Forensics News

June 26, 2025

Top Headlines

Invisible ID: How a Single Breath Could Reveal Your Health—and Your Identity

June 13, 2025 — Scientists have discovered that your breathing pattern is as unique as a fingerprint and it may reveal more than just your identity. Using a 24-hour wearable device, researchers achieved nearly 97% ...

Evolution of a Single Gene Allowed the Plague to Adapt, Survive and Kill Much of Humanity Over Many Centuries

May 29, 2025 — Scientists have documented the way a single gene in the bacterium that causes bubonic plague, Yersinia pestis, allowed it to survive hundreds of years by adjusting its virulence and the length of ...

New Study Reveals Our Skin's Own Bacteria Can Help Protect Us from the Bad Effects of Sunlight

May 15, 2025 — The skin microbiome plays an important role in health and disease. Researchers have now substantiated that certain skin bacteria can protect us from the sun's ultraviolet (UV) radiation specifically ...

Your Fingers Wrinkle in the Same Pattern Every Time You're in the Water for Too Long

May 12, 2025 — Your fingers wrinkle in the same pattern every time you're in the water for too long, according to new ...

Heart Rhythm Disorder Traced to Bacterium Lurking in Our Gums

May 9, 2025 — New research shows that the gum disease bacterium P. gingivalis can slip into the bloodstream and infiltrate the heart. There, it quietly drives scar tissue buildup -- distorting the heart's architecture, disrupting electrical signals, and raising ...

Researchers Introduce a Brand-New Method to Detect Gunshot Residue at the Crime Scene

Apr. 16, 2025 — Crime scene investigation may soon become significantly more accurate and efficient thanks to a new method for detecting gunshot residues. Researchers have developed the technique that converts lead ...

Pioneering Method Detects Oral Cancer Earlier

Apr. 14, 2025 — The powerful potential of nano technologies and AI to detect oral cancer earlier and more accurately have been revealed by a new ...

Early Education Impacts Teenage Behavior

Apr. 8, 2025 — Researchers explored the long-term effects of preschool expansion in Japan in the 1960s, revealing significant reductions in risky behaviors amongst teenagers. By analyzing regional differences in the rollout of the program, the study identified ...

Novel Point-of-Care Technology Delivers Accurate HIV Results in Minutes

Apr. 2, 2025 — The technology described uses a nanomechanical platform and tiny cantilevers to detect multiple HIV antigens at high sensitivity in a matter of minutes. These silicon cantilevers are cheap and easy to mass produce and can be readily equipped with a ...

AI Is as Good as Pathologists at Diagnosing Celiac Disease, Study Finds

Mar. 28, 2025 — A machine learning algorithm was able to correctly identify in 97 cases out of 100 whether or not an individual had Celiac disease based on their biopsy, new research has shown. The AI tool, which has been trained on almost 3,400 scanned biopsies ...

VR Crime Scene Tech

Mar. 25, 2025 — Researchers presented advances shaping the world of forensics, from research that could improve how forensic scientists estimate a person's age at death, to technology demos of CSIxR -- a virtual reality (VR) application that simulates crime scenes ...

Nature Relieves Physical Pain: Pain-Related Signals in the Brain Are Reduced

Mar. 14, 2025 — Neuroscientists have shown that experiencing nature can alleviate acute physical pain. Surprisingly, simply watching nature videos was enough to relieve pain. Using functional magnetic resonance ...

Latest Headlines

updated 1:10pm EDT

An Aerosol Test for Airborne Bird Flu

Mar. 7, 2025 — Recent outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza (also known as bird flu) have created a need for rapid and sensitive detection methods to mitigate its spread. Now, researchers have developed a ...

New Biosensor Can Detect Airborne Bird Flu in Under 5 Minutes

Mar. 3, 2025 — As highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza continues to spread in the U.S., posing serious threats to dairy and poultry farms, both farmers and public health experts need better ways to monitor for ...

New AI-Powered Tool Could Enhance Traumatic Brain Injury Investigations in Forensics and Law Enforcement

Feb. 26, 2025 — A team of researchers has developed an advanced physics-based AI-driven tool to aid the forensic investigation of traumatic brain injuries ...

Study Suggests Drunk Witnesses Are Less Likely to Remember a Suspect's Face

Feb. 19, 2025 — Researchers have tested whether intoxicated people can be reliable witnesses when it comes to identifying a suspect's face after a crime is ...

Scientists Develop Realistic 'Micro-Gut' Model to Study the Relationship Between Gut Microbes and Human Diseases

Feb. 10, 2025 — In a breakthrough for the advanced study of gut health, scientists have developed a 3D microscopic version of the human intestines condensed into a ...

Microbial Therapy Offers New Hope for Vitiligo Patients

Jan. 28, 2025 — A natural compound derived from gut-friendly bacteria significantly slows the progression of vitiligo and may restore pigmentation, reports a new pre-clinical study in ...

A Deep Learning Pipeline for Controlling Protein Interactions

Jan. 17, 2025 — Scientists have used deep learning to design new proteins that bind to complexes involving other small molecules like hormones or drugs, opening up a world of possibilities in the computational ...

MRI-First Strategy for Prostate Cancer Detection Proves to Be Safe, Study Finds

Dec. 20, 2024 — There are several strategies for the early detection of prostate cancer. The first step is often a blood test for prostate-specific antigen (PSA). If ...

Researchers Reveal Mechanisms Underlying Sjögren's Disease

Dec. 19, 2024 — Researchers are closer to understanding what drives the autoimmune disorder Sj gren's disease, thanks to new discoveries about the role of calcium signaling, regulatory T cells, and interferon. Their ...

Bioengineered Yeast Microbes as Targeted Drug Delivery Systems

Dec. 16, 2024 — Researchers have developed a groundbreaking way to engineer yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) to create microbial communities that can perform complex tasks and self-regulate their composition in ...

Cancer 'Fingerprint' Can Improve Early Detection

Dec. 10, 2024 — Different types of cancer have unique molecular 'fingerprints' which are detectable in early stages of the disease and can be picked up with near-perfect accuracy by small, portable ...

Incorrect AI Advice Influences Diagnostic Decisions, Study Finds

Nov. 19, 2024 — When making diagnostic decisions, radiologists and other physicians may rely too much on artificial intelligence (AI) when it points out a specific area of interest in an X-ray, according to a new ...

Optical Biosensor Rapidly Detects Mpox Virus

Nov. 14, 2024 — Researchers have developed an optical biosensor that detects the virus that causes mpox. The technology could make diagnosis much faster and cost-effective as the disease continues to spread ...

We May Be Overestimating the Association Between Gut Bacteria and Disease, Machine Learning Study Finds

Nov. 13, 2024 — Many bacterial-linked illnesses, such as inflammatory bowel disease or colorectal cancer, are associated with an overgrowth of gut bacteria thought to be bad actors. But when researchers used a ...

AI for Real-Time, Patient-Focused Insight

Nov. 4, 2024 — BiomedGPT is a new a new type of artificial intelligence (AI) designed to support a wide range of medical and scientific tasks. This new study is described in the article as 'the first ...

Beneficial Gut Microbe Has Surprising Metabolic Capabilities

Oct. 24, 2024 — Researchers discovered potentially far-reaching effects of a particular gut bacterium that was linked to better growth in Bangladeshi children receiving a therapeutic food designed to nurture healthy ...

Human Skin Map Gives 'Recipe' to Build Skin and Could Help Prevent Scarring

Oct. 16, 2024 — Prenatal human skin atlas and organoid will accelerate research into congenital diseases and lead to clinical applications for regenerative ...

AI Promises to Ramp Up PCR Tests for Faster DNA Diagnostics and Forensics

Oct. 12, 2024 — Promising new inroads into critical DNA testing has been forecast by experts who have applied machine learning to DNA profiling. From medical diagnostics to forensic tests and national security, PCR ...

Planning a Drug's Route in the Body With Synthetic Chemistry

Oct. 2, 2024 — Researchers have developed technology that can alter, within the body, the recognized identity of proteins, which allowed researchers to target mouse tumors with a protein and then transport that ...

A Tool to Enhance the Taste and Texture of Sourdough and Study the Complexity of Microbiomes

Oct. 1, 2024 — Researchers explore how acetic acid bacteria shapes emergent properties of sourdough, with implications across complex microbial ...

Automatic Speech Recognition Learned to Understand People With Parkinson's Disease -- By Listening to Them

Sep. 27, 2024 — Listening to people with Parkinson's disease made an automatic speech recognizer 30-percent more accurate, according to a new ...

New Method for Fingerprint Analysis Holds Great Promise

Sep. 13, 2024 — Overlapping and weak fingerprints pose challenges in criminal cases. A new study offers a solution and brings hope for using chemical residues in fingerprints for personal ...

Gut Microbiome Influences Location of Immune Cells, Study Finds

Sep. 12, 2024 — Researchers have found that microbial communities in the mouse GI tract are unevenly distributed, which influences immune cell ...

New AI Hair Analysis Method Holds Promise for Improved Health Research

Sep. 5, 2024 — An application that uses artificial intelligence may revolutionize the way scientists study hair and could lead to the development of health diagnostics based solely on ...

Geographic Differences in U.S. Homicide Rates Have Decreased Since the 1970s

Aug. 28, 2024 — A new study finds that, counter to expectations, geographic disparities in rates of homicides in the US have decreased in recent ...

Let Me Take a Look: AI Could Boost Diagnostic Imaging Results

Aug. 22, 2024 — Researchers compared the diagnostic accuracy of ChatGPT and radiologists in radiological imaging with 106 musculoskeletal radiology cases. The results showed that the diagnostic accuracy of the ...

How to Catch a Criminal Using Their 'Skin Shedder' Profile

Aug. 22, 2024 — A pioneering new DNA forensics technique is looking for a reliable method to measure a suspect's individual level of natural shedding of skin and other cells to add to, and compare with, ...

Improving Access to Heart-Failure Screening With Saliva

Aug. 19, 2024 — Heart failure is a leading cause of death worldwide and is especially deadly for people who don't have access to medical facilities. A team of researchers aims to bring heart failure screening ...

AI Model Identifies Certain Breast Tumor Stages Likely to Progress to Invasive Cancer

July 24, 2024 — A new machine-learning model can identify the stage of disease in ductal carcinoma in situ, a type of preinvasive tumor that can sometimes progress to a deadly form of breast cancer. This could help ...

Improving Identification of Human Remains Using Craniofacial Superimposition

July 17, 2024 — Researchers propose an improvement in the identification of human remains using craniofacial superimposition. The forensic identification technique is based on the analysis of a skull (post-mortem) ...