Cross-Pollinating

So, I am working on a paper I intend to submit to the society of plastics engineers on fingerprinting. Ok when I say it like that it seems like I should be rethinking my audience. But, in addition, to other professional associations, I am a member of the Color and Appearance Division of the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE). And there is more cross-over that you would think.

Ok, in general, SPE members are concerned with consumer products where color is an aesthetic property. In forensics, color is a functional property that aids in visualization. But, the technology for the actual coloration crosses over from one application to the other. Sometimes the failure in one arena is a success in the other. So, it behooves me to follow other industries.

For example, the first official use of fingerprinting in western culture that I am aware of is a British Officer who was trying to verify payment receipt. And I believe he got the idea from a Japanese pottery journal.

For myself, the axis-inversion colors, were born out of a sublimation printing product and work on the old principals of printers resists. They sublime into the substrate to form a colored in the matrix like textile printing. But, they do not penetrate where the fingerprint blocks migration.

But, that’s the point, there are a lot of innovations to be found in other industries and arts.

Well, that’s all for today.

Introduction: How do I do that?

I often wonder how many criminalists actually watch cop shows like CSI or NCIS. People often tend to scoff at fiction that pretends to emulate what they know. It’s a question of where the suspension of disbelief kicks in. We look at what the characters are doing and go – “yea right!”

But, liberties aside, I enjoy detective and crime scene fiction, even when the science goes astray. Does the fact that warp drive doesn’t exist make Star Trek less enjoyable? No – and lets be honest, aside from the lighting, is there anyone out there who wouldn’t want Grissom’s lab?

As a product developer, I also have to admit I find a lot of fodder in fiction. While it’s true that the people who produce television forensic television shows or books based on criminalist characters try to add as much authentic science as then can, the pacing of the stories requires some liberties. Sometimes, I see that prop guys have devised easier delivery systems than the original manufacture had. Sometimes the writers have presented “real life” problems for which there is no off the shelf solution. And sometimes, you see a piece of evidence that can only be read by a really cool piece of equipment that most labs couldn’t hope to afford. And I wonder what I would do if confronted with the same problem.

And that I guess is the essence of research science. So, in this blob space, I plan to look at the developing and using of the tools that help us answer the question “how do I do that?”

Original Post June 2009