DNA·VIEW NEWSLETTER #20
May 25,2005
DNA·VIEW and Tsunami Identifications
The DNA·VIEW Disaster Screening
and Kinship identification
modules are unparalleled tools for finding and evaluating DNA matches
of disaster victims to their families or direct references. Having
played central roles in World Trade Center identifications –
Screen Disaster Matches found the id's;
Kinship is the tool that proved them
these tools are also of pivotal importance in identifying victims of
the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
I spent a week in Phuket, Thailand, in March teaching the use of
DNA·VIEW to members of the DNA identification team there. It has
also been used successfully for national identification efforts of
Thailand victims in Innsbruck, Austria and in Leipzig, Germany. Now
the job of obtaining DNA profiles from tsunami victims has been turned
over to the ICMP laboratory in Sarajevo who are
also experienced users of DNA·VIEW (http://dna-view.com/icmp.htm)
because of the Bosnian war victim identification project.
Racial origin analysis
Two very nice tools analyze racial origin.
-
| Relative support for each racial origin: |
|---|
| Caucasian | Korean | Black | Indian |
|---|
| M Hester Prynn | 8 | 1 | 6.8 | 1.5 |
|---|
| C Scarlett | 35 | 6.6 | 4.7 | 1 |
|---|
| F Rev Dimsdale | 160 | 440 | 23 | 1 |
|---|
Racial Estimate
(in the Casework menu; also an option within the Paternity/...Case
commands) compares specified possible racial origins for the observed
DNA profile(s) of a person or people in a case. The result is the
relative likelihood across races of seeing the profile:
-
| Racial discrimination using 15 Identifiler loci |
|---|
| Caucasian | 16 | 29 | 100 |
|---|
| Indian | 12 | 400 |
|---|
| Korean | 500 |
|---|
| Black |
|---|
Racial Distance
(in the Research menu) calculates the "typical" likelihood ratio
supporting the true origin of a DNA profile, versus an alternative
origin a population average of the racial discrimination ability that
can be expected from the previous command.
GeneMapper Import
The Import/Export command includes a new option Genemapper Import to import DNA profiles of ABI's
new Genemapper format.
See the manual for details.
Windows installation
DNA·VIEW now installs with a Windows-style installer, which adds some flexibility. For example it is
possible to install a test copy of the system in a different folder.
Web pages of interest
Technical fixes
Freezing under Windows XP
I discovered the cause of this annoying problem and fixed it in January as from DNA·VIEW version 27.04
and PATER version 13.35. The problem affected some XP computers but not others, and the symptom was
that DNA·VIEW or PATER would randomly lock up from time to time.
TameDOS helps Windows cooperation
DNA·VIEW tends to hog all the CPU cycles (the priority adjustment
mechanism in Windows NT & relatives doesn't work) so any competing
process including a print job started from DNA·VIEW runs very
sluggishly. I'm experimenting with an inexpensive software called
TameDOS (http://tamedos.com) that seems useful. It is trivial to
download and install it for a 45-day demo.
TameDOS plus an appropriate configuration file should result in
good compromise behavior. The configuration file, aplii.tam, can be
downloaded from the DNA·VIEW downloads page. Save it in the aplii
folder within the folder (e.g. C:\dnaview\) where DNA·VIEW is
installed.
