Forensic Science

The National Clearinghouse For Science, Technology & The Law (NCSTL) at Stetson University has produced a comprehensive website that provides: a searchable database of legal, forensic, and technology resources.

We scoured the Internet looking for quality free online murder mystery games more out of hope than expectation. Much to our delight though, the good old BBC came up trumps.

Researchers from the Computer Science Department at The University of Warwick (UK) have developed a technologically advanced fingerprint recognition system which is capable of identifying partial, distorted, scratched and smudged fingerprints in a matter of seconds.

The Steven Truscott case is among the most high profile and controversial in Canadian legal history. On the 9th June 1959 14 year old Steven Truscott went on a bike ride with his 12 year old classmate Lynne Harper. Two days later, Lynne Harper is found dead, she had been raped and strangled.

This innovative conference organised by Sisters in Crime is aimed at anyone you wants to write about crime with authority and credibility, as well as non-writers who simply wish to further their understanding of forensic science. The conference offers two-and-a-half days of classes delivered by forensic experts.

How To Commit The Perfect Murder was the title of a recently aired programme in the current series of Horizon. (Horizon is an excellent long running TV science based show produced by the BBC).

Came across the transcript of a very interesting radio brodcast on psychopathy. The programme which aired back in March 2002 was introduced as follows:

"In fiction there's been Hannibal Lecter and American Psycho. In real life, the legacy of notorious serial killer Ted Bundy still resonates. But how much can we believe of Hollywood's Tinseltown representations of psychopaths? What is it that defines psychopathic personality? Is it a distinct psychological state? And what hope for a cure?"

Over 200 forensic science related resources have been uploaded to the document sharing website Scribd.

Very informative and engaging podcast by Dr. David Sweet, director of the internationally renowned Bureau Of Legal Dentistry (BOLD) at the University of British Columbia.

A database of ink profiles is being put together at the Midwest Forensics Resource Center at Iowa State University which will allow scientists to combine mass spectrometry with a new sampling technique called Direct Analysis in Real Time (DART). This new process will help identify the chemical makeup of ink much more quickly and in much more detail than was previously possible and should prove to be of invaluable assistance to forensic scientists attempting to identify inks on fraudulent documents.

Science and the Courts: When Certainty Meets Probability is the title of a thought provoking podcast that was first broadcast in 2002 on Quirks & Quarks, the award-winning radio science program produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Blinkx is the world's largest and most advanced video search engine. Simply type in a search term e.g. forensic science and get instant results back drawn from a constantly updating index of over 12 million hours of searchable video from national broadcasters, commercial media giants, and private video libraries.

In a fascinating podcast author and professor of history Ken Alder discusses the origins of the lie detector, it's place within the criminal justice system; and why despite the consistent doubts raised over its reliability, the polygraph is still being administered on a regular basis within the USA.

At the beginning of each month the All About Forensic Science Website features a new, best selling or critically acclaimed book which helps further the reader's understanding of the application of science within the criminal justice system and/or specific areas of forensic science theory and practice.

Thanks to it being made available via podcast, anybody interested in forensic science, particularly forensic pathology can listen to a very insightful interview on KSKA public radio with host Dr. Thad Woodard talking to State of Alaska Medical Examiner Dr. Frank Fallico.

Researchers, from Bristol University in the UK, the University of Vienna in Austria and Indiana University in the US, have developed a way of analysing the traces of scent that every person leaves behind.

Inside The Forensic World is the title of the seminar being organised by the NSW branch of the Australian and New Zealand Forensic Science Society. The seminar is taking place on the 14th July at the University of Technology, Sydney and is open to anyone who wants to learn more about the "real" world of forensic science, policing and law.

The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) and leading computer forensics company, 7Safe, have just released the latest version of the official guide to computer-based electronic evidence collection.

100 years of fingerprinting is being marked by an exhibition at the place where the first criminal in the UK was convicted on the strength of fingerprint evidence alone.

When 105 grams of hashish went missing from the narcotics department of the Forensic Medicine building in Yenibosna, Turkey; it was claimed that two mice found dead near the crime scene had nibbled their way through the drug sample bags.