(Corrects day of hearing to Thursday, Feb. 27) A Public Hearing on the Cass County Memorial Hospital’s Fiscal Year 2021 County Budget will be held 10:30-a.m. Thursday, in CCMH Conference Room Number 1. Following the hearing, the CCMH Board of Trustees will act on approving the FY 21 Budget, along with Capital Equipment Requests for: Boiler Automation, and, Laboratory Equipment.

DES MOINES — The Iowa Attorney General’s Office today (Tuesday) said a judge has ruled that a former Atlantic vehicle recycler must pay an additional $50,000 penalty for violating environmental laws and ignoring state orders to clean up the abandoned site.   Fourth District Chief Judge Jeffrey L. Larson also ruled that Jason Wright, who now lives in Colorado, is liable for future cleanup costs and could face contempt charges if he fails to comply with the order.

In his ruling issued Feb. 21st, Judge Larson said “Wright repeatedly ignored the DNR’s notifications, warnings, and an administrative order to remove the solid waste and contamination left behind by his company. At trial, Wright appeared unconcerned about the condition of the property, and demonstrated no inclination he intends to comply with the administrative order.”

The ruling is on top of an order last April in which Chief Judge Larson imposed a $100,000 penalty on Wright’s business, Recycling Services LLC.  The Department of Natural Resources, represented by the Iowa Attorney General’s Office, sued Wright and Recycling Services on Feb. 1, 2019, and the case was tried on Feb. 5, 2020, in Cass County.

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) — A former school bus driver in Cedar Rapids accused of sexual misconduct is scheduled to go on trial May 11. Linn County court records say Thomas Williams pleaded not guilty last week to misdemeanor charges of false imprisonment and sexually exploitation by a school employee. Investigators have said Williams forced a 10-year-old girl to sit on his lap inside the bus he drove Jan. 2 in a district parking lot. Court documents say he grabbed the girl’s head and tried to kiss her before she pulled away and left the bus. The district has since fired Williams.

(Radio Iowa) — Researchers at Iowa State University are looking to expand on the information that can be gathered after the whorls, loops and arches of fingerprints are identified. I-S-U graduate student in chemistry, Paige Hinners, want to be able to put a time on when a fingerprint was created. She says the idea came out of other research into fingerprint information. She says people are trying to determine if they can establish age, ethnicity, and gender based on the compounds found in a fingerprint.

Fingerprint analysis (NSF.Gov. image)

Hinners saw the degradation of chemicals could possibly give a timestamp for fingerprints. “What I originally set out to do was to use a physical and chemical method –so we use mass spectrometry imaging — meaning we get a chemical profile and a spatial profile — so I could actually see where the chemical is on the fingerprint ridges,” according to Hinners. So, what I wanted to look at was how the compounds in the fingerprint ridge diffused with time.” She says the early research has shown they can create a chemical image of the print. “The older the fingerprint got, the more I lost the fingerprint ridges in my chemical image. And so, that’s kind of what led us into looking at what was happening in those compounds,” Hinners says.

Hinners says everyone has a couple of different types of chemicals in their fingerprints. “There can be both sweat-based, and then kind of like grease-based residues in your fingerprint. So, when you touch a surface you’re leaving a combination of that behind,” Hinners explains. “And the oily portion actually comes from you touching your face, touching your hair, touching other areas of your body where you have sebaceous glands and those secret lipids and it’s more oily. You touch a glass and you see a fingerprint on there — you are leaving some of that material behind.”

Hinners says they’ve done a small survey of fingerprints kind of as a proof of concept. “We just did a study from fresh through seven days age. So, even by one day age, we were able to tell that those fingerprints had been exposed to an ambient environment, and they were no longer fresh,” Hinners says.  The research confirmed that ozone in the air was causing the degradation of the unsaturated fats in fingerprints. Hinners says knowing when a fingerprint was left can help in narrowing when someone was at a crime scene. “If you’ve ever heard the defense ‘I was there the week prior.’ So this kind of just assists in locking down and says ‘yes’ this fingerprint is from within the crime window — so we know it happened during this time — and the fingerprint also came from this time,” Hinners says.

She says it could also be helpful if you don’t have a suspect and can tell that one set of fingerprints was left during the time of the crime and rule out others. Hinners says there needs to be a lot more study with a larger test pool of fingerprints to move toward making a time determination on a fingerprint something that can be used in a case. “To get something presented in court is a very difficult task. It has to meet many different standards. And I think the very broad team is it has to be generally accepted by the scientific community,” she says.

A National Institute of Justice grant is supporting the research.