New DNA pellets used by law enforcement officers will be able to tag certain individuals with a special SelectaDNA code so they can continue to search for an assailant sometime after their initial getaway. This new tagging system has been launched by a leading forensic marketing company from the UK to assist the identification of criminals at arms length, according to Selectamark Managing Director Andrew Knights.

The new high velocity DNA pellet trace system is available in both pistol and rifle formats, which means criminals can be tagged from a safe distance with a tagging gun. This will help police and law enforcement officers identify an individual in a crowd or from a distance. The new idea recently launched at The SHOT Show, Las Vegas, by Selectamark the innovative UK security company that believes the product is a great way to mark certain members involved in crowd control problems, which can be actively apprehended because of this unique marking.

A safe distance of around 30-40 meters is the suggested distance to tag a potential target with either pistol or rifle, and this will help officers apprehend an offender at a later date when the situation at hand is less confrontational. Andrew Knights mentions the uniquely coded SelectaDNA solution, which leaves a synthetic DNA trace mark for enforcers to confirm or eliminate those involved in a criminal activity.

This could be used as evidence in the arrest and prosecution of offenders in the future, therefore making the job of law enforcement easier and more direct in its approach to tracking down a perpetrator after the event. Powered by 12g powerlet with up to 20 shots in each for the pistol version, the SelectaDNA pellets come in packs of 14 pellets to a container all containing the same unique DNA code, and can be used in rifles as well as pistols.

More details on this can be viewed on Selecta DNA including the recent launch, we have also embedded a video of this in action at the bottom of our post. The video shows a mark left after being shot shown up under a UV light, although we are unsure how long this mark takes to disappear or whether it will penetrate certain forms of clothing.

If the DNA marking can stay on skin or clothing for a number of weeks this could be used to catch certain criminals sometime after the offence, so once this becomes apparent we could see situations like last summer’s UK riots disperse quicker once those involved know that they can be tracked down at a later date. Do you think this DNA trace system is a great way to stop some crowd situations from escalating?

This tree produces the seeds used to make cocoa the main ingredient in chocolate, and the information will help grow stronger tree’s resistant to disease and easier to grow for millions of farmers.

The company behind Snickers and M&M’s has decided to share the information instead of keeping it secret. Having better tree’s means more chocolate for years to come for everyone. Howard-Yana Shapiro a staff officer of plant science and research at mars said “The information is so rich and so accurate we felt there was no reason to hold back.”

In the US not much cocoa is produced, but companies such as Mars rely so much on it and led to the US Department of Agriculture trying to come up with a better cacao tree since 1999.

Mars in partnership with IBM and the USDA began sequencing the cacao genome in 2008, and Mars put $10 million in to the project. The results have been shared three years ahead of schedule.

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