Steaming out some of luminol's wrinkles

Luminol gets trotted out pretty frequently on TV crime shows, but a new technique might someday compete with the storied forensics tool as a police procedural plot device and, perhaps more importantly, as a means of solving real crimes. Recently published work from the University of South Carolina is showing that what the researchers term "steam thermography" has the ability to spot blood spots in all kinds of spots—even in spots where luminol can't.