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Things You Drink Can Be Used To Track You
sciencehabit writes with an intriguing story about the potential of figuring out where people have been by examining their hair: "That's because water molecules differ slightly in their isotope ratios depending on the minerals at their source. Researchers found that water samples from 33 cities across the United State could be reliably traced back to their origin based on their isotope ratios. And because the human body breaks down water's constituent atoms of hydrogen and oxygen to construct the proteins that make hair cells, those cells can preserve the record of a person's travels. Such information could help prosecutors place a suspect at the scene of a crime, or prove the innocence of the accused." Or frame someone by slipping them water from every country on the terrorist watchlist.
That's tough to swallow...
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
Let's hope there aren't any murders near the Coca-cola bottling plant!
My toilet telling asking me... "How was your trip to Tokyo?"
or the next version that checks the stool... "Rosanna the cow hopes that she was a tasty treat!"
If your accuser says you were in Philly, and your hair says you were in Detroit, then you might be innocent of the crime in Philly, but you're still stuck in Detroit.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
That's why I only drink liquid tin foil.
Who's laughing now?
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/england/bristol/10332975.stm
Basically some bones from a German cathedral could be places as having lived in England due to isotopes in the teeth.
This helped confirm the bones were of a 10th century English princess.
This may be forensically useful, but don't think of it like a fingerprint or a DNA match. There's only one degree of freedom here -- whether the water is isotopically "heavy" or "light". All of a person's water co9nsumption history is mixed up into one number.
So you won't be able to tell the difference between, say, a person who lived all year in Illinois (with a moderate isotope ratio) and a person who flies back and forth between Montana and Florida (who'd have a mix of "heavy" and "light" water in their system.)
This has been done before: in the investigation of the poisoning of Alexander Livinenko, the traces of Polonium 210 left wherever the poisoner(s) went gave the UK authorities a very detailed trail to work with - one that not only showed the exact teapot used for the poisoning, but also provides a fingerprint of where the Po-210 was produced and at what date.
It's quite a fascinating story:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Litvinenko_poisoning#Polonium_trails
Simply substitute Po-210 for something not deadly and you have a wonderful tracking mechanism.
'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it' - Eeyore
I can see this science being abused. Whether your body contains a certain chemical signature or not is still circumstantial evidence, but increasingly our justice system (like many countries) are using it to give carte blanche access to a person's private information and life. Worse, if the request is later determined to have been falsified or exaggerated, the evidence gathered as a result of that request is still considered valid for the persecution of not just the original crime, but anything else uncovered as a result.
Thanks to shows like CSI and confidence in science, we want DNA samples, hair, urine, and a billion other things -- and believe that their presence somehow proves or disproves guilt. This is despite the fact that such evidence can be manufactured with ease -- the prime example being Photoshop for photographs, but virtually every technology you have around you can be used against you in some fashion or manipulated to imply or explicitly state something that is not true. Yet the courts rarely ask that samples be tested for contamination, or refuse to re-hear cases where the lab clearly and undeniably compromised the results.
It used to be that testimony was the primary vehicle in obtaining a conviction. Now we're increasingly using evidence that neither the judge, jury, defense, or even prosecution fully understands to take away other people's freedoms, sometimes under false pretext. While this particular technology is neither good nor bad, the system that will incorporate its use may be fundamentally flawed.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
General Jack D. Ripper: Mandrake, have you ever seen a Commie drink a glass of water?
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Well, no, I can't say I have.
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
researchers have used this technique to uncover the shocking truth that a small hamlet in southern maine is actually the residence of tens of millions of people
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=poland%20spring
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Baldness FTW
I mean, sure, the bottled water will have the same signatures, but what is to say you didn't drink your own bottled water wherever you went? Or things like bottle sodas, and drinks. The best you might be able to do is say that they had drink which used water from XYZ location. It is a far stretch to say that they were in XYZ when they drank it. Heck, there are stores around me which sell bottled water from around the world, and I know I have even tried a few, but I never left my home town, yet it according to this "evidence" I have been to Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Ukraine, Ireland, and Poland...
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Dude, don't drink them! They're valuable! Do you know how hard it is to get illicit liquids like water into the US these days?
I had bottled water in my checked luggage seized last time I flew back from South America... maybe they thought I might have dissolved drugs in them or something. I figured it was better to let them keep them than ask for the water back, since all I wanted to do was catch my connecting flight (ATL airport, btw).
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
"Is there a timestamp attached to those water molecules?"
Well, there sort of is. Hair grows at the root only, so if I watch how the patterns change moving from the root of a hair to the tip, I can get a fuzzy sort of timeline of your waters' origin. Circumstances where that's precise enough to be useful, though, seem narrow.
The airport variaty: Has someone else given you water to drink?
The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head
A major component of most things you drink is water.
Most things you drink aren't bottled in your home town. (Including bottled water, if you're into that sort of thing.)
If somehow this technique were to be come a common defense tool, then someone planning a crime could shrewdly stockpile tap water from a city with a distinct signature that isn't where the crime will take place.
It might be marginally useful as a tool in a civil case if you want to convince the jury where someone was (but probably not if you want to convince them where he/she wasn't); I would hope it would be considered too inconclusive to be used in a criminal trial.
If this method could tell us if it rained on your wedding day?
Nope...that would be a coincidence. Still. Fifteen years later.
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
I've never left the US, Canada and Mexico, but my hair would say I spend a little time each year in Speyside, Scotland drinking water that is anywhere from 12-18 years old, usually Macallan.
If somehow this technique were to be come a common defense tool, then someone planning a crime could shrewdly stockpile tap water from a city with a distinct signature that isn't where the crime will take place.
I'd be impressed if you could stockpile significant amounts of water without leaving evidence in the form of empty containers, palates of water, shipping receipts, purchase receipts, and loyalty card information.
It's not that hard to destroy evidence. The hard part is destroying evidence without creating even more evidence.
Nope. Different isotopes of the same element have the same chemistry, so chemical processes won't alter isotope ratios. This is an important feature of using isotopes as tracers, since generally the tracer elements will be subject to a lot of chemical processes -- like being absorbed into the body and incorporated in to hair.
It turns out that TFA (which is just a bad summary of an actual paper) appears to have introduced the "minerals" bit. Minerals aren't involved; different water sources just have different hydrogen and oxygen isotope ratios.
I'd say the "identifying where a bottle of water is from" part may have some scientific validity. Assuming that the isotope ratios in the oxygen molecules in your blood match the water you're drinking is more dubious - you're also breathing air, which may have different ratios, plus your body would also be exchanging liquids between cells and bloodstream, so there's a long slow storage period. How that relates by the time the stuff gets out to your hair is even more speculative. The real question is how much was speculation by the scientists, and how much by the reporter.
But yeah, terrorists are going to start drinking bottled water, and the real trick is that you'll be able to identify terrorists by all the water bottles in the trash. Or, wait, was that terrorists or tourists? Hard to tell the difference sometimes...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Or he could shave his head.
Leave Brittney alone!