A comparison of hair colour measurement by digital image analysis with reflective spectrophotometry

While reflective spectrophotometry is an established method for measuring macroscopic hair colour, it can be cumbersome to use on a large number of individuals and not all reflective spectrophotometry instruments are easily portable. This study investigates the use of digital photographs to measure hair colour and compares its use to reflective spectrophotometry. An understanding of the accuracy of colour determination by these methods is of relevance when undertaking specific investigations, such as those on the genetics of hair colour. Measurements of hair colour may also be of assistance in cases where a photograph is the only evidence of hair colour available (e.g. surveillance). Using the CIE L^*a^*b^* colour space, the hair colour of 134 individuals of European ancestry was measured by both reflective spectrophotometry and by digital image analysis (in V++). A moderate correlation was found along all three colour axes, with Pearson correlation coefficients of 0.625, 0.593 and 0.513 for L^*, a^* and b^* respectively (p-values = 0.000), with means being significantly overestimated by digital image analysis for all three colour components (by an average of 33.42, 3.38 and 8.00 for L^*, a^* and b^* respectively). When using digital image data to group individuals into clusters previously determined by reflective spectrophotometric analysis using a discriminant analysis, individuals were classified into the correct clusters 85.8% of the time when there were two clusters. The percentage of cases correctly classified decreases as the number of clusters increases. It is concluded that, although more convenient, hair colour measurement from digital images has limited use in situations requiring accurate and consistent measurements.     

Homicidal Ideation and Forensic Psychopathology: Evidence From the 2016 Nationwide Emergency Department Sample (NEDS)

Homicide is the most serious and costly criminal offense and better forensic and criminological understanding of homicidal ideation as a potential psychobehavioral precursor to homicidal conduct is critical. Using data from the 2016 Nationwide Emergency Department Sample (NEDS) from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) distributed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), we found 64,910 cases of homicidal ideation among a sample of 25.6 + million—a prevalence of 0.25%. Numerous conditions conferred increased substantially the likelihood of homicidal ideation including antisocial personality disorder (2406%), schizoaffective disorder (1821%), borderline personality disorder (1557%), paranoid personality disorder (1,504%), schizophrenia (1,143%), obsessive–compulsive personality disorder (921%), brief psychotic disorder (771%), unspecified psychosis (737%), avoidant personality disorder (596%), and schizoid personality disorder (571%), delusional disorder (546%), and other psychotic disorder (504%). Homicidal ideation is comorbid with serious psychiatric and behavioral problems and has important implications for offender typologies and homicidality.     

Religiosity Profiles of American Youth in Relation to Substance Use, Violence, and Delinquency

Relatively little is known in terms of the relationship between religiosity profiles and adolescents’ involvement in substance use, violence, and delinquency. Using a diverse sample of 17,705 (49?% female) adolescents from the 2008 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, latent profile analysis and multinomial regression are employed to examine the relationships between latent religiosity classes and substance use, violence, and delinquency. Results revealed a five class solution. Classes were identified as religiously disengaged (10.76?%), religiously infrequent (23.59?%), privately religious (6.55?%), religious regulars (40.85?%), and religiously devoted (18.25?%). Membership in the religiously devoted class was associated with the decreased likelihood of participation in a variety of substance use behaviors as well as decreases in the likelihood of fighting and theft. To a lesser extent, membership in the religious regulars class was also associated with the decreased likelihood of substance use and fighting. However, membership in the religiously infrequent and privately religious classes was only associated with the decreased likelihood of marijuana use. Findings suggest that private religiosity alone does not serve to buffer youth effectively against involvement in problem behavior, but rather that it is the combination of intrinsic and extrinsic adolescent religiosity factors that is associated with participation in fewer problem behaviors.     

The Obama Administration's Challenges after the “War on Science”: Reforming Staffing Practices and Protecting Scientific Integrity in the Executive Branch

In this article, we examine the difficult leadership position President Barack Obama inherited as he took office with respect to science and technology policy making and implementation, particularly following the Bush administration and years of the so‐called “war on science.” We contend that the Obama administration's challenge is not only to take substantive policy action, but also to reform certain administrative practices, particularly in light of the previous administration's practice of the politics of strategic vacancies, a managerial technique that rearranges an agency's ideological inclinations not through the usual forms of active politicization (i.e., by filling the appointee ranks with like‐minded ideologues) but instead by “starving” the agency of staff and co‐opting its agenda that way.     

Relevance analysis using revision identifier in MS word

Electronic documents often contain personal or confidential information, which can be used as valuable evidence in criminal investigations. In the digital investigation, special techniques are required for grouping and screening electronic documents, because it is challenging to analyze relationships between numerous documents in storage devices manually. To this end, although techniques such as keyword search, similarity search, topic modeling, metadata analysis, and document clustering are continually being studied, there are still limitations for revealing the relevance of documents. Specifically, metadata used in previous research are not always values present in the documents, and clustering methods with specific keywords may be incomplete because text‐based contents (including metadata) can be easily modified or deleted by users. In this work, we propose a novel method to efficiently group Microsoft Office Word 2007+ (MS Word) files by using revision identifier (RSID). Through a thorough understanding of the RSID, examiners can predict organizations to which a specific user belongs, and further, it is likely to discover unexpected interpersonal relationships. An experiment with a public dataset (GovDocs) provides that it is possible to categorize documents more effectively by combining our proposal with previously studied methods. Furthermore, we introduce a new document tracking method to understand the editing history and movement of a file, and then demonstrate its usefulness through an experiment with documents from a real case.     

A forensic examination of four popular cross‐platform file‐sharing apps with Wi‐Fi P2P

File‐sharing apps with Wi‐Fi hotspot or Wi‐Fi Direct functions become more popular. They can work on multiple platforms and allow users to transfer files in a concealed manner. However, when criminals use these apps in illegal activities, it becomes an important issue for investigators to find digital evidence on multiple platforms. At present, there are few studies on this topic, and most of them are limited to the single platform problem. In this paper, we propose a forensic examination method for four popular cross‐platform file‐sharing apps with Wi‐Fi hotspot and Wi‐Fi Direct functions: Zapya, SHAREit, Xender, and Feem. We use 22 static and live forensic tools for 11 platforms to acquire, analyze, and classify the forensic artifacts. In our experiments, we find many useful forensic artifacts and classify them into six categories. The experimental results can support law enforcement investigations of digital evidence and provide information for future studies on other cross‐platform file‐sharing apps.     

Validation of the 4‐aminophenol color test for the differentiation of marijuana‐type and hemp‐type cannabis

The analysis of cannabis plant material submitted to seized‐drug laboratories was significantly affected by the signing of the Agricultural Improvement Act of 2018, which defined hemp and removed it from the definition of marijuana in the Controlled Substances Act. As a result, field law enforcement personnel and forensic laboratories now are in need of implementing new protocols that can distinguish between marijuana‐type and hemp‐type cannabis. Colorimetric tests provide a cost‐effective and efficient manner to presumptively identify materials prior to submission to a laboratory for analysis. This work presents the validation of the 4‐aminophenol (4‐AP) color test and demonstrates its utility for discriminating between marijuana‐type and hemp‐type cannabis (i.e., typification). Validation studies included the testing of numerous cannabinoid reference materials, household herbs, previously characterized cannabis plant samples, and real‐case samples. The 4‐AP test reliably produces a pink result when the level of Δ⁹‐tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is approximately three times lower than the level of cannabidiol (CBD). A blue result is generated when the level of THC is approximately three times higher than that of CBD. Inconclusive results are observed when the levels of THC and CBD are within a factor of three from each other, demonstrating the limitations of the test under those scenarios.     

Understanding research methods,limitations, and applications of drug data collected by the National Forensic Laboratory Information System (NFLIS-Drug)

The National Forensic Laboratory Information System (NFLIS) is a drug surveillance program of the US Drug Enforcement Administration that systematically collects data on drugs that are seized by law enforcement and submitted to and analyzed by the Nation's forensic laboratories (NFLIS-Drug). NFLIS-Drug data are increasingly used in predictive modeling and drug surveillance to examine drug availability patterns. Given the complexity of the data and data collection, there are some common methodological pitfalls that we highlight with the aim of helping researchers avoid these concerns. The analysis done for this Technical Note is based on a review of the scientific literature that includes 428 unique, refereed article citations in 182 distinct journals published between January 1, 2005, and April 30, 2021. Each article was analyzed according to how NFLIS-Drug data were mentioned and whether NFLIS-Drug data were included. A sample of 37 articles was studied in-depth, and data issues were summarized. Using examples from the literature, this Technical Note highlights eight broad concerns that have important implications for the proper applications, interpretations, and limitations of NFLIS-Drug data with suggestions for improving research methods and accurate reporting of forensic drug data. NFLIS-Drug data are timely and provide key information to inform drug use trends across the United States; however, our present analysis shows that NFLIS-Drug data are misunderstood and represented in the literature. In addition to highlighting these issues, DEA has created several resources to assist NFLIS data users and researchers, which are summarized in the discussion.     

Police civil liability for inappropriate response to domestic assault victims

Over the last several years, the criminal justice system has encouraged survivors of domestic abuse to report their victimization to law enforcement authorities. While some pieces of evidence suggest that police are more sensitive to the plight of domestic survivors, law enforcement response remains incomplete and problematic. This article explores this issue, focusing on police civil liability for inappropriate response to domestic violence. It discusses a specific legal remedy—the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment—highlighting the circumstances under which police are held liable when they fail to prevent victims' injuries because of their inappropriate response to domestic violence. The article concludes that police need more training and education on family abuse so they can become more responsive to victims of domestic violence.