Cell Phone Lets Your Secret Out Your cell phone holds secrets about you. Besides the names and numbers that youve programmed into it, traces of your DNA linger on the device, according to a new study. DNA is genetic material that appears in every cell. Like your fingerprint, your DNA is unique to you-- unless you have an identical twin. Scientists today routinely analyze DNA in blood, saliva, or hair left behind at the scene of a crime. The results often help detectives identify criminals and their victims. Your cell phone can reveal more about you than you might think.www.zcyy8.com Meghan J. McFadden, a scientist at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, heard about a crime in which the suspect bled onto a cell phone and later dropped the device This made her wonder whether traces of DNA lingered on cell phones--even when no blood was involved. So she and colleague Margaret Wallace of the City University of New York analyzed the flip-open phones of 10 volunteers. They used swabs to collect invisible traces of the users from two parts of the phone: the outside, where the user holds it, and the speaker , which is placed at the users ear. The scientists scrubbed the phones using a solution made mostly of alcohol. The aim of washing was to remove all detectable traces of DNA. The owners got their phones back for another week. Then the researchers collected the phones and repeated the swabbing of each phone once more. |