Mặc dù sự ra đời cuối của khoa học pháp y, công nghệ bây giờ là di chuyển nhanh chóng mà nó ngày càng trở nên khó khăn đối với pháp luật để theo kịp. Các thám tử sẽ sớm được giải quyết tội phạm súng và các vụ giết người nhanh hơn bằng cách sử dụng một thiết bị cầm tay | Advances in Forensics It wasn t until the early nineteenth century that hair blood and fingerprints were used as evidence to pinpoint the whereabouts of a criminal. Despite the late birth of forensic science technology is now moving so swiftly that it is becoming difficult for legislation to keep up. Detectives will soon be solving gun crimes and murder cases far faster by using a simple handheld device that instantly confirms whether a suspect has fired a gun. Lab delays mean suspects often get away. This handheld forensic tool could take X-ray fluorescence XRF readings at the crime scene and send them to a computer for instant analysis without destroying physical evidence. It should take a few minutes and give crime teams enough feedback to arrest a suspect - or not. The technology was developed by NASA to measure the wavelengths emitted by different substances. Jacob Trombka a NASA physicist says .by 2003 we should be testing it in real life situations . Murder detectives should also soon be able to determine how long a person has been dead for and also discover information about where the person lived. For example Stuart Black an environmental geologist at the University of Reading determined that a man who had been repeatedly stabbed and then set on fire was probably from the former Soviet Union and had been dead for about a week. Forensic scientists normally rely on studies of how bodies decay in different climates. However the temperature and moisture conditions make these methods imprecise. Instead Black looks at the decay of radioactive isotopes. This technique is similar to carbon dating but focuses on isotopes with shorter half lives than carbon 14. Police are so impressed with his work that Black s lab are already working on two other murder cases and three more are awaiting analysis. The Forensic Science Service FSS in Birmingham has the biggest DNA database in the world. Police have recorded a 40 per cent success rate in matching DNA clues at the .
