The Documentation of Individual Identity: Historical and Comparative Perspectives since 1500 » Fingerprinting

Workshop: Legal Medicine and Expertise in History

jamesrbrown — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:49:43 +0000

A one-day workshop to be held at Oxford Brookes University on Friday 4 December 2009 will explore ‘Legal Medicine and Expertise in History’. According to the organizers, ‘[T]he workshop is designed to facilitate intellectual exchange and debate between academics working on the history of forensic medicine, by bringing together scholars who study the subject in a variety of national contexts and across a broad period of time. It will engage with two central themes: the character and role of forensic medicine in Europe since the medieval period; and the relationship between medicine, the law and wider society as illuminated by the notion of ‘expertise’’. It promises to be rich in identification angles; for further details, including speaker information, full programme and abstracts, see the workshop webpage. Picture: Flickr (CC)

New Handbook of Fingerprint Recognition

macsp2 — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 16:28:40 +0000

Posted by Massimiliano Pagani. A new version of the Handbook of Fingerprint Recognition was published in May 2009. The authors announce that this is not a mere new edition. The 2009 book is a major update that describes the most recent advances in fingerprinting, represented by over 500 papers on fingerprint recognition published between 2003 and 2008. The DVD included with the book also contains the databases used in the 2004 Fingerprint Verification Competition (FVC 2004). For full details and ordering information see the Springer website. Picture: stock.xchng

CFP: 3rd International Conference on Bio-inspired Systems and Signal Processing

jamesrbrown — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 12:32:47 +0000

The ‘3rd International Conference on Bio-inspired Systems and Signal Processing (BIOSIGNALS)’ will take place in Valencia on 20-23 January 2010. The event will bring together researchers from biology, medicine, engineering and other physical sciences, and papers are requested on a range of applications used fpr identification including biometrics, pattern recognition and speech recognition. The deadline for the submission of full papers is 21 July 2009; for further details and submission instructions, see H-Net or the conference website.

Fingertip Search

jamesrbrown — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 14:43:48 +0000

A new technique for recovering fingerprints invented by a British forensic scientist is being implemented in the US. The method was developed by Dr John Bond, the scientific support manager of Northamptonshire Police and an Honorary Fellow of the Forensic Research Centre at the University of Leicester. It uses charged ceramic beads coated with black powder to disclose the unique patterns of salt corrosion left by human fingertips on metallic surfaces, especially shell casings; unlike normal fingerprint residues, these cannot be wiped off, are impervious to heat and do not deteriorate over time. Once revealed, they are baked, photographed and analysed in the standard manner. The technique, which has already been used in connection with half a dozen North American ‘cold cases’, is currently being applied to bullet casings found at the scene of an unsolved shooting which took place in Bristol, Connecticut in 1998. For more information, see BBC News. Picture: stock.xchng