Indian Muslims, CA
07-26-07
New technology to detect forged signatures
By IANS
Washington: Think twice if you are about to forge a signature. A newly developed
technology will help forensic specialists find out when you signed a cheque, the
pen you used, and the origin of the ink.
The technology that is used at present can only trace the ink if a piece of the
document is soaked in certain solutions.
But the new method, aptly dubbed DART (Direct Analysis in Real Time), can
read the ink chemistry from the paper in a few seconds without leaving any
evidence that the paper was examined, reported the online edition of the
Scientific American journal.
The DART technology, commercially marketed by the Japanese company JEOL
Ltd., is a few years old and is currently used by agencies like the Federal Bureau
of Investigation (FBI) to identify minute amounts of toxins.
Now, chemists at Ames Laboratory and Iowa State University in the US have
adapted this technique to analyse ink samples.