With mobile devices being a repository of extremely intimate and personal information, users are increasingly cautious, protecting this information. The onset of security apps for phones helps people feel proactive in safeguarding their privacy. Such apps may be used for nefarious purposes such as hiding illegal images, files and communications. However, users may employ these apps to maintain privacy by hiding data from parents, guardians, siblings, spouses etc. While another potential risk for law enforcement, these apps can also be a trove of new content for investigators. However, handling and interacting with devices with such security apps should be done so with caution. In this presentation, we will explore some of the apps available, look at the risks and some data the data that is left behind and an overview of the examination process undertaken to find such data.
 

Accessing evidence stored in iOS devices (iPhones and iPads) is a challenge. Full-disk encryption stands in the way of low-level acquisition, while the many hardware and system level restrictions make physical extraction extremely difficult. At the same time, the iPhone must remain usable and accessible to the owner, which means a forensic specialist may still be able to get around iOS security measures. iOS devices feature several layers of protection, which makes seizing, storing and transporting iOS devices a challenge requiring expertise. Latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system actively resist forensic efforts by disabling the less secure biometric identification (Touch ID or Face ID) and blocking USB connectivity after a short period of time. Many of these restrictions can be effectively bypassed with proper timing and the right technique. In this talk, we'll cover the entire iOS forensic workflow. We'll start from seizing, transporting and storing the device, and discuss approaches, methods and tools to access information and extract evidence. We’ll address USB restricted mode, talk about using existing pairing records to extract locked devices, and discuss physical acquisition via jailbreaking. We’ll look at the types of data Apple devices store and sync via iCloud, and learn how to extract that data. Finally, we will talk about extracting stored passwords from local and iCloud keychain. Logical, physical and cloud acquisition methods will be covered.

Crime in South Africa is currently a huge problem. Many criminals cases (eg. Rape and murder cases) remain unsolved due to a lack of reliable forensic evidence. The detection of body fluids such as blood has becomes problematic since existing tests such as the luminol test have inherent disadvantages. These disadvantages include a high cost and short shelf life. The need for tests which are more cost effective has therefore arisen. This study has been initiated to identify components in the plant extract of Crinium Macowanii bulb which are chemically similar to luminol and therefore can replace luminol. Such components include tryptamine alkaloid and rutin flavonoids. The preliminary Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC) studies have shown that the components of the Crinium bulb are soluble in non-polar organic solvents (alkaloids) as well as in water (flavonoids). Tryptamine glows in the presence of UV-light and show potential for replacing luminol. Whereas, rutin produces chemical reactions with human blood and thus may be used in day time detections. Tests on these isolated components and their interactions with pig blood were also conducted to verify replacement for the luminol test. This study was also extended to real human blood samples. Furthermore, human blood specimens detected by luminol and alternate materials (Crinum Macowanii bulb extract) were tested for their DNA integrity to ensure that DNA remained intact upon detection for further positive identification for evidence presentation in a court of law.

Generally in examination of handwriting, the details of handwriting characteristic features are examined in order to ascertain the authorship.  In disguised writing the writer tries to hide his own handwriting features and try to portray a different type of writing style. Doing this act he/she becomes conscious to write the text content or signature on paper. As we know that writing is an outcome of neuromuscular coordination of brain to hand, so it is very difficult to do so. The document examiner in such cases of disguised writing is faced with the challenge of recognizing the act of disguise as well as to deeply examine and find out the inconspicuous writing features left by the writer in order to fix authorship. However many of the cases related with examination of disguised writing were examined and opined by the authors. The objective of this paper is to examine the characteristic features of disguised writing. The detailed study of cases related with disguised writing will be discussed.

Immunomodulation is any procedure which can alter the immune system of an organism by interfering with its functions; if it results in an enhancement of immune reaction is named as immunostimulation and primarily implies stimulation of non-specific system i.e., stimulation of the function and efficiency of granulocytes, macrophages, complement, certain T-Lymphocytes and different effector substances.  Immunosuppression implies mainly to reduce resistance against infections, stress and may be because of environmental or chemotherapeutic factors. The objective is to explore the possibility of using traditional medicines as an immunomodulatory agent with proper scientific account. Chemotherapeutic agents available today have mainly immunosuppressive activity.  Most of them are cytotoxic and exerts a variety of side effects. This has given rise to stimulation in the search for investigating natural resources showing immunomodulatory activity. Terminalia arjuna has been documented to produce immune promoting effect. However, detailed phytochemical investigations of leaves for in-vitro immunomodulatory activity have not been scientifically documented. Here in this study the extracts of petroleum ether, ethyl acetate, chloroform alcohol and cholorofrm water of Terminalia arjuna (Roxb) bark was investigated for immunomodulatory activity by assessing Nitroblue tetrazoldium test, phagocytosis of killed Candida albicans, candidicidal assay, neutrophil locomotion and chemotactic assay.  All the extracts were given at dose of 5 mg/ml, 10 mg/ml, 25 mg/ml, 50 mg/ml and 100 mg/ml.  Results of in-vitro immunomodulatory activity lead to the conclusion that the chloroform extract and isolated compound of Terminalia arjuna bark showed predominantly significant activity on in-vitro human neutrophils in all parameters as compared to other extracts.

Bacterial wilt (caused by Ralstonia solanacearum, Rs) and fungal wilt (caused by Fusarium oxysporum (f.sp). lycopersici, Fol) are two major production constraints of tomato in Nigeria.  The two diseases constitute 40-80% loss of yield in endemic areas.  Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) marker, LEOH19, was used to screen for bacterial wilt resistance gene (bw) while Cleaved Amplified Polymorphic Sequence (CAPS) markers TAO1 and TG105 were used to identify the resistance gene (I2) to fusarium wilt in tomato. Fifty tomato genotypes within the country were screened.   With LEOH19, the primer pairs produced amplification at 300 bp in 35 genotypes.  Restriction enzyme digestion produced amplicons in four genotypes namely FUNAABTO09803, FUNAABTO0201, Tomachiva and Eyetom.  Screenhouse experiment confirmed the resistance in the four mentioned genotypes.  The primer pairs for TAO1 and TG105 produced amplification at 902 bp in 33 accessions and 450 bp in 38 accessions, respectively.  The restriction enzymes Fok1 and Hinf1, for TAO1 and TG105 respectively, produced fragments at base pairs indicative of susceptible, homozygous and heterozygous resistant accessions to Fol.  Restriction fragments from the two markers indicated that 11 accessions were homozygous resistant to Fol.  Four of these accessions (Delila, Gem Pride, K-Small and Oxheart) occurred in the two molecular markers as homozygous resistant to Fol.  The combined effect of the two markers enhanced precision in the identification of tomato accessions with resistance status to Fusarium vascular wilt. The resistant tomato genotypes against bacterial and fungal wilt had been recommended to farmers and researchers for further evaluation.

Statement of the Problem: How to find the early sensitive biomarker is the most important question for medicine. Theoretical Orientation: Biomarker is the measurable change associated with the disease. Without homeostatic control, urine accumulates many early changes therefore theoretically is a better biomarker source than blood. Findings: Disease animal models were used to limit the confounding factors to the minimum. Early candidate biomarkers were found in many disease models including type2 diabetes, lung fibrosis, liver fibrosis, chronic pancreatitis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, multiple sclerosis, myocarditis, subcutaneous cancer model, bacterial meningitis, astrocytoma cancer model, patient-derived xenograph model, Alzheimer disease etc. Relatively significant percentage of those candidate biomarkers had been reported to related to the disease. And many early biomarkers appeared earlier than the clinical symptom, than MRI imaging, than significant pathological changes. Preservation of urine samples on the membrane will also be discussed. This simple and economical method will greatly speed up the urinary biomarker discovery and validation. Conclusion & Significance: Urine is an early sensitive biomarker source for many systematic diseases.