BackgroundCriminal offenders have a fundamental goal not to leave any traces at the crime scene. Some may suppose that items recovered underwater will have no forensic value, therefore, they try to destroy the traces by throwing items in water. These traces are subjected to the destructive environmental effects. This can represent a challenge for forensic experts investigating fingerprints.MethodsThe present study was conducted to determine the optimal method for latent fingerprints development on dry non-porous surfaces submerged in aquatic environments at different time interval. The quality of the developed fingerprints depending on the used method was assessed. In addition, two factors were analyzed in this study; the effects of the nature of aquatic environment and the length of submerged time. Therefore, latent fingerprints were deposited on metallic, plastic and glass objects and submerged in fresh and sea water for 1, 2, and 10 days. After recovery, the items were processed by black powder, small particle reagent and cyanoacrylate fuming and the prints were examined. Each print was evaluated according to fingerprint quality assessment scale.ResultsCyanoacrylate developed latent prints found to have the highest mean visibility score after submersion in fresh and sea water for 1, 2 and 10 days. Mean visibility score of prints developed showed significant decline after 10 days of submersion. Prints submerged in fresh water showed significantly higher mean visibility score than those submerged in sea water using various methods of development and in all time intervals.ConclusionThe study demonstrated that it is possible to recover latent prints submerged in water on different studied dry non porous surfaces with the best visualization method using cyanoacrylate either in fresh or sea water. The duration of submersion affects the quality of fingerprints developed; the longer the duration, the worse the quality is. In addition, this study has revealed that the exposure to high salinity i.e. sea water has more damaging influence on the quality of detected fingerprints.It is concluded that any piece of evidence recovered from underwater should be tested for prints, no matter the amount of time spent beneath the surface.

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Study of dermatoglyphics has a great importance in judicial and criminal researches. Nowadays its relation to some genetic diseases has an immense application. The patterns of dermatoglyphics have been studied in various congenital disorders like Down syndrome, Klinefelter's syndrome and also in chronic diseases like hypertension, diabetes mellitus etc. The present study was carried out to demonstrate the association between acute lymphoblastic leukemia among children and palmar dermatoglyphics to assess the possibility of using this association as a screening tool for early prediction of leukemia. The study was conducted on 50 children suffering from acute lymphoblastic leukemia who attended at the