Fingerprint technology is moving ahead fast

Fingerprints

New fingerprint technology is making it easier to catch criminals.

Dr Sue Jickells from Kings College, in London, is undertaking research that could make it easier for police to find a suspect's age, gender and even dietary habits.

A simple fingerprint can now detect whether a criminal is a drug user, has recently consumed alcohol or can link a crime with a suspect - all through chemical testing of fatty acids left from fingerprints.

New technology

Old technology of ink fingerprinting, which could take weeks, is being phased out for more efficient techniques such as new laser scanning technologies, taken in minutes and checked against the database within an hour.

Police are already using portable laser fingerprint scanners and airports are implementing biometrics scanners.

Groundbreaking research - Dr Sue Jickells from Kings College

Fingerprint chemistry can aid in criminal detection when a fingerprint is not recognised on a database and when there are no witnesses.

Now the simple fingerprint could give a lot more away than before.

Dr Sue Jickells' work research started by looking at the chemical components of prints and how they change over time.

She says that much of the material left behind when people touch anything are fat molecules, or lipids.

One lipid, called squalene, a precursor to cholesterol, is strongly present in fingerprints.

Squalene breaks down over a number of days, as do the saturated and unsaturated fatty acids left behind by human touch.

This makes it harder for traditional techniques to reveal prints.

Good evidence from prints

Dr Jickell has been working on ways to get good quality evidence from relatively old prints.

New fingerprint technology is helping to solve crimes

Her research has also shown how fingerprints can be utilised to provide clues about the person that left a print.

It also reveals that adults, children and old people lay down different types of organic compounds in the prints.

Also, smokers are known to secrete cotinine, a chemical produced when the human body breaks down nicotine.

Further work is now ongoing on looking at methadone clinics and drug centres to see how drug use changes the prints users leave behind.

A brief history of finger printing

New style fingerprint scanning technology

Fingerprinting has a long history but there is no definitive date for when it was first used.

Prehistoric picture writing with ridge patterns have been discovered in Nova Scotia, Canada.

Fingerprint impressions have been found in government papers from 14th Century Persia.

In 1686 Malpighi from the University of Bologna referred to the value of spirals and loops in fingerprints for individual identification.

In 1858 William Herschel, a British Administrator in Bengal, made the first practical application of fingerprints for personal identification as signatures on contracts.

In 1880 Dr Henry Faulds looked at the possibility of identifying criminals from fingerprints left at a crime scene.

Faulds offered the concept to the Metropolitan Police in London in 1886 but it was dismissed.

Sir Francis Galton published an in-depth study of fingerprint science in 1892.

Juan Vucetich, an Argentine police officer in 1892, made the first fingerprint identification at a crime scene. He also opens the world's first fingerprinting bureau.

The world's first Fingerprint Bureau opened in Calcutta, India in 1897.

The first United Kingdom Fingerprint Bureau was founded in Scotland Yard in 1901. The Henry Classification System was accepted in England and Wales.

Links relating to this story:

• King's College London
• Crimtrac
• Wikipedia - Fingerprints
• Onin - history of finger prints

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Cakes

Small cake makers are fighting back

With many high street food shops seeming to be bland and homogenised, it is easy to think that small individual shops are gone forever but think again.

A few small shops are fighting back and some with just cakes.

Top chef Allegra McEvedy tastes the delights of the Primrose Bakery and Bury Farm Bakery who are surviving on their handmade baking and localised products.

It is because they are different and local that they can survive against the big name supermarkets.

They have been approached by supermarkets but prefer dictating on their own terms - they want to keep it small and special.

Allegra McEvedy's Colour Cookbook
The Magic Rhubarb trick
Serves 6

for the rhubarb...
675g rhubarb, washed, cut into 10cm batons
450g caster sugar
1 vanilla pod, split and scraped
juice of 1 orange, plus 3 thin slices of zest
for the shortbread
2 cardamom pods
80g unsalted butter (at room temperature)
80g plain flour
30g icing sugar
30g cornflour
a drop of vanilla essence

for the chocolate sauce and whipped cream...
300ml double cream
1 tbs caster sugar
200g best dark chocolate

First get the rhubarb in, as the magic can't be rushed.

Preheat the oven to 110°C/225°F/gas ¼.

Lay the rhubarb out on a tray in military fashion: you are aiming for a single layer.

Sprinkle the sugar over and add the scraped vanilla pod. Splash on the orange juice and slices of rind.

Cover tightly with foil and pop into the oven on the middle shelf to bake slowly for 2½-3 hours.

Have a peek after 1½ hours. Now have a go at the shortbread.

Preheat your other oven to 180°C/350°F/gas 4.

Gently break open the cardamom pods, scrape out the seeds and carefully chop them with a knife and then squash them down. Discard the husks.

Either in a mixer (not a food processor) or by hand, cream the butter until pale and fluffy. Sift in the flour, icing sugar and cornflour and beat again until fully incorporated. Stir in the vanilla and ground cardamom.

Put squash-ball sized lumps of the mix on to a greased baking tray, about 2cm apart.

Bake in the oven for 12-15 minutes, until the shortbreads are just golden. Take them out and leave to cool for a few minutes. Then carefully lift them off the tray on to a wire rack to cool completely.

Take the rhubarb out of the oven once it has done its bit. You will see the sugar is totally dissolved and the rhubarb is intact, though slightly shrunken, and the whole lot is the most perfect pink and the softest of softs.

Leave to cool; do not play with it. I have known some rhubarb to take an extra hour to cool down properly.
Finally, get the chocolate sauce going.

Set up a double boiler (a bowl set on top of a larger pan of water, on a small flame). Pour in half the double cream and stir occasionally until it has warmed up.

Meanwhile, whisk the remaining cream with a tablespoon of sugar. Don't overwhip it and go and spoil everything now.

Once the cream in the double boiler is warm, drop in the chocolate pieces and stir until smooth.

For serving, the first time I did it was as the finale of an uber-posh dinner, where we put the chocolate into martini glasses with the other components in little dishes beside it. Dip and scoop, suck and see.

Healing Sounds

The healing power of music - Sadie Nine investigates

Listening to live music can certainly be pleasurable, but it may also assist in the healing process.

Many hospitals around London are now employing musicians to give live performances in hospital wards.

Kurdish harpist Tara Jaff regularly performs at Barts hospital in East London.

But can the effects of music be measured scientifically? To find out, Professor Rosalia Staricoff conducted a series of tests over a period of several years, and concluded that the presence of live music can definitely reduce stress levels, heart rate and blood pressure, and also reduce the amount of pain-killing drugs that patients use.

Inside Out explores the links between music and healing.