LinkNotes: New technology finds chemicals in fingerprints

2008-08-12

New technology finds chemicals in fingerprints

Clipped from: Fingerprint Test Tells What a Person Has Touched - NYTimes.com

Fingerprint Test Tells What a Person Has Touched
With a new analytical technique, a fingerprint can now reveal much more than the identity of a person. It can now also identify what the person has been touching: drugs, explosives or poisons, for example.

Clipped from: Fingerprints provide clues to more than just identity

The research was performed within Purdue's Center for Analytical Instrumentation Development located at the Bindley Biosciences Center in Purdue's Discovery Park.

Cooks' device, called desorption electrospray ionization or DESI, has been commercialized by Indianapolis-based Prosolia Inc., and the research was funded by Office of Naval Research and Prosolia Inc.

Clipped from: Lifesaving Answers Hidden Inside Fingerprints
Purdue University Chemistry professor R. Graham Cooks unveiled a new scientific discovery in Friday’s issue of the journal Science. It appears that human fingerprints can determine more than just who you are. They also contain extremely small traces of what someone touched, what someone ate or whether any drugs were taken.

The researchers used a technique called DESI, pioneered by him and his collaborators in 2004. In this revolutionary method, researchers spray microscopic droplets of water onto a sample. The droplets form a film that dissolves chemicals. Some of the additional droplets splashed bounce back and are sucked into a tube. They are thus heated inside the tube; they break into smaller molecules which are afterwards identified according to their molecular weight.

Clipped from: CAID - Center for Analytical Instrumentation Development

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2008-08-12

New technology finds chemicals in fingerprints

Fingerprint Test Tells What a Person Has Touched