> Detectable levels of DNA were also observed in air and dust samples from ultra-clean forensic laboratories which can potentially contaminate casework samples.
Great news for criminal defense attorneys.
Maybe we should spin up an air-based version for the office to keep track of who’s in coming to work the most
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_of_Heilbronn
Woman at a cotton swab factory was identified after being considered a serial killer.
Here's a cool recent paper showing you can extract DNA of local species from spider webs, by sequencing DNA stuck to spider webs from next to a zoo https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S258900422...
The path toward Air DNA has been known for years [0]. Wouldn’t be surprised to learn crime scene investigators have been sampling and storing air in high profile cases ready for the tech to catch up.
[0] https://www.science.org/content/article/dna-pulled-thin-air-...
In the autopsy they discovered sperm from a 3rd person on her body, tried to claim that it was an infidelity case(you get different sentece depending on your motives and circumstances) but later it was revealed that this was just a contamination during the autopsy.
So, the more forensic options the better but likely longer and more expensive trials. All lawyers win.
How does sperm end up on her body during the autopsy? Are we talking necrophilia or are there multiple murdered bodies laying next to each other and the tools are re-used or something?
The whole case is a huge mess with attempts of cover ups, months long manhunts and all kinds of conspiracy theories. The killer was sentenced to 24 years of prison but unalived himself in prison and there're still conspiracy theories saying that he actually escaped to China because he was studying Chinese in prison prior that. This happened more than 10 years ago and last year they opened his grave to check the remains and again it was confirmed that that's him. Yet, this is still not enough to end the public discussion and conspiracy theories.
Anyway, if anyone is curious this is the case in question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Münevver_Karabulut
Unfortunately, the juicy literature around that is mostly in Turkish.
In reality, criminals are angry, frightened, in a rush, high or stupid, and they make the most elementary mistakes, so DNA and fingerprints work just fine almost all the time. In like 99% of cases there's not much doubt about who did it, the main thing is to have a watertight case against them when they deny it.
If there is DNA evidence that is almost a guilty verdict. It should be more closely scrutinized but not everyone is rich enough to afford a real defense.
except for all of those innocent folks that have had their lives ruined by that 'almost all the time' caveat, it's great!
here's a report[0] that says something like 80% + of criminal forensic work has major mistakes within it.
[0]: https://www.criminallegalnews.org/news/2024/may/15/report-fi...
[1]: https://medium.com/new-writers-welcome/unalive-the-birth-of-...
[2]: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/unalive
Edit: typo.
> At 100% of the 130 examinations analyzed, seized drug analysis was the examination with the highest percentage of Type 2 errors. It was followed by pediatric physical abuse (83% of cases had forensic errors with 22% having Type 2 errors out of 60 cases analyzed), fire debris not including chemical analysis (78% of cases/38% Type 2 in 45 cases), bitemark comparison (77% of cases/73% Type 2 in 44), pediatric sexual abuse (72% of cases/34% Type 2 in 64), serology (68% of cases/26% Type 2 in 204), shoe/foot impressions (66% of cases/41% Type 2 in 32), DNA (64% of cases/14% Type 2 in 64), hair comparison (59% of cases/20% Type 2 in 143), and blood spatter (58% of cases/27% Type 2 in 33).
Also this sample comes from cases where people were exonerated, which could cluster around poor quality police work in general. And is US-based where policing is all kinds of messed up.
"Mr Butler has a rare skin condition, which means he sheds flakes of skin, leaving behind much larger traces of DNA than the average person. He worked as a taxi driver, and so it was possible for his DNA to be transferred from his taxi via money or another person, onto the murder victim."
That's not language changing because of fresh eyes, it's because of tired eyes looking towards the bottom dollar.
Unalive on the other hand is a simplistic word that has neither of those, it is originally derived as an attempt to bypass automatic filter. IMHO using it for someone without the practical need to bypass censorship takes away the heft of their act. Makes it insignificant.
It's as if they took the token sentence that goes in an abstract about potential applications, and turned it into the meat of the article.
It sounds like they are using standard extraction kits, them analyzing with RT-PCR.
(I am currently reading and infected by Hofstadter's "Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking" which I think would side with using unalive, which might also construe a set larger than that of "dead.")
I've sometimes conjectured collecting hair from barbershops and making a dusting bag that steadily fluffs out hairs to dirty up a crime scene. Maybe get some saliva from grocery store sample spoons.
I accept an agency like Mosad or the CIA would attempt it though. CIA tried so many crazy schemes to try to kill or embarrass Castro and failed every time. Mosad loves balls to the walls evil schemes too, like the pagers. It would be one of those situations where they leave a stupid trace and everyone knows it's them and they are untouchable so they don't care and even enjoy the attention.
Framing someone else is not a perfect crime. A perfect crime finds no criminal, accused or convicted.
Rule 43(a) in the criminal procedures handbook IIRC.
>Respondents who are the most highly educated, have the highest number of daily posts on social media, and spend the most time on social media, appear to self censor criticisms of the government on social media more than they self censor praise of the government on social media. Other respondents do not appear to self-censor criticism of the government on social media. However, my findings are severely limited by my small sample size.
I was actually asking for accounts of firsthand experience, not ideological slop.
But maybe I'm just an old man yelling at a cloud.
One strategy that might work, though you’d need to take care and get permission: create a barrier to downstream so sculpins can’t come upstream, and place a trap above the barrier and see if any enter the trap after a few hours. That should tell you if they’re occupying that part of the stream. Just sticks with a mesh net placed as a barrier should be sufficient to prevent any downstream occupants from coming up and entering the trap.
Another would be to place a camera in the water and review the footage. I use this approach with an iPhone 15 Pro (I just stick it straight in the stream) and I get excellent results. There are always really cool animals popping up. Here’s an example: https://youtu.be/N9PLra7amfs?si=kZ01cFZ8upKLxNPb
This was in a very tiny puddle off the side of a creek in summer. At a glance it appeared empty, but after putting the camera in and walking away for 10 minutes or so, all kinds of creatures like this sticklebacks came out of the detritus.
They send you usually a syringe with some filter paper in it, you push water through the filter paper, send the paper back, and they sequence the DNA stuck in the paper and send you a report (and add the sightings to their database).
I don't think my own curiosity is a good enough reason to build a trap or barrier. But a camera is a good idea. I actually just picked up some parts from blue robotics to put together a setup for one or more cameras using some stuff I have laying around.
Cool sticklebacks! One of the places I stumbled on Sculpins was in the Taylor River on Vancouver island. I saw something moving and nearly froze myself staying in until I found several of them.
I double-checked the forensics work and found several mistakes in processes, assumptions and technical conclusions. I sent off my findings to people associated with Project Innocence - not because I found anything that proved Cooper or Anthony's innocence, quite the opposite. Instead, I wanted to let them know that forensics experts can make mistakes.
It is interesting that scientific work have fault-finding processes like peer-reviews, but forensics investigations in court cases does not.
I've never seen blue robotics before. I almost wish I hadn't, haha. This is going to soak up some time.
Their low light USB camera looks awesome for stream monitoring. You could probably even get decent footage in the shady areas (where I find a lot of fish prefer to be). Maybe under some rocks on an overcast day with lots of diffused light? Could be awesome!
Its peak draw is only 220mA so you could actually record a ton of footage on a raspberry pi 5 without a massive power source (10,000mAh should get you somewhere around 2.5 hours, I think?)