Crime

Your next favorite true crime podcast might have some new forensics jargon to make sense of. Researchers in Australia have developed a new way to identify humans – similar to how we do with DNA – that could come in handy while investigating crimes.

A massive study has found that ADHD medication has a real-world social impact – for the those on the drugs and the wider community. In nearly 150,000 newly diagnosed people, medication appeared to offer sweeping benefits beyond just symptom management.

While it's very important to know if a "date rape" drug has been sneaked into your drink, whipping out a full test kit in a bar may be time-consuming. That's why scientists have developed a temporary tattoo that can detect such drugs in one second.

If you've watched even a single episode of CSI, you'll know how important it is to check suspects and crime scenes for gunshot residue (GSR). A new technique could make that task faster and easier than ever before, by causing GSR to glow green.

If you've ever watched CSI, you'll know that suspects often leave incriminating traces of their DNA behind at crime scenes. According to a recent study, however, the amount of that genetic material could also point to a person's guilt or innocence.

Even if a criminal wears gloves, their cast-off DNA may still be present in a room's air. A study suggests that if such material gets sucked up by an air conditioner, it could let investigators know if a suspect has or hasn't been in a certain room.

An experimental new forensic spray allows latent fingerprints to be made visible in just 10 seconds, plus it doesn't require the use of any messy powders. What it does incorporate, however, is a glowing protein that's obtained from jellyfish.

One of the more sinister functions of deepfake AI systems is the ability to replicate a person's voice, based on even just a short recording. A new software tool known as AntiFake, however, could help keep that from happening.

Although most of our clothes fold and crease with our bodies as we move, our shoes maintain the same shape and appearance pretty much all the time. With that fact in mind, scientists are now developing a method of catching criminals via shoe ID.

Lending new meaning to the phrase ‘cat burglar’, a single feline hair left at a crime scene can be traced back to an individual animal through a new method that can highlight a unique, rare genetic ‘fingerprint’. You could say it turns the cat into a rat.

Even if someone's fingerprints are found on an incriminating document, that person may claim that they handled the blank paper before the criminal printed anything on it. A new technique, however, can now be used to check if that really was the case.

When you pull your car up on a quiet street at night, do you park under a street light thinking it will dissuade a thief from breaking into your car? New research challenges that assumption, finding rates of vehicle theft drop when street lights are off.