Developing Successful iOS Applications

Have you ever wanted to publish a popular iOS application? If so, this paper discusses the successful characteristics in successful iOS mobile applications, as well as the characteristics to avoid when developing. This information is gathered from multiple academic journals and interviews with professionals in the field. This paper highlights the importance of applying all the important key characteristics in an organized manner. Using simple software engineering techniques such as using the MVC (Model-View-Controller) are the key driving forces in developing successful iOS mobile applications. This paper also puts emphasis on data-driven applications and brings up common mistakes to avoid when developing it. Finally, the importance of using native applications opposed to cross platform applications is emphasized. These are the keys to a successful iOS application and should be utilized in each application

Seasonality of Forensically Relevant Diptera in Northwestern Indiana

Minimum postmortem interval (mPMI) estimations are critical to solving cases of equivocal death and the accuracy of these predictions can depend on the understanding of necrophagous fly successional patterns. In order to better understand the successional patterns of necrophagous flies, it is important to know the seasonality of forensically relevant fly species—that is, the baseline pattern of their presence and absence in relation to annually cyclic environmental factors. Since many environmental factors play a role in insect seasonality, it is possible that some of these factors can be summed to create an index that represents seasonality in a simpler form. This study seeks to determine whether or not temporal variations in the presence of particular fly species are directly related to changes in environmental conditions. Minimum and maximum temperature, solar radiation, wind speed, and humidity were the environmental factors of interest in this study and have been shown in previous studies to affect carrion fly assemblage. Specimens were passively collected in Northwestern Indiana using a fly trap with rotting chicken bait as an attractant, then pinned and morphologically identified. The presence and relative abundances of relevant fly species were compared to local environmental factor data to determine whether seasonality exists for carrion flies based predominantly on evaporative index or on other environmental variables. Data collected in the summer of 2015 shows that Dipteran community composition varies temporally within the summer season. The differences in relative species abundance and species presence throughout the sampling period can likely be attributed to environmental changes. However, the environmental variables exerting the greatest effects on fly presence and abundance are as of yet unidentified by this study. Because of this shortcoming, the work done this summer represents only a part of a multi-year project in attempting to identify any relationship between fly presence and environmental conditions

Teaching Morphological Species Identification to Forensic Science Students: Advantages, Problems and Results

Poster presented at the 69th American Academy of Forensic Science Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA, USA. The poster discusses findings of a study of how students identify morphological species

A Descriptive Analysis of the Appropriate Use of Cognitive Bias Terminology in Forensic Science Literature

Cognitive bias occurs without a person’s awareness and can affect decision-making abilities. In forensic science, bias can be especially detrimental to making accurate decisions about the evidence in a criminal investigation. There are many academic studies in identifying, describing, and suggesting ways to mitigate cognitive biases in forensic science. Many authors will give a known cognitive science concept a new name or create their own bias. This is a problem in the literature because nobody knows for sure how many published studies are referring to or testing the same phenomena since authors are using different definitions or terminology to describe the same concept. This study systematically identified bias terms that different domains of research use when conducting forensic science research. After identifying the bias term(s) used in each study, each error was categorized by domain (e.g., psychologists, lawyers, forensic scientists), by type of bias (e.g., confirmation bias, anchoring bias, made up bias term) and how the authors define the bias term (i.e., correct definition, incorrect definition, no definition, or made a new definition). Overall, this study shows that authors were more likely to use a correct bias term and bias definition (29%) than make up a bias term and bias definition (25%.) A majority of the authors in this study are not cognitive scientists and, therefore, are not heavily trained in cognitive terminology. The issue of the incorrect use of cognitive bias terminology is a serious one for forensic science and has yet to be noted or investigated until this preliminary analysis. The responsibility for forensic scientists who are not trained in cognitive science to understand the bias literature and to adopt the correct terminology is fundamental for proper communication among scientific professionals

Exposing Problems Teaching Students Morphological Species Identification

When dealing with physical remains, morphological assessment for species is a traditional approach to entomological specimen identification. A dichotomous key guides the user through taxa determination for a specimen by providing a series of dual-choice nodes that center around morphological differences. Each nodal choice leads to either a new set of dichotomous choices or a taxa decision. We evaluated student’s ability to utilize a dichotomous key down to species for a limited set of taxa, by reviewing their nodal decisions along with their confidence level using a Likert scale (1-5). Along with individual decision recording, students conducted a post-decision group comparison, following a think-pair-share active learning model. If student answers were not the same, they re-evaluated their specimen until a mutual evidence-based decision was reached. We analysed student identification success as well as the correlation between confidence and accuracy. Students displayed high decision confidence but low accuracy. We observed a higher initial accuracy from students enrolled in STEAM majors when compared to non-STEAM majors and saw gender-based differences in accuracy improvement after a think-pair-share event. From these data we aim to improve student training in the use of dichotomous keys for species identification, with a continued approach that can be then used to provide guidelines for how forensic scientists should approach dichotomous key training

iFly: Code Development for an App to Support Automating Entomological Data Collection

We are developing a prototype entomological data-collection application called iFly, which runs on a field-capable iPad device. In this phase, we tackled refining screens and introducing a database manager to streamline operations as info is entered, stored, retrieved and delivered. We used SQLite3 database in Apple\u27s Xcode Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Xcode gives mixed programming results. Apple\u27s iOS environment ensures functional and fairly error-free apps can be built. But the sophisticated Xcode IDE requires specialist developers and valuable project time is spent as new programmers learn key techniques. The iFly prototype was advanced with improved database integration; however, more work is needed. For this software to successfully empower researchers in entomology/forensic science, funding is needed for the prototype to move out of the lab and into the field for real-world testing feedback to guide design refinement. Further, we’ve yet to exploit the full range of iPad data-entry capabilities

Post-Colonization Interval Estimates Using Multi-Species Calliphoridae Larval Masses and Spatially Distinct Temperature Data Sets: A Case Study

Common forensic entomology practice has been to collect the largest Diptera larvae from a scene and use published developmental data, with temperature data from the nearest weather station, to estimate larval development time and post-colonization intervals (PCIs). To evaluate the accuracy of PCI estimates among Calliphoridae species and spatially distinct temperature sources, larval communities and ambient air temperature were collected at replicate swine carcasses (N = 6) throughout decomposition. Expected accumulated degree hours (ADH) associated with Cochliomyia macellaria and Phormia regina third instars (presence and length) were calculated using published developmental data sets. Actual ADH ranges were calculated using temperatures recorded from multiple sources at varying distances (0.90 m–7.61 km) from the study carcasses: individual temperature loggers at each carcass, a local weather station, and a regional weather station. Third instars greatly varied in length and abundance. The expected ADH range for each species successfully encompassed the average actual ADH for each temperature source, but overall under-represented the range. For both calliphorid species, weather station data were associated with more accurate PCI estimates than temperature loggers associated with each carcass. These results provide an important step towards improving entomological evidence collection and analysis techniques, and developing forensic error rates

An Efficient Technique for Primer Development and Application that Integrates Fluorescent Labeling and Multiplex PCR

Premise of the study: Development of genetic markers can be costly and time-consuming, especially when multiple primer pairs are fluorescently labeled. This step was streamlined by combining two techniques in the same PCR reaction: (1) custom-labeling of primers by the investigator and (2) multiplexing multiple primers together in the same reaction. Methods and Results: This technique was successfully used to develop microsatellite markers in several plant species. Microsatellites amplified with this multiplexing process were identical to those generated from PCR using individual primer pairs and with traditional methods using a priori labeled fluorescent primers. Tests of PCR cycling programs revealed that conditions recommended for the commercial kit generated stronger fragment peaks than the previously recommended cycling protocol. Conclusions: This technique is an efficient and economical way to fluorescently label multiple microsatellite primers in the same reaction. It is also applicable to other markers used in PCR amplification of genetic material