adityamalik - Slashdot User

Submission + - Indian census to collect fingerprints, photos (indiatimes.com)

Submitted by adityamalik on Thursday April 01, 2010 @04:24AM

adityamalik writes: The Indian census kicks off on thursday, with approximately 2.5 million charged with conducting it across the billion plus strong country.
"Officials will collect fingerprints and photograph every resident for the first time for the register — a process described by Home Minister P. Chidambaram as 'the biggest exercise... since humankind came into existence.'"
Sensitivity towards collection of biometrics and personal details is quite low in India currently. Wonder how effective — and how powerful — the exercise will turn out to be for the country. Was also struggling to imagine how the photo & fingerprint collection is going to happen, technology-wise.

Submission + - Biologist (almost) creates artificial life 1

Submitted by

Aditya Malik

on Tuesday September 09, 2008 @03:09AM

Aditya Malik writes: "Wired has a very interesting story up about how a lab led by Jack Szostak, a molecular biologist at Harvard Medical School, is building 'protocells' from artifical molecules which are very close to satisfying the conditions for being 'alive'.

Story here: http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/09/biologists-on-t.html

"Szostak's protocells are built from fatty molecules that can trap bits of nucleic acids that contain the source code for replication. Combined with a process that harnesses external energy from the sun or chemical reactions, they could form a self-replicating, evolving system that satisfies the conditions of life, but isn't anything like life on earth now, but might represent life as it began or could exist elsewhere in the universe."

This obviously throws up very interesting questions about creationism, not to mention some scary bio-research-gone-wild scenarios."

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