Ever changing technology is allowing law enforcement/crime laboratories the ability to use new advances to solve old cases. Exonerations through advances in DNA testing have become increasingly common. However, other forensic disciplines are also utilizing new technologies, which are providing investigative leads and case closures. One advancement is the Federal Bureau of Investigation\'s Next Generation Identification (NGI) biometric system, which has enhanced the field of print identification. The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI) Latent Evidence Unit is utilizing NGI to assist in solving \"Cold Cases.\" While the OSBI cold case project has been successful, reviewing old evidence and case files, while keeping up with current casework, can be challenging. However, the recognition and application of such powerful technology is warranted, as demonstrated by the success that has been achieved.

Every year thousands of migrants die during the endeavour to reach the Italian coasts, making the Mediterranean the theatre of one of the greatest tragedies of mankind. Over 60% of these victims is buried unidentified: one of the reasons behind this is related to the specific difficulties and lack of strategies concerning AM and PM data collection. The present article describes how Italy is trying to face the problem of migrant identification, thanks to the collaboration between government, the Italian national police and universities. In particular, this is the first pilot study carried out to identify the victims of the second greatest tragedy of its kind off the Italian coast, near Lampedusa, on October 3rd 2013, which caused 366 victims. The present article shows the strategies conceived to collect postmortem and especially antemortem data and to compare them to identify matches, using medicolegal, anthropological, odontological and genetic approaches. Thirty-one victims out of 53 missing sought by relatives were identified (58.5%). The type and the quality of antemortem data available, generally photos and videos, pinpoints the importance of the face and the body for identification when the bodies are well preserved and how DNA analyses may at times present difficulties. In fact, critical points emerged concerning especially the lack of genetic information of the populations to which the victims belonged, the number of genetic markers needed to reach a statistical support for the identification and the need to adopt lineage markers such as mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosome polymorphisms to identify parental relationships. This pilot study however has proven that families continue to seek their relatives and that it is possible, as well as mandatory, to identify migrant victims in spite of the difficulties in the collection of antemortem and postmortem data. In addition, considering the peculiar scenario, novel strategies for positive identification have to be defined in each field (anthropological, odontological and genetic) as well as in combination.

In a 2012 case in New South Wales, Australia, the identity of a speaker on several audio recordings was in question. Forensic voice comparison testimony was presented based on an auditory-acoustic-phonetic-spectrographic analysis. No empirical demonstration of the validity and reliability of the analytical methodology was presented. Unlike the admissibility standards in some other jurisdictions (e.g., US Federal Rule of Evidence 702 and the Daubert criteria, or England & Wales Criminal Practice Directions 19A), Australia\'s Unified Evidence Acts do not require demonstration of the validity and reliability of analytical methods and their implementation before testimony based upon them is presented in court. The present paper reports on empirical tests of the performance of an acoustic-phonetic-statistical forensic voice comparison system which exploited the same features as were the focus of the auditory-acoustic-phonetic-spectrographic analysis in the case, i.e., second-formant (F2) trajectories in /o/ tokens and mean fundamental frequency (f0). The tests were conducted under conditions similar to those in the case. The performance of the acoustic-phonetic-statistical system was very poor compared to that of an automatic system.

Before a newly-elected government abandoned the project in 2010, for at least eight years the British state actively sought to introduce a mandatory national identification scheme for which the science and technology of biometrics was central. Throughout the effort, government representatives attempted to portray biometrics as a technology that was easily understandable and readily accepted by the public. However, neither task was straightforward. Instead, particular publics emerged that showed biometric technology was rarely well understood and often disagreeable. In contrast to some traditional conceptualizations of the relationship between public understanding and science, it was often those entities that best understood the technology that found it least acceptable, rather than those populations that lacked knowledge. This paper analyzes the discourses that pervaded the case in order to untangle how various publics are formed and exhibit differing, conflicting understandings of a novel technology.

BACKGROUND: An examination of remains found on the roadside in a locality near Łódź, Poland showed them to be cranial bones. Their general appearance, and particularly the significant curvature of the vault and dimensions indicating a relatively large skull capacity showed that they could be human remains. But against that notion spoke anatomical details such as the size of the frontal sinuses, the situation of probable zygomatic appendices of the frontal bone, the texture of the interior surface, atypical in human beings, and the progression and morphology of the cranial sutures. However, a comparative analysis of animal skulls did not result in any positive conclusion. The skull fragment was judged to have a significantly different morphology, possibly the effect of developmental abnormalities or disease processes.
METHODS: To resolve the uncertainty, genotyping was carried out in human-specific STR sequences, and then in STR sequences using starter sequences specific for dogs, cattle, sheep, domesticated and wild swine. But to determine decisively the species of the remains, mitochondrial DNA analysis was performed using universal starters for the PCR--a conservative, species-specific region of the mitochondrial genome was analysed.