Science Thursday: Indenitication Without DNA and Crime Lab Closings

A UK company develops a new test for identifying people without using DNA, the El Paso city council considers shutting down its troubled laboratory, and Indiana shuts down its toxicology lab audit midstream. Here’s a roundup of this week’s forensics news:

 

A UK company partnering with a lab in Idaho announces a new non-DNA human identification test. 

AbP ID can be used on blood left at crime scenes to develop an antibody profile in less than two hours

.

In May, Idaho State Police announced that some

lab workers were hiding drugs in the crime lab for their personal use

.  Defense attorneys believe this finding could raise doubts in about 1,100 cases.

The city of El Paso, Texas is considering

outsourcing all of its Police Department’s drug analysis work after the lab’s non-marijuana drug tests were suspended

. The Indiana advisory board overseeing the audit of the state’s problematic

toxicology lab has stopped the review midstream, citing cost problems

.

Forensic mycology is being used in Australia to

connect the fungal spores found on people to places they have been or people with whom they have had contact

.

After exhuming the body of Chilean president Salvador Allende,

the forensic investigation into his death determined his death to be a suic

ide.

The Justice Department acknowledged in court papers that the laboratory of Bruce Ivins, the man the FBI could not definitively prove was responsible for the anthrax attacks,

was not equipped to convert liquid anthrax into powder

.

The Las Vegas Sun contemplates an independent crime lab

in the aftermath of the Las Vegas Metro DNA switch.

Officials have given the green light to a new $15M North Louisiana Criminalistics Laboratory

to be built on land donated by the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center.  The project will allow collaborations between the crime lab and the university, creating a training ground to attract medical students interested in forensic pathology.

The University of Western Sydney opened a forensic science center

that allows students and police to train on mock crime scenes.