JustScience Podcast

This study assesses the production of subclass characteristics during the manufacturing of breech faces. Observations on how well subclass characteristics persist on manufactured breech faces with and without any finishing methods as well as the effect of the primer on the quality/quantity of the breech face impressions will be discussed.    

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on December 9, 2021.

The Overdose Detection Mapping Application Program (ODMAP) is a near real-time suspected overdose event surveillance platform developed by the Washington/Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (W/B HIDTA). The platform allows participating agencies to develop and implement response strategies that are tailored to their communities to help save lives.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on December 7, 2021.

Molecular identification is advantageous for medicolegal death investigations involving entomological activity. This enables species-level identification of immature specimens necessary for estimating post-mortem interval and may be performed without specialized training or resources. The presenter describes a strategy effective for relevant species and demonstrates analysis of casework-type samples.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on December 2, 2021.

The role of a death certificate has evolved from a legal record of death to a document used extensively by public and private entities to monitor the health of our nation. As the public health usage of death certificates continues to grow, it has become increasingly important to complete death certificates in a clear and consistent manner. This webinar will cover best practices for filling out death certificates in drug-related deaths.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on November 30, 2021.

Forensic science services cannot succeed in the 21st century without active information technology. Interoperability, agility, availability, and security are all critical. This presentation focuses on the preparation and best practices for implementing data systems that serve both internal operations and national strategies.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on November 16, 2021.

Medical examiners/coroners (ME/C) have identified prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs) as valuable data sources that can aid in carrying out their roles. An increasing number of ME/Cs use decedents’ PDMP data to assist in determining whether, and to what extent, prescription drugs caused or contributed to an individual’s death. The experience of ME/Cs with PDMPs indicates that PDMP data can assist in many phases of forensic investigations, both in the laboratory and in the field.

With the increased prevalence of DART-MS in forensic laboratories comes an increased need for tools and resources. This webinar will highlight the new NIST/NIJ DART-MS Data Interpretation Tool (DIT), a freely available software tool that allows users to interpret DART-MS data resulting in improved presumptive screening of seized drug evidence. Other resources to assist with adoption and implementation of the DART-MS DIT will also be discussed.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on October 21, 2021.

Low-cost computing power and capture devices, as well as advances in machine learning tools, allow for rapid and affordable photogrammetry tools.  These tools dramatically improve crime scene documentation by producing highly accurate, three-dimensional representations of crime scenes in high resolution.  

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on October 14, 2021.

This webinar will provide an opportunity to discuss some of the post-SWGTREAD considerations for articulating findings (interpretations, limitations, opinions, and results) as well as a platform to exchange thoughts, consider suggested conclusion structures, and observe examples related to articulating footwear evidence conclusions.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on September 30, 2021. 

Sam Quinones is a Los Angeles-based freelance journalist and an international award-winning author of four books of narrative nonfiction. Quinones’ latest book, The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth, will be featured in this FTCoE webinar celebrating National Forensic Science Week.

Data availability is the cornerstone of progression of any scientific inquiry. For forensic anthropologists, the data sources are limited, as they must be contextually appropriate (temporal, geographical, etc.) for study and application in forensic research on human variation. In this webinar, the presenters will discuss The Forensic Anthropology Database for Assessing Methods Accuracy (FADAMA), a database that offers access to unique, innovative, and nuanced data. The webinar will cover the database’s goals, ethical considerations, research potential, data accessibility, and more.

When processing a digital image for scientific analysis and comparison, there are proper procedures that must be followed.  This is to ensure the processed image’s admissibility in court and to provide the highest level of clarity and detail possible.  Adobe Photoshop provides many tools for processing digital images; however, there are some tools that should not be used in forensic digital image processing.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on August 5, 2021.

Analyzing, comparing, and evaluating forensic digital images relies on understanding two essential elements: image quality and image clarity.  Resolution provides image quality, while bit depth provides clarity between the details in an image. It is important to understand how image quality and clarity can affect the probative value of a forensic digital image as well as an examiner’s ability to accurately analyze those images. 

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on August 3, 2021.
 

This webinar will provide an overview of overdose fatality reviews (OFRs) with a specific focus on engaging partnerships with coroners, medical examiners, and medicolegal death investigators.  The presenters will highlight OFRs that have been implemented by engaging the medicolegal death investigation system and will discuss challenges and recommendations associated with implementing an OFR. The webinar will consist of three presentations on OFRs highlighting a county-level, a rural community, and a state-wide approach.

Over the last ten years, numerous novel psychoactive substances (NPS) have emerged in the recreational drug supply. Upon synthesis or discovery, each of these drugs has been given a name other than its IUPAC chemical name, primarily for ease of communication. This has resulted in various naming convention for NPS, sometimes multiple within a given subclass. This webinar is aimed at tackling the naming conventions for NPS and the associated challenges encountered along the way.

In this webinar, attendees will learn a variety of strategies to keep participants engaged in an online meeting environment. In addition to reviewing these strategies, attendees will also be provided with factors to keep in mind when creating and selecting strategies for engagement. Attendees will also learn about features available in Zoom. T

his webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on July 7, 2021.

This webinar will facilitate a discussion about bias in a crime laboratory including what is bias in forensics, how it can impact your operations, why it is important, and considerations when building this culture. The webinar will include important aspects of an unbiased culture, symptoms that your culture is biased, and examples from the Phoenix Police Department, the Virginia Department of Forensic Sciences, and ICITAP’s.

This webinar was hosted by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence in July 2021.

Microhaplotypes (microhaps) are biomarkers fewer than 300 nucleotides long that display multiple allelic combinations. The main advantages of microhaps over conventional short tandem repeats (STRs) include the 1) absence of stutter, 2) same-size alleles within each locus, 3) lower mutation rate, and 4) ancestry informative alleles. These forensically relevant loci can yield a power of discrimination similar to STRs while enhancing human identification (HID), mixture deconvolution, and biogeographic ancestry prediction.

The webinar will cover microbial research in nontraditional forensics such as environmental contamination, foodborne illness, plant pathogens, and antibiotic resistance source tracking. The webinar will conclude with needs that must be met for chains of custody and current limitations to forensic microbiology.

This webinar was hosted by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on June 21, 2021.

In this webinar, the presenter will cover key components of successful onboarding in a crime lab, including setting employee expectations and making the employee feel like part of the team.  The presenter will go over an onboarding checklist so you can devise one that suits your agency’s needs.  Lastly, the presenter will discuss how successful onboarding can get the new employee “fired up” and increase employee engagement overall.   

LatentSleuth is a novel software tool set designed for (and with direct feedback from) latent print examiners. The toolset includes a small-scale automated fingerprint identification system (AFIS) matcher that leverages a novel matching algorithm that calculates a warp between a latent print image and a given reference print image. This webinar will demonstrate a comprehensive quantification of a latent images entire structure and how that quantification is exploited in a commercially available workstation for latent print examination. 

This webinar will provide an overview of the validation, implementation of 3D  technology at the FBI Laboratory’s Firearms/Toolmarks Unit. This presentation will highlight the process, including Standard Operating Procedures, laboratory workflow, selection of casework, blind verification, reexamination of casework using light microscopy and Daubert preparation.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on June 2, 2021, as part of the 2021 ASCLD Train the Director Series.

In the sixth and final webinar, participants will be introduced to the use of PMCT in the investigation of a variety of unnatural deaths not discussed in previous webinars.  Topics include overdose deaths, select asphyxial mechanisms of death, and sharp force injury.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on May 18, 2021. 

In the fifth webinar, participants will be introduced to the use of PMCT in the investigation of natural deaths.  At the New Mexico OMI, a PMCT scan may be used to rule out trauma in apparently natural deaths, or to confirm a natural cause of death.  Depending on investigative details (circumstances, age, and medical history), and the PMCT findings, pathologists may choose to perform an external exam or a full autopsy.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on May 11, 2021.

This webinar will introduce participants to the use of PMCT in the diagnosis of blunt force trauma.  PMCT scan may be used to diagnose fatal trauma in certain situations, allowing an external examination with postmortem CT to supplant an autopsy, which may better honor religious and cultural requests of grieving family members.  Non-suspicious, traumatic deaths, such as motor vehicle collisions, are such an example.  Additionally, PMCT often provides additional documentation of internal injuries where fatal injuries are obvious on external examination.