Mount Sinai High School Student Studies Adult/Child Fingerprint
Differences At Brookhaven Lab
UPTON, NY — Children’s fingerprints can disappear faster than those of
adults. This little-known fact can hamper investigations of kidnapping
cases, which have been so prevalent in the news this summer.
Lara Hershcovitch, who will be a senior at Mount Sinai High School this
September, is using an infrared microscope at the U.S. Department of
Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory in an experiment to determine why
adults’ fingerprints can last longer than children’s fingerprints.
 |
|
(From right) Lara Hershcovitch, Lisa Miller, a
Brookhaven scientist who volunteered to mentor Hershcovitch, and
Jackie Tetenbaum, a current employee and former undergraduate
student at BNL, work on the fingerprinting project together.
300 dpi hi-res
image. |
Hershcovtich is a participant in Brookhaven’s Community Summer Science
Program, managed by the Lab’s Office of Educational Programs and funded by
Brookhaven Science Associates. Throughout this program, 26 high school
students are spending six weeks at the Laboratory this summer
participating in hands-on workshops or in a research internship, like
Hershcovitch. All students also attend morning lectures in various
scientific fields.
In her experiment, Hershcovitch studied fingerprints from fathers and
their young sons, ages 5-8, under the infrared microscope to determine the
differences in chemical composition of the fathers’ and sons’ prints. Her
data analysis may eventually be published in a scientific journal, and it
could lead to more effective forensic investigations.
|
 The
U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory conducts
research in the physical, biomedical, and environmental sciences, as
well as in energy technologies. Brookhaven also builds and operates
major facilities available to university, industrial, and government
scientists. The Laboratory is managed by Brookhaven Science
Associates, a limited liability company founded by Stony Brook
University and Battelle, a nonprofit applied science and technology
organization. |
|
