Predictive biometrics: A review and analysis of predicting personal characteristics from biometric data

Interest in the exploitation of soft biometrics information has continued to develop over the last decade or so. In comparison with traditional biometrics, which focuses principally on person identification, the idea of soft biometrics processing is to study the utilisation of more general information regarding a system user, which is not necessarily unique. There are increasing indications that this type of data will have great value in providing complementary information for user authentication. However, the authors have also seen a growing interest in broadening the predictive capabilities of biometric data, encompassing both easily definable characteristics such as subject age and, most recently, `higher level' characteristics such as emotional or mental states. This study will present a selective review of the predictive capabilities, in the widest sense, of biometric data processing, providing an analysis of the key issues still adequately to be addressed if this concept of predictive biometrics is to be fully exploited in the future

Integrative epigenome-wide analysis demonstrates that DNA methylation may mediate genetic risk in inflammatory bowel disease

Epigenetic alterations may provide important insights into gene-environment interaction in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Here we observe epigenome-wide DNA methylation differences in 240 newly-diagnosed IBD cases and 190 controls. These include 439 differentially methylated positions (DMPs) and 5 differentially methylated regions (DMRs), which we study in detail using whole genome bisulphite sequencing. We replicate the top DMP (RPS6KA2) and DMRs (VMP1, ITGB2 and TXK) in an independent cohort. Using paired genetic and epigenetic data, we delineate methylation quantitative trait loci; VMP1/microRNA-21 methylation associates with two polymorphisms in linkage disequilibrium with a known IBD susceptibility variant. Separated cell data shows that IBD-associated hypermethylation within the TXK promoter region negatively correlates with gene expression in whole-blood and CD8+ T cells, but not other cell types. Thus, site-specific DNA methylation changes in IBD relate to underlying genotype and associate with cell-specific alteration in gene expression

The Future of Smart Health

Longitudinal individual and crowdsourced health data from wearable sensors can be leveraged to increase the quality and length of life, giving rise to a new health data economy

The Future of Smart Health

Longitudinal individual and crowdsourced health data from wearable sensors can be leveraged to increase the quality and length of life, giving rise to a new health data economy

Thermal Vein Signatures, DNA and EEG Brainprint in Biometric User Authentication

In this paper we present a survey of three recent developments in biometric user authentication based on physical human characteristics that are less prone to natural or intentional changes than other currently used techniques: thermal vein signatures, DNA and EEG brainprint obtained by stimulating the brain with cognitive events. This paper argues that biometric user authentication using these three human characteristics is already an everyday a reality or is going to be very soon