Stories tagged forensics
You wouldn’t eat moss. But, then again, you’re no iceman.
in Life Science, Diversity of Organisms, Scientific Inquiry, and Human Organism
It's a darn feast!: When I die, my stomach will be so full of moss, scientists of the future will be ecstatic.
Courtesy Martin LaBarThat little devil Otzi is in the news again.
I readily acknowledge the fact that I haven’t lived my life quite up to Otzi standards—I don’t have any tattoos (that I know of), I’ve never killed anybody (that I know of), I don’t own a cape…the list goes on—but I hope that when hikers find my frozen corpse, thousands of years in the future, they’ll be as thrilled with it as they are with Otzi. Honestly, every millimeter of our leathery friend is getting the once over and the double take.
Scientists figured out what Otzi’s last meal was years ago (they practically dove into his stomach), but they’re still going over the most minute of minutia of the iceman’s guts. And, you know what? I’m into it.
Archaeobotanists and moss-experts are the last to have taken a swing at Otzi. They have found trace remains of six different kinds of moss in Otzi’s intestines, and were able to identify them under a microscope. None of those moss varieties, interestingly, are the kinds of moss that you’d eat (if there are any kinds of moss you’d eat). They do, nonetheless, add to the details of Otzi’s life.
One of the kinds of moss, the scientists guess, was used to wrap one of Otzi’s last meals (sort of a fuzzy saran wrap, I guess), another probably got into his water, and another was most likely used as a dressing for a wound (he probably chewed it up and swallowed a little). At least one of the mosses, however it got into him, isn’t known to grow in the region where Otzi was found, adding another location to Otzi’s travel diary. So cross that off your bucket list, little dude.
None of this information is insulating my attic, or buying me dinner, but I still think it’s pretty cool. The same sort of forensic techniques we might use to solve a murder today are being used to learn about the life of a guy who died 53 centuries ago. I like it.
Tags : Did you ever wonder what those pesky moths ate before they ate your clothes in your closet? Clothes moths were known previously to feed on dead animals. Recently, scientists also discovered that the casemaking clothes moth, one of the two most common closet menaces, can be helpful in forensic work as well!
The casemaking clothes moth, so named because it makes a fuzzy case-like home for itself as a young caterpillar, will eat human hair and can even feed on corpses. The caterpillars can eat enough hair to identify a body with DNA.
These moths can be particularly helpful if a body is moved to a new location. The caterpillar will move to a nearby spot, away from the body, to make its cocoon. Then, if the body is moved, DNA evidence from the caterpillar in the cocoon can tie the victim to the original location.
More information on this can be found at Science News.
Washed up feet have Canadians fearing their sneakers
Map of British Columbia: Georgia Strait where the majority of the feet were found.
Courtesy Puget Sound PartnershipA mystery has been unfolding in British Columbia over the past year. Since August 2007, seven body-less feet have been found washed up on the banks of the Frasier River and Georgia Strait. The most recent foot was discovered on November 11 by a couple walking along the Frasier River. One of the feet has been identified by DNA as belonging to a missing man. Investigators are looking to missing persons reports in an attempt to identify the other feet.
Some people have found the fact that many of the feet were in tennis shoes and were right feet to be suspicious, but authorities believe that the body parts are most likely from natural deaths and have travelled by ocean currents to the shore. Forensic analysts agree with a scenario in which the feet disarticulated naturally from the bodies, with the tennis shoes keeping the feet afloat while other body parts likely sank. Is this a hoax, a serial killer who has a big problem with sneakers or just an odd and icky manifestation of natural deaths? You can find more information in this article Another severed foot washes up on B.C. coast. And, to see what local British Columbians think is going on, or if you enjoy some morbid humor and a foot pun or twelve, check out the comments section of this article.
Crime Scene: That elephant seems strangely out of place...suspicious...
Courtesy matt coatsImagine a crime scene that has hundreds of crime scene investigators. All of the students at Arlington High School in St. Paul, MN are working together to crack the case! As part of the school’s BioSMART program, intended to expose students sciences, engineering, business, etc., this school-wide lesson is drawing on a variety of different disciplines. Art students have become sketch artists, English language learners are questioning “persons of interest”, other students are working to determine the angles of blood spatter. I think this lesson is really a neat way to highlight how crime scene investigation draws on many different subjects and specialists. It is also a cool way to get students interested in subjects that maybe they would not have thought about before. What do you think?
Researchers in Australia have developed a way to mark artwork with an invisible chemical fingerprint. A forensic chemist named Rachel Green has been developing the technology for the past five years. The process involves determining the trace elements present in a painting and then adjusting the mixture of trace elements to make its own signature. Artwork can be treated with this signature a of couple different ways, by mixing it in with the paint or spraying it on previously completed works. Green claims it does not harm the painting.
The technology could prove valuable in preventing art forgery and Green hopes that it will also help indigenous artists by increasing the value of their art and reducing fraudulent works. Earlier this month, a painting by Freddy Timms of Australia was the first painting to be treated by this process.
Thx 4 the confession
What can messages on your cell phone say about you? They can potentially reveal your age, gender or even your identity. Linguistic forensics is being increasingly used as an investigation tool and as evidence in court, including in cases where suspects claimed text messages as alibis. In a recent case, text messages from a missing woman’s phone were used in the conviction of her ex-boyfriend for her murder. Experts determined that the style of suspicious text messages from her phone pointed toward him as the author rather than her. They looked at, among several differences, her consistent use of the spelling “myself” versus the use of “meself” in the questioned texts.
Dr. Tim Grant is researching the linguistic analysis of text messaging and has developed a method to quantify stylistic differences between two texts. He also has put together a database of 7000 texts so far. He hopes his research will determine the base rate for specific texting features and show similarities among groups of individuals that frequently text each other. You can contribute your text messages to his research at a link in the article below.
Txt Crimes, Sex Crimes And Murder: The Science Of Forensic Linguistics
Do you often find yourself watching those prime-time crime dramas on TV asking yourself, "Wow! I didn't know they could figure out whom the killer is based on a single carpet fiber sample found on the sidewalk outside of a crime scene! Can they really do that?!?" Well, some of the processes we see on TV may not be quick as quick and easy, or even possible compared to real life crime investigation.
Lisa Smith, of the University of Leicester School of Psychology, is doing some research to see how these portrayals of forensics on TV are affecting how jurors view forensic evidence in actual court cases. Jurors make their decisions based upon their knowledge, perceived understanding, and beliefs regarding forensic evidence. So the next time you are watching some evening television or even hear a news story regarding some forensic evidence, think twice about the validity of what you see!
Oh, and if you like, there is an online questionnaire for the study!
CSI: The Experience will open here at SMM on October 15.
One aspect of crime scene investigation is forensic entomology: the use of insects found on or near a body to help determine the time, manner, and location of death.
And we're fortunate that Valerie Cervenka, the first female board certified forensic entomologist, lives here in St. Paul. She's our Scientist on the Spot right now, so you can read about her work and get her answers to your questions.
And, Buzzketeers, do we have something "special" for you... Lots of forensic entomology studies are done using pigs, because (according to Jessica Snyder Sach's Corpse:
"The soft, near-hairless skin of a domestic pig closely duplicates that of a human, and that the torso of a luau-size porker parallels that of a 160-pound man."
Pig, @2pm, 9-18-08: Our pig, fresh from the freezer.
Courtesy Liza Pryor
That is, the skin, muscle/fat ratio, and other characteristics of pigs are reasonably good approximations of humans'. In death, what happens to a pig, and when, is pretty similar to what happens to human corpses. (If you think that's unpalatable, consider that the other way we can calibrate insect evidence is to do controlled studies at places like Tennessee's "Body Farm," where researchers observe what happens to people instead of pigs. You can search Buzz for the term "body farm" if you're interested in that: we've done a few stories.)
So we've obtained a young pig. (Don't worry: the pig died of natural causes.) And we've put it in a cage, with a webcam, and we're letting it decompose. The camera records a still image every 15 seconds, and we'll eventually turn all those photos into a time lapse, which Val Cervenka will help us interpret. Pretty cool. Pretty gross. And all in the interest of science.
Why didn't we wait for the exhibit? Well, insect activity slows dramatically or even drops off to nothing once the outside temperature gets to about 50 degrees. To follow the pig through most of its stages of decomposition, we had to get it going now.
Want to see what's going on with the decomposing pig right now? Click here. But don't say we didn't warn you. It's graphic.
Metal musician: This statue of Ludwig Von Beethoven in his hometown of Bonn, Germany, remembers the great composer. New research is showing that he might have died from medical treatments containing high levels of lead. (Flickr photo by Gauis Caecilius)Beethoven may have had a good ear for music, but he might have had bad judgment when it came to selecting a doctor.
Further forensic tests on hair samples of the classical music giant are showing that he received unusually high levels of lead in his system over the final one-third of a year of his life. And researchers think that lead likely came from treatments from his doctor.
Several years ago, CSI-type studies of Beethoven’s hair and bones revealed that he died of lead poisoning. But new findings this year, based on further samplings of his hair, show that he had huge spikes in lead levels in his system following visits from his doctor.
At the end of his life, Beethoven was suffering from cirrhosis of the liver and other abdominal ailments. To treat him for the stomach ailments, Beethoven’s doctor would repeatedly puncture the abdominal cavity and then seal up the wound with a lead-laced poultice.
Even back in the early 1800s, medical professionals knew lead was a dangerous element to the body. But it was believed that the low dosages in the stomach treatments were non-poisonous for someone in Beethoven’s state. What the doctor’s didn’t know was that the composer’s liver was already reeling from high levels of lead that he consumed in wines and water that he had drank earlier in his life. In effect, the final treatments were just making the problem worse.
My editorial comment: The one thing we can be sure about was that Beethoven wasn’t playing with toys made in China at the time of his death.
Does everyone remember Otzi the Iceman? The little frozen mummy they found in the Alps, back in the early Nineties? Of course you do. How could you forget something like that?
Otzi, at about 5300 years old, bears the distinction of being one of the oldest natural mummies in the world. Also, a five feet, five inches, and eighty-four pounds, he is one of the smallest people I am afraid of. And not just because he’s dead.
And the award for "most hardcore death" goes to...: That's right, to Otzi the Iceman for dying high on a mountain, covered in tattoos and the blood of his enemies, and shot though the shoulder with an arrow. We envy you, but only slightly.
New research has finally put to rest (as it were) the question of Otzi’a death. It turns out that Otzi died as he lived: on a mountain, and totally hardcore. I will now list the evidence for this conclusion, in order of increasing bad-assness.
1) Otzi dressed all in leather. His cloak was made of woven grass, but his belt, vest, leggings, loincloth, and shoes were all leather. We know that’s what tough people wear.
2) Otzi wore a bearskin hat. I would never mess with anyone in a bearskin hat. Bears don’t give up their skin easily.
3) Otzi carried around a prehistoric medicine kit. Maybe this isn’t that hardcore, but it seems like a good idea. He had a string of two kinds of polypore mushrooms, which have antibacterial properties. Way to think ahead, Otzi!
4) Otzi had 57 tattoos. No elaboration needed.
5) Otzi carried an axe, a knife, a quiver of bone-tipped arrows, and a longbow. For comparison, I usually carry around my house keys, and sometimes a pen. John Rambo and Otzi probably shopped at the same stores, come to think of it.
5) The blood of four non-Otzi people was found on Otzi’s cloak. Whoa! After DNA analysis revealed this, some people began to speculate that Otzi may have been part of a raiding party. After baby showers, these are the roughest, toughest kind of parties around.
6) A recently constructed 3D model of Otzi’s body shows that he died of blood loss after getting shot with an arrow under his left collar bone. Previous examinations had revealed a wound beneath a matching tear in Otzi’s (leather) vest, inside of which was lodged an arrowhead, but the new CT scans clearly show that the arrow had torn an artery, which would have caused severe bleeding, shock, and eventually death by heart attack. A large haematoma, or a collection of blood from internal bleeding, was also revealed, which might suggest that the arrow was pulled out of the wound, shortly before death. The chances of surviving this sort of wound, even today, would be around 40%.
Wow. My hat goes off to you, little iceman.
There have been some cool shows about the iceman, but even wikipedia’s article is pretty interesting.
And here’s an article about the recent research on Otzi’s body.
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