Los Angeles police say that Lonnie Franklin Jr. may be the “grim sleeper” serial killer they have sought for more than 20 years. And if indeed they do have their man, they have his son to thank—for getting arrested himself.

Franklin is one of the first major suspects nabbed by police using familial DNA. With this controversial method, investigators look for partial matches between DNA left at a crime scene and DNA profiles that are stored in police databases; a partial match may indicate that the person is related to the target individual sought by the cops.

The trail began to heat up when the DNA of Franklin’s son was entered in a state database after he was convicted in a weapons case, authorities said. The son’s DNA was similar to genetic material found on the victims, and authorities soon began following around Franklin to get his DNA and see if he was the suspected killer [AP].

The cops posed as waiters at a restaurant where the elder Franklin ate, which is how they obtained a complete DNA sample from him–they grabbed a plate and napkin he tossed after eating a slice of pizza. The investigators say that when they found the match to the samples in their evidence, it eased 25 years of frustration at not being able to track him down.

In 2009, LAPD Det. Dennis Kilcoyne, who led a special unit assigned to find the Grim Sleeper, expressed frustration with knowing who the killer was, but only in a language of numbers and dashes. “We’ve got this beautiful DNA profile — all these dashes and dots, and this and that, but there’s no name to go with it,” Kilcoyne said [CNN].

It was just two years ago that California Attorney General Jerry Brown gave the OK to testing the state’s DNA data bank for these familial matches. Colorado is the only other state that currently allows the practice. Brown promises that only convicted felons are in that database for testing, but that’s just the thing that raised the hackles of opponents.

Familial DNA database searches have come under fire from privacy and civil liberty advocates, who argue, among other things, that they put more minorities, who are disproportionally represented in the database, in an at-risk group [ABC News].

However, as DISCOVER blogger Razib Khan writes at Gene Expression, this testing is coming whether we like it or not (and besides, it’s probably more reliable than eyewitness testimony or fingerprinting). So, Khan says, the issue we should worry about is not privacy but accuracy.

Related Content:
Gene Expression: To Catch a Predator: Familial DNA
Gene Expression: The State May Have Your Genome Sooner Than You Think
80beats: Could Forensic Scientists ID You Based on Your “Bacterial Fingerprint?”
80beats: Think DNA Evidence Can’t Be Faked? Think Again

Image: iStockphoto

Considering cryonics? Before you sign up to freeze yourself — or just your brain! the whole thing (you) might be overkill–after you die so that you can be unfrozen and then un-deadened in the future, you might want to consider your current relationships. As it turns out, a lot of those who plan to go into cryonic suspension when they are “deanimated” have trouble with their loved ones, primarily wives. In Kerry Howley’s NYT Magazine piece “Until Cryonics Do We Part” about Robin Hanson, a George Mason University economics professor and forward thinker, and Peggy Jackson, a hospice worker and Hanson’s wife, we get a glimpse of the tension wanting to live forever can cause. You see, Hanson wants to cryonically preserve his brain, and Jackson thinks that idea is a bit absurd.

And she isn’t the only one:

Among cryonicists, Peggy’s reaction might be referred to as an instance of the “hostile-wife phenomenon,” as discussed in a 2008 paper by Aschwin de Wolf, Chana de Wolf and Mike Federowicz.“From its inception in 1964,” they write, “cryonics has been known to frequently produce intense hostility from spouses who are not cryonicists.” … Premonitions of this problem can be found in the deepest reaches of cryonicist history, starting with the prime mover. Robert Ettinger is the father of cryonics, his 1964 book, “The Prospect of Immortality,” its founding text. “This is not a hobby or conversation piece,” he wrote in 1968, adding, “it is the struggle for survival. Drive a used car if the cost of a new one interferes. Divorce your wife if she will not cooperate.”

Thankfully, Hanson and Jackson don’t seem to be heeding Ettinger’s advice. When asked to speculate why it might be that so many don’t see cryonics as a good decision, Hanson described cryonics as analogous to a “a one-way ticket to a foreign land.”

I suppose that works, but let’s flesh that analogy out a little bit more. Cryonics is like buying a ticket to a foreign land to which no one has been and may not even exist; in a vehicle that, if it stops working for just a couple of hours at any point on its indeterminately long journey, will kill (for real this time) everyone on board; all with the hopes that when you arrive the people of the foreign land will have the benevolence and the ability to not only bring you back to life, but also reverse the damage caused by rotting and freezing as well as the terminal issues that caused your death in the first place. Whew. Oh, and the ticket costs $100,000 and your current quality of life is reduced because you have to start paying for the ticket now.

You know what? I can see how that might strain my current friendships and/or sanity. You guys go on with out me. I’m going to keep holding out for Aubrey de Grey and the SENS Foundation to keep me from dying in the first place. Come ooooon, resveratrol.

It blinds; it burns; it looks kind of pretty. An invasive, poisonous plant known as giant hogweed, or Heracleum mantegazzianum, is attacking western Ontario.

The plant is a member of the carrot or parsley family, and as described in a brochure (pdf) from the Michigan Department of Agriculture, 20th century gardeners cultivated the giant for its impressive size and for its stem’s purple coloring. But it soon broke out of gardens and arboretums, its seeds finding soil outside of captivity.

Besides Canada, the plant has also appeared in the northern United States (both east and west) and as far south as Maryland. Ontario officials are concerned with the plants’ continuing spread–it was most recently sighted in Renfrew County–and have urged anyone who spots it to contact them immediately.

Giant Hogweed can grow to almost twenty feet tall and five feet wide, and each plant can produce around 500,000 seeds. Sap on your skin can give you ugly blisters, the CBC reports, and sap in your eyes could cause blindness.

Jeff Muzzi, manager of forestry services for Renfrew County, told the CBC that, despite its heft, the weed is a stealthy attacker.

“[Exposure] could be inadvertent,” Muzzi said. “You might not even know it’s here, [just] walk into it and happen to break a leaf. The next thing you know, you’ve got these nasty burns.”

Renfrew County officials are attempting to thwart the toxic plant’s leafy grip by distributing pamphlet warnings and, as the CBC reports, through “weed-whacking campaigns.”

Related content:
Discoblog: The Iron Curtain Kept Invasive Species Out of Eastern Europe
Discoblog: For Guilt-Free Fur, Wear a Coat Made From an Invasive Water Rat
Discoblog: Does Fighting Forest Fires Help Invasive Species?
Discoblog: Crocs Chow Down on Invasive Toads, Instantly Regret It
DISCOVER: Humans vs Animals: Our Fiercest Battles With Invasive Species (gallery)

Images: Wikimedia, Michigan Department of Agriculture

At 15:45 UTC tomorrow, July 10, the European Space Agency probe Rosetta will fly to within 3200 km (2000 miles) of the asteroid 21 Lutetia. This close pass will reveal, for the first time, the shape and details of this roughly 100-km-diameter rock.

You can watch this event live as it happens; ESA is streaming the event. Around 01:00 UTC they’ll start presenting the images, too. Below is an embedded feed that will go live once the actual stream starts.

I’m very excited about this! This is all happening during TAM 8, but I’ll try to watch it live if I can too.