Biography
- I wish I were an expert in:
- EVERYTHING!!
- Dream jobs:
- **Forensic Investigator for the FBI
**Criminal Profiler for the FBI
**Actress
**ROCKSTAR ;)
Education and work
- Website
- MySpace
- About me
- Well, I attend Hamline University with the majors of Criminal Justice (emphasis on Forensic Science) and Psychology. I study under Susan Myster, who happens to be one of the smartest professors I know :) I'm also a multi-talented person with many goals in life...science being close to the top :) I love to learn! Knowledge is key! I don't know what I would do if I didn't have books and the internet to study anything and everything! And I really love this website! There's just so much information to soak up...
Science in my life
- What is science to you?
- Science is a never ending study of our lives and the life around us. To me, it's a way to understand ourselves. How we were created, what we were created for, what we were meant to do...and it's also a way to understand the world we are living in and the living creatures, and insects that we are surrounded by daily.
- I would invent
- A new planet that could hold human life and contained no possible natural disaster! ;P
- Technology I love
- THE INTERNET!! You can find almost anything...
- Technology that drives me crazy
- CELLPHONES!! I know they're supposed to be helpful...but they're not!! Cellphones should only be used in case of emergency when your car breaks down in the middle of nowhere and you get stranded...THAT'S IT!!
- What technology do you use every day?
- My computer/the internet...
Forensic Archaeologists search for evidence of genocide
Archaeologists excavate mass graves in Iraq.
Courtesy US Army Corps of Engineers, St. Louis District and Regime Crimes Liaison OfficeIt’s the last weekend to go check out the CSI exhibit which takes visitors through the process of gathering forensic evidence and solving a case and the January issue of Archaeology magazine offers a really interesting look at how forensic techniques can be used on a large scale. It follows the role of American archaeologists in gathering evidence used in the trial of Saddam Hussein and other leaders for the 1988 mass murder of Kurdish people in Iraq.
Investigators had many documents suggesting the previous Iraqi leaders were guilty of genocide and had found what looked like mass graves. However, they looked to excavating the graves and locating the bodies in order to prove that the previous Iraqi government had targeted a civilian population of a particular ethnicity.
Mobile camp to analyze remains and artifacts
Courtesy US Army Corps of Engineers, St. Louis District and the Regime Crimes Liaison OfficeA team of archaeologists from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers surveyed the desert and found 10 burial pits all oriented in the same direction. They uncovered one of the pits and photographed it. Then they removed each body with its clothes and belongings one at a time, marking each one’s position. They made a case file for each victim and analyzed each individual’s clothing, bones, and DNA samples to reconstruct what had happened.
I was shocked to read that of the 114 people they found, 84 were children. From the belongings people had with them, the team thought that the victims expected to be relocated but were instead led into a one of 10 already dug pits and shot.
The archaeological evidence was used in court along with government documents and eyewitness accounts including the testimony of a man who had survived the massacre. Hussein had been sentenced to death in another trial, but five of the other six defendants were convicted.
The team of archaeologists stayed to excavate and return the bodies to Kurdish officials, who held a reburial ceremony and plan to use some of the objects for a holocaust museum.
Tags : 
Fingerprint
Courtesy leeechy (jkjond)Criminals need no longer waste time wiping down or washing the cartridge cases of the bullets they intend on using in a crime to get rid of their fingerprints ahead of time, you will still be caught! Researchers at the University of Leicester and the Northamptonshire police have teamed up to develop a technique to see fingerprints even if a metal surface has been wiped down. When people hold metal objects, the natural residues on their hands, like sweat, corrode metal surfaces. Their technique is particularly useful with cartridge casings, because the heat from shooting the weapon helps to imprint the fingerprints on the metal. Basically, you dust the metal of interest with a fine layer of conducting powder, and then apply an electrical charge to it. This causes the conducting powder to be attracted to the areas where the metal is corroded from fingerprints. Would be criminals would need to use abrasive cleaning techniques to remove the layer of corroded metallic surface to destroy their prints. Now don’t you go getting any ideas!
Heard about the pigcam? While the Science Museum of Minnesota is hosting the CSI exhibit this winter we are digging deeper into forensic science. We have some expert scientists who study bugs at the scene of a crime and even real murder scenes here in Minneapolis. But most people's favorite feature is the pigcam, and we have a new video for you. Curious? Check it out, but I must warn you the videos do feature some graphic decay.
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.
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?
Liza might have posted this somewhere already, but in case you missed it, here's a great video on the work being done at the Body Farm. Warning, it is graphic.
Marching backwards, to better times: This must be...right before the executions?
Courtesy Hysterical BerthaIt’s easy, sometimes, to get frustrated with the modern world. Society these days is confusing and violent, and it makes me yearn for humanity’s gentle youth.
7,000 years ago, for instance, would have been a refreshing time to be alive. That would be the life: living with your tribe in lush central Europe, hunting and gathering, perhaps herding cattle, being at one with nature and your fellow humans. Now and again you might run across another group of people, and you would interact in your simple, honest way—an argument might break out, one thing leads to another, and then you and the other men and children are bound with rope and struck on the left side of the head with an axe, while the women of the tribe are taken away by your executioners.
I guess this is why they call archaeology “the dismal science.”
Wait--do I have that right?
Smithsonian Institution scientists examine the remains of a teenager from the 19th century: Smithsonian forensic anthropologist Dr. Doug Owsley, pathologist Dr. Arthur Aufterheide, pathologist Dr. Larry Cartmell, Smithsonian volunteer Marta Camps, pathologist Mary Aufterheide. Image Courtesy Ken Rahaim, Smithsonian Institution.The body of a 15-year old boy discovered by utility workers in Washington DC two years ago has been identified by scientists at the Smithsonian.
William Taylor White died in 1852 and was buried in Columbia College cemetery, and the coffin was probably left behind by mistake when the cemetery was moved. (Moving a cemetery would be interesting/horrifying/nightmare inducing/challenging.)
The body can now be placed in a properly marked grave.
I would like to donate ny body to forensic science after my death because I have no family that cares and I don't believe in god so I do not want a funeral.So if my body could be used to assist in forensic science it would leave me content, to do so,
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