Texas legislators are considering several new proposals to restrict law enforcement's ability to access databases from genetic testing companies, placing the state at the center of a roiling national privacy debate over a technology already solving some of the most stubborn unsolved cases.

“These people didn’t really sign up to help law enforcement, that wasn’t their intent,” said Amy McGuire, the Leon Jaworski Professor of Biomedical Ethics and director of medical ethics and health policy for Baylor College of Medicine. “So, it’s a question of, what other purposes can that information be used for? And is this somehow a violation of their rights?”

Across the country, police are checking crime-scene DNA against data gleaned from popular genetic testing kits, like Ancestry and 23andMe. These increasingly popular mail-order kits allow consumers to share their DNA in hopes of finding long-lost relatives or track their family's geographic roots. But as the technology can pinpoint long lost siblings or relatives, it can also link people to crimes.

Representatives of Texas District and County Attorneys Association took to social media this week to decry the proposed legislation and how it might hamper law enforcement.

House Bills 4 and 2545 and Senate Bills 704 and 1014 all impose new restrictions for the blossoming number of companies offering genetic testing.

You can read more in an article by Matt deGrood published in the Houston Chronicle at https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/crime/article/dna-evidence-cold-case-legislation-17810225.php.

The Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy (SLIG) has issued calls for course proposals for the 2025 program year and for scholarship applications for the 2024 Program Year. Please see the press releases linked below for complete details.

Call for 2025 Course Proposals

Call for Scholarship Applications for 2024 Programs

Oseredok is digitizing its collection of artifacts, books, artwork and photographs, using the web to broaden its reach.

The curator of Oseredok Ukrainian Culture and Exhibition Centre has spent the last 14 months digitizing items in aid of its newly launched online catalogue.

The catalogue currently lists 1,252 museum artifacts, 1,235 library holdings, 424 fine art pieces, 4,583 photographs and 600 glass slides. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

“It’s an evolving project; there is no end date to what I started,” Sloboda says. “The online catalogue provides global access to all who are interested. As the collection grows it will need to meet the information and cultural needs of everyone.”

Sloboda, who joined Oseredok in September 2021, has spent much of her tenure tackling the mammoth task. She oversees the four collections housed in Oseredok: museum, archive, library and fine art, and quickly realized exhibition space was limited.

You can read more in an article by AV Kitching published in the Winnipeg Free Press at: https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/2023/03/06/a-treasure-of-ukrainian-culture-open-to-the-world.

From an article by Jake Peterson published in the LifeHacker web site:

Scammers are hijacking sponsored links in Google searches. Avoid them.

We all google, so we’re all used to Google’s quirks, sponsored links being one of the most visible. These links appear at the top of any given Google search, depending on who pays the most to be there. Even though these links can be largely irrelevant to what you’re actually searching for, sometimes they’re right on the money. However, even if it looks like a sponsored link applies to your search, don’t click it. It might be a scam.

The latest example of this nefarious misuse of Google Ads comes to us via Twitter. Author Cory Doctorow tweeted about his experience trying to place a takeout order with a local Thai spot. When Doctorow googled the name of the restaurant, Kiin Thai Eatery, he naturally clicked the first result that popped up, which happened to be a sponsored link.

Who cares, right? A link’s a link. That is, unless someone has hijacked the identity of the restaurant, which is exactly what happened in this case.

The link loaded to a website purporting to be Kiin Thai Eatery, inviting Doctorow to place an order. He did, and paid for his meal, only to receive a call from Kiin Thai Eatery shortly after. The restaurant informed Doctorow that they did receive an order—from a known scammer. The scammer had created a fake website mimicking Kiin Thai Eatery’s menu, upped the prices by 15%, and placed an order with the real restaurant in Doctorow’s name, hoping no one would notice.

Luckily, Kiin Thai Eatery did, and subsequently canceled the order. But Doctorow was still on the hook for the charges—plural, since the scammers also double-charged Doctorow for the fake order.

You can read more at: https://lifehacker.com/why-you-need-to-stop-clicking-sponsored-google-links-1850163992.

You might have your family tree in order, records documented, and DNA tests all done. Add the Root & Seed conversation cards to your family documentation toolkit. Inspire conversations between generations with 68 thoughtful prompts to capture rich stories, recipes and traditions for generations to come. Act now for discounts.

Learn more at: https://www.rootandseed.com/

Periscope Film owners [Doug] and [Nick] just released a mini-documentary about the rescue of a large collection of old 35 and 16 mm celluloid films from the landfill. The video shows the process of the films being collected from the donor and then being sorted and organized in a temporary storage warehouse. There is a dizzying variety of films in this haul, from different countries, in both color and black and white.

We can see in the video that their rented 8 meter (26 foot) cargo truck wasn’t enough to contain the trove, so they dragged along a 1.8 x 3.6 m (6 x 12 ft) double-axle trailer as well. That makes a grand total of 49 cubic meters of space. Our back-of-the-envelope calculations says that filled to the brim, that would be over 30,000 canisters of 600 m (2,000 ft) 35 mm movie reels.

When it comes to preserving these old films, one big problem is physical deterioration of the film stock itself. You will know something is wrong when you get a strong acetic or vinegary odor when opening the can. [Nick] shows some examples where the film has even become solidified, taken on a hexagonal shape. It will take months to just assess and catalog the contents of this collection, with damaged films that are still salvageable jumping to the head of the queue to be digitized.

Films are digitized at 4K resolution using a Lasergraphics ScanStation archival quality film scanning system, and then the restoration fun begins. One issue demonstrated in this video is color deterioration. In the Eastmancolor film technology introduced in the 1950s, the blue dyes deteriorate over time. This, and a plethora of other issues, are corrected in the restoration process.

If you’re interested in doing this with 8 mm home movies, we covered a project way back in 2011 of a DIY home movie scanning project.

In the meantime, you can learn more about the current project at: https://youtu.be/yhJIIhxng_A.

Here is a list of all of this week's articles, all of them available here at https://eogn.com:

Introducing cM Explainer™ to Predict Relationships Between DNA Matches With Greater Accuracy

MyHeritage Announces Third Installment of DNA Quest Initiative

MyHeritage Introduces Color Coding for Family Trees

Vivid-Pix and the National Genealogical Society Restore Treasured Memories

Ancestry® Launches Storymaker Studio

Connect Our Kids Will Tell Its Story Today at RootsTech 2023

Celebrating 40 Years of Family History Discoveries

National Archives Allocates $600,000 to Transfer Digitized Veterans’ Records from the VA

Black History Month at Atlantic City Library Strengthened by Digitized Collection

BYU Professor Works to Connect ‘Entire Human Family’ Through Genealogy Research Lab

Museum of Jewish Heritage Plans Peter and Mary Kalikow Genealogy Research Center

Newberry Library Online Exhibition Showcases Images From the Great Migration

Museum Of Jewish Heritage Reviews Plans For Genealogy Research Center In Battery Park City, Manhattan

Reykjavík Municipal Archives to Be Closed Down

Trent Park House Oral History Project Gets Underway

National Archives Allocates $600,000 to Transfer Digitized Veterans’ Records from the V

New Records Added to Findmypast

All the New Android Features Google Announced

The Museum of Jewish Heritage is currently reviewing plans to build a new genealogy research center at its facility at 36 Battery Place in Battery Park City. Named the Peter and Mary Kalikow Genealogy Research Center, the waterfront expansion will provide visitors with Jewish genealogy resources through JewishGen, a non-profit organization and affiliate of the museum.

When complete, the space will contain computer stations for visitors to peruse Jewish Gen’s vast collection of records and historical data, including ancestry, hundreds of memorial prayer books known as Yizkor, and other records. There also will be trained volunteers on site to assist visitors interested in the service.

“JewishGen has enabled countless people to learn more about their Jewish ancestry, and we are extremely grateful to launch this initiative to serve as an invaluable resource to anyone wishing to learn more about their relatives and their heritage,” said Jack Kliger, president and CEO of The Museum of Jewish Heritage. “We are proud to name this center after Peter and Mary Kalikow, who have been longtime supporters of the museum.”

Designed by Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo & Associates, The Museum of Jewish Heritage was first opened in 1997. The same design team completed an 82,000-square-foot addition that curves around the existing building. Today, the museum features a collection of Jewish historical artifacts, classrooms, a 370-seat theater, gallery space, and a library.

The museum has not revealed when the new Genealogy Research Center might be completed.

The City Council of Reykjavík approved the mayor’s proposal to close down the Reykjavík Municipal Archives. The operations of the Municipal Archives would be incorporated into the National Archives of Iceland. Historians and archivists have criticised the decision, RÚV reports.

Operations to be transferred to the National Archives

Reykjavík City Council approved Mayor Dagur B. Eggertsson’s proposal to close down the Reykjavík Municipal Archives. The mayor’s proposal was presented at a city council meeting six months ago, although its formal processing was postponed until yesterday.

The proposal was predicated on a summary authored by KPMG, which reviewed the operation of the Municipal Archives and assessed three possible options to cut down costs: one, to continue running the Municipal Archives in its current form; two, to increase cooperation with the National Archives of Iceland, which would imply the construction of a new archive; and three, to close down the Municipal Archives and transfer its operation to the National Archives. The last option was considered, by far, the cheapest.

Mayor Dagur told RÚV that the city council had made “a policy decision,” but that the matter would go before the city executive council. “The [path] that was chosen was to start discussions with the National Archives about joint digital preservation and, in effect, the merging of these institutions. That would mean that the Municipal Archives, in its current form, would no longer be an independent entity.”

According to available analyses, operational changes will not be felt over the next four years, Dagur noted. “It will depend on the progress made during discussions, on the outcome of those discussions, and the overall outcome regarding these preservation issues in the country as a whole.” On this latter point, Dagur referred to the global discussion concerning the digital preservation of documents. He hopes that museums in Iceland will unite to ensure safe and accessible document storage.

You can read more in an article by Ragnar Tómas published in the Iceland Review web site at: https://www.icelandreview.com/news/reykjavik-municipal-archives-to-be-closed-down/

A few years ago I would have described this as "magic." Yesterday, I sat through a demonstration of cM Explainer™ while at the RootsTech 2023 confenrece and now I will dscribe it as "state of the art technology."

The following is extracted from an article in the MyHeritage Blog:

One of the most important benefits of taking a DNA test is the matches that you receive. DNA Matches reveal many relatives you never knew about before, based on shared DNA inherited from common ancestors. However, the relationships to your DNA Matches can be confusing. This results in many users not understanding how they are related to most of their DNA Matches, which holds them back from using the matches to advance their family history research and make new discoveries.

Today we’re excited to announce the release of cM Explainer™, an innovative, free new feature on MyHeritage that estimates familial relationships between DNA Matches with high accuracy. This helps overcome the challenge of understanding relationships to DNA Matches. For every DNA Match, cM Explainer™ predicts the possible relationships between the two people and the respective probabilities of each relationship, estimates who their most recent common ancestor(s) could be, and displays a diagram showing their relationship path.

DNA Matches are characterized by the amount of DNA shared between two individuals, measured using a unit of genetic distance called centimorgans (cM). cM Explainer™ is unique in the way it uses both the centimorgan value as well as the ages of the two individuals (if known) to fine-tune its predictions, making MyHeritage the only major genealogy company to offer relationship prediction at this level of granularity and accuracy.

cM Explainer™ is fully integrated into the MyHeritage platform to shed light on any DNA Match found on MyHeritage, and is also available as a free standalone tool to benefit individuals who have tested with other DNA services.

How cM Explainer™ works

cM Explainer™ was developed by MyHeritage in collaboration with Larry Jones, developer of the cM Solver technology. We exclusively licensed this technology from Jones, and our Science team enhanced it further over a period of five months to create an industry-leading solution for genetic genealogy that is exclusive to MyHeritage. Among the enhancements are an age algorithm developed by MyHeritage’s Science team that greatly enhances the prediction by adjusting the probability of each possible relationship, and a slick user interface that displays possible relationships and their probabilities. cM Explainer™ includes useful features such as the ability to filter the predictions by full and half relationships, and to display the probable most recent common ancestor(s) (MRCA) of a match.

The ages of the two people who match each other are instrumental in predicting their relationship. They help rule out impossible relationships and adjust probabilities when multiple relationships are possible. For example, half siblings typically share the same amount of DNA as a grandparent and grandchild. But if the two people are of a similar age, they are probably half siblings. If they are 60 years apart, they are more likely to be a grandparent and grandchild. Other relationships may be possible for the same amount of shared DNA, such as an uncle and nephew, and knowing the ages can help determine which one is more likely. In many cases, the ages don’t make a selection clear-cut, but they affect the probability of each possible relationship, providing useful predictions you can apply to your research.

To maximize the accuracy of the relationship predictions, MyHeritage’s Science team developed an age algorithm by first examining age difference distributions among parents and children, and siblings (calculated separately for full and half siblings), based on extensive research using empirical aggregated data from family trees.

We further derived age difference distributions for all other relationships by combining those for parents, siblings, and children along a standard genealogical path. For example, the distribution of the age difference between an uncle and his nephew (see bottom graph below) is estimated by considering all potential ages of the nephew’s parent, and then adding the age difference between the nephew and his parent (see middle graph) and the age difference between the parent and the uncle (see top graph). On the graphs below, you can see that the average age difference for Parent, Uncle/Aunt, and Parent’s Cousin are similar, but the distribution is more widespread for Uncle/Aunt, and even more so for Parent’s Cousin because of the additional age differences between siblings. More generally, using the age difference allows us to rule out some relationships and assign more accurate probabilities to the remaining possible relationships. Since shared DNA and age difference complement one another, this method provides better results than those provided by shared DNA alone, and is useful even when only one individual’s age is known.

The full description is significantly longer and includes several charts used to explain the technology. You can read the full article at: https://blog.myheritage.com/2023/03/introducing-cm-explainer-to-predict-relationships-between-dna-matches-with-greater-accuracy/