Articles Published by NIJ

NIJ-supported research has enabled biomechanical experts to improve predictive models of head injuries in children, helping physicians and law enforcement to better distinguish between accidental injury and abuse.

NIJ-supported researchers developed a free web tool to help forensic investigators and others interested in bone identification.

Determining sex, age, and other forensic information from the skeleton of a young person has stymied investigators for decades.

Development of blowflies on a body is a standard forensic measure of time since death, but temperature variations can alter that development and mislead investigators.

Researchers believe a bacterium that causes food poisoning and other diseases may underlie some SIDS cases.

Criminal investigators use physiological changes and insect development to determine how long a body has been dead, but scientists are using the trillions of microbes involved in human decomposition to find more accurate postmortem intervals.

A new postmortem image database will be a resource for research in forensic anthropology, pathology, and radiology.

Researchers created an open-access computer program for estimating the age of skeletal remains that outperforms current methods. The algorithm is based on 20 age-related skeletal changes identified by experienced forensic anthropologists.

Improving postmortem interval estimation with standardized and simplified protocols could significantly impact medicolegal death investigations by providing more accurate and reliable data for determining time since death.

In response to the National Academy of Sciences’ call for scientific data to support forensic evidence, researchers revised forensic anthropology procedures to include an “error metric” for the measurement of human skeletal remains.

Researchers look into the utility of postmortem X-ray computed tomography in supplanting or supplementing medicolegal autopsies.