Hair is an important piece of evidence in forensic and archaeological investigations. Analysis of the morphological features of hair has been reported since at least the early 1800's. However, many questions still remain unanswered such as, how can human groups (or local populations) be analyzed and possibly distinguished from each other based on the morphology of their hair? This investigation successfully established a set of procedures for analysis of human hair morphology and explored the possibility of separating populations by examining a case study of 40 hairs from five sample populations (Mongolian, English, Vietnamese, Native American Sioux and Oneida). The methodology leads the investigator from the point of receiving a single hair to acquiring a list of specific, discernible traits characterizing that hair. These methods included a variety laboratory procedures (cleaning, casting, mounting and microtome sectioning of the hair) and examination procedures (microscope and computer imaging and developing a key and database). Statistical analysis was then utilized in order to determine the variability and/or relationships between the populations. Although the results were not statistically significant, they weakly support a division of three groups: English, Mongolian and Vietnamese, and Sioux and Oneida. The small sample size and overlap between the five populations is a limiting factor in attempting to discriminate between populations and should be taken into consideration in future investigations. / Graduation date: 1999

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Stable isotope analysis of human tissue can provide information about diet independent of artifactual remains. Food is broken down and used in the synthesis of body tissue, so the isotopic composition of hair keratin reflects the isotopic composition of foods consumed. Therefore, the analysis of hair can provide a window into broad dietary practices, and this view can supplement the information that is inferred from artifacts such as hunting tools and hearths. This project details the use of historic Plains Indians hair as a sample material for carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis. A minimum specimen size of a 2-cm (l00- 150 μg) segment of a strand was established. This indicates that small hair fragments found in archeological excavations can be informative. It also allowed the testing of up to 12 sequential segments from strands up to 24 cm long. Since hair grows about 1 cm per month, a 24-cm strand provided about a 2-yr record of isotopes and diet. The isotopic variations along some strands were as high as 0.49‰ for δ¹⁵N and 1.05‰ for δ¹³C, exceeding the background analytical uncertainty of 0.22‰ for δ¹⁵N and 0.2l‰ for δ¹³C. Differences between individuals and between population groups also exceeded this background level, validating the use of this isotope technique in discriminating isotopic differences between hairs and between people. No isotopic differences were found between males and females, and no isotopic differences were found based on the age of the individual. This suggests that there are no physiological differences by gender or age affecting isotope metabolism, which means that should a study find an isotopic difference between men and women, it would reflect dietary differences, not physiological ones. Isotope testing produced distinct isotope profiles (δ¹⁵N vs. δ¹³C) for two cultural groups, the Lower Brule reservation Sioux of 1892 and the reservation Blackfoot of 1892 and 1935. The resultant dietary profiles indicate a higher consumption of meat by the Blackfoot and a higher consumption of corn by the Lower Brule. The two groups of Blackfoot fit into the same profile despite the passage of several decades. This raises the possibility that stable isotope analysis can also be used to identify members of the same cultural population. / Graduation date: 2003

Clinical and forensic toxicology analysts rely heavily in their daily tests on the analysis of the conventional samples (blood and urine). However, these specimens are limited in the time scale they reflect with regard to drug intake history and also in terms of drug stability within the matrices. Alternative matrices such as hair, oral fluids and dried blood spots (DBS) provide new horizons and new opportunities. Drugs incorporated within hair are very stable. Hair also provides a very long detection window, for at least one year, if not a lot longer. Oral fluids on the other hand are non-intrusive, easy to collect and much cleaner sample matrix than blood or urine. DBS also offer great drug stability, are easy to collect, faster to analyse and suitable for automated analysis. However, a number of studies are needed to assess the limits of these alternative samples in terms of the correlation of their results with the results of conventional samples and with regard to drug stability. Such studies will enable a more reliable and confident interpretation of results obtained from these matrices especially for medico-legal purposes. The main aims of this research were: to develop and validate analytical methods for detection and quantitation of drugs of use and abuse in hair, oral fluids, blood and DBS samples, to investigate the correlation between dose and drug concentration in hair, blood and oral fluids after controlled chronic drug administration, to investigate the stability of anti-psychotic drugs in DBS (from patients) stored under different conditions and the effect of addition of preservative, and to investigate the alcohol intake prevalence among Kuwaiti drug addicts and correlate these results with selfreported intake. As the majority of drugs were basic, an extraction method based on methanolic incubation was developed for detection of basic/weak basic drugs in hair. It was compared to alkaline digestion (with NaOH) followed by liquid-liquid extraction (LLE). Detection was achieved by LC-MS/MS (Sciex2000) after separation on a C18 column. When applying both methods on positive authentic hair samples the results showed that the methanolic method was capable of extracting most basic drugs in hair but only partially, while the alkaline digestion method was found to degrade V some unstable drugs like sulpiride, but was capable of fully extracting the alkaline stable drugs such as quetiapine. After development and validation of the LLE-LC-MS(Exactive) method for the analysis of anti-psychotics in blood, oral fluids and hair, an investigation was carried out on the correlation pattern between trough concentrations in those three matrices. The most significant correlation coefficients (r) found were those between blood and hair concentrations, procyclidine r=0.83 (18 subjects p=<0.001), risperidone r=0.96 (14 subjects p=<0.001), haloperidol r=0.90 (10 subjects p=<0.001), OH-risperidone r=0.24 (13 subjects p=>0.44), quetiapine r=0.28 (14 subjects p=>0.33) and chlorprothixene r=0.32 (13 subjects p=>0.32). Among the interesting results was the strong correlation found between drugs half-lives and the mean ratio of hair concentration/dose (r=0.96, p=<0.003). The stability of anti-pyschotics in DBS from patients’ samples was assessed by storing them at four different temperatures (25, 4, -20 and -80°C) with and without prior impregnation of the DBS cards with sodium fluoride. After development and validation of the LLE-LC-MS method, samples were analysed at days 0, 45, 90 and 180. Results showed good stability of all the compounds (procyclidine, quetiapine, risperidone, OH-risperidone, chlorprothixene and haloperidol) in all the different storage conditions and no significant increase or decrease in drug concentrations with sodium fluoride impregnation. Finally, after trials with five different HPLC columns, two SPE cartridges, two LLE extraction procedures and two mass spectrometer instruments, a method was developed and validated for the detection and quantitation of alcohol’s minor and specific metabolite in hair, ethyl glucuronide (EtG). The method has a limit of detection (LOD) of 3pg/mg and lower limit of quantitation (LLOQ) of 9pg/mg. This method was applied to 59 hair samples from patients at a general addiction centre and alcohol prevalence was investigated and its correlation with self-reported use was investigated.

It can be useful to discover a person’s chronic drinking consumption in child custody cases and to aid in the diagnosis of diseases like fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. When one alcohol marker in hair is analysed to indicate chronic use false negatives and false positives can occur. When two (ethyl glucuronide (EtG) and fatty acid ethyl esters (FAEEs)) are analysed false negatives and false positives can be recognized and provide stronger evidence as is underlined statistically in this work. For a combined method, the sample preparation and analytical procedures were optimized. The effect of the decontamination step was difficult to interpret, which shows that addressing issues with external contamination is challenging. Analytes may be extracted from the hair matrix during decontamination and analytes can diffuse into the hair shaft from external contamination. The last is illustrated by the incorporation via excretions of endogenous EtG and FAEEs. A novel and sensitive analytical procedure was developed and validated which saves time and possibly money compared to analysing of both markers separately. The best overall method had a linear calibration curve (r2 > 0:99) and an intra-day (n=3) and inter-day (n=9) accuracy for the quality control samples at three concentration levels between 84–118% with a coefficient of variation of 3–30% for both EtG and the FAEEs. The Bayesian approach was suggested as a new interpretation framework for hair tests, to account for the uncertainties in these tests in a transparent manner. In this work databases were constructed with EtG and FAEEs hair concentrations linked to the subject’s chronic alcohol use, the likelihood ratios were calculated and working examples were provided. This showed that a positive hair test for either EtG or FAEEs may very well be only ’limited’ evidence and therefore should only be used with a high prior odds. This means that a hair test result should not be used in isolation. The large confidence interval in this study also underlines the need for more control data.

In this dissertation, we introduce a framework for simulating the dynamics between liquid and thin structures, including the effects of buoyancy, drag, capillary cohesion, dripping, and diffusion. After introducing related works, Part I begins with a discussion on the interactions between Newtonian fluid and fabrics. In this discussion, we treat both the fluid and the fabrics as continuum media; thus, the physical model is built from mixture theory. In Part II, we discuss the interactions between Newtonian fluid and hairs. To have more detailed dynamics, we no longer treat the hairs as continuum media. Instead, we treat them as discrete Kirchhoff rods. To deal with the thin layer of liquid that clings to the hairs, we augment each hair strand with a height field representation, through which we introduce a new reduced-dimensional flow model to solve the motion of liquid along the longitudinal direction of each hair. In addition, we develop a faithful model for the hairs' cohesion induced by surface tension, where a penalty force is applied to simulate the collision and cohesion between hairs. To enable the discrete strands interact with continuum-based, shear-dependent liquid, in Part III, we develop models that account for the volume change of the liquid as it passes through strands and the momentum exchange between the strands and the liquid. Accordingly, we extend the reduced-dimensional flow model to simulate liquid with elastoviscoplastic behavior. Furthermore, we use a constraint-based model to replace the penalty-force model to handle contact, which enables an accurate simulation of the frictional and adhesive effects between wet strands. We also present a principled method to preserve the total momentum of a strand and its surface flow, as well as an analytic plastic flow approach for Herschel-Bulkley fluid that enables stable semi-implicit integration at larger time steps. We demonstrate a wide range of effects, including the challenging animation scenarios involving splashing, wringing, and colliding of wet clothes, as well as flipping of hair, animals shaking, spinning roller brushes from car washes being dunked in water, and intricate hair coalescence effects. For complex liquids, we explore a series of challenging scenarios, including strands interacting with oil paint, mud, cream, melted chocolate, and pasta sauce.

Hair, as a vital component of the human's appearance, plays an important role in producing digital characters. However, the generation of realistic hairstyles usually needs professional digital artists and/or complex hardware, and the procedure is often time-consuming due to its numerous numbers, and diverse hairstyles. Thus, automatic capture of real-world hairstyles with easy input can greatly benefit the production pipeline. State-of-the-art 3D hair modeling systems require either multi-view images or a single- view image with complementary synthetic 3D hair models. For the multi-view image based 3D hair reconstruction, the capture systems are often made of a large number of cameras, projectors, light sources, and are usually in the indoor environment, which prevents popular use of the methods. On the contrary, single-view image based methods only use simple capture devices, e.g.; a handheld camera. However, a front view containing a face is often required and the resulting 3D hair strand reconstruction quality is compromised. Meanwhile, several hairstyles can not be easily modeled, such as braids and kinky hairstyles (afro-textured hairs), even though they are very common in real life. In this dissertation, we implement a single-view imaged based 3D hair modeling system, where our hair reconstruction is done through 2D hair analysis and 3D strands creation, which benefits from both traditional image processing techniques and the strengths of machine learning. Our 2D hair analysis is used to learn the attributes of input hairs, including 2D hair strands, detailed hairstyle patterns, and the corresponding parametric representation (which includes braids and kinky hairs), and braid structures. Simultaneously 3D hair strands are generated using deep-learning models. Our method is different from previous methods as our generated hair models can be modified by controlling the attributes and parameters we learned from the 2D hair recognition/analysis system. Our system does not require a face to be shown in the input image and to our best knowledge, our work is the first work that can reconstruct 3D braided hair and kinky hair given a single-view image. Qualitatively and quantitatively assessments indicate that our system can generate a variety of realistic 3D hairstyle models.

To determine the relationship of tobacco and marijuana smoking to levels of cadmium and zinc manifested in hair samples, a study was conducted at Portland State University using atomic.absorption spectrophotometry. 97 adult student volunteers participated in the main study.