Profiling the scent of weathered training aids for blood-detection dogs.

At outdoor crime scenes, cadaver-detection and blood-detection dogs may be tasked with locating blood that is days, weeks or months old. Although it is known that the odour profile of blood will change during this time, it is currently unknown how the profile changes when exposed to the environment. Such variables must be studied in order to understand when the odour profile is no longer detectable by the scent-detection dogs and other crime scene tools should be implemented.

The influence of ageing and surface type on the odour profile of blood-detection dog training aids.

Cadaver-detection dogs are a preferred search tool utilised by law enforcement agencies for the purposes of locating victim remains due to their efficiency and minimal disturbance to the crime scene. In Australia, a specific group of these canines are blood-detection dogs, which are trained to detect and locate blood evidence and search potential crime scenes in cases where a cadaver may not be present. Their role sometimes requires searches to be carried out after considerable time has passed since the crime occurred, and this is important for developing effective training protocols.

The interactive effect of the degradation of cotton clothing and decomposition fluid production associated with decaying remains.

Textiles are a commonly encountered source of evidence in forensic cases. In the past, most research has been focused on how textiles affect the decomposition process while little attention has been paid to how the decomposition products interact with the textiles. While some studies have shown that the presence of remains will have an effect on the degradation of clothing associated with a decaying body, very little work has been carried out on the specific mechanisms that prevent or delay textile degradation when in contact with decomposing remains.

Comparison of the decomposition VOC profile during winter and summer in a moist, mid-latitude (Cfb) climate.

The investigation of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) associated with decomposition is an emerging field in forensic taphonomy due to their importance in locating human remains using biological detectors such as insects and canines. A consistent decomposition VOC profile has not yet been elucidated due to the intrinsic impact of the environment on the decomposition process in different climatic zones. The study of decomposition VOCs has typically occurred during the warmer months to enable chemical profiling of all decomposition stages.

Analysis of alkyl phosphates in petroleum samples by comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography with nitrogen phosphorus detection and post-column Deans switching.

Alkyl phosphate based gellants used as viscosity builders for fracturing fluids used in the process of hydraulic fracturing have been implicated in numerous refinery-fouling incidents in North America. In response, industry developed an inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES) based method for the analysis of total volatile phosphorus in distillate fractions of crude oil; however, this method is plagued by poor precision and a high limit of detection (0.5±1μg phosphorus mL(-1)).

Integration parameters and their effects on quantitative results with two-step peak summation quantitation in comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography.

Quantification of comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatographic (GC×GC) data in a commercial software package is examined. ChromaTOF(®) (Leco Instruments) includes a smoothing step prior to data integration. Improper choice of integration parameters can introduce errors in excess of ±10% and as high as 60% in the total peak area.

Comprehensive multidimensional separations for the analysis of petroleum.

Petroleum analysis presents many unique challenges as a result of the overwhelming number of compounds present in petroleum samples. Consequently the use of multidimensional separation techniques will almost invariably be required in order to overcome these challenges. Within this paper we review recent developments in the application of comprehensive multidimensional techniques for petroleum analysis focusing on more recent applications.