Showing papers in "Science & Justice in 2016"

TL;DR: Conversations held between scientists of a forensic institution to develop and implement a verbal scale are summarized, with the opinion that if experts were able to coherently articulate numbers, and if recipients of information could properly handle such numbers, then verbal qualifiers could be abandoned completely.

TL;DR: Given evidence of a shared feature of a trace and an accused, this framework is applied to assign an evidential value to this correspondence, and it is demonstrated the LR is given by what the authors know about the proportion rather than by the unknown proportion itself.

TL;DR: Application of context information management does not make a subjective examination objective, but can limit the risks of bias with a minimal investment of time and resources.

TL;DR: This research showed that reproducible aging modelling could be obtained based on fingermark residue exposed to influence factors, as well as promising age estimations, although the proposed models are still not applicable in practice.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explored the effect of prior information given to crime scene investigators on their perception and interpretation of an ambiguous crime scene and found that participants interpreted the crime scene differently depending on how it was presented to them.

TL;DR: The chromatographic chemical profiles of the samples were significantly different, probably due to different variety, light exposition and age, and the PLS-DA classification provides a satisfactory prediction of plant age.

TL;DR: To increase the forensic relevance of such a system, the large number of OGSR compounds reported in the literature has been decreased to 20 OG SR compounds based on the organic chemical composition of over 200 propellant powders.

TL;DR: The solution proposed in this paper is based on the normalized Bayes error-rate in combination with the introduction of misleading LRs with increasing strength to determine limit values of the likelihood ratio in LR systems.

TL;DR: Evidential value is measured by a likelihood ratio, which takes the form of a single value, even if these probabilities are subjective measures of belief of the reporting forensic scientist.

TL;DR: In this review, an overview is given of the techniques that are available addressing their unique characteristics and limitations and it is expected that in the nearby future, donor profiling from contact traces, including fingermarks will be possible.

TL;DR: This paper constructed Bayesian Networks and explored the impact of the amount of data that are available for assessing results, and the consequences of the sensitivity analysis to the discussion on how the evidence shall be reported for a given state of knowledge in terms of underpinning data.

TL;DR: The present paper frames the debate, explaining the underlying problem and referencing classes of solutions proposed in the existing literature, on measuring and reporting the precision of forensic likelihood ratios.

TL;DR: It is argued that forensic practitioners should empirically assess and report the precision of their likelihood ratios, and a normative framework is outlined which a trier of fact could employ to make non-arbitrary use of the results of forensic practitioners' empirical calculations of likelihood ratios and their precision.

TL;DR: The present paper illustrates the use of the new paradigm to evaluate strength of evidence under conditions reflecting those of a real forensic-voice-comparison case and examines how system performance would have differed had the suspect recording been of better quality.

TL;DR: A novel application of visible wavelength reflectance hyperspectral imaging (HSI) has been used for the detection and positive identification of blood stained fingerprints in a non-contact and non-destructive manner on white ceramic tiles.

TL;DR: Here the authors present their take on such device, as well as quantitatively describing its performance and benefits against the manual production of marks, in an emerging area of fingerprinting research concerning the retrieval of chemical intelligence from fingermarks.

TL;DR: Although it is possible to amplify the housekeeping gene at high temperature, DNA profiling is difficult to obtain, probably due to small size of these regions making them more prone to degradation.

TL;DR: In this work, 512 cocaine samples seized by the Civil Police of Espirito Santo state were analyzed by gas chromatography mass spectrometry allied to principal component analysis (PCA) in order to classify the samples as a function of seizure year and location and location.

TL;DR: This paper discusses general principles of software validation and how they could be applied to the interpretation software now being introduced into the forensic community, and uses the LRmix program to provide specific examples of how these principles can be implemented.

TL;DR: There was a small positive association between shift scores and the degree to which analysts displayed an intuitive decision-making style, but shift scores did not vary meaningfully as a function of experience or the other characteristics measured.

TL;DR: A novel application of visible wavelength reflectance hyperspectral imaging (HSI) has been used for the non-contact, non-destructive detection and identification of blood stained fingerprints across a range of coloured substrates of varying porosities.

TL;DR: The reasons for the opinion that interval quantifications for the value of evidence should not be used directly in the Bayesian decision-making process to determine the support of the evidence for one of the two competing hypotheses are discussed.

TL;DR: The determination of sex from the mesio-distal width of incisors and canines in Chilean populations does not adhere to the Mohan and Daubert criteria and therefore would not be presented as evidence in court.

TL;DR: Anecdotal evidence suggests the possibility of identifying emotions from gait, and 30 untrained analysts viewed video footage of 6 walkers displaying 5 emotions and correctly identified all 5 emotions significantly better than by chance.

TL;DR: The results of this study suggest that there are three factors that isolate elderly people and increase the difficulty in determining their cause of death: reduced communication with family members, reducing communication with neighbors or the community, and the increasing prevalence of the nuclear family.

TL;DR: Data obtained in this study suggest that a matching female DNA profile below a peak height of 1000 rfu on the waistband of a male's underwear might be explained by nonintimate social contact with secondary transfer of female DNA from the male's hands.

TL;DR: A qualitative analytical approach that utilizes novel sorbent-coated wire mesh and dynamic headspace concentration to permit the generation of information rich chemical attribute signatures (CAS) for trace energetic materials in smokeless powder with DART-MS is designed.

TL;DR: The aim is to highlight that given the limited knowledge on the subject, there is a research gap that needs to be attended in order to efficiently establish optimal operating conditions for the reliable performance of mine detection dogs in Colombian demining field applications.

TL;DR: Results demonstrate that generally, there is no significant difference between using swabs or mini-tapes to recover the DNA from the non-porous cables and that CNA fuming performed better than WPS in terms of subsequent recovery and profiling of DNA.

TL;DR: It is argued that, given the current state of knowledge, reporting uncertainty in the likelihood ratio is best practice, and this may in time be replaced by reporting a Bayes factor.