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Aggie professor helps law enforcement find answers in the soil

26Mar

We have seen them on TV, the crime scene investigators who sift through the minutia to help law enforcement personnel determine what took place.

Dr. Jacqui Aitkenhead-Peterson fills this role for those in Texas law enforcement looking for soil-borne answers.

two people talking

Dr. Jacqui Aitkenhead-Peterson discusses soil samples with an officer during a recent investigation.

An Associate Professor in the Texas A&M University Department of Soil and Crop Sciences, Peterson’s research focuses on nutrients in soil and water in human dominated ecosystems. Her research projects include urban irrigation run-off; extractable soil nutrients under tillage and cropping treatments; and investigation of carbon and nutrients released from decomposing mammals – primarily humans.

It is the latter for which she has become one of the go-to sources for law enforcement.

student behind crime scene tape

Aitkenhead-Peterson’s forensic soil science class includes a mock crime scene at which students find evidence and take soil readings.

For the past 6 years, she has been helping law enforcement discover the importance of matching soil from crime scenes and suspects or determining evidence of human decomposition products in soil.

In 2008, following a call from the Soil Science Society of America to increase undergraduate numbers in Soil Science, Peterson decided to develop and offer a Forensic Soil Science class. The first year, the class include included a field trip to the Huntsville donor facility.

“The extremely high concentrations of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus from decomposing donors prompted my research and subsequent articles on this topic,” Peterson said. “Volunteering my expertise in sampling soil and on-site chemical analyses of soil at decomposition workshops for law enforcement or other practitioners led to initially helping to examine soil from cold cases and, more recently, active cases in Texas.”

dog sniffing one in a series of cans

Dogs sniff a series of cans containing either controls or crime scene soil to determine if further testing is warranted.

Earlier this year, when asked to help locate remains for an ongoing case, Peterson called in some canine reinforcements.

Trained by Dr. Ben Alexander, an instructor in the Texas A&M University Department of Biology and a visiting professor and K9 training coordinator at Texas State University’s Forensic Anthropology Center, the human remains detection (HRD) dogs “hit” on certain smells that are often undetectable to humans. They are a valuable tool, Peterson said.

“Dogs have a significantly higher sensitivity than the equipment in my lab,” Peterson said. “Sometimes the volume of soils delivered is high and so it is useful to have trained HRD dogs to alert for human remains before the time consuming chemical analyses is performed. If the HRD dogs show some interest then the next step is to scan sub-samples of the soils using UV-Vis-near infrared spectroscopy.”

“The diffuse reflectivity of decomposition-contaminated soils is significantly lower than soils collected as controls,” she said. “Statistical analyses will show whether it is worthwhile to continue on with wet chemical analyses to determine chemical markers for human remains.”

dog laying beside one of several cans in a row

A human remains detection (HRD) dog signals a “hit” to her handler, Ben Alexander, as Dr. Jacqui Aitkenhead-Peterson looks on.

Recently, three HRD dogs examined soil evidence, for redundancy purposes, and then Peterson tested the soils in her lab.

Information passed on to the investigators may help them find where a victim is buried, or provide other crucial information.

Aggies who wish to learn these techniques enroll in Peterson’s Forensic Soil Science Course, a three credit-hour course in which they learn soil and geologic characteristics associated with crime scene examination, and much more. This course draws numerous budding scientists each semester.

Fritjof Capra to present Kavli Science at Carnegie

21Nov

Counsil of Scientific Society Presidents

Advancing Leadership in Science & Technology

MEDIA RELEASE Contact: Lynda West, Project Manager
Monday, 13 November 2017
Council of Scientific Society Presidents
254-776-3550, Ext. 3
lyndaw@sgmeet.com

Best-Selling Author of The Tao of Physics, Fritjof Capra, to speak at Carnegie

Washington, D.C. – Fritjof Capra, Ph.D., best-selling author whose work includes The Tao of Physics, will present the Fred Kavli Science at the Frontiers Lecture on Monday evening, 4 December 2017, at the Carnegie Institution for Science. His talk, entitled The Systems View of Life: A Science for Sustainable Living, is sponsored by the Council of Scientific Society Presidents (CSSP) and the Kavli Foundation in cooperation with the Carnegie Institution for Science. Capra’s lecture will be based on his book, The Systems View of Life, which presents a grand new synthesis, integrating the biological, cognitive, social, and ecological dimensions of life into one unified vision.

Capra is a scientist, educator, activist, and author of many international bestsellers that connect conceptual changes in science with broader changes in worldview and values in society. The Systems View of Life, coauthored with Pier Luigi Luisi, has been published in three editions in three languages. The Vienna-born physicist and systems theorist first became popularly known for his book, The Tao of Physics, which explored the ways in which modern physics was changing our worldview from a mechanistic to a holistic and ecological one. Published in 1975, it is still in print in more than 40 editions worldwide and 23 different languages. It is referenced with the statue of Shiva in the courtyard of one of the world’s largest and most respected centers for scientific research: CERN, the Center for Research in Particle Physics in Geneva.

Over the past 30 years, Capra has been engaged in a systematic exploration of how other sciences and society are ushering in a similar shift in worldview, or paradigms, leading to a new vision of reality and a new understanding of the social implications of this cultural transformation. He is a founding director of the Berkeley-based Center for Ecoliteracy which is dedicated to advancing ecology and systems thinking in primary and secondary education. The primary focus of his environmental education and activism has been to help build and nurture sustainable communities. He believes that to do so, we can learn valuable lessons from the study of ecosystems which are sustainable communities of plants, animals, and microorganisms.

The lecture is free, but those who are interested in attending must reserve tickets at https://kavli-lecture.brownpapertickets.com/. The Carnegie Institution for Science is located at 1530 P Street NW in Washington, D.C.

For more information about Dr. Capra and his work, please go to http://www.fritjofcapra.net/. For more information about the CSSP and the Fred Kavli Science at the Frontiers Lecture, please contact Helen Schneider Lemay, CSSP Business Manager, at info@sciencepresidents.org.

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