THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, August 13, 1994 TAG: 9408130263
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B4 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WINSTON SALEM LENGTH: Short : 37 lines
A new computer program that can recognize chemical fingerprints could be used to trace cocaine shipments, helping investigators and prosecutors map out drug conspiracies, scientists said.
The ``Sniffer'' can scan thousands of complex chemical profiles within minutes - a task that would take a forensic scientist days or weeks, said James Watterson, who helped develop the program.
John Casale, a former forensic chemist with the State Bureau of Investigation, came up with a procedure for analyzing cocaine based on impurities that mark the drug with a distinctive fingerprint. Watterson, a retired electrical engineer, designed an artificial neural network, which imitates the human brain, to ``learn'' the patterns of those chemical impurities quickly.
Just because cocaine shipments can be traced doesn't mean prosecutors will have it easy. The program becomes useless once a drug dealer dilutes a batch of cocaine. The probability of a false match is still unclear. David B. Smith, an assistant U.S. attorney in Greensboro, said pinpointing the origin of seized drugs doesn't guarantee members of a drug ring selling them will go to prison.
The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy has awarded a $380,000 contract to Research Triangle Institute to refine the program and send it to forensic labs nationwide.
KEYWORDS: RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK by CNB