CBC.The Nature of Things.S50E10.HDTV.XviD.Ekolb

Bugs, Bones & Botany: The Science of Crime

Premiering: Thursday January 21, 2010 at 8 pm on CBC-TV

In the dark recesses of a warehouse, a drunken game of cards explodes into a shocking murder. Now the night watchman lays dead. The only witnesses a housefly or perhaps a cockroach that might be skittering by.

That stylized tribute to our seemingly endless appetite for TV programs about forensic science sets the stage for an examination of how, in the real world of police investigations, nature is being enlisted in the war on crime.

With the help of Dr. Jennifer Gardy, of British Columbia's Centre for Disease Control (CDC) we spend the next hour sifting through the mayhem, murder and science that make up the world of forensic investigation. In the field and the lab we follow scientists who are able to read the subtlest evidence and turn nature to righting wrongs. Sometimes these clues are disturbing, sometimes they are surprisingly beautiful. You'd be hard pressed to find a better guide, than Dr. Gardy, to this world where, plants, bones even dust, can be turned into formidable enemies of crime.

But the real secret of using science for solving crime may be less about technology and more about the careful observation of the natural world. Partnering the latest technologies with nature's own detectives produces a powerful combination that is giving law enforcement new and astounding advantages in this high stakes game of cat and mouse.

Bugs, Bones & Botany: The Science of Crime is produced and directed by Daniel and Donna Zuckerbrot of Reel Time Images.

Format : AVI

Length : 349 MiB for 44mn 4s 210ms

Codec : XviD

Source : HDTV

Language : English CA

Subtitles : None

Genre : Nature/Science

Video #0 : MPEG-4 Visual at 963 Kbps

Aspect : 624 x 336 (1.857) at 29.970 fps

Audio #0 : MPEG Audio at 131 Kbps

Infos : 2 channels, 48.0 KHz

Enjoy!

Ekolb