Word: tools
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Some people find finger a useful tool; those in the know use it to "talk" friends across campus, to see if someone's read their mail or just to keep tabs on their friends. Some people have what the computer literate refer to as a "stalk script" to let them know when their friends are logged on. That's fine, but the choice to make that information public should be the student's and not the University's. To protect the computer illiterate (an endangered, Luddite few), incoming first-year accounts should all be set inaccessible unless explicitly changed...
...This will be our most powerful tool," says Collins. "Finding these weak-susceptibility genes will be moderately useful for predicting risk, but they will be far more useful in allowing us to see the real molecular basis of diseases--all diseases--whether it's multiple sclerosis or brain tumors or diabetes." The truth is that no one can predict exactly what breakthroughs might result from the deciphering of the human genome. As Venter puts it: "It's like it was before electricity. No one could have envisioned personal computers back then...
Genetic screening is also becoming an issue in the courts, not just as a forensic tool to catch criminals but even to settle private squabbles, says Professor Lori Andrews of Chicago-Kent College of Law. In a custody case in South Carolina, a judge ordered a man's former wife to be tested for Huntington's because it might impair her ability to care for their children. In another case, a manufacturer demanded a genetic test of an ailing boy in order to show that his illness was caused not by the toxicity of substances made by the company...
...accurate results. If three of the ministrands match a suspect's, the likelihood is 2,000 to 1 that police have the right person. Nine matches boost the odds to 1 billion to 1. FBI sampling rules require no fewer than 13 matches. "Its success as a crime-fighting tool is incredible," says Christopher Asplen, director of a national DNA-study commission...
...even among the rarefied biotech elite, there are mavericks who think they have a better idea. They want to move one step closer to the gene by targeting the RNA molecules that transfer information from genes to proteins. And they have the perfect molecular tool with which to do it. By synthesizing strands of DNA that are the mirror image of the RNA they wish to block, researchers can produce a drug that is more specific than anything else on the market. Because it interrupts the "sense" that the cell is trying to make of the RNA molecule...