While investigating mass transit accidents, especially in air travel, officials often rely on digital clues left behind in flash memories of any and all electronic devices—both personal and professional—at a crash site. With the physical forces and high-temperature fires associated with many crashes, memory units are often damaged and sometimes unreadable. Researchers have now figured out how much damage memory units can sustain before becoming unreadable and new repair techniques to retrieve clues off of damaged units, which might help prevent future tragedies.
(via WSJ)