A glimpse behind closed laboratory doors

Kat Austen, CultureLab editor

(Image: Kevin Webb/NHM Image Resources)

"Get your protective suit on, take these gloves. Now get in there and hunt for body parts."

I scrambled to obey the clipboard-holding official who greeted me in the garden of London's Natural History Museum, then plunged into the crime scene, clumsy, nervous and inexperienced.

I need not have worried overly much. The "body parts" were bits of meat planted in the undergrowth by NHM forensic entomologists earlier in the day, along with grubs bought from a local bait shop.

This was all in aid of Science Uncovered, the museum's contribution to Researcher's Night, a European Union endeavour to show the public what science research is going on behind closed laboratory doors. Around 800 venues took part in 320 cities across Europe.

The idea behind the larva-foraging exercise was to give us an unforgettable insight into the work of the NHM's forensic entomology team, who use fly larvae and pupae to date corpses. It worked. I am unlikely to forget that maggots are most likely to be found in the head and ano-genital area of corpses - a fact graphically illustrated by a thermally imaged photograph passed round by forensic sleuth, Martin Hall.

Hall also regaled us with tales of cases where entomology has brought killers to justice, such as the Liverpudlian man who was convicted because some old pupae cases were found in a?dried-up water tank in his attic. The police became suspicious because the fly species they belonged to usually lays eggs in dead bodies. Further investigation found traces of the breakdown products of cocaine, confirming that the corpse would have been human: in Hall's words, "it wasn't likely to be a drug-taking pigeon". When confronted with the evidence, the man confessed to murdering a drug user who was known to be missing.

The Crime Scene Live event was only one of many activities on at the NHM on Friday night. The halls were packed with people interacting with scientists, be it sorting through trays of insects or using a pneumatic pen to extract a bit of "maybe dinosaur" bone from some sedimentary rock ("It's definitely not sheep," said Head of Conservation Chris Collins when pressed on its provenance).

The museum's restaurant was also filled to bursting for The Science Bar, where you got the opportunity to have a drink with real-life researchers. I ended up with Alex Monro of the Botany Department, who enthralled me with talk of his research into Chinese cave nettles. He visited over 40 caves in South West China, where he found numerous different species. Many grow only in caves where they thrive in a measly 0.1 per cent daylight.

If you made it to a Researcher's Night event tell us about it in the comments, through facebook or via twitter @CultureLabNS.

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/18de14c1/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Cculturelab0C20A110C0A90Ca0Eglimpse0Ebehind0Eclosed0Elaboratory0Edoors0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm

janet jackson brooklyn decker palladium king arthur king arthur september 11 2001 september 11 2001