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Nabbing Terrorists With the Help of Sulphur
The mid-term objective is to be able to use these methods to track the geographical movements of people, including international crime suspects and victims.
In order to carry out this study, the scientists focused on the most abundant sulphur isotopes in hair keratin - sulphur-32 (32S), which accounts for about 95 percent, and sulphur-34 (34S), which makes up around 4 percent.
This proportion can change slightly in response to people's diets and if they travel from one country to another, and the technique is able to detect these small variations.
The scientists use a laser that makes contact with the selected fraction of the hair, generating an aerosol, which later ionizes within plasma, with the spectrometer providing the exact proportions of the sulphur isotopes.
"The advantage of this method compared with others is the high resolution resulting from use of the laser," said Rebeca Santamaria-Fernandez of LGC, lead author of the study.
This advance has enabled the scientists to confirm that the sulphur variations in hair can be linked to peoples' geographical movements.
The researchers collected hair samples of more than 4cm in length donated by three volunteers.
Two were permanent residents in the United Kingdom, while the third - dubbed "the traveler" - had spent the past six months in Croatia, Austria, the United Kingdom and Australia.
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