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This systematic review deals with the last 10 years of research in analytical methodologies for the analysis of fingerprints, regarding their chemical and biological constituents. A total of 123 manuscripts, which fit the search criteria defined using the descriptor “latent fingermarks analysis,” were selected. Its main instrumental areas (mass spectrometry, spectroscopy, and innovative methods) were analyzed and summarized in a specific table, highlighting its main analytical parameters. The results show that most studies in this field use mass spectrometry to identify the constituents of fingerprints, both to determine the chemical profile and for aging. There is also a marked use of mass spectrometry coupled with chromatographic methods, and it provides accurate results for a fatty acid profile. Additional significant results are achieved by spectroscopic methods, mainly Raman and infrared. It is noteworthy that spectroscopic methods using microscopy assist in the accuracy of the analyzed region of the fingerprint, contributing to more robust results. There was also a significant increase in studies using methods focused on finding new developers or identifying components present in fingerprints by rapid tests. This systematic review of analytical techniques applied to the detection of fingerprints explores different approaches to contribute to future studies in forensic identification, verifying new demands in the forensic sciences and assisting in the selection of studies for the progress of research.

A total of 76 unrelated male patients with mild (n = 55) or moderate (n = 21) haemophilia A living in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul were studied by direct sequencing of all F8 26 exons, the 5' UTR and 3' UTR, intron-exon junctions and the promoter region. When no mutation was found, a multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification analysis was performed. We identified the disease-causing mutations in 69 patients, who showed 33 different mutations: 27 missense, one small deletion, two small duplications and three splice site mutations. Seven missense and two splice site mutations were not previously reported in HAMSTeRS and were not identified in any current literature search. Nine recurrent mutations were found, one of them never described before (p.Tyr1786Phe). Haplotype analysis indicated that this mutation had originated in the Brazilian population as a single event in a common ancestor. The possible influence of these mutations in the determination of the disease was carefully considered, including bioinformatic tools. These data add to the general knowledge of the disease and can also be useful for HA diagnosis and detection of carriers in the southern Brazilian population.

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Documents are frequent targets of fraud and adulteration. Sometimes it is not enough to determine the document's authenticity or authorship, but it is also necessary to demonstrate when the document was signed or written. Determining the age of a document, also known as ink dating analysis, is still a challenge for the forensic examiners. There are two main approaches for the dating of ballpoint pen inks: the static method, which is based on the characterization and identification of the ink composition and comparison to a reference collection, and the dynamic method, which involves the study of ink's processes and alterations that occur with time, considering environmental aging factors such as light and humidity. This article aims to provide a comprehensive systematic review of the studies regarding ballpoint ink characterization and dating, in the last ten years. There are several methods, destructive and non-destructive, which are capable of characterizing and differentiating blue and black ballpoint pens that have shown applicability to the static approach. Regarding the dynamic dating methods, most studies quantified the loss of 2phenoxyethanol (2-PE) solvent over time using GC-MS, or studied the dyes degradation through different methods. Although ink dating approaches offer relatively good accuracy, there is still more research to be done, such as the documents' storage conditions evaluation, the influence of initial ink quantity variation between different pen brands and writing fists, and the type of paper.

Cannabis sativa L. is a substance widely used around the world for recreational and medicinal purposes. Oral fluid has been investigated as an alternative biological matrix for demonstrating the illegal use of cannabis, particularly in situations where

In Forensic Documentoscopy, it is frequently questioned if a particular document was written with one or more pens. Different methods have been developed to distinguish pen inks from each other, but some of these techniques require the ink extraction, destructing the document, and other techniques uses high cost instruments. PhotoMetrix PRO ® , an app for mobile devices, is a qualitative and colorimetric analysis tool that applies uni-and multivariate analysis. Amongst them, Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Hierarchical Cluster Analysis (HCA) and Partial Least Squares Discriminant Analysis (PLS-DA) can be obtained from digital images' decomposing data. It is a non-destructive and a simple method, of easily use and low cost. Chemometric knowledge is important for results interpretation. This study aims to evaluate the PhotoMetrix PRO ® capacity on blue ballpoint pens differentiation. Three experiments were performed with different ballpoint pens, including colorful pens as an app functionality control. The results showed appropriate differentiation between colorful ballpoint pens, and there was a satisfactory tendency of separation for different brands of blue ballpoint pens, most used in Brazil. This method is interesting to confirm subjective results, eliminating visual differences, intrinsic for each observer, which can be useful in places with an instrument deficiency, like the Video Spectral Comparator ® . New studies to evaluate writing pressure's

Questioned documents comprehend analysis of identity theft, forged signatures or texts, documents alterations and falsification of security documents or banknotes. Questions involving inks or paper require chemical analysis, and multivariate analysis or chemometrics has been an emerging tool for data evaluation and interpretation after instrumental data collection in this area. The goal of this study is to identify previous articles that applied multivariate analysis within questioned documents for forensic purposes. The search for articles was performed in four databases (Google Scholar, Science Direct, Pubmed and Scopus). Sixty studies, published in the last ten years, were selected. Thirty-four articles described pen inks analysis; fourteen articles comprehended printed documents studies; eight articles evaluated paper analysis, and four articles included banknotes analysis. Spectroscopy, mass spectrometry, chromatography, thermo gravimetric analysis and multivariate image analysis were the analytical methods applied to collect chemical data. Chemometrics methods included mainly unsupervised pattern recognition techniques, regression methods, and supervised pattern recognition techniques, amongst other methods. This review summarized and discussed multivariate analysis techniques applied in different questioned documents sub-areas, highlighting the importance of this knowledge for forensic analysts. In addition, it shows new research topics such as different printing and pen inks, papers and security documents analysis herein not included.