Intersection of CBRN, military forensic science, and counterterrorism.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan required that forensic science was used beyond the traditional law enforcement and criminal justice goals and applied to military operations. The 9/11 terror attacks in the United States (US) inspired further attacks in the Western World and highlighted the importance of national and international intelligence sharing for counterterrorism operations. Following the 9/11 attacks, anthrax was disseminated in the US mail system, demonstrating a successful modern use of biological agents.

Improving juror assessments of forensic testimony and its effects on decision-making and evidence evaluation.

Objective: We explored whether an educational forensic science informational (FSI) video either alone or with specialized jury instructions would assist mock jurors in evaluating forensic expert testimony.

Hypotheses: We predicted that the FSI video would help participants distinguish between low-quality and high-quality testimony, evidenced by lower ratings of the testimony and the expert when the testimonial quality was low compared with when it was high.

Method: Jury-eligible adults ( = 641; = 38.

Portable gas chromatography-mass spectrometry method for the in-field screening of organic pollutants in soil and water at pollution incidents.

Environmental pollution incidents generate an emergency response from regulatory agencies to ensure that the impact on the environment is minimised. Knowing what pollutants are present provides important intelligence to assist in determining how to respond to the incident. However, responders are limited in their in-field capabilities to identify the pollutants present.

Quality Management in forensic science: A closer inspection.

An international survey was conducted on the benefits and limitations of accreditation to ISO17025 in forensic science, and how quality management could be improved to reflect the complexities of the end-to-end process. The survey was in response to growing concern within the forensic science community that the standard ISO17025 (and ISO17020), which is the backbone of forensic science accreditation, does not have sufficient depth and reach to properly address the quality of both the inputs (crime scene traces) and outputs (e.g.