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Examination of fire debris can provide information about the types of materials which were present at the time of the fire to give insights for fire scene reconstruction and understanding compartment fire dynamics. This paper demonstrates the ability of Raman spectroscopy for material identification postfire in complex situations, such as the production of fused masses during fire dropdown. A validated Raman spectral library is combined with Raman mapping in three fire case studies, to determine the individual materials in the fused masses formed. The case studies accessed material combinations of several common polymers. Raman mapping was carried out on a 10 μm × 10 μm square of the masses. Material identification using this technique ranged from a high of 85% match to a low of 40% match. This work demonstrated that complex masses found in the fire debris can be resolved into the individual material components for identification and spatial distribution.

This paper describes a computer-based ‘visual tutor’ that was developed to reinforce the learning abilities of students pursuing the Digital Electronic Course (ECNG 1014) at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of the West Indies. Macromedia Flash MX was used to create the necessary text, graphics and interaction needed for the application. The considerations that informed the design of the visual tutor were colour coding, examples, exercises and diagrams. It is believed that these aspects would be most useful to the user. The design also focused on certain functions that should be performed throughout. Also, the main elements of the graphical interface were identified. Seven chapters are included within the tutor, from ‘Introduction to Digital Electronics’ to ‘Sequential Logic’, with a single chapter linked to the enhanced VHDL Tutorial with Applications (EVITA). Students found the tutor to be both useful and helpful, and gave it an overall average rating of 7.2 on a scale of 0–9, and 88% agreed that it had encouraged them to learn more about digital electronics. The use of animated and highly visual teaching aids was therefore proven to be effective in assisting students in their study of digital electronics. The visual tutor is called ‘SmartStart’.