Police sniff out those who breach law and odour/Scientists create eggs, sperm-like cells apart from body

[Guest guest]

Police sniff out those who breach law and odour

July 30 2003

By Kim Willsher

Paris

 

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/07/29/1059244618116.html

 

 

Scientists working for French police have perfected a technique for

" bottling " smells at a crime scene to identify suspects by the odour they

leave behind.

 

After two years of tests on a method of detection known as " odourology " ,

they have concluded that smell can be as effective as fingerprints or DNA to

link a criminal with a crime.

 

The French national police force's Scientific and Technical Unit, in Lyon,

established that trained sniffer dogs could be presented with a crime's

" smell signature " , then match it to the correct suspect in the olfactory

equivalent of an identity parade.

 

A police official hailed the study as a breakthrough in crime-fighting. " We

now know beyond doubt that wherever a criminal goes they leave behind

molecules of odour which are unique to them and which a trained dog can

recognise, " he said.

 

" A burglar who jumps out of a building having tiptoed carefully to the

window and taken precautions against leaving fingerprints, hair or anything

which would contain DNA, could still be identified because his smell will

have been left on anything he touched, even through his clothing or the

soles of his shoes. "

 

French scientists refined a technique pioneered in eastern European

countries to gather odours from crime scenes. The smells gathered can come

from tiny droplets of sweat or skin oils.

 

Investigators leave strips of a special tissue paper at the crime scene to

absorb smells, which are then sealed in a sterile jar. Scientists believe

they can retain the smell for up to 10 years. An arrested suspect is told to

hold a similar tissue for up to 15 minutes, and this and other samples are

then presented to a sniffer dog to be matched - or not - to the odour from

the crime.

 

The scientists found that, in strictly controlled experiments, the dogs

correctly picked the suspects' smells from samples from the crime scene,

even when the samples bore the odour of more than one person.

 

In one of the first cases using the technique, detectives arrested several

suspects over a robbery, unsure who was responsible. Dogs identified the

odour of one suspect in an sample from the getaway vehicle.

 

The technique is being experimented with in other European countries,

including Holland, Belgium and Germany.

 

Police are preparing to present the French courts with evidence from the

study to convince them of the accuracy of the technique. Until now, judges

have ruled that it may be used in trials only alongside other evidence.

 

One police scientist said: " It's an empirical technique which essentially

depends on the skills of the dogs. No one knows exactly how their sense of

smell works, but their powers of detection are amazing.

 

" Equally, no one has the slightest idea of the nature of the molecules which

make up the 'smell signature' of an individual. "

 

- Telegraph

 

Scientists create eggs, sperm-like cells apart from body

July 26 2003

By Julie-Anne Davies

 

 

 

 

Whipping up babies in a Petri dish is nothing new. But doing it without the

apparently basic ingredients of sperm from the father and eggs from the

mother could be the next fertility frontier to crumble.

 

Just 25 years after the world's first IVF baby was born, researchers in

Japan and the US have produced a synthetic egg and sperm-like cells from

mouse embryos, reports the science magazine New Scientist.

 

It is the first time the cells that hold the secret to fertility have been

created outside the body. Australian infertility scientist Alan Trounson

predicts that the ability to grow artificial human eggs and sperm in the

laboratory is only a decade away.

 

" We will be able to take cells and reconstruct the equivalent of sperm and

eggs, " he said in London yesterday.

 

In England to address a meeting of the Royal College of Obstetricians,

Professor Trounson said that by combining stem cell technology and fertility

treatment, " in future, everyone who is infertile will be helped " .

 

He said that if artificial sex cell research continued, embryonic stem cells

could be used to make sperm and eggs. The most immediate consequence would

be to help create more stem cells, eliminating the demand for surplus IVF

embryos for stem cell collection.

 

The US team from the University of Pennsylvania that created artificial eggs

from embryonic mouse stem cells will now attempt to fertilise the eggs.

Whether any resulting embryos will develop into health baby mice is the big

question.

 

Applications could include creating a limitless and cheap supply of human

eggs, which would greatly accelerate research on infertility and therapeutic

cloning.

 

Jose Cibelli, the first scientist to publish details of attempts to clone

human cells, told the journal: " Eggs were one of those cell types we never

thought we could produce. "

 

The most obvious application would be to treat infertile women who cannot

produce eggs suitable for IVF, or men who cannot produce sperm. It could

also theoretically allow a male couple to have their own children.

 

The Japanese team that has completed the more difficult feat of making

artificial mouse sperm, took embryonic stem cells that were developing into

eggs and transplanted them into testicular tissue.

 

After three months they had formed what appeared to be normal sperm.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/07/25/1059084208911.html