Crime wave fuels forensics boom in Mexico

Enrique Ramos slipped a long piece of packing tape into a bowl of purple dye, swished it around and then held it up to a light, looking for fingerprints.
"They use this tape for packaging drugs or for tying you up before they put a bullet in your head," he told a group of forensic science students clustered around him. "You get great fingerprints off it."

As Mexico struggles to stem a wave of drug-related crime, forensic science classes such as Ramos' are multiplying, trying to meet the booming demand for fingerprint collectors, crime scene photographers and ballistics experts to keep up with the body count.

"Forensic science is seeing a boom in Mexico," said Rafael Ruíz Mena, secretary-general for professional training at Mexico's National Institute of Criminal Science. "More and more young people are seeing this as a career opportunity."

Source: http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2010-01-12-mexico-crime_N.htm

New Rule Allows Use of Partial DNA Matches

ALBANY — New York has become the latest of a handful of jurisdictions to permit a controversial use of DNA evidence that gives law enforcement authorities a sophisticated means to track down criminals.

Under a state rule approved in December, DNA found at a crime scene that does not exactly match that of someone in the state’s DNA database can still be used to pursue suspects if the DNA closely resembles that of someone on file.

Since family members share genetic traits, a partial DNA match allows investigators to narrow searches to relatives of people whose DNA is already in the state database, forensic experts say.

But advocates for protecting the public’s privacy warned that the practice could be abused and effectively promoted a guilt-by-association approach to criminal justice that could result in the investigation of many innocent people. New York’s DNA database contains more than 343,000 genetic profiles of people convicted of serious crimes.

As DNA databases have grown and investigators have become more sophisticated about recovering genetic evidence from every possible source at a crime scene, partial matches have become a tantalizing policing tool.

Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/25/nyregion/25dna.html

Virtual Forensic Computing (VFC) by MD5 Ltd, UK

VFC is one of the significant breakthrough's in forensic computing in the last ten years. VFC enables investigators to:

rapidly boot a forensic image of a suspects computer; or
boot a physical write blocked hard drive.
The investigator can then experience the 'desktop' as seen by the original user in an entirely forensic manner. The investigator can use the suspects computer in a read only virtual environment.

"VFC boots a mounted EnCase image in seconds..."

There are numerous specialist software applications available to assist the investigation and analysis of digital media which has been forensically acquired. Whilst these tools can and do provide a great depth of analysis and will reveal data fragments of material no longer readily available, it is often the case that the 'scene of the crime' part of the examination process is overlooked as an additional source of potentially invaluable information.

In the 'real' world, it is almost unthinkable not to examine in detail the actual crime scene and then perform 'forensic' examinations on evidence gathered from the scene. In the 'virtual' world of forensic Computing, the same is not true and all too often it is only the underlying data and information that resides on the storage devices that is examined in detail.

Source: http://www.mountimage.com/virtual-forensic-computing-vfc.php

Can Digital Tech and Insects Replace Cadaver-Sniffing Dogs?

Forensic scientists work with law enforcement to locate and identify corpses at crime scenes and in the wake of disasters. Forensic teams typically rely on highly trained cadaver dogs that are expensive to maintain. DNA or dental records are then used to determine a recovered body’s identity. Although these well-honed methods are considered the gold standard, forensic experts are faced with scenarios where these conventional tools are impractical, as when the body is badly decomposed or buried by debris. These new tools are being developed.

Source: Popular Mechanics

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/worst_case_scenarios/4338265.html?nav=RSS20&src=syn&dom=yah_buzz&mag=pop

To Catch A Child Predator

New techniques are emerging to help forensic analysts build cases against Internet child pornographers.

Some crimes, like the rape and torture of infants and toddlers, are so unspeakable the reaction of most people is to turn away and hope the problem vanishes.

Forensic analysts, however, must face this dark reality in the pursuit of prosecutions. The scope of the problem is immense.

The Internet enables instant access to child pornography. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) reports it has reviewed 23 million child pornography images and videos—8.6 million just in 2008.

As the problem spreads, the victims seem to get younger and younger. According to the 2008 InternetWatch Foundation (IWF) Annual Report, 69% of child victims are under ten years old, and 24% are six years old or younger. Some are babies.

Both IWF and NCMEC are active in helping forensic scientists build cases against those who produce, distribute, and consume child pornography. Two new software tools, one developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the other in Sweden, appeared this summer to help them and others involved in this pursuit. Both packages are designed to automate some of the grim forensic tasks of fighting child pornography.

The Swedish system, called NetClean Analyze, is an investigative tool for individual law enforcement agencies working with images and videos of child sexual abuse.

Developed for the Swedish National Police, NetClean Analyze uses unique image recognition techniques to speed up the process of analyzing and classifying images and videos. The system, which is currently in use throughout the European law enforcement community, can rapidly catalog the hundreds of thousands of images and videos that are typically found during an investigation of computers confiscated from suspected child pornography traffickers.

Before NetClean Analyze, forensic examiners had to manually view and catalog each image or video, which significantly slowed down the forensic process.

NetClean Analyze focuses on three key issues. It minimizes the time investigators have to spend looking at old or duplicate images and videos, it eases collaboration between police units, and it enables more efficient reporting with an engine that allows easy creation of either customized or standardized reports.

Aside from automatic categorization, NetClean isolates duplicate files, which saves time.

“It’s not unusual for duplicates to reduce the number of images in a case from perhaps 350,000 to 80,000, saving a tremendous amount of analytical time,” said Christian Sjöberg, CEO of NetClean Technologies, Göteborg, Sweden.

Source:Forensic Magazine
http://www.forensicmag.com/articles.asp?pid=309

Forensic Expert Says Bigfoot Is Real

Now, Bigfoot advocates are increasingly turning to forensic evidence to prove the existence of the giant creature.

Investigator Jimmy Chilcutt of the Conroe Police Department in Texas, who specializes in finger- and footprints, has analyzed the more than 150 casts of Bigfoot prints that Meldrum, the Idaho State professor, keeps in a laboratory.

Chilcutt says one footprint found in 1987 in Walla Walla in Washington State has convinced him that Bigfoot is real.

"The ridge flow pattern and the texture was completely different from anything I've ever seen," he said. "It certainly wasn't human, and of no known primate that I've examined. The print ridges flowed lengthwise along the foot, unlike human prints, which flow across. The texture of the ridges was about twice the thickness of a human, which indicated that this animal has a real thick skin."

Meldrum, meanwhile, says a 400-pound (180-kilogram) block of plaster known as the Skookum Cast provides further evidence of Bigfoot's existence. The cast was made in September 2000 from an impression of a large animal that had apparently lain down on its side to retrieve some fruit next to a mud hole in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest in Washington State.

Meldrum says the cast contains recognizable impressions of a forearm, a thigh, buttocks, an Achilles tendon and heel. "It's 40 to 50 percent bigger than a normal human," he said. "The anatomy doesn't jive with any known animal."

A few academics believe Meldrum could be right.

Renowned chimpanzee researcher Jane Goodall last year surprised an interviewer from National Public Radio when she said she was sure that large, undiscovered primates, such as the Yeti or Sasquatch, exist.


FOR MORE READ: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/10/1023_031023_bigfoot_2.html

Chemical In Henna Useful In New Fingerprinting Techniques

Henna, used to draw attractive designs on palms and in hair dyes, may become the latest tool in the fight against crime.

Curtin University of Technology researchers are developing new fingerprinting technologies using lawsone, a naturally occurring substance found in henna.



Simon Lewis, Associate Professor of Forensic Chemistry, said the new methods being tested had the potential to be an important complementary method to those currently used in fingerprint detection.

According to Curtin PhD student Renee Jelly, lawsone’s properties made it a very useful tool for law enforcement.

“Lawsone is the compound that gives henna its characteristic property for dying hair and skin a reddish brown colour,” she said.

“We have discovered that it reacts with the amino acids in invisible fingerprints on paper, which turn a purple-brown colour when treated with lawsone.

“These coloured fingerprints are also luminescent under a forensic light source.”

Miss Jelly’s thesis, Natural Products as Novel Reagents for the Development of Latent Fingermarks on Porous Surfaces, involves investigating a number of alternative materials to use in hunting for fingerprints on paper.

“Paper-based evidence, such as documents, wrapping material and containers, are frequently encountered in criminal investigations,” she said.

“The most widely used methods for detecting invisible fingerprints on these surfaces rely upon the detection of the amino acids present in natural skin secretions.

“Fingerprints formed in this way can be extremely long lived, with impressions in excess of 20 years of age being developed with amino acid sensitive treatments.

Source: medindia.net

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Forensic Scientists Improve DNA Analysis With Mummy-inspired Bone-baking

ScienceDaily () -- Forensic scientists analyzing bones found in the Gobi desert discovered that the DNA within them could be surprisingly easily extracted. In an experiment designed to mimic the conditions that affected those bones, baking a particularly difficult sample made the DNA much more easily extracted, probably because it makes it easier to break open more cells and expose more of the DNA molecules.

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