Academic Journal of

Forensic Sciences

[Abbr: Acd. Jr. AJFSc]
English
2581-4273
2016

Forensic DNA Phenotyping: Significance in Criminal Investigations

by Kangana Agrawal

In today’s present scenario, the forensic investigator faces immense challenges and difficulties to apprehend the perpetrator due to lack of evidence or eyewitnesses. To convict the criminals, the most conclusive evidence is considered to be biological (DNA) evidence. Since criminals have advanced their methods to commit the crime, forensic investigators should also adapt or look for modern techniques to help the court of law to serve justice. One of those modern and most recent techniques is Forensic DNA Phenotyping (FDP). It predicts the external traits of unknown or missing individuals directly from the biological evidence discovered at the scene of crime. FDP can help in providing the lead to the forensic investigator to uncover unidentifiable persons. This application of DNA will be used in forensic casework in a completely different manner from the comparative current DNA profiling which is presently used in the court of law. Presently, no such technique exists which can predict individual-specific appearance accurately. Forensic DNA Phenotyping uses SNPs to determine the phenotype of the individual. It can help in estimating the externally visible characteristics (EVCs) such as hair color, iris color, height, gender, skin tone, and others. Therefore, it develops the biological blueprint of physical traits. This technique can have a great impact in the future and can replace the traditional techniques if provided sufficient funding for research purposes, to develop based on genetically appearance of humans. This will significantly lead to a vast and detailed description of an unidentified person’s appearance from DNA, delivering increased value for police investigations in criminal and missing/deceased person cases involving unknowns.Keywords: Crime, DNA, Forensic DNA Phenotyping, Evidence, EVCs

Heroin Drug: Production, Chemistry, Effects and Analysis

by Pooja Kumari Sharma

Heroin production is on rise. This study aims to introduce Heroin production, its chemistry, and its effects on the human body. In this context, we study how the manufacture of heroin is done with the help of various chemicals, how we can analyze the heroin from a given sample with the help of different reagents. Based on a different review of literature on heroin recovery, comparative analysis of heroin, characteristics of heroin, etc. we demonstrated that there is a possibility to recover a heroin addict naturally, and there are many techniques to study the characteristics of heroin. The conclusion indicates that heroin production is not so expensive, and this factor is responsible for abrupt increases in the marketing of heroin. Heroin is an illegal drug, which is known by many names such as black sugar, horse, smack, junk, skat, and harry. It is a class ‘A’ drug. It is an opioid drug with strong addictive properties. There are three types of heroin i.e. white, brown, and black tar. Heroin is diluted with quinine, lactose, mannitol, etc. Heroin with the combination of cocaine is called “speedballs”. It is rapidly hydrolyzed in the stomach therefore it is not taken orally. It is the most dangerous among all drugs. Heroin is a depressant with analgesic/ painkilling properties. Heroin is a narcotic drug and its abuse increases rapidly. Keywords: Heroin, Opium, Morphine, Alkaloids, Extraction.

Collection and Preservation of DNA Evidence

by Govind Khanna, Kratika Mishra, Dr. Ranjeet Kumar Singh

As the justice system or courts have more relay on DNA evidence in the last few years, the early steps in the examination of DNA evidence played a major role in the investigation. There is a need for proper collection and preservation of DNA evidence such as in sexual assault cases. This evidence played an important role in the personal identification of the victim and perpetrator or suspect. The importance of evidence preservation and collection is often revealed many difficult court challenges. In the identification, the forensic scientist tries to establish the link between victims, perpetrators with the scene of the crime. Now, to narrow down the aspect for identity, DNA evidence needs a proper collection and preservation because from this evidence we can extract a lot of essential information that helps in solving crimes and also provide a lead in case findings. This paper focuses on the techniques and methods to collect DNA traces. There is not so much research available on, but some studies reveal information and played a weighty role in the field of forensic science. This paper review those studies which give efforts in the collection and preservation of DNA evidence. Keywords: DNA Evidence, Collection, Preservation, Scene of Crime

Speaker Recognition: On the Basis of their Habitual and Apprehensive Voice

by Gurpreet Kaur, Dr. Ranjeet Kumar Singh

Spoken language is the natural method of communication that contains the transfer of various information related to linguistics (accent etc.), information related to speakers (emotions, etc.), and also information related to the environment (background noise, etc.). The ability of humans to extract and decode spoken language automatically inspires various researchers to study the distinct prospects of spoken language, which includes recognition of accent or recognition of changed accent, recognition of emotions or gender, etc. “Voiceprint” is a collection of acoustic frequency spectrum which contains the significant features of a human speech that are used for the recognition of a speaker. The voiceprint of an individual has a distinct quality of uniqueness, durability, and strength. Every speaker has unique features of speaking besides those physiological dissimilarities such as the use of specific accent, intonation style, etc. An apprehensive speech is a disguised speech of the speaker recorded under the influence of any threat, nervousness, etc. used for various criminal purposes such as fraud or spam calls, etc. This paper focuses on the areas concerned with the information extraction of an individual’s speech observable in speech signals such as emotional state, intentional accent change, belligerence, etc. will give better clues to the investigator for the differentiation. Some external factors (environmental noise or emotions etc.) impact the effectiveness of speaker identification. But, the basic components of their original voice remain unchanged such as formant frequency in the “Voiceprints” which helps in the recognition process even after using an apprehensive voice. The intonation pattern of formants of the speaker’s original voices will almost be similar to the intonation pattern of formants of the speaker’s deliberate apprehensive voice. Keywords: Apprehensive Voice, Disguised Voice, Speaker Recognition, Voiceprint, Intonation Pattern.

Detection of Unclaimed Metformin and Glimepiride in Anti-diabetic Ayurvedic Medicines

by Arti Varshney, Dr. Munish Mishra

Ayurveda has been proven a boon to our country and because of its lesser side effects; people are shifting to herbal medicines. This has led to increased demands of these herbal products and hence, the purity and efficiency of these products become a matter of concern. This poses the problem of adulteration and adding compounds not been claimed in their ingredients for increasing the effectiveness and fast functioning of the herbal medicine. When referred to diabetes, a major chronic disease, patients with diabetes conform to herbal medications almost every time for overall welfare and better hold of the disease. This study focuses on the detection of two such allopathic compounds that are metformin and glimepiride in anti-diabetic herbal medicines. For this, 15 samples of herbal medicines were collected from local stores of Prayagraj and Aligarh. For metformin, samples were subjected to the color test, followed by thin-layer chromatography and FT-IR spectroscopy for both metformin and glimepiride. Out of 15 samples, 2 samples were detected with the presence of metformin which was confirmed by Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC) and Fourier transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR). Keywords: Metformin, TLC, FT-IR, Glimepiride, Ayurvedic Medicine, Forensic Science

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