If we consider photo forensics within a Bayesian framework, then the probability that an image has been manipulated given the results of a forensic test can be expressed as a product of a likelihood term (the probability of a forensic test detecting manipulation given that an image was manipulated) and a prior term (the probability that an image was manipulated). Despite the success of many for...

In most legal systems, it is crucial that evidence that is obtained for use in any judicial proceedings, especially criminal prosecutions, is obtained lawfully. In other words, no crimes should be committed in the obtaining and examining of any evidence, which will be later, be relied upon in court. Section 86 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002 in South Africa crea...

The forensic process relies on the scientific method to scrutinize recovered evidence that either supports or negates an investigative hypothesis. Currently, analysis of digital evidence remains highly subjective to the forensic practitioner. Digital forensics is in need of a deterministic approach to obtain the most judicious conclusions from evidence. The objective of this paper is to examine...

Assignment methods, which use genetic information to ascertain population membership of individuals or groups of individuals, have been used in recent years to study a wide range of evolutionary and ecological processes. In applied studies, the first step of articulating the biological question(s) to be addressed should be followed by selection of the method(s) best suited for the analysis. How...

The capacity to identify an unknown organism using the DNA sequence from a single gene has many applications. These include the development of biodiversity inventories ( Janzen et al. 2005), forensics (Meiklejohn et al. 2011), biosecurity (Armstrong and Ball 2005), and the identification of cryptic species (Smith et al. 2006). The popularity and widespread use (Teletchea 2010) of the DNA barcod...

The unrelenting progress of laboratory techniques is rapidly unleashing the huge potential of palaeomicrobiology. That bodies are often found in poor condition is common to both palaeomicrobiology and forensic medicine, and this might stimulate them towards a joint quest to extract reproducible data for reliable specimens.

Recent work has demonstrated that the diversity of skin-associated bacterial communities is far higher than previously recognized, with a high degree of interindividual variability in the composition of bacterial communities. Given that skin bacterial communities are personalized, we hypothesized that we could use the residual skin bacteria left on objects for forensic identification, matching ...

Establishing the gender of a dead person is an important procedure in forensic medicine, especially during mass disasters. Teeth are very important material as they are available even after considerable postmortal changes because they are resistant to chemical and mechanical agents. The results of this study indicate that there are significant differences between the sexes in canine dimorphism....