Recently, a team of chemists, engineers, management scientists, sociologists and nanotechnologists has worked under the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council to develop a new method in ballistics tagging. Very small tags, known as “nanotags,” are coated onto gun cartridges and attach themselves to hands or gloves. Nanotags are useful because they remain on the skin or clothing of whoever handled the cartridges and are not easily removed. Furthermore, they also remain on the cartridge after firing which allows forensic scientists to link a weapon to a suspect. Normally, it is very difficult to find fingerprints on cartridges because they are very smooth and shiny. One of the team members explains, “The tags primarily consist of naturally-occurring pollen, a substance that evolution has provided with extraordinary adhesive properties.” This breakthrough is also much more cost effective because sufficient amounts of DNA is captured without damage.
The technology is said to be put into use within the year and hopefully the technique can be applied to other fields.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080801074732.htm
2 comments:
I think that this article was well summarized and well presented. I was not bored at any point when I read through it. I think the topic was very compelling. We have yet to study ballastics in class so it was exciting to learn a little bit about the forensic ballastic field. I was surprised why what I read. Finally, it was great the author used direct quotations.
To improve, maybe the author could have included what other fields this technology could be used in. In addition, maybe she could have given her opinion on the importance of this new technology.
I had no idea that little tags could be put on guns.
You summarized the article well. You kept the reader interested on a very good article. It is interesting that this method hasnt really been discovered yet. It could have been better if the writer included how this is going to affect forensics in the future. Overall, you did a good job.
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