JustScience Podcast

This video is one of four from the Virtual Workshop Series: 3D Firearm Imaging, hosted by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence from August 21 to September 11, 2024. This series is intended for firearm examiners or soon-to-be firearm examiners working in laboratories that have recently adopted 3D Firearm Imaging or are considering its adoption soon.

This video includes two presentations - 

This video is one of four from the Virtual Workshop Series: 3D Firearm Imaging, hosted by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence from August 21 to September 11, 2024. 

Throughout this workshop series, attendees hear from a range of presenters and subject matter experts.  

This video includes the presentation Integrating Cadre Forensic TopMatch-3D in NIBIN Workflows, Alexander Luby, Firearms Examiner at Unified Forensic Laboratory.

This video is one of four from the Virtual Workshop Series: 3D Firearm Imaging, hosted by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence from August 21 to September 11, 2024. Throughout this workshop series, attendees hear from a range of presenters and subject matter experts.  

This video includes a presentations by Todd Weller, Weller Forensics, and Rachael Gominsky, Federal Bureau of Investigation Session.

This video is one of four from the Virtual Workshop Series: 3D Firearm Imaging, hosted by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence from August 21 to September 11, 2024. Throughout this workshop series, attendees hear from a range of presenters and subject matter experts.  

This video includes the presentation" Instrumentation, and Measurement Practices," Xiaoyu Alan Zheng, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and Rachael Gominsky, Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Plastic bags are present in many criminal cases. Analyzing these bags in a forensic case can sometimes identify the manufacturer. More importantly, forensic comparison of bags from a known box or other known source can determine whether the bag could have originated from that source. This webinar discusses the manufacturing process, class and randomly acquired characteristics, examination techniques, and comparisons between questioned and known bags. The final segment includes a discussion of recent research in this area, followed by a question-and-answer period.

Identification of novel psychoactive substances (NPS) based on comparisons of electron-ionization (EI) mass spectra continues to pose challenges in seized drug analysis. In this webinar, a method to statistically compare EI mass spectra is described, and an application of the method to distinguish several structural and positional isomers of NPS analogs are demonstrated.

This webinar was hosted by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on July 25, 2024. 

In this fireside chat, session six of the the Foundational Statistics for Forensic Toxicology series, panelists include practitioners and experts in forensic toxicology, and subject matter experts for the application of statistics in forensic toxicology. Join us in a dynamic and engaging session to explore common frustrations and challenges experienced in the laboratory, providing participants with valuable insights and practical solutions.

Session five of the Foundational Statistics for Forensic Toxicology series will incorporate concepts from earlier sessions and focus on the practical application of control data in estimating Measurement Uncertainty (MU). Rather than a discussion about how to calculate the MU, this session provides practical examples to demonstrate the key elements of the statistical process. Participants will learn how to incorporate control data into MU estimation by leveraging statistical techniques aimed at quantifying the uncertainty associated with measurement processes.

Of recent, forensic toxicology laboratories have been grappling with the emergence of tetrahydrocannabinol isomers within biological specimens. Traditional methodologies are often inadequate in the separation of Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol and Δ8-tetrahydrocannabinol, which are the most common isomers identified in forensic testing.

In this fourth session of the Foundational Statistics for Forensic Toxicology series, we address common challenges, misconceptions, and questions encountered in day-to-day forensic toxicology laboratory settings related to statistics. Participants will gain insights into the practical application of statistical concepts and terminology in quality control and control charting, including trends and outliers. Furthermore, participants will learn about data interpretation, distinguishing between results that occur due to statistical significance and those the occur due to random variation.

This third session of the Foundational Statistics for Forensic Toxicology series explores hypothesis testing, a fundamental concept in statistical analysis, and its applications in forensic toxicology. Participants will gain an understanding of the different types of statistical tests, their respective applications, and how they can be utilized to uncover meaningful insights from toxicological data. 

This second session in the  Foundational Statistics for Forensic Toxicology series explores various distributions commonly encountered in forensic toxicology (normal, rectangular, etc.). Participants will learn about the characteristics of these distributions and how they manifest in toxicological data. Also, this session covers statistical measures that can describe and compare distributions, including variance, standard deviation, and relative standard deviation.

This session provides an overview of the fundamental principles of statistics as encountered and applied in forensic toxicology. Various elements of statistics are often utilized or relied upon by scientists to describe produced results and to demonstrate if forensic instruments or processes are “working” or “in-control”. Here we establish the basic terminology for the principles of statistical analysis. Participants will begin to be better equipped to interpret and analyze forensic toxicology data accurately and effectively. 

Following a multi-month course of data collection using simulated human gravesites, Ground-Penetrating Radar (GPR) researcher Jordan Mullikin will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of GPR for the detection of unmarked graves. Additionally, this webinar will explore Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) technology for the same purpose and investigate the potential integration of both technologies for optimal detection of clandestine graves within the law enforcement and forensic communities.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) conducts the Census of Publicly Funded Forensic Crime Laboratories (CPFFCL) to provide insight into federal, state, county, and municipal crime labs that are funded solely by the government or whose parent organization is a government agency. The most recent CPFFCL provides national-level data on the workload and operations of crime labs during 2020. Of the 326 eligible crime labs and multilab systems in the 2020 CPFFCL, 293 (90%) provided responses to at least some of the survey questions.

This presentation explores a series of research studies aimed at assessing the accuracy, repeatability, and reproducibility of forensic pattern evidence examination decisions across various disciplines, including latent prints, firearms, shoeprints, and handwriting.  Key topics covered include a comprehensive overview of the design factors in these four large-scale research studies, as well as a response to common critical observations regarding the experimental design and the interpretation of results.