Last month Jennifer Doleac, assistant professor of public policy and economics at the University of Virginia, published a paper entitled The Effects of DNA Databases on Crime, which suggested that size matters: "larger DNA databases reduce crime rates".

BBC: DNA and individual freedom v crime prevention

"The long-term goal is a handheld instrument the size of a calculator" for detecting DNA, says Branton, who hopes to have a prototype in a few years.

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The same folks who were concerned about the Galaxy Note II's behemoth size will also have identical reservations for the 5-inch DNA at first, but this particular device isn't looking to compete in the same genre.

ENGADGET: HTC Droid DNA review Mobile

He vows to have a machine by 2012 that will decode in two hours all 20, 000 human genes that code for proteins. (This is roughly 3% of all DNA and will still be far behind Illumina, which can do all the DNA twice.) Eventually, he hopes to create a machine the size of an iPad.

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In the new study, scientists studied mitochondrial DNA extracted from well-dated fossil bear skeletons to work out how population size changed over time.

BBC: Early human 'squatters' drove cave bears to extinction

Akamai engineers in Cambridge, Mass. are constantly preparing newer, faster servers the size of pizza boxes--cheap off-the-shelf machines embedded with special Akamai DNA--and deploying them to the farthest edges of the network.

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