With the recent news that hackers stole data from around 6.9 million users of the genetic testingvcompany 23andMe, it’s understandable that some might have concerns as to what someone could do with that information. 

Whilst no DNA records were reported stolen, it does beg the question of the potential consequences if they had been. After all, you can change your address or your name, but unless you subject yourself to a hefty amount of radiation (in which case, someone having your DNA would be the least of your concerns), you’d be hard-pressed to alter your genetic material. So once someone has your DNA sequence, can they glean anything of importance from it?

It depends on who’s looking

Of course, some things can be interpreted from our DNA – otherwise, genetic testing services wouldn’t exist, nor would we be moving towards healthcare personalized by our genetics – but a certain level of expertise is required.

You  can read the full article by Holly Large published in the iflscience web site at: https://www.iflscience.com/what-can-someone-do-with-your-dna-sequence-71875. 

Legislators should increase state funding for DNA testing and forensic genetic genealogy of unidentified human remains, a state task force recommended.

The recommendations came from a Washington task force on missing and murdered Indigenous women and people in a report adopted unanimously on Nov. 20.

The report said DNA testing and forensic genetic genealogy can help identify missing Indigenous people "and bring a measure of closure to families." The primary barrier to testing is cost strapped agencies, according to the report.

DNA testing of remains costs approximately $2,500 and the approximate cost of forensic genetic genealogy is $8,000. The state provides financial assistance to local coroners and medical examiners through an account administered by the Forensic Investigation Council, the report says.

Task force members recommend that the Legislature provide one-time funding to the council in its Death Investigations Account to identify remains that have not yet had DNA testing completed and for forensic genetic genealogy if DNA testing fails to yield a match. The group also seeks ongoing funding to ensure needs are met, the report says.

You can read more in an article by Tammy Ayer published in the yakimaherald web site at: https://www.yakimaherald.com/news/local/wa-panel-recommends-more-funding-for-dna-testing-and-forensic-genealogy/article_5bc998dc-92ec-11ee-98c1-ebc7042d204d.html. 

A press release from the National Coast Guard Museum  

The National Coast Guard Museum (NCGM) team assigned to Coast Guard Headquarters is making tremendous strides in curating exhibits and programming to bring the museum experience to life through its website and social media channels. With that, the NCGM team is celebrating two recent, monumental achievements: the reveal of the NCGM’s official website and the launch of its social media accounts. 

“This is an exciting time for the museum,” said Ken Hickman, NCGM deputy director. “We have the unique opportunity to offer Facebook and Instagram followers a glimpse into the history of the Coast Guard and behind-the-scenes access to the curation process of the exhibits and artifacts that will tell the service’s story. The website is an equally important tool because its final design will be that of a virtual experience as visitors await opening day.” 

Building the foundation for a digital museum 

The NCGM’s new website, which can be found at www.nationalcoastguardmuseum.org, is being built in two phases.  

“Phase 1 revolved around rooting the website into a strong foundation,” said Dwight Martino, the NCGM’s visual information specialist. “From there, we can build a robust and expressive online museum experience. We are starting with the Pentagon Experience exhibit, an overview of the Coast Guard's history, which is on display at the Pentagon, but will also have a home as our first virtual exhibit.  In Phase 2, we will be bringing on more exhibits, both as part of the permanent collection, but also more typical exhibits.” 

As the NCGM project gains momentum, which includes artifact treatment and restoration, progress will be documented and posted to the museum’s Instagram and Facebook accounts. One of the oldest artifacts in the collection that is currently being prepared for conservation is the Fog Signal Cannon.  

Unveiling the collection 

“The Cannon is the oldest object in the Heritage Asset Collection, and it is a direct tie back to one of the oldest lighthouses in North America, the Boston Light,” said Gabe Christy, NCGM curator. “Boston Light was first built in 1716, and a fog cannon was installed on the island in 1719. The cannon we have in our collection is likely not the original from 1719, but still holds a significant place in terms of being a direct connection to this important piece of American maritime heritage.” 

On Thursday, Dec. 7, 2023, at 12:30 p.m. EST the NCGM public affairs team will go Facebook Live, the first of many in a series documenting the Fog Signal Cannon’s path to restoration and eventual placement into the museum. The Facebook Live event will introduce viewers to the cannon and the team at B.R. Howard & Associates in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where a sizable portion of Coast Guard artifacts will be treated and restored in preparation for display in the NCGM.  

You are invited to join the team for the Facebook Live event. The museum can be found on Facebook  at National Coast Guard Museum | New London CT | Facebook and on Instagram at National Coast Guard Museum (@ncgmuseum) • Instagram photos and videos 

The chat will be monitored during the event and your questions will be answered live by a member of the museum team.

The following is a press release from Vivid-Pix:

Vivid-Pix, President & CEO, Rick Voight to Speak at “What’s Next Longevity Innovation Summit” in Washington, DC on December 13

Memory Station One-click Scanning Solution Is Designed Easy-to-Use for Older Adults to Help Them Save Precious Image, Artifact and Voice Memories for Future Generations

December 7, 2023, Savannah, GA – Vivid-Pix www.vivid-pix.com, a technology leader specializing in scanning, restoring, and archiving treasured memories, announced today that the Memory Station™ one-click scanning solution designed for older adults to scan, restore, and record audio memories and save multiple images, documents, and memorabilia for future generations is being deployed throughout the U.S., expanding into senior living, home healthcare, genealogical and historical societies, archives, and museums, where seniors can enjoy reliving their memories.

Vivid-Pix is now available for use at:

• Senior Living: Cloverwood Friendly Senior Living, the #1 Nursing Home in NY state. Cloverwood is a full-service independent living community located in Pittsford, NY which opened in 2004 as an active, friendly senior living community with a rich selection of programs and activities.
• Home Healthcare: Thrive Center, a technology testing location for National Institute of Health (NIH). A unique consortium of people and ideas unlike anything in the world, Thrive is a collaborative group of innovators, researchers, and healthcare providers from across the US who are focused on solving challenges and providing solutions for the aging care market.
• Societies: National Genealogical Society, California Genealogical Society, South Carolina Historical Society, and Rochester Genealogical Society.
• Libraries: Allen County Public Library, Fort Wayne, IN, The Power of Story. The ACPL Genealogy Center explores unique state-of-the-art resources for family history research with the largest publicly available research collection in the country; making available, at no cost, records from around the world to aid in personal discovery.
• Archives: Houston County Archives and Tennessee Archives & Museum.
• Museums: International African American Museum, Charleston, SC. IAAM is the museum that honors the untold stories of the African American journey at one of our country’s most sacred sites.

In addition to the recent extensive travels throughout the U.S. showcasing Vivid-Pix Memory Station at various societies, libraries, and facilities, Rick Voight, President & CEO, Vivid-Pix will also be speaking at the “What’s Next Longevity Innovation Summit” in Washington, DC on December 13 at 8:00 AM with Matt Menashes, Executive Director, National Genealogical Society. For more information, and to schedule interviews, please contact: Karen Thomas, Thomas PR (631) 549-7575 kthomas@thomaspr.com.

Where: What’s Next Longevity Innovation Summit

What: “Successful Case Studies” Panel

Date: December 13, 2023 at 8:00 AM

Who: Matt Menashes, Executive Director, National Genealogical Society and

Rick Voight, President & CEO, Vivid-Pix

About: https://washingtoninnovationsummit.com/

Vivid-Pix Memory Station Availability

The Vivid-Pix Memory Station solution is available immediately at: https://www.vivid-pix.com/memorystation, priced at $629.95 – $1299.95. For more information, see: www.vivid-pix.com.

About Vivid-Pix

Vivid-Pix invents and harnesses technologies, making it simple for individuals and organizations to relive memories and share stories. Whether by inventing software to restore decades/centuries-old photos/documents, bringing back precious memories that were thought to be long gone due to the passage of time, cognitive decline, or helping to bring families and friends together at reunions, for over a decade Vivid-Pix has made it simple and affordable for consumers and organizations to relive memories. For more info, visit https://www.vivid-pix.com/.

Photos: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/16UHfGOkp_tgqoFMmnQPf44DXgASEwDGV?usp=sharing

Vivid-Pix Logo: http://www.thomas-pr.com/136/photos/vividpixlogo.html

Memory Station How-to Video: https://vimeo.com/866954225/f7bd35929a

Some 6.9 million 23andMe customers had their data compromised after an anonymous hacker accessed user profiles and posted them for sale on the internet earlier this year, the company said on Monday.

The compromised data included users’ ancestry information as well as, for some users, health-related information based on their genetic profiles, the company said in an email.

Privacy advocates have long warned that sharing DNA with testing companies like 23andMe and Ancestry makes consumers vulnerable to the exposure of sensitive genetic information that can reveal health risks of individuals and those who are related to them.

In the case of the 23andMe breach, the hacker only directly accessed about 14,000 of 23andMe’s 14 million customers, or 0.1%. But on 23andMe, many users choose to share information with people they’re genetically related to — which can include distant cousins they have never met, in addition to direct family members — in order to learn more about their own genetics and build out their family trees. So through those 14,000 accounts, the hacker was able to access information about millions more. A much smaller subset of customers had health data accessed.

Users can choose whether to share different kinds of data, including name, location, ancestry and health information such as genetic predisposition to conditions such as asthma, anxiety, high-blood pressure and macular degeneration.

The exposure of such information could have concerning ramifications. In the US, health information is typically protected by what’s known as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA. But such protections only apply to health-care providers.

You can read more in an article by Kristen V. Brown published in the Mercury News at: https://tinyurl.com/4zsuw8hc.

Former first lady Melania Trump is scheduled to appear for a speech at the National Archives on Dec. 15, Bill of Rights Day, during a ceremony to swear in new U.S. citizens.

At the ceremony, 25 people from 20 countries will be sworn in as new American citizens.

Trump, who was born in Slovenia and became a citizen in 2006, will speak alongside U.S. Archivist Colleen Shogan, in her latest public appearance amid her husband's third presidential campaign.

The former first lady's husband, former President Donald Trump, has a troubled relationship with the National Archives as he is facing criminal charges for mishandling classified documents following his departure from the White House in 2021.

After adding Drive support in recent weeks, Google now also lets you scan documents using the Files app.

Last week saw some great updates to Google Drive's document scanner. First of all, it's finally available on iPhone (thank god), but the Android version also received some exclusive new features, including automatically capturing documents when the camera detects them, an improved viewfinder, and the ability to upload documents directly from your phone.

But apparently Google doesn't just have its sights set on Drive to serve as your document scanning hub. As Twitter user @Nail_Sadykov discovered, the company is also rolling out similar functionality for Google Files (at least on Android).

Once the feature hits your device, you'll see a camera icon appear towards the bottom-right of the Files window, just as it appears in Google Drive. When you tap it, you'll open the same document scanner Google added to Drive, including all the new upgrades. 

The tool gives you a choice for how to scan your documents: "Manual" or "Auto Capture." Manual capture means you can line up the document in the viewfinder yourself and take the scan as you would a photo. Auto Capture, on the other hand, gives the controls over to Files: When the app detects the borders of the document you're trying to scan, it'll automatically capture it for you.

You can read more in an article by Jake Peterson published in the lifehacker web site at: https://lifehacker.com/tech/you-can-now-scan-documents-in-google-files.

Over the last ten years, researchers have gradually been working out how to teach computers to read handwritten documents. As in most machine learning, a computer is fed training data: in this case, images of handwriting and details of what it says. It then learns how the marks on each page correspond to letters. It learns that that half circle is a “c”, that that short vertical stroke is an “i” and that it might therefore be “rice” that you wrote on your shopping list, for example.

How it does this no one is quite sure – machine learning is often a black box. But it seems likely it is at least partly learning which characters are likely to occur in sequence, thus determining that you are unlikely to want to be shopping for “qvjx”, however much the word might look like that.

This technology has been applied to handwriting from many countries and periods, from medieval manuscripts to 19th-century diaries (if not yet 21st-century shopping lists), in languages from Latin to Old French to Hebrew.

Because the technology works on the basis of image analysis, it is in theory applicable to any writing whatsoever, from Egyptian hieroglyphs to copperplate. Ten years after its initial development, some truly exciting consequences of the development of handwritten text recognition (HTR) techniques are becoming clear.

You can read more in an article in theconverstation web site at: https://tinyurl.com/4bf62k5h .

The Fellows of the American Society of Genealogists are pleased to offer grant opportunities in support of important continuing genealogical research projects. These grants are intended to assist with those projects sitting unfinished (or unstarted) on every genealogist’s “back burner” for lack of financial aid to help cover researching and writing time, costs of copies, fees, travel, and other usual expenses associated with genealogical research and publication.

Each grant is for $2,500. Projects are not limited regarding subject, length, or format, but the value of the work to other researchers and institutions will be an important consideration. Examples of possible projects include, but are not limited to, compilation of single or extended family genealogies, transcriptions or translations of original documents, bibliographies, indexes, studies of ethnic groups, geographic locations, migration patterns, legal history, etc., using genealogical resources and methods. Publication is not required, but acknowledgement of the support from the American Society of Genealogists in any distribution of the project results is requisite. Fellows of the American Society of Genealogists are not eligible for these grants.

Submission deadline: All applications for the 2024 grants must be received on or before March 1, 2023: Email to: acwcrane@aol.com, or mail to:

ASG Continuing Grants

c/o Alicia Crane Williams, FASG

4 White Trellis

Plymouth MA 02360

Purpose:

The American Society of Genealogists (ASG) was founded in 1940 to “advance genealogical research standards, encourage publication of scholarly studies, and secure recognition of genealogy as a serious subject of research in historical and social fields of learning.” Because research, compilation, and publication expenses are usually borne by the genealogical researcher, funding is often reliant on the individual’s means. Significant genealogical projects often do not meet the requirements of standard funding sources, such as academic or commercial entities. The American Society of Genealogists’ Continuing Research Study Program contributes financial support to advance important genealogical projects.

Project Scope:

Consideration of projects may include, but is not confined to, the importance of original research to be undertaken, the goal of the project – e.g. compile a genealogy of descendants of an individual or an all-my-ancestor compilation of a single individual; explore a “brick wall”; a treatment of extended families, ethnic groups, geographic locations, migration patterns, legal history, or other important studies for the use of genealogical researchers? Will the transcriptions of difficult archaic or partially illegible records be made available to researchers? Are indexes, catalogs, or bibliographies to be created?

Grants may be made for any size undertaking of any expected duration and are not required to be finished under a single grant. Publication is not a requirement of the grant, but if published or distributed to the public, acknowledgement must be made of the contributions by the American Society of Genealogists.

Project Requirements:

Applicants must complete and submit the Application Form, including a genealogical resume, a comprehensive description of the project and its history (if it has already been started), the importance of the records or subjects being studied, who will most benefit from the project and why, how the ASG Grant is expected to be used in the project, a listing of anticipated actions to be taken under this funding opportunity.

Benchmarks:

The application must include benchmarks to record the progress of the project. These benchmarks are not time sensitive. They should indicate expected development and completion goals for the grant. Benchmarks may include such things as number of pages transcribed, completion of research prior to writing, writing and production of written articles, books, website content, number of index entries made, etc. At least one interim benchmark is recommended, with the final benchmark for completion of the grant.

Adjustments to research schedules and benchmarks are allowed provided the Grant Committee is kept apprised. Recipients are required to send written reports to the Grant Committee of all benchmark achievements or adjustments when requested. Failure to send timely reports on project progress and benchmarks may result in the requirement to return funding, total or partial, to ASG.

Funding:

Each grant is for $2500 and such grants can be sequential, but not overlapping. Funds will be distributed by the ASG Treasurer after applications are approved by the Grant Committee and the Executive Board.

Terms:

Applicants should understand that acceptance of the grant means agreeing to the publicizing of the grant by ASG in social and other media, and that photos and news stories will appear tied to this activity, as well as notices posted on the ASG website.

Application

2024 Continuing Genealogical Research Project Grants

American Society of Genealogists

Phone Number(s): (cell or landline?)

E-mail address:

Website:

Please attach written responses to the following topics: Your genealogical resume.

Project background:

Is this a new project, or is it ongoing? If so, how long have you been working on this project? What does this project mean to you? Who do you think will most benefit from the results of this project?

Project size and duration:

We recommend that each proposal for a grant be for projects estimated for completion within the individual grant funding. Continuing projects may be eligible for further grants in the future. Tell us what work you intend to accomplish under this grant and how long you expect it will take. If this is part of a larger project, tell us what else might be needed. What monetary contribution do you expect to make to the project, yourself. What additional financial support are you receiving, or expect to receive, from individuals or institutions?

Project tasks: What tasks might be involved in the project?

• Research in original records in libraries, repositories, the Internet

• Research in secondary sources in libraries, repositories, the Internet

• Abstraction, transcription, or interpretation of records for this project only

• Abstraction, transcription, or interpretation of a collection of records

• Creating a database, index, or bibliography

• Compiling genealogical or historical text

• Other

Project participants: In addition to yourself, will there be others involved in the project? If so, who?

Project benchmarks and outcome: What goals do you have and how will you measure the progress of your project?

• A compiled genealogy of descendants of a single individual or extended family

• An all-my-ancestor genealogy of an individual

• An article on exploration of a difficult “brick wall,” or discovery of new information

• Transcriptions of difficult, rare, or obscure original documents

• Indexes, catalogs, or bibliographies of source materials

• Database of individuals

• A genealogical study of aggregate groups by ethnicity, religion, origin, settlement, etc.

• Other outcomes

• Expected benchmarks: e.g., number of pages or records transcribed, indexed, or entered

in a database, number of research repositories visited, compilation from research, drafting and writing articles, books, or reports, publishing articles, books, creating website content, other?

Your comments:

Please submit application on or before 1 March 2023 to: acwcrane@aol.com  or mail to:

Alicia Crane Williams, FASG

4 White Trellis

Plymouth MA 02360

 

Activists are trying to end secrecy for sperm and egg donors — a campaign that troubles some L.G.B.T.Q. families.

A thought-provoking article by Emily Bazelon published in the New York Times:

A few years ago, when he was in his early 30s, Tyler Levy Sniff took a home DNA test he received as a gift. The results revealed a staggering truth: His father wasn’t biologically related to him. Levy Sniff confronted his parents, who explained that after years of trying and failing to have a baby, they turned to a sperm donor. Following the standard advice at the time, they decided not to tell him for fear of driving a wedge into their family.

Levy Sniff felt as if he’d found a key to his identity that he was looking for. “It made sense of why I felt different from my family,” he said recently. He wanted more information about the person he called his “bio father” to understand his genetic heritage. “It was so important to me to know my bio father’s life story, his personality and talents and struggles,” Levy Sniff says.

But by the time he found his donor, through relatives on two genealogy websites, the man had died — another revelation that shattered him, he says. To Levy Sniff, the value of knowing where you come from is self-evident. “A lot of influence comes from your biology,” he says.

There’s plenty of support for this way of thinking. Recent findings in behavioral science show the role of genetics in shaping certain individual characteristics. Questionnaires from doctors routinely ask for generations of family medical history. And learning about your genetic ancestry can be emotionally powerful — one reason millions of people buy inexpensive at-home DNA tests and sign up for genealogy websites.

Levy Sniff has helped found the U.S. Donor Conceived Council, a group that advocates for more transparency when it comes to donor anonymity. In a sense, it’s a battle that has already been won: For earlier generations of donor-conceived children, secrecy was commonplace, but today the widespread use of DNA technology has ended any guarantee of anonymity for donors. As a result, major sperm banks in the United States are requiring donors to agree to disclose their medical histories up front and reveal their identities when a child turns 18.

You can read more at: https://tinyurl.com/46wfb66s.