Cell phones calling out suspected criminals

Question: How are cell phones today "dishing the dirt" on crime suspects?

(a) GPS-equipped phones make movement of suspects highly traceable (b) digital memories stockpile clues, from audio and video recordings to e-mails to text images (c) the user's DNA lingers in loose cheek cells breathed into the microphone or in skin flakes adhering to buttons or the earpiece (d) high-quality fingerprints often remain on the phone (e) retrievable data can lay out a suspect's entire network of contacts (f) all of the above.

Answer: It's definitely all of these and more, says Paul Marks in NewScientist magazine, prompting law enforcement officials to talk of crime-connected cell phones as "smoking guns."

In fact, so robust is such evidence that even a phone found underwater can still tell tales, as did one recovered from the bottom of a lake a full year later, noted Amanda Goode of Forensic Telecommunications Service of Canada and the UK.

As cell phones have become ever more useful, she said, "there is virtually no criminal case that does not involve phone evidence."

Question: Who was the surprising "angel of death" at a certain nursing home, stopping by for a visit whenever a demise grew imminent?

Answer: An adopted gray-and-white kitten named Oscar roamed the halls of the dementia unit of a Rhode Island facility, generally keeping to himself, says Science News magazine. Oddly, though, whenever a resident was close to death, the feline would hop on the bed and nuzzle the patient and purr, reported The New England Journal of Medicine.

The staff took notice whenever Oscar cozied up to someone and would put in a call to the family. According to a staff geriatrician, over the past year, Oscar predicted about 25 deaths and missed just one.

Janis Hammer of the Animal Behavior Institute in Durham, North Carolina, reports of another such nursing home cat that lies on the bed of someone dying and won't leave. Quite possibly, says veterinary medicine professor Bonnie Beaver of Texas A & M University, when a person nears death, body odors change and cats have a much better sense of smell than people. But why Oscar has this special sense and the other cats there don't is something "we'll probably never know."