An explosive study

My cousin sister Swathi Murali has her first peer-reviewed paper out, expected in print in the December 2026 edition of Forensic Chemistry. Excerpt from the abstract: Electrical tapes may be submitted to forensic laboratories for analysis concerning their utilization in the construction of improvised explosive devices (IEDs). However, post-blast tape specimens collected at an explosion site are seldom pristine and may undergo physical and chemical alterations that can affect the outcome of a forensic examination. Therefore, a systematic assessment of the impact of detonation on the analysis and comparison of tapes was conducted on a selection of 30 black vinyl electrical tapes from brands representative of the US market, which were subjected to controlled detonations. Swathi and her coauthor Patrick Buzzini, who is her PhD advisor at the Sam Houston State University in Texas, then tested the tapes using three techniques. The first, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR),…