|
x7x_x7x
x7x, my problem child.




Registered: 05/05/07
Posts: 3,818
Loc: buenos aires
Last seen: 11 days, 20 hours
|
Fingerprint Test Tells What a Person Has Touched
#8821350 - 08/24/08 06:03 PM (15 years, 8 months ago) |
|
|
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/08/science/08finger.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin
Fingerprint Test Tells What a Person Has Touched
Article Tools Sponsored By By KENNETH CHANG Published: August 7, 2008
With a new analytical technique, a fingerprint can now reveal much more than the identity of a person. It can now also identify what the person has been touching: drugs, explosives or poisons, for example. Skip to next paragraph RSS Feed
* Get Science News From The New York Times »
Writing in Friday’s issue of the journal Science, R. Graham Cooks, a professor of chemistry at Purdue University, and his colleagues describe how a laboratory technique, mass spectrometry, could find a wider application in crime investigations.
The equipment to perform such tests is already commercially available, although prohibitively expensive for all but the largest crime laboratories. Smaller, cheaper, portable versions of such analyzers are probably only a couple of years away.
In Dr. Cooks’s method, a tiny spray of liquid that has been electrically charged, either water or water and alcohol, is sprayed on a tiny bit of the fingerprint. The droplets dissolve compounds in the fingerprints and splash them off the surface into the analyzer. The liquid is heated and evaporates, and the electrical charge is transferred to the fingerprint molecules, which are then identified by a device called a mass spectrometer. The process is repeated over the entire fingerprint, producing a two-dimensional image.
The researchers call the technique desorption electrospray ionization, or Desi, for short.
In the experiments described in the Science paper, solutions containing tiny amounts of various chemicals including cocaine and the explosive RDX were applied to the fingertips of volunteers. The volunteers touched surfaces like glass, paper and plastic. The researchers then analyzed the fingerprints.
Because the spatial resolution is on the order of the width of a human hair, the Desi technique did not just detect the presence of, for instance, cocaine, but literally showed a pattern of cocaine in the shape of the fingerprint, leaving no doubt who had left the cocaine behind.
“That’s an advantage that this technique would have,” said Bruce Goldberger, professor and director of toxicology at the University of Florida who runs a forensics laboratory that helps medical examiners and law enforcement. Dr. Goldberger was not involved in the research.
The chemical signature could also help crime investigators tease out one fingerprint out of the smudges of many overlapping prints if the person had been exposed to a specific chemical, said Demian R. Ifa, a postdoctoral researcher and the lead author of the Science paper.
Prosolia Inc., a small company in Indianapolis, has licensed the Desi technology from Purdue and is already selling such analyzers as add-ons to large laboratory mass spectrometers, which cost several hundred thousand dollars each.
Prosolia has so far sold about 70 analyzers, said Peter T. Kissinger, the company’s chairman and chief executive. The most sophisticated $60,000 version that would be needed for fingerprint analysis went on sale this year.
However, fingerprints are not the main focus for Prosolia or Dr. Cooks. “This is really just an offshoot of a project that is really aimed at trying to develop a methodology ultimately to be used in surgery,” Dr. Cooks said.
If a Desi analyzer can be miniaturized and automated into a surgical tool, a surgeon could, for example, quickly test body tissues for the presence of molecules associated with cancer. “That’s the long-term aim of this work,” Dr. Cooks said.
In unpublished research, the researchers have successfully tested the method on bladder tumors in dogs.
Prosolia is collaborating with Griffin Analytical Technologies, a subsidiary of ICx Technologies, on a Desi analyzer that works with a portable mass spectrometer. That product is probably a year or two away from the market, Dr. Kissinger said.
As it becomes cheaper and more widely available, the Desi technology has potential ethical implications, Dr. Cooks said. Instead of drug tests, a company could surreptitiously check for illegal drug use by its employees by analyzing computer keyboards after the workers have gone home, for instance. More Articles in Science » A version of this article appeared in print on August 8, 2008, on page A16 of the New York edition. Free trial. Read the complete New York edition of The Times on computer, just as it appears in print.
-------------------- cultivando en la miseria SuctoSpore® Pictorial Tek
 x7x_x7x@shroomery.org carl_jung_in_lsd@yahoo.com koh samui and oak ridge are my favourite strains
|
Seuss
Error: divide byzero



Registered: 04/27/01
Posts: 23,480
Loc: Caribbean
Last seen: 3 months, 8 days
|
Re: Fingerprint Test Tells What a Person Has Touched [Re: x7x_x7x]
#8821423 - 08/24/08 06:19 PM (15 years, 8 months ago) |
|
|
Million dollar machine vs ten cent pair of gloves.
-------------------- Just another spore in the wind.
|
Chemy
Jesus is Lord

Registered: 10/05/07
Posts: 6,276
Loc: A Church
Last seen: 14 years, 5 months
|
Re: Fingerprint Test Tells What a Person Has Touched [Re: Seuss]
#8821473 - 08/24/08 06:31 PM (15 years, 8 months ago) |
|
|
Quote:
Instead of drug tests, a company could surreptitiously check for illegal drug use by its employees by analyzing computer keyboards after the workers have gone home, for instance.
Or, maybe in the near future cops can obtain search warrants by obtaining fingerprints from a persons home or apartment doorknob while they're at work, and if they test positive for a substance, a warrant could be issued?
Paranoid right now, if this wouldn't fly please disregard.
That's absurd because touching paper money will leave drug residue in the ridges of someones print, possibly.
-------------------- Alcoholics Anonymous Narcotics Anonymous Get help, help is free and available 24/7/365. God bless you all and I hope you receive the help you need to turn away from your lives of sin. Mushrooms and drugs make you gay, you can reverse this homosexual condition with rehab, get help! Stop being gay!
|
Esophagus
Mr. Poops



Registered: 07/08/08
Posts: 203
|
Re: Fingerprint Test Tells What a Person Has Touched [Re: Chemy]
#8821611 - 08/24/08 07:01 PM (15 years, 8 months ago) |
|
|
Just don't touch anything?
-------------------- "First of all, I don't see America having problems." --George W. Bush, interview with Bob Costas at the 2008 Olympics, Beijing, China, Aug. 10, 2008
|
kidaihuan
First Growery Ban



Registered: 07/25/07
Posts: 3,173
Loc: Shanghai, China
Last seen: 13 years, 7 months
|
Re: Fingerprint Test Tells What a Person Has Touched [Re: Esophagus]
#8823043 - 08/25/08 01:15 AM (15 years, 8 months ago) |
|
|
|
LeftyBurnz
Mr. I Eat Butthole



Registered: 06/21/05
Posts: 24,570
Loc: FL
|
Re: Fingerprint Test Tells What a Person Has Touched [Re: Seuss]
#8864870 - 09/02/08 09:22 AM (15 years, 8 months ago) |
|
|
Quote:
Seuss said: Million dollar machine vs ten cent pair of gloves.
--------------------
|
|