Legal News – Expert Witness Legal News – page 27

Scotland's New Lethal High

A LEGAL high linked to at least nine deaths in Europe and on sale in Scotland for as little as £10 a time must be banned, politicians said yesterday.

The drug, called Krypton, is made using the deadly combination of a narcotic Asian plant called kratom and a powerful medical painkiller.

It is completely legal and widely available on the Internet, as well as from at least one “head shop” in Scotland.

But authorities in Sweden have linked Krypton to the deaths of nine young people in the last year and are set to make it illegal in that country.

Gisela Classon, of the Swedish National Board of Forensic Medicine, yesterday urged the Scottish Government to investigate if there have been any fatalities here, adding: “I would be rather surprised if there weren’t any since this drug is globally available.”

CT Best at Uncovering Drug Mule Payload, Study Finds

According to a study presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA), the best way to detect cocaine in the body of a human drug courier, known as a mule, is through computed tomography Cocaine from South America is making its way to Europe through Africa," said Patricia Flach, M.D., a radiologist at University Hospital of Berne and Institute of Forensic Medicine of Berne in Switzerland. "From Africa, drug mules most commonly try to enter the European Union and Switzerland."

World's Fastest Camera Takes a New Look at Biosensing

A European consortium comprising NPL, ST Microelectronics, the University of Edinburgh, and TU Delft has been involved in the development and application of the Megaframe Imager -- an ultrafast camera capable of recording images at the incredible rate of one million frames.

Deepwater Horizon: Not Managing Danger, Not Learning from 'Near Misses'

The numerous technical and operational breakdowns that contributed to the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion and spill from the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico suggest the lack of a suitable approach for managing the inherent risks, uncertainties, and dangers associated with deepwater drilling operations and a failure to learn from previous "near misses,"

Forensic Metal Fingerprinting: Simple, Handheld Device Which Can Measure Corrosion on Machine Parts

Dr John Bond's method of identifying fingerprints on brass bullet-casings, even after they have been wiped clean, was based on the minuscule amounts of corrosion which can be caused by sweat.

First announced in 2008, this breakthrough was cited as one of the technologies 'most likely to change the world' by a panel of experts for BBC Focus magazine and was included in Time magazine's list of '50 best inventions of the year'.