This article reports the results of a survey of the responsible crime laboratories in the first 19 states with legislation establishing forensic DNA data banks. The survey inquired into the labs' policies and procedures regarding the collection, storage, and analysis of samples; the retention of samples and data; search protocols; access to samples and data by third parties; and related matters. The research suggests that (1) the number of samples collected from convicted offenders for DNA data banking has far surpassed the number that have been analyzed; (2) data banks have already been used in a small but growing number of cases, to locate suspects and to identify associations between unresolved cases; (3) crime labs currently plan to retain indefinitely the samples collected for their data banks; and (4) the nature and extent of security safeguards that crime labs have implemented for their data banks vary among states. The recently enacted DNA Identification Act (1994) will provide $40 million in federal matching grants to states for DNA analysis activities, so long as states comply with specified quality-assurance standards, submit to external proficiency testing, and limit access to DNA information. Although these additional funds should help to ease some sample backlogs, it remains unclear how labs will allocate the funds, as between analyzing samples for their data banks and testing evidence samples in cases without suspects. The DNA Identification Act provides penalties for the disclosure or obtaining of DNA data held by data banks that participate in CODIS, the FBI's evolving national network of DNA data banks, but individual crime labs must also develop stringent internal safeguards to prevent breaches of data-bank security.
Recent advances in DNA identification technology are making their way into the criminal law. States across the country are enacting legislation to create repositories for the storage both of DNA samples collected from convicted offenders and of the DNA profiles derived from them. These data banks will be used to assist in the resolution of future crimes. This study surveys existing state statues, pending legislation, and administrative regulations that govern these DNA forensic data banks. We critically analyzed these laws with respect to their treatment of the collection, storage, analysis, retrieval, and use of DNA and DNA data. We found much variation among data-banking laws and conclude that, while DNA forensic data banking carries tremendous potential for law enforcement, many states, in their rush to create data banks, have paid little attention to issues of quality control, quality assurance, and privacy. In addition, the sweep of some laws is unnecessarily broad. Legislative modifications are needed in many states to better safeguard civil liberties and individual privacy.
The purpose of this study was to review existing and proposed legislation specifically intended to regulate the collection, use, and potential misuse of genetic data. The study encompasses laws relating to confidentiality, informed consent, discrimination, and related issues. It excludes from consideration legislation relating to medical records generally that may bear indirectly on genetic information. It also excludes both legislation relating to the regulation of DNA data collection for law enforcement purposes and state laws relating to the confidentiality of data collected by newborn-screening programs. While relatively few laws that explicitly regulate the treatment of genetic information have been enacted to date, a considerable amount of activity is currently underway in the nation's legislatures. Although most of the bills under consideration are not comprehensive in scope, they reflect a growing societal awareness that the uncontrolled dissemination and use of genetic data entails significant risks.
We present measurements of the Baryon Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) scale in redshift-space using the clustering of quasars. We consider a sample of 147 000 quasars from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) distributed over 2044 square degrees with redshifts 0.8 0 at 6.6s significance when testing a ΛCDM model with free curvature.C 2017 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society ; AJR is grateful for support from the Ohio State University Center for Cosmology and ParticlePhysics. HGM acknowledges support from the Labex ILP (reference ANR-10-LABX-63) part of the Idex SUPER, and received financial state aid managed by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche, as part of the programme Investissements d'avenir under the reference ANR-11-IDEX-0004-02. GBZ is supported by NSFC Grant No. 11673025, and by a Royal Society Newton Advanced Fellowship. RT acknowledges support from the Science and Technology Facilities Council via an Ernest Rutherford Fellowship (grant number ST/K004719/1) CHC is grateful for support from Leibniz-Institut fur Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP). EB and PZ acknowledge support from the P2IO LabEx (ANR-10-LABX-0038). JLT acknowledges support from National Science Foundation grant AST-1615997. YW is supported by the NSFC grant number 11403034. WJP acknowledges support from the UK Space Agency through grant ST/K00283X/1, and WJP acknowledges support from the European Research Council through grant Darksurvey, and the UK Science & Technology Facilities Council through the consolidated grant ST/K0090X/1. ADM was partially supported by the NSF through grant numbers 1515404 and 1616168. IP acknowledges the support of the OCEVU Labex (ANR-11-LABX-0060) and the A*MIDEX project (ANR-11-IDEX-0001-02) funded by the 'Investissements d'Avenir French government program managed by the AN. JPK acknowledges support from the ERC advanced grant LIDA. GR acknowledges support from the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) through NRF-SGER 2014055950 funded by the Korean Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MoEST), and from the faculty research fund of Sejong University in 2016. Funding for SDSS-III and SDSS-IV has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Participating Institutions. Additional funding for SDSS-III comes from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. Further information about both projects is available at www.sdss.org. SDSS is managed by the Astrophysical Research Consortium for the Participating Institutions in both collaborations. In SDSS-III, these include the University of Arizona, the Brazilian Participation Group, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Florida, the French Participation Group, the German Participation Group, Harvard University, the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, the Michigan State/Notre Dame/JINA Participation Group, Johns Hopkins University, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, New Mexico State University, New York University, Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, University of Portsmouth, Princeton University, the Spanish Participation Group, University of Tokyo, University of Utah, Vanderbilt University, University of Virginia, University of Washington, and Yale University. The Participating Institutions in SDSS-IV are Carnegie Mellon University, Colorado University, Boulder, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Participation Group, Johns Hopkins University, Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe Max-Planck-Institut fuer Astrophysik (MPA Garching), Max-Planck-Institut fuer Extraterrestrische Physik (MPE), Max-Planck-Institut fuer Astronomie (MPIA Heidelberg), National Astronomical Observatories of China, New Mexico State University, New York University, The Ohio State University, Penn State University, Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, United Kingdom Participation Group, University of Portsmouth, University of Utah, University of Wisconsin and Yale University. This work made use of the facilities and staff of the UK Sciama High Performance Computing cluster supported by the ICG, SEP-Net and the University of Portsmouth. This research used resources of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, a DOE Office of Science User Facility supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231.
