Explore the vast range of titles available.

Fundamentals of Forensic Science offers a complete look at the core topics of forensic science. It represents the most realistic view of the field by including areas that, while central to criminal investigation, fall outside the typical definition of criminalistics. These areas include pathology, entomology, anthropology, and other areas of scientific study unique to forensic textbooks. Organized by the timeline of a real case, the text begins with an introduction and history of forensic science. It then covers the methods of analysis used in most forensic examinations, addressing the biological, chemical and physical elements relevant to the field, and concluding with an examination of how forensic science intersects with law. Feature boxes throughout the text contain online resource listings, historical events in forensic science, practical issues in laboratory analysis, and topics for further reading or interest. This book is recommended for students in forensic science and professionals in the various forensic disciplines - fire, chemistry, crime scene, trace evidence, law enforcement personnel, lawyers, and defense attorneys.

This paper presents a novel digital watermarking technique using face and demographic text data as multiple watermarks for verifying the chain of custody and protecting the integrity of a fingerprint image. The watermarks are embedded in selected texture regions of a fingerprint image using discrete wavelet transform. Experimental results show that modifications in these locations are visually imperceptible and maintain the minutiae details. The integrity of the fingerprint image is verified through the high matching scores obtained from an automatic fingerprint identification system. There is also a high degree of visual correlation between the embedded images, and the extracted images from the watermarked fingerprint. The degree of similarity is computed using pixel-based metrics and human visual system metrics. The results also show that the proposed watermarked fingerprint and the extracted images are resilient to common attacks such as compression, filtering, and noise.

The foreign textile fibers recovered from one item of evidence from each of 20 unrelated crimes in three categories (bank robbery, kidnapping, and homicide) were cross-compared. The items of evidence were scraped to remove the trace evidence and a sample of the collected fibers was examined using a standard scheme of analysis. The fibers were examined with light microscopy (including polarized light microscopy), fluorescence microscopy, and microspectrophotometry. The fibers were divided into natural and manufactured groups and then categorized by color and generic (polymer) class. Cross-comparing all 2083 fibers resulted in 2,168,403 comparisons, after removing duplicate (same fiber) comparisons. Colorless and denim fibers were excluded from this study. No two fibers were found to exhibit the same microscopic characteristics and analytical properties. Therefore, it is rare to find two unrelated items that have foreign fibers that are analytically indistinguishable. These results corroborate other population studies conducted in Europe and target fiber studies conducted both in the US and in Europe.

A study was conducted with forensic experts using standard tests of frequency assessment and number handling to judge their abilities to estimate problem solving capacities. The experts faired no better than other professions; in some ways, they did worse. Given the prevalence of statistics in the courtroom, a greater emphasis on enhancing numerical literacy teaching statistics may be necessary in the forensic sciences. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

Chemometrics, or the application of multivariate statistics to chemical data, provides informative and statistically valid analyses within a forensic context and there has been an increase in the use of chemometrics to characterise forensic exhibits. Introducing chemometric methods suitable for forensic practitioners, this book fills a gap in the literature outlining how such methods are applied to forensic casework, what limitations to these approaches exist, and future trends emerging in the field. The book highlights how chemometric methods may be applied to different areas of forensic science, enabling more confident and transparent decision-making based on quantitative approaches. It is divided into various sections which include a background to chemometrics, types of chemometric methods, their applications in various disciplines of forensic science, and emerging trends in the field. The detailed discussion of chemometric methods used for the examination of forensic exhibits outlines their advantages, limitations, and efficiency. Providing a centralised source of information addressing the above aspects, and suitable for forensic practitioners, researchers and stakeholders, this book is written for MSc Forensic Science courses and more broadly applications in the biological, chemical and physical sciences.