DNA Evidence Can Be Fabricated, Scientists Show

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/science/18dna.html?_r=1

This article is about how scientists from Israel have determined that DNA fabrication is possible. DNA ever since this new research, has been the best and most reliable way of gaining evidence and the ultimate way of determine who was where and when they were there. Scientists have created blood and saliva samples containing DNA from a person other than the donor of the blood and saliva. Also, they showed that they could construct a sample of DNA to math a profile in the DNA database.

Dan Frunkin, the lead author of the paper published, says, “ You can just create a crime scene…a biology undergraduate can perform this procedure. Dr. Frumkin the founder of Nucleix, has developed a test that can distinguish between real DNA and fabricated DNA, and hopes to sell his idea to forensic labs.

Nucleix’s test to tell if a sample has been fabricated relies on the fact that amplified DNA is not methylated, meaning it lacks certain molecules that are attached to the DNA at specific points, usually to inactivate genes.

DNA can be fabricated from any thing from a strand of hair to marks left on a drinking cup. It is truly remarkable, that DNA, once known as the final frontier in forensics. DNA, that had sent so many people to jail, because many believed that DNA could not be faltered with, has the ability now, to be fabricated.

Science digs into Civil War sites

This article was very interesting because it told how advances in forensic science can improve archeological techniques in finding relics. This article provides examples of research on the civil war where scientists are using these new technologies to get information on the history of what happened on a field in Atlanta. It seems to have been an area where war is forgotten and a city has been built over it; however, this is not the case. Forensic scientists known informally as the “civil war CSI” are working hard to figure out what happened on the field. One of these scientists found a bullet and with new forensic technologies has been able to find out everything about this bullet. He could tell what gun it was fired from, information about the gun, whose bullet it was, where it was fired from, and even when it was fired down to the time of day. It is truly amazing what can be researched now compared to 100 years ago because back then underground radar took a truck and much manpower, now it can be put on one person’s back and carried around like a backpack.

Speech Patterns in Messages Betray a Killer

Julia Turner, a 40 years old resident of Sheffield, England informed her partner Darren Akers that she would be running late to do some shopping. As time passed Mr. Akers became restless after not hearing from Ms. Turner for so long, two days later he received a text message from Ms. Turner. The message said that she would be “Stopping at jills, back later need to sort my head out.” Mr. Akers was surprised because normally Julia would not text and he did not know anyone that had the name Jill. “Tell kids not to worry. sorting my life out. be in touch to get some things.” This was the next text message received. Mr. Akers felt that something was wrong; the police began to investigate Ms. Turner’s disappearance.

The police went to Mr. Simmerson because it was known that he and Ms. Turner were having an affair. Mr. Simmerson’s cell phone and a five page letter talking about how he wanted to kill himself and Ms. Turner were taken by the police.

John Olsson, the director of the Forensic Linguistics Institute, based in Wales, notices something through linguistic similarities between the letter, the text messages that Julie had supposedly sent, and taped excerpts from Mr. Simmerson’s interview with the police. The phrases “sorted her life out” and “head sorted out.” were mentioned in Mr. Simmerson’s interview and also in the text messages that Ms. Turner allegedly sent. Mr. Olsson analyzed immense amounts of sample language and noticed that those phrases are very rare to come up so close together.

Based on the analysis of these messaged Mr. Olsson was able to create enough evidence to convict Mr. Simmerson for Ms. Turner’s murder. In the end, Mr. Simmerson confessed to the murder and Julia Turners body was found in an oil barrel that had once been in Mr. Simmerson’s Ford Ranger. Mr. Simmerson was sentenced to life in jail.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/science/12file-text.html

Test Proves 'The Eyes Have It' For ID Verification

A new report by computer scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) demonstrates that iris recognition algorithms can maintain their accuracy, affirming their potential for large-scale identity management applications. Examples include the federal Personal Identity Verification program, cyber security, and counterterrorism.

After fingerprints, iris recognition has emerged in recent years as the second most widely supported biometric characteristic. This requires images to be captured in a standard format and prepared so that they are compact enough for a smart card and for transmission across global networks. The images also have to be identifiable by computer algorithms and interoperable with any iris-matcher product regardless of the manufacturer.

NIST established the Iris Exchange IREX program as a NIST-industry collaboration to encourage development of iris recognition algorithms operating on images conforming to the new standard. The first IREX project, IREX I, provided quantitative support to the standard by conducting the largest independently administered test of iris recognition technology to date. The test attracted 19 recognition technologies from 10 different providers.

The IREX I tests also looked at technical factors affecting users. These include speed-accuracy tradeoffs, threshold calibration, storage requirements, image quality assessment, and the effects of iris size, eyelid occlusion and pupil dilation. The test result shows that forensic applications, where image quality is sometimes degraded, can benefit from slower but more powerful algorithms.

Plans for IREX II are under way to calibrate and evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of iris image quality assessment algorithms. This study will support a new international iris image quality standard by identifying specific iris image properties that are influential on recognition accuracy.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091104101628.htm

Court should acquit mom of infanticide

The article “Court should acquit mom of infanticide in disgraced pathologist case: Crown” is about the story of Sherry Sherret-Robinson and how she was found guilty of smothering her baby, named Joshua, to death in 1999. She was convicted based on evidence found by Dr. Charles Smith, whose findings were not questioned because Sherret-Robinson had made comments about her depression and how she wanted to kill her child before the death occurred. However, now several cases of Dr. Smith, including this one, have been under investigation because there have been several inconsistencies. In this case, Dr. Smith concluded that there had been a skull fracture and neck hemorrhaging which is consistent with smothering.  After further review in 2006, it has been found that there was no skull fracture, and that he hemorrhaging was caused by Dr. Smith during his autopsy. Sherret-Robinson is still serving her sentence but is going to fight at a trial to clear her name in December. 

link to article: http://www.570news.com/news/national/more.jsp?content=n232739323

Case of the toxic gingerbread man

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/49897/title/Case_of_the_toxic_gingerbread_man


There where Christmas ornaments that were producing a source of indoor air anomalies. These toxins contaminate shallow ground water reservoirs. The vapors from them can seep into homes as the pollutants follow beneath them. The data of the Hill Air Force base would indicate that the lone ornament, the gingerbread man, could elevate DCA concentrations in a entire house above the level that is considered safe. Products found to be admitting these toxins came from china. They DCA can harden the inexpensive plastic but that is not allowed in the US. They suspected that house hold cleaners and other consumer products where the source of the high DCA and TCE levels, but there data concluded that it came from a plastic box, filled with Christmas ornaments. They tested some paint chips, but they found little DCA. They then amputated the legs of the ginger man and they found high levels of DCA.

CRIME SCENE IMPERFECTIONS:

Next time you see one of those television crime-scene investigators crack a case with high-tech analysis, better take it with a grain of salt. The National Academy of Sciences, the nation’s most prestigious scientific organization, has surveyed the field of forensic science and found it grossly deficient.
It’s not just that many forensic laboratories are poorly funded and staffed with “experts” who are poorly trained. The more fundamental problem, according to the study, is that there is little evidence of the accuracy and reliability of most forensic methods — especially those that rely on expert interpretation.
The most thoroughly validated technique is nuclear DNA analysis, which has a minuscule likelihood of error when done right. But other well-known methods that can supposedly identify a guilty person or link a weapon or other evidence to a particular crime have no rigorous scientific proof that they work consistently.
That goes for analyses of hair, bite marks, fibers, documents, tools, firearms, shoe impressions, tire tracks, handwriting and blood spatters, among others. The analyses can help focus an investigation but can seldom provide infallible evidence of guilt.
Even fingerprint analysis depends on a subjective judgment by experts as to how closely two prints match, a conclusion that can be biased by the examiner’s knowledge of the suspect or the case. Examiners have sometimes disagreed with their own past conclusions when viewing the same prints in a different context.
The academy’s panel makes sensible suggestions for improvement, such as certification of forensic professionals, accreditation of laboratories, uniform standards for analyzing evidence and independence of the laboratories from police and prosecutors who might bias judgments. In the long run, research is needed to determine the accuracy of forensic methods. For now, judges, lawyers and juries are on notice that high-tech forensic perfection is a television fantasy, not a courtroom reality.

Test Proves 'the Eyes Have It' For ID Verification

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091104101628.htm

This article talks about how the eye can be used for identity verification. Because the iris has such an intricate structure, each person’s is slightly different. For this reason, it has become the second most widely supported biometric characteristic, after fingerprints. Now, NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology) is working internationally to change the recognition standards and advance the iris images. The present international standard defined three competing image formats and three compression methods. However, it has been shown that only two of the three formats have worked well, which were centering, and then cropping the iris, or centering, and then cropping and masking eyelids and eyelashes. Also, only two of the three compression methods were able to make the images small enough for transmission while retaining the quality, which were JPEG 2000 and PNG. The purpose of this is to be able to expand the use of irises for identification. Instead of just using this technology as locks, perhaps one day, this technology can be used to create an iris database that will help identify victims.

"Innocent but Dead" By BOB HERBERT

Cameron Todd Willingham is a man who was executed in Texas in 2004 for capital murder. The authorities presumed that it was arson that resulted in the death of two young children. Willingham pleaded innocent. Fire examiners noticed deep charring at the base of some of the walls and patterns of suspicious soot. The examiners were sure that someone had set the fire, and that it had to have been Willingham. The local DA said “the children were interfering with his beer drinking and dart throwing.” Willingham was in fact innocent. He remained on death row for 12 years. Gerald Hurst, a arson investigator, reviewed the evidence in the case and began shooting down every indication of arson. Unfortunately, the authorities would not give him another hearing. Willingham was executed by lethal injection on February 17, 2004. Now, this year, Craig Beyler also reviewed the case. He found that there was absolutely no scientific basis for coming to the conclusion of arson. An innocent man was killed because experts came to a conclusion without having scientific evidence. If forensic examiners were at the scene perhaps this man would not have lost his life.

A Dream Interpretation: Tuneups for the Brain

People have always wondered what their dreams mean and now finally there are some answers. Scientists have been comparing their hypothesizes for what dreams are and how they work. Some scientists, such as Dr. Hobson, a psychiatrist at Harvard, has suggested that dreams are “tuning the mind for conscious awareness.” In his point of view, when people dream it is simply the body’s way of preparing the brain for the next day’s activities. Many other scientists have recognized Dr. Hobson’s reasoning and have thought it to be impressive. However, Dr. Llinás, a neurologist and physiologist at New York University, said that his idea was not the only interpretation of dreams. Dr. Llinás’ and other scientists’ studies have shown that dreams are a kind of crude test run for what the coming day may hold; it could be good; it could be bad. In way this interpretation of dreams makes the statement that dreams are a type of warning sign, for the good and bad. There are different types of dreaming and these different types of dreaming can vary a scientist’s point of view on what a dream is. There is lucid dreaming, which is a mixed state of consciousness, sleepwalking and night terrors, which are mixtures of muscle activation and non-REM sleep, and narcolepsy, which is an infringement of REM on normal daytime alertness. Although it is comforting to have some idea of what a dream is, scientists have a lot of work ahead of them before they are able to come up with a definite explanation for what a dream actually is.

Fabricated DNA Evidence

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/science/18dna.html?_r=1

Recent studies have shown that DNA evidence collected from a crime scene might lose some of its credibility. Scientists in Israel have proven that it is possible and in fact unsettlingly easy to fabricate DNA samples at the scene of a crime. The scientists were able to fabricate both saliva and blood samples from a man who was not at the crime scene, along with reconstructing the DNA of any person within a given database. Using a drinking cup or a cigarette butt, it is possible to scrape together enough genetic material to amplify into evidence to be planted at a crime scene. Dr. Dan Frumkin, leader of the project and author of the scientific paper, stated that “You could just engineer a crime scene… any biology undergrad could perform this”. The scientists used two methods to construct fake DNA evidence: one required a small sample from an individual such as saliva from a drinking cup, then amplifying the DNA using a technique known as whole genome amplification. The other method involved taking snippets from a DNA profile database in a series of numbers and letters corresponding to the 13 places within the genome that they appear, and then cloning them.

While it is clear that not every criminal would have the resources available to him to accomplish a task such as fabricating DNA, the scientific evidence suggests that samples of DNA found at a crime scene cannot be relied on for 100% accuracy in naming the culprit. Tania Simonielli, science advisor to the American Civil Liberties Union, said that the findings were worrisome because “DNA is a lot easier to plant at a crime scene than fingerprints… We’re creating a criminal justice system that is increasingly relying on this technology”. It is clear from the evidence in this article that DNA evidence perhaps should no longer be considered the gold standard of proof in criminal investigations.

Luke Nichols

New DNA Method Makes it Easier to Trace Criminals

DNA samples often convict criminals. But many of today's forensic tests are so polluted by soil, tobacco and food remains, for example, that they can not be used. Now researchers at Lund University in Sweden, working together with the Swedish National Laboratory of Forensic Science, SKL, have improved a critical part of the analysis process.

The first findings, published in the latest issue of the journalBiotechniques, indicate that the new method strengthens the DNA analysis so that previously negative samples yield positive and usable DNA profiles.

"The results are overwhelming. In my study I selected 32 truly difficult samples from the SKL archive, that is, with few cells, little DNA, and many so-called inhibitors, meaning lots of junk. With current methods it was impossible to get acceptable DNA profiles from any of them. But with the new method, 28 of the samples yielded more usable DNA profiles," says Johannes Hedman, an industrial doctoral candidate from SKL doing research at the Faculty of Engineering, Lund University.

Genetic information has become more and more common in forensic analyses. The analysis flow usually starts with taking a sample with a swab from a drinking glass or a blood spot, for example. The cells from the swab are then dissolved in water, and the DNA is extracted.

In forensics all over the world, much work has been done to improve the taking and handling of samples.

"The DNA analysis, on the other hand, has been something of a black box, since it is purchased as a finished product. No one has tried to improve it to be able to deal with dirty samples. But this is absolutely crucial, since the samples often have extremely small amounts of DNA. In this phase you copy certain parts of the DNA strands and then obtain a DNA profile that is unique to each person.

In the copying step, I have optimized the chemical environment and replaced a key enzyme, a so-called DNA polymerase. This yields a clearer genetic footprint, a DNA profile, to work with," explains Johannes Hedman. He has also devised a new mathematical model that makes it easy to interpret the DNA analysis.

If the copying phase is improved, stronger DNA evidence can be shown from crime scenes that today provide only partial or entirely blank DNA profiles. In other words, the chances are greater that a person can be found and linked to a particular crime.

The reason Johannes Hedman wound up at Lund is the fact that Peter Rådström, a professor of microbiological engineering, has been working since the late 1980s to improve DNA-based infection diagnostics and microbiological analyses for food. SKL was eager to find out whether these research findings could be applied to improving forensic DNA analysis.

"This collaboration opens new vistas for both SKL and Lund University, and we hope to be able to continue to work together with Peter Rådström's team. We have truly seen cross-fertilization," says Birgitta Rasmusson, research director at SKL.

“Picked From a Lineup, on a Whiff of Evidence”

L. Reetz

A man named Curvis Bickham was recently released from an eight-month jail sentence through the evidence of a dog’s sniff. After a dog-scent lineup, Bickham was convicted of a triple homicide. During a dog-scent lineup, the dogs are exposed to different items’ scents found at the crime scene and walk by a series of containers with samples from one suspect and others not involved in the crime. If the dog finds a match, he will begin barking, signaling that he has found a criminal. For some time now, FBI agencies have used dogs to help track down people involved with drugs, explosives, and other crimes.
This technique, however, does not always seem to be entirely accurate because in some cases other evidence proves something different from what the dog discovers. For instance, one man named Ronald Curtis, was jailed after a scent lineup for shoplifting when the store videos showed someone not resembling Curtis at all. In Bickham’s case, he was sent to jail for eight months because of a scent lineup until another man confessed to the crime. Both Curtis and Bickham are now filing civil lawsuits against their cases. Although dog-scent lineups do prove to be accurate in some instances, they have been wrong numerous times and thus should be used “only to corroborate other evidence.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/us/04scent.html?ref=science

Test Proves 'The Eyes Have It' For ID Verification

Scientists can now say that the iris can reveal a person’s true identity. A new report by computer scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) reveals that iris recognition algorithms can maintain their accuracy with compact images, confirming their potential for large-scale identity management applications, such as the federal Personal Identity Verification program, cyber security and counterterrorism.

This marketplace rests on the ability of detected algorithms to process standard images from the many cameras now available. NIST scientists are working with the international biometrics community to modify iris recognition standards and to advance iris images as the global transaction in this rapidly developing field.

NIST established the Iris Exchange IREX program as a NIST-industry cooperation to encourage development of iris detected algorithms operating on images respectful to the new ISO-IEC 19794-6 standard. The first IREX project, IREX I, provided great support to the standard by performing the largest independently administered test of iris recognition technology to date. The test attracted 19 recognition technologies from 10 different providers. The image format test showed that two of the three formats performed well. These center and crop the iris, or center, crop, and mask eyelids and eyelashes.

Temporarily, plans for IREX II are under way to regulate and evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of iris image quality evaluation algorithms. This study will support a new international iris image quality standard by identifying specific iris image properties that are influential on recognition accuracy.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091104101628.htm