regional task force was formed to help in the search for the killer and physical evidence was carefully collected, but the case eventually went cold.

“This meticulous collection of evidence would ultimately provide the suspect’s identification 37 years later,” the sheriff’s office said in a release last year.

Stafford Detective D.K. Wood “would not let the case go idle” and began to look at a new technology, forensic investigative genetic genealogy, to assist in identifying the killer.

Wood worked with Parabon NanoLabs, a company that provides DNA phenotyping, which describes the physical characteristics of an unknown suspect. Forensic genetic genealogy uses genealogical databases and research to make a connection.

Analysis of the DNA linked the murder of Jacqueline Lard to the unsolved 1989 murder of Amy Baker in Fairfax County, the sheriff’s office said. Stafford County and Fairfax County detectives then joined forces and on Dec. 14 a family name for the suspect was identified.

Detectives then obtained a search warrant for Harrison’s DNA. It was a match in both murders.

“We hope this conviction today helps bring some closure to the Lard and Baker families,” the sheriff’s office said.

On the heels of a consumer edition launched at I/O 2025 last month, Google is now announcing “Google AI Ultra for Business.”

The new add-on plan for Workspace customers comes after the full Gemini offering was made available to Business and Enterprise plans earlier this year, when Google first introduced Gemini.

Gemini app will provide “advanced coding” with 2.5 Pro, and “higher usage limits,” while Deep Think mode, which Google is teasing with more powerful reasoning ability, is in testing for “highly-complex math and coding.”

AI Ultra is also being positioned for researchers, with Deep Research in the Gemini app and NotebookLM.

Subscribers will also have access to Project Mariner: “A research prototype to explore the future of streamlined human-agent interaction using natural language prompts. Assign AI agents to complete time-consuming tasks like research and data entry concurrently, so you can get more done while the agents work in the background.”

AI Ultra for Business is available starting today in the Admin Console as an add-on for Workspace: Business Starter, Standard and Plus. It’s also on the way for G Suite Legacy Free Edition and Education customers.

Genealogy company Ancestry.com has filed a lawsuit in Virginia federal court accusing a rival domain of cyberpiracy and trademark infringement.

“The owner of the domain name is using that domain name to resolve to a website that infringes the Ancestry Family of Marks,” counsel for Ancestry.com allege in the complaint filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Debevoise & Plimpton represent the plaintiff and seek a court order transferring the defendant’s myancestryai.com domain name to Ancestry under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act.

“In addition to expropriating Ancestry’s distinctive Ancestry Family of Marks, the offerings found on the www.myancestryai.com website feature a trade dress that is confusingly similar to the Ancestry Trade Dress, including a green color scheme and leaf logo,” according to the allegations in the complaint.

Founded in 1983, Ancestry is a Utah-based privately held company that collects information found in family trees, historical records and DNA to help people learn more about their ancestral origins.

The alleged cyberpiracy began in January when an unknown person or group based in Iceland concealed their identity using a privacy shield and registered the myancestryai.com domain name without authorization from Ancestry in violation of the ACPA statute 15 U.S.C. § 1125(d), according to the complaint.

“The registrant is attempting to capitalize on the valuable goodwill of Ancestry for its own commercial gain and is infringing the distinctive ANCESTRY® mark in the process,” Debevoise partner Jonathan R. Tuttle and other counsel for the plaintiff alleged in the complaint. “Accordingly, Ancestry is entitled to the immediate transfer of the domain name.”

My Ancestry AI uses artificial intelligence to scan digital portraits and provide customers with a personalized ancestry report within hours, according to its website.

The defendant myancestryai.com did not respond to a request for comment on this article.

The following is an announcement written by the (U.S.) National Archives and Records Administration:

During their extraordinary public careers, the Roosevelts interacted with a “who’s who” of the 20th century. Signature Moments: Letters From the Famous, the Infamous, and Everyday Americans, a special exhibit at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, NY, opening June 28, 2025, provides an insider’s view of the remarkable–and sometimes surprising–variety of personal exchanges the Roosevelts had with an amazing array of famous (and a few infamous) people. As a key part of the Roosevelt Library’s celebration of America250, the exhibit also features prize selections from FDR’s personal collection of historical documents of America’s Founders, including items signed by George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson. Portraits from a Presidency "Portraits from a Presidency," the newest temporary exhibit at the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum in Little Rock, AR, offers a poignant reflection on the Clintons' lasting impact on American history. Going beyond officially-commissioned portraits, the featured works include a variety of creative forms—paintings, sculptures, engravings, and photography—that show how artists from every walk of life portrayed the Clinton family. These unique works of presidential art will remain on exhibit through December 7, 2025. The Clinton Presidential Library is open Monday to Saturday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. CT, and Sunday, 1-5 p.m. CT. From the Museum: Founding Fathers The massive oil-on-canvas murals in the Rotunda of the National Archives Building were painted by artist Barry Faulkner in 1935. Faulkner created allegorical scenes depicting the writing and adoption of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.  Can you identify the men in the mural over the Constitution? Make your best guess and check your results!  “The Constitution” Mural by Barry Faulkner

Southeast Missouri State University (SEMO) anthropology students and faculty assisted in the identification of human remains recovered from the Mississippi River in 2022, and worked with law enforcement to bring long-awaited closure to the case for a family in Indiana.

The remains of an individual were recovered in June 2022 by the New Madrid County Sheriff’s Office from the Mississippi River near Portageville, Missouri.Although forensic and DNA testing were done, the identity of the individual, who had been known as “Portageville John Doe” for two years, could not be confirmed. In 2024, New Madrid County reached out to Jennifer Bengtson, professor of anthropology at SEMO.

The anthropology professor and her students assisted in the case, performing a comprehensive forensic evaluation of the remains, which led to an updated biological profile being generated, dental analysis being completed, and samples being selected for further DNA testing, which were sent to Othram, a forensic sequencing laboratory with a specialization in degraded DNA samples.While SEMO students worked to further refine the biological profile in order to narrow potential matches, Othram was able to build a comprehensive SNP profile with Forensic-Grade Genome Sequencing and forensic genetic genealogy.

The analysis was able to find a possible match: investigators were able to find and interview potential relatives who had posted online about a missing family member who fit the profile. Familial DNA testing was performed in April 2025 to confirm that the remains were those of Robert J. Eaton, 26, who had been reported missing from Elizabeth, Indiana in early 2022.

“As always, we are honored to work with our law enforcement and laboratory partners to help bring resolution to another case,” Bengtson said. “Robbie's family finally has some answers and can now lay him to rest. But so many other families are still waiting for news on their own lost loved ones. By some estimates, there are up to 40,000 sets of unidentified human remains in this country. We'll keep working to help put a dent in that number.”

Support for this work came from the Missouri State Highway Patrol and private donations to SEMO’s Forensic Anthropology Program. In a statement, the New Madrid County Sheriff’s Office thanked SEMO for their assistance and time, and said that it has set a new standard for how future investigations will be conducted.

“This case opened the door to new techniques that will change the way we investigate unidentified remains in New Madrid County,” the Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. “Because of the tireless efforts of Dr. Bengtson and her students, a family that has been searching for their son for the last two years finally has closure.”

Eaton’s family traveled to Missouri in May to pick up his remains and they also offered thanks to all of the individuals who assisted. The investigation into his death and disappearance continues.