Just Science

Atlanta Olympic Bombing

Season two, episode five of Just Science interviews John Collins during the annual ASCLD symposium in Dallas, Texas. This episode takes us back to a time when the United States was hosting the summer Olympics, in Atlanta, in 1996.  The summer of 1996 was meant to be an important moment for the heart of Georgia on the world’s stage, but instead is remembered by a horrific explosion, whose percussion echoed the planet.  Join us as John Collins walks us through the timeline of when law enforcement received an anonymous phone call warning of the bomb, to the forensic analysis of explosive devices, and how a pre 9/11 America tried to cope with such a shocking event.

Some content in this podcast may be considered sensitive and may evoke emotional responses, or may not be appropriate for younger audiences.

This season of Just Science is funded by the National Institute of Justice’s Forensic Technology Center of Excellence [Award 2016-MU-BX-K110].

Season two, episode four of Just Science involves a case through the eyes of an investigator.  Mike Weber, an investigator with the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office in the Crimes Against Children Unit, walks us through a case involving Munchausen Syndrome by proxy. Munchausen Syndrome by proxy is a rare form of child or elderly abuse where a primary caretaker exaggerates or creates their victim’s symptoms of illnesses, in this case through manipulation, deceit, and forgery. Not much is known about this type of crime because it is so rarely recognized and so difficult to prosecute. Listen along as Investigator Weber navigates us through his journey to justice in this horrific case involving an abusive and attention crazed chemist, a poisoned child, and an investigator who wants justice.

In part 2 we navigate this dramatic rollercoaster of a case, filled with deceit and cliffhangers that seem more like fiction than reality. We left off with the victim being tested in the hospital and Hope’s story starting to unravel...

This season of Just Science is funded by the National Institute of Justice’s Forensic Technology Center of Excellence [Award 2016-MU-BX-K110].

Season two, episode three of Just Science involves a case through the eyes of an investigator. Mike Weber, an investigator with the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office in the Crimes Against Children Unit, walks us through a case involving Munchausen Syndrome by proxy. Munchausen Syndrome by proxy is a rare form of child or elderly abuse where a primary caretaker exaggerates or creates their victim’s symptoms of illnesses, in this case through manipulation, deceit, and forgery. Not much is known about this type of crime because it is so rarely recognized and so difficult to prosecute. Listen along as Investigator Weber navigates us through his journey to justice in this horrific case involving an abusive and attention crazed chemist, a poisoned child, and an investigator who wants justice.

Some content in this podcast may be considered sensitive and may evoke emotional responses, or may not be appropriate for younger audiences.

This season of Just Science is funded by the National Institute of Justice’s Forensic Technology Center of Excellence [Award 2016-MU-BX-K110].

Episode two of the Just Science podcast involves a case from Canada that Deputy Director Andrew Greenfield worked on when he was a young scientist. The gruesome murder of a child in 1999 in Toronto was unheard of and it dominated the air waves, and because of inaccurate witness statements describing the suspects, it was near impossible to generate leads for this case. Greenfield spoke up to one of his superiors about using a new DNA technology to help find a lead. We will be discussing with him outside the box thinking and DNA match probability, and what it means for justice.

This podcast contains violent and sometimes graphic content, this may evoke emotional responses, or may not be appropriate for younger audiences.

This season of Just Science is funded by the National Institute of Justice’s Forensic Technology Center of Excellence [Award 2016-MU-BX-K110].

JUST CASE STUDIES: MEL HALL – A SEXUAL PREDATOR

For the second season of Just Science we will be delving into case studies. These case interviews include victim accounts, lawyers, investigators, and crime lab directors. They will tell you about cases they have personally worked during their career, and what tactics they used to bring their victims justice. Episode one is a case involving a former Yankee baseball player, Mel Hall, who was convicted on three counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child and two counts of indecency with a child. We phone interviewed the prosecutor of his case, Kim Davignon, and one of his victims Chaz Easterly. Just Science discusses with them victimology, and how to handle cases involving children who have experienced sexual assault. Some content in this podcast is sensitive and may evoke emotional responses, or may not be appropriate for younger audiences. This recording took place during the From Cradle to Cane Conference: Crimes Against Vulnerable Victims in Charleston, SC March of 2017.

If you are a victim of sexual assault or would like to talk to a trained advocate, there is a National Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline you can call at 800.656.4673, or visit RAINN.ORG or Victimsofcrime.org.

Some content in this podcast is sensitive and may evoke emotional responses, or may not be appropriate for younger audiences.

This season of Just Science is funded by the National Institute of Justice’s Forensic Technology Center of Excellence [Award 2016-MU-BX-K110].

This special release season of the 2017 NIJ R&D Symposium of Just Science, funded by the National Institute of Justice’s Forensic Technology Center of Excellence [Award 2016-MU-BX-K110], interviews Dr. Rob Maher.

Below is the abstract submitted where Dr. Rob Maher explains his research:

Gunshot acoustics–interpretation of the characteristic sounds produced by firearms recorded at a crime scene–is a specialization within the audio forensics field. Audio forensic evidence is increasingly common in law enforcement investigations because of the growing availability of inexpensive and lightweight digital voice recorders and miniature personal digital video camera systems for routine law enforcement and surveillance use. An increasing number of cases involving gunshot sounds are being captured in these audio recordings. The acoustical characteristics of a firearm depend upon the type of gun and ammunition, the distance and azimuth with respect to the gun barrel, and the acoustical reflections and reverberation due to nearby surfaces and objects. For scientific study it is necessary to separate the direct sound of the muzzle blast from the acoustic reflections, echoes, and reverberation that depend upon the recording environment. We use an elevated array of twelve specialized microphones capable of capturing the high intensity and short duration of the firearm’s muzzle blast concurrently over 180 degrees in azimuth. Each microphone is recorded with 16-bit resolution at a 500 kHz sampling rate, and the elevated platform allows the entire muzzle blast to be recorded before the arrival of the first acoustical reflection from the ground. This presentation includes a description of the firearm recording technique, the characteristics observed from these scientific recordings, recommendations on the use and processing of our database of firearm acoustical recordings, and a discussion of future prospects for forensic gunshot acoustical analysis.

Dr. LaMotte and Dr. Wells discuss their NIJ funded research on PMI and how it can help crime scene investigators. This is their abstract submitted for the R&D Symposium: "To our knowledge an estimate of time since death is almost never accompanied by the kind of mathematically explicit probability statement that is the standard in most scientific disciplines. This has been a problem both for death investigation casework (and court testimony) and for research, because scientists have not known how to design decomposition experiments to provide adequate statistical power for postmortem interval (PMI) estimation. We have been developing methods for calculating statistical confidence limits about a PMI estimate based on either continuous quantitative or categorical data. The examples we present are from forensic entomology, but the approach is suitable for any postmortem variable. To do this we extended and adapted the time-tested statistical method of inverse prediction (IP, also called calibration) to the PMI estimation setting. Methods to produce valid p-values for this process are known for single, quantitative y and x that follow a linear regression relation and with y having constant variance. Some exist for multivariate y, but only for settings where y has constant variance. Many measurements used for PMI estimation do not fit these criteria. The current project builds on earlier work in which we developed IP methods for non-constant variance of a single, quantitative y (e.g. estimating carrion maggot age using a single size measurement, Wells and LaMotte 1995), and in which we developed the first ever method for IP based on categorical data (e.g. estimating PMI based on carrion insect succession, LaMotte and Wells 2000). One possible barrier to the adoption of these new inverse prediction methods by researchers and death investigators has been that they are not implemented in statistical software packages. In this presentation we will show how IP using categorical data can be done by simply reading a table. Concerning quantitative data we will show how inverse prediction of PMI can be performed using statistical analysis software already widely available for general linear mixed models, where the statistical theory and methodology are well-established. We will show how flexible models using polynomial splines can be fit for both the means and variance-covariance matrices, and how to use dummy variables over a grid of values of x to get the p-values required for confidence sets automatically. Attendees familiar with mixed models and their applications will be able to implement these methods in standard statistical packages.

Statistical Methods for Combining Multivariate and Categorical Data in Postmortem Interval Estimation

2013‐DN‐BXK042

Lynn R. LaMotte,1 and Jeffrey D. Wells2 1Biostatistics Program, LSU School of Public Health

To learn more visit www.ForensicCOE.org

Just Bath Salts 

In this special release episode of the 2017 NIJ R&D Symposium, Just Science interviews Lindsay Glicksberg, a student from Sam Houston State University. This is an excerpt from the abstract submitted by the guest, Lindsay Glicksberg explaining the research discussed in this episode:

The ongoing proliferation of designer drugs present a variety of public health and safety concerns. Synthetic cathinones are capable of producing a variety of psychostimulant effects. According to the National Forensic Laboratory Information System (NFLIS), their use has escalated. Forensic laboratories must be able to identify these new drugs as part of antemortem and postmortem toxicology investigations. Due to limitations in immunoassay-based screening technologies, many forensic toxicology laboratories must rely on chromatographic-based screening approaches in order to detect these drugs in biological evidence. The detection of drugs is heavily dependent upon the stability of the drug in biological matrices, information that is relatively limited for synthetic cathinones. This research presents a validated method for the quantification of twenty- two synthetic cathinones in urine and blood using liquid chromatography/quadrupole time of flight mass spectrometry (LC/Q-TOF-MS). The validated method was used to systematically evaluate the stability of synthetic cathinones in blood and urine over a six-month period. Drug stability was assessed in terms of pH, temperature, matrix, concentration-dependence and chemical properties.

This episode is funded by the National Institute of Justice's Forensic Technology Center of Excellence.

In this special release season, Just Science will be covering presenters at the National Institute of Justice’s Research and Development Symposium Meeting held in conjunction with the American Academy of Forensic Sciences annual meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana in February of 2017. The first of four episodes, funded by the National Institute of Justice’s Forensic Technology Center of Excellence, we interviewed Dr. Jarrad Wagner, from Oklahoma State University. This NIJ funded research is striving to make law enforcement officials and their communities safer by determining practical ways to detect methamphetamine clandestine laboratories through water waste systems.

Just Hairy Isotopes 

In episode ten of Just Science, funded by the National Institute of Justice’s Forensic Technology Center of Excellence [Award 2016-MU-BX-K110], we spoke with Dr. Gwyneth Gordon,  from Arizona State University.  Dr. Gordon and her team have developed methods to use the isotopic abundance of elements in hair to learn more about the history of an individual. This NIJ funded research, used in the investigation of unidentified dead, isotopic analysis will measures strontium, trace elements, and even rare earth minerals to shed light on diet, birthplace and residential history.

https://forensiccoe.org/?p=4412&preview=true