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Biological evidence is often found at crime scenes and can comprise of DNA from the victim(s) and perpetrator(s) to a crime as well as from individuals with no direct relationship to the incident. This can complicate analysis as DNA mixtures are one of the more difficult sources of biological evidence to interpret. Probabilistic genotyping (PG) has greatly aided in mixture analysis. However, even with PG, standard bulk mixture approaches do not always result in probative results as allele overlap, artifacts, or low-level minor contributors inevitably cause genotype information loss. Therefore, deconvolution of forensic DNA mixtures into their individual component DNA (geno)types is of great investigative value. In the present work, enhanced single cell DNA typing conditions consisting of reduced reaction volumes and increased PCR cycle number were optimized and paired with a simplified micro-manipulation technique resulting in a subsampling scheme referred to as direct single cell subsampling (DSCS). Furthermore, the PG systems STRmixTM and EuroForMix were validated for use with both standard bulk DNA mixtures as well as with 1-5 cells. The DSCS approach was applied to various complex mixture scenarios including equimolar 2-6 person mixtures, mixtures comprised of 1st degree relatives, mixtures in which a minor donor is virtually undetectable (~1:50), and mixtures that had been deposited for varying time periods resulting in a probative gain of information compared to the standard mixture methods. Specifically, with the 5- and 6- person complex mixtures analyzed, DSCS recovered highly probative LRs ( > 10^20) from donors that had returned non-probative LRs ( < 10^3) by standard methods. With familial mixtures, DSCS prevented the false inclusion of non-donor relatives seen with standard methods. This approach was further applied to Y-STR mixture analysis. The DSCS approach could permit forensic scientists to analyze and recover probative evidentiary information from complex mixtures with excessive overlapping alleles such as those seen with related individuals and large contributor numbers as well as from mixtures with marginally detectable minor donors. Requiring only basic equipment and materials, the DSCS approach can easily be implemented into a casework laboratory.

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Latent print evidence collected from crime scenes are analyzed and compared by examiners using the ACE-V protocol (Analysis, Comparison, Evaluation-Verification) to identify potential suspects. However, smudged and poor-quality prints, usually deemed inconclusive, could be utilized for source association or discrimination based on the chemistry of the oils and sweat that comprises the latent print residue (LPR). For this research, LPRs were collected from various places on the face and analyzed via two-dimensional gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (2D GC-MS), one-dimensional (1D) GC-MS, and direct analysis in real time-high resolution mass spectrometry (DART-HRMS). LPR recovery with two common sample preparation methods, derivatization and non-derivatization, was examined when collected on a porous and non-porous substrate. The method that provided high correlation and low relative standard deviation for each substrate was used for subsequent studies. Then, the LPRs were investigated to observe if association to a source can be achieved in either 1D or 2D GC. Comparison methods of Pearson correlation coefficient (PCC), principal component analysis (PCA), hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA), and receiving operating characteristic (ROC) curves were used to test source association. An aging study was performed to analyze the change in latent print chemistry when simulating evidence storage for up to three months via 1D GC and DART-HRMS. During this time, a longevity study was conducted by collecting LPRs every two weeks to test the intra- and inter-variability of the recovered chemistry. Correlation and similarity metrics such as PCC, Spearman's rank correlation, and Euclidean distance were used to compare the monthly and weekly changes of the LPRs.

This dissertation research project examines how contemporary academic bioethics in the U.S. balances the aspiration to guide biomedical research and practice with the need to become an institutionally legitimate influence in society. Since its inception three decades ago, to what extent has bioethics made biomedicine more socially accountable? At the same time, to what extent has bioethics been rendered a public-relations tool for academic and corporate biomedicine? This project investigates the co-production of the legitimacy and the logic of the academic field of bioethics by examining the activities of bioethicists in three professional arenas: the establishment of an academic bioethics unit, discourse on the legal liability of institutional review boards and health care ethics consultants, and the deliberations and recommendations of a federal bioethics commission.Bioethicists' efforts to legitimate their field are viewed as competition and collaboration with other professional groups to stake out an emblematic expertise, which is then tendered to various societal clients. A case study of an academic bioethics unit was conducted to reveal how the unit's efforts to secure material resources and organizational legitimacy shape the center's intellectual output, drawing on the unit's archival documents and interviews with the unit's director, faculty, staff, and graduate students. Discourse analysis was used to explore what anticipated legal liability reveals about the legitimacy of expertise claims and the shaping of those claims. The proceedings of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission related to the human stem cell research debate were used to examine the boundary-work conducted by the commission at the borders between science and ethics, and between ethics and public policy.The research described here shifts attention in the budding sociology of bioethics from clinical to academic bioethics, and highlights the institutional and power relationships amongst bioethics, biomedicine, and public policy. This study also contributes to the fields of higher education studies and science and technology studies, where ethics, and the relationship between legitimacy and expertise, have not been fully explored. The findings presented here provide useful insight into the challenges and opportunities bioethicists face in cultivating socially responsible biomedical science and technology.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--American University, 1984. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 403-418).

This thesis contains a short biography of Stahl together with an account of his experimental researches in chemistry and of his general theoretical ideas. The part played by him in the development and elaboration of the phlogiston theory has been discussed. This was the first comprehensive chemical theory and one which gained almost universal acceptance for half a century, and an endeavour has been made to describe the experimental evidence on which it was based, a point hitherto little realised, and to explain the reasons for its general adoption. Various isolated researches have been investigated which show Stahl to have been a careful and accurate experimentalist over a wide range of subjects. A bibliography of Stahl chemical works is appended.