[Special Issue News] Urban Planet: Roots of the Urban Mind
For the first 190,000 years of our history as a species, humans lived in small, mobile communities of up to a couple hundred individuals, in which everybody knew everybody else. Today, more than half of us live in cities, surrounded by multitudes of people we'll never meet. This radical change happened in an evolutionary eye blink: We navigate our modern world with Paleolithic brains. In the traditional view, agriculture was the crucial innovation that paved the way for cities. But overcoming food constraints is only part of the story, according to a new hypothesis on the origin of urban life. The first villagers also had ...
Source: Science: This Week - May 19, 2016 Category: Science Authors: Greg Miller Tags: Urban Planet Source Type: research
[Special Issue News] Urban Planet: Rise of the City
In 2014, 54% of the world's population, or 3.9 billion people, lived in urban areas. That's up from one-third in 1950, and forecasters say the proportion will rise to 66% by 2050. This two-page infographic highlights the geography of urbanization, and the impacts that cities can have on the environment. (Source: Science: This Week)
Source: Science: This Week - May 18, 2016 Category: Science Authors: Science Magazine (mailto:soleditor at aaas.org) Tags: Urban Planet Source Type: research
[Special Issue News] The Bitcoin busts
A string of recent arrests has shown that even with Bitcoin, the Internet currency beloved by computer scientists, libertarians, and criminals, privacy is not guaranteed. The data associated with transactions in Bitcoin and other forms of cryptocurrency leave a forensic trail that can make one's entire financial history public information. Some academic researchers, operating in a new field at the crossroads of computer science, economics, and forensics, are trying to follow these trails. Partly as a result of their work, law enforcement officers increasingly see cryptocurrency as a tool for prosecuting crimes.
Author: Joh...
Source: Science: This Week - March 11, 2016 Category: Science Authors: John Bohannon Source Type: research
[Special Issue News] The microbial death clock
When you die, a new life begins for the billions of microbes you carry with you. Waves of species start multiplying and breaking down your body. Microbes from the environment join in as well. Scientists think this procession can provide a microbial clock that can help investigators tell the time of death more precisely than they can with current methods, which rely on body temperature, rigor mortis, and insects. Studies in mice and at a so-called body farm, where human cadavers are placed outside so that forensic scientists can study how they decompose, suggest the idea is viable. A larger study is underway.
Author: Kai Ku...
Source: Science: This Week - March 11, 2016 Category: Science Authors: Kai Kupferschmidt Source Type: research
[Special Issue News] Clues from the ashes
The Mexican government's official story is that the bodies of 43 students who went missing in 2014 were burned at a dump outside the town of Cocula in the state of Guerrero. But José Torero, an internationally known fire investigator at the University of Queensland, St. Lucia, in Brisbane, Australia, says the evidence doesn't add up. Burning so many bodies completely would have required a massive amount of energy, he says. Torero is trying to bring more science to the field of fire investigations; many other analysts set out to prove an established theory of a crime, rather than ruling out hypotheses with the help of mode...
Source: Science: This Week - March 11, 2016 Category: Science Authors: Lizzie Wade Source Type: research
[Special Issue News] Whose voice is that?
Speaker recognition is a forensic field with a checkered history that is trying to find solid scientific ground. Past methods to compare recordings of human voices were often highly subjective and have been discredited. More objective alternatives have emerged and they are reliable when comparing standard sentences clearly spoken into a microphone, but real-world recordings are often still problematic. To improve accuracy, scientists are studying how factors like inebriation, emotional state, and recording device influence voice samples. They are also testing how well existing systems perform and developing standards for t...
Source: Science: This Week - March 11, 2016 Category: Science Authors: Nala Rogers Source Type: research
[Special Issue News] Who dropped the bomb?
Many experts believe that a nuclear attack on U.S. soil is more likely than ever; a bomb set off in a city street is seen as the most likely scenario. The conceivable need to unmask a perpetrator, and mount an effective response, is propelling the emerging area of postdetonation forensics. Scientists are devising new sensors, manufacturing artificial fallout to hone analytical techniques, and studying how the glass formed in the furnace of an atomic blast would vary depending on the nature of the bomb and the city where it detonated. Discreet Oculus, a sensor array that would collect data during a nuclear attack on a U.S. ...
Source: Science: This Week - March 11, 2016 Category: Science Authors: Richard Stone Source Type: research
[Special Issue News] A trail of microbes
Humans carry a highly personal mix of hundreds of bacterial species that live in and on their bodies, and they shed these bacteria wherever they go. Some scientists think analyzing the molecular signature from these microbiomes might one day be used to place someone at a crime scene. The research field is still in its infancy, and some doubt that microbiomes are so individual that they can distinguish every human being. But even if they can't uniquely identify a person, the data could be used to build up a picture of an unknown suspect because the microbiome varies by gender, age, origin, and lifestyle.
Author: Kai Kupfers...
Source: Science: This Week - March 11, 2016 Category: Science Authors: Kai Kupferschmidt Source Type: research
[Special Issue News] How hair can reveal a history
Forensic hair analysis has developed a bad reputation. The technique has traditionally relied on traits such as color, thickness, and curvature to link a suspect to a crime scene. But an ongoing reanalysis of old cases by the U.S. Department of Justice found that analysts have often overstated their case in the courtroom. Now, sophisticated analytical techniques are giving hair a new role in forensics. The goal is no longer matching a suspect to a crime scene, but using hair to infer physical characteristics or even the travel history of an unknown criminal or victim.
Authors: Hanae Armitage, Nala Rogers (Source: Science: This Week)
Source: Science: This Week - March 11, 2016 Category: Science Authors: Hanae Armitage Source Type: research
[Special Issue News] When DNA is lying
Greg Hampikian, who holds joint appointments in biology and criminal justice at Boise State University and heads the Idaho Innocence Project, has helped free innocent people from prison for more than 20 years by exploiting the power of DNA forensics—or by exposing its pitfalls. DNA evidence is virtually unassailable, and it has helped exonerate hundreds of wrongly convicted people. But new techniques make it possible to detect DNA at levels hundreds or even thousands of times lower than 30 years ago. This heightened sensitivity can create false positives and land innocent people in jail.
Author: Douglas Starr (Source: Science: This Week)
Source: Science: This Week - March 11, 2016 Category: Science Authors: Douglas Starr Source Type: research
[Special Issue News] Sizing up the evidence
For decades, forensic examiners have claimed that so-called pattern evidence—including footprints, tire tracks, shoeprints, and grooves on bullet cartridges—could conclusively link evidence to a suspect. After a landmark report in 2009 called such claims groundless, forensic science began grinding toward reform. In one example, the new Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensic Evidence has begun developing statistical methods that describe the strength of pattern evidence. It's a problem of immense complexity; it's unclear how much variation exists in the world's population of shoes, guns, or fingerprints, for...
Source: Science: This Week - March 11, 2016 Category: Science Authors: Kelly Servick Source Type: research
[Special Issue News] Evidence on trial
A report published in 2009 by the U.S. National Research Council found that forensic analysts had long overstated the strength of many types of evidence, including foot- and fingerprints, tire tracks, bullet marks, blood splatters, fire, and handwriting. Many innocent people have ended up behind bars as a result; even DNA evidence, widely seen as the golden standard, can finger the wrong person. This special issue of Science shows that forensic analysts are trying to do better. Many fields are taking a critical look at the value of evidence, testing the accuracy of their methods, and developing new ones that are more scien...
Source: Science: This Week - March 10, 2016 Category: Science Authors: Martin Enserink Source Type: research
[Special Issue News] Breakdown of the year: Assault on the past
Along with breakthroughs, Science's editors traditionally name a Breakdown of the Year. This year's pick for the worst news in science was the assault on Near East antiquities and scholars by the group known as the Islamic State. In territory under its control—notably Palmyra in Syria and Mosul and Nimrud in Iraq—the IS group has deliberately blown up ancient temples and monuments, vandalized museums, and murdered researchers in an effort to erase the region's pre-Islamic past. UNESCO and other organizations and universities are working to document threatened sites and reduce the IS group's trade in looted artifacts. B...
Source: Science: This Week - December 18, 2015 Category: Science Authors: Elizabeth Culotta Source Type: research
[Special Issue News] Areas to watch in 2016
Every year, the Breakthrough staff scans the horizon for the hottest topics in science likely to make news in coming months. On the watch list for 2016: a physics satellite, dog evolution, and gravitational waves. The satellite, called MicroSCOPE, will test whether gravitational mass really equals inertial mass—a basic identity that lies at the heart of Einstein's relativity. As for dogs, it's clear that they evolved from wolves, but scientists aren't sure exactly where or when it happened. Work on track to be published next year could make things a lot clearer. Finally, big detectors in the U.S. and Europe will be watch...
Source: Science: This Week - December 18, 2015 Category: Science Authors: Science Magazine (mailto:soleditor at aaas.org) Source Type: research
[Special Issue News] Scorecard for 2015
Last year's Areas to Watch fared reasonably well in 2015. As predicted, researchers vied to figure out how changes in Arctic ice cover and temperature affect extreme weather events at lower latitudes. Space missions to Pluto and Ceres were as exciting as expected and revealed tantalizing possible links between the two far-apart dwarf planets. The Large Hadron Collider revved up its energy as planned but fell far short of its target for collecting data. And efforts to harness patients' immune systems to fight cancer continued to surge, although researchers are still waiting for hoped-for hard results. New results are still ...
Source: Science: This Week - December 18, 2015 Category: Science Authors: Science Magazine (mailto:soleditor at aaas.org) Source Type: research
