New method for recovering fingerprints
Australian researchers have come up with a new method which can recover dry and weak fingerprints from old evidence and help police solve cold cases.
"If we get something that does work really well and is able to enhance prints on old evidence, there is always that potential to use it for cold cases and things like that and for older evidence that may have been laying around for quite a while," said Dr Xanthe Spindler of the University of Technology in Sydney.
"So I think this is something that is really going to push the boundaries, and will hopefully get more fingerprints, better fingerprints and hopefully improve case-solving success rates."
Scientists say their technology is the first of its kind and can detect usable fingerprints which are not revealed by traditional techniques, the state-run BBC reported.
The project is collaboration between scientists in Sydney and Canberra, the Australian Federal Police and Northern Illinois University in the United States.
To develop the new method, the team used nanotechnology because it can reveal much sharper detail of amino acid traces from old fingerprints than existing methods.
The technique uses new chemical treatments to target amino acids and reveal specimens that were not detectable until now.
The chemicals target the amino acids of the molecules that are commonly found in sweat and are therefore present in most fingerprints.
Source: presstv.ir
