ISIS Neutron and Muon Source Data Journal

WIDENING THE FRONTIERS IN FORENSIC PROFILING: PROBING BURNED HUMAN BONES WITH NEUTRON DIFFRACTION

Abstract: Neutron diffraction techniques are applied to the study of burned human skeletal remains, for assessing heat-induced changes associated to alterations in bone´s microcrystallinity. The results, coupled to vibrational spectroscopy data (INS, Raman, FTIR), are expected to provide an improved understanding of the structural changes undergone by bone upon burning. A quantitative relationship between spectroscopic and diffraction parameters, dimensional variations and specific burning conditions is sought, with a view to relate burned to pre-burned parameters. This is an innovative way of tackling heat-induced changes in human bone, with a high impact in forensic investigation. This work follows successful experiments on MAPS and TOSCA, which were the first studies on human burned bones by neutron techniques and allowed us to identify spectral biomarkers of heat-elicited alterations [1].

Principal Investigator: Professor Luis Alberto Batista de Carvalho
Experimenter: Dr Adriana Mamede
Experimenter: Dr Winfried Kockelmann
Experimenter: Dr David Gonçalves
Experimenter: Professor Stewart Parker
Experimenter: Dr Maria Paula Marques
Experimenter: Miss Adriana Mamede

DOI: 10.5286/ISIS.E.RB1810025

ISIS Experiment Number: RB1810025

Publisher: STFC ISIS Neutron and Muon Source

Data format: RAW/Nexus
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Data Citation

The recommended format for citing this dataset in a research publication is as:
[author], [date], [title], [publisher], [doi]

For Example:
Professor Luis Alberto Batista de Carvalho et al; (2018): WIDENING THE FRONTIERS IN FORENSIC PROFILING: PROBING BURNED HUMAN BONES WITH NEUTRON DIFFRACTION, STFC ISIS Neutron and Muon Source, https://doi.org/10.5286/ISIS.E.RB1810025

Data is released under the CC-BY-4.0 license.