《物权法》解释(一),为财产纠纷再立保护屏障

2016年3月1日,《最高人民法院关于适用〈中华人民共和国物权法〉若干问题的解释(一)》(以下简称《解释》)正式实施.该《解释》的内容包括预告登记效力、特殊动产转让中的“善意第三人”、按份共有人优先购买权的司法保护、善意取得制度等六个方面.     

Evaluation of human brain damage in fatalities due to extreme environmental temperature by quantification of basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF), glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP), S100β and single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) immunoreactivities

Fatalities due to extreme environmental temperatures involving hypothermia (cold exposure) and hyperthermia (heat stroke) might present with poor or nonspecific morphological pathologies, which are insufficient to establish the cause of death in forensic practice. The present study immunohistochemically investigated basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF), glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP), S100β and single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) in the parietal lobe and hippocampus of the brain in fatalities from hypothermia (n=15) and hyperthermia (n=18), and compared them to those of controls (n=39), including acute death due to ischemic heart disease, mechanical asphyxiation and drowning. In addition, S100β concentration in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) was measured. Characteristic findings in hypothermia cases were higher glial bFGF immunopositivity in the cerebral cortex and white matter, and higher S100β immunopositivity in the cerebral cortex with a lower CSF S100β concentration. Hyperthermia showed lower glial GFAP and S100β immunopositivities in the white matter, and higher neuronal ssDNA immunopositivity in the cerebral cortex and hippocampus, accompanied by high glial bFGF and S100β immunopositivities in the cerebral cortex. These findings suggest neuroprotective glial responses without marked neuronal or glial damage in fatal hypothermia, and diffuse neuronal apoptosis despite initiation of neuroprotective cortical astrocyte responses, accompanied by glial damage in the white matter, in fatal hyperthermia. These markers may be useful for evaluating brain damage and responses in fatalities due to extreme environmental temperatures.     

Mortality under and after sentence of male convicts transported to Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania), 1840–1852

This article reports on mortality in a cohort of 7084 English, Irish and Scottish-born convict men who were transported on 30 ships to Tasmania between 1840 and 1852. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study of convict mortality that systematically traces the mortality of convicts after emancipation as well as under sentence. This pilot study investigates the relationship between pre-transportation characteristics, convict discipline, reactions to convict discipline, and mortality under and after sentence of the male convict population. The convict men were various in their origins but shared the experience of penal servitude under the gaze of a paper panopticon. Controlling for other factors, the authors find that the convicts were more likely to die under sentence if they were born in Scotland, London or an industrial-urban area; if they exhibited disturbed mental behaviour under sentence, such as tearing their clothes; or if they had more time in solitary confinement or more accumulated insults of their mind and body. For those who survived sentence, mortality was higher for those born in an industrial-urban area, those who had more alcohol-related offences under sentence, those with more time in solitary confinement under sentence, and those who were violent or threatened violence while under sentence.     

American Indian religion in the iron house: searching for ‘some accommodation’

Religious freedom claims by American Indian prisoners are disfavored in law and policy more than most prisoner civil rights claims. This disfavor reflects the continuing influence of the cultural distance between traditional Indians and Christianity – a distance with an unfortunate history from the Indian point of view. The salutary effects of Christian religion within prisons have been assumed for as long as prisons have existed; this assumption is based upon scant evidence. Treating Indian religious expression as inferior to Christian religious expression within prisons is often allowed by law, but it is insupportable in policy without reference to the historical power relationship between Indians and the dominant culture. Indian spirituality, like Christianity, can engage prisoners in the moral discourse demanded by the tenets of restorative justice. Accommodation of Indian spirituality is as much in the public interest as accommodation of religion within prisons at all.     

Comments on the Linux FAT32 allocator and file creation order reconstruction [Digit Investig 11(4), 224–233]

Minnaard proposed a novel method that constructs a creation time bound of files recovered without time information. The method exploits a relationship between the creation order of files and their locations on a storage device managed with the Linux FAT32 file system. This creation order reconstruction method is valid only in non-wraparound situations, where the file creation time in a former position is earlier than that in a latter position. In this article, we show that if the Linux FAT32 file allocator traverses the storage space more than once, the creation time of a recovered file is possibly earlier than that of a former file and possibly later than that of a latter file on the Linux FAT32 file system. Also it is analytically verified that there are at most n candidates for the creation time bound of each recovered file where n is the number of traversals by the file allocator. Our analysis is evaluated by examining file allocation patterns of two commercial in-car dashboard cameras.     

The ability of the blowflies Calliphora vomitoria (Linnaeus), Calliphora vicina (Rob-Desvoidy) and Lucilia sericata (Meigen) (Diptera: Calliphoridae) and the muscid flies Muscina stabulans (Fallén) and Muscina prolapsa (Harris) (Diptera: Muscidae) to colonise buried remains

A novel method for the non-destructive age determination of a blood stain is described. It is based on the measurement of the visible reflectance spectrum of the haemoglobin component using a microspectrophotometer (MSP), spectral pre-processing and the application of supervised statistical classification techniques. The reflectance spectra of sample equine blood stains deposited on a glazed white tile were recorded between 1 and 37 days, using an MSP at wavelengths between 442 nm and 585 nm, under controlled conditions. The determination of age was based on the progressive change of the spectra with the aging of the blood stain. These spectra were pre-processed to reduce the effects of baseline variations and sample scattering. Two feature selection methods based on calculation of Fisher's weights and Fourier transform (FT) of spectra were used to create inputs into a statistical model based on linear discriminant analysis (LDA). This was used to predict the age of the blood stain and tested by using the leave-one-out cross validation method. When the same blood stain was used to create the training and test datasets an excellent correct classification rate (CCR) of 91.5% was obtained for 20 input frequencies, improving to 99.2% for 66 input frequencies. A more realistic scenario where separate blood stains were used for the training and test datasets led to poorer successful classification due to problems with the choice of substrate but nevertheless up to 19 days a CCR of 54.7% with an average error of 0.71 days was obtained.     

Allele frequencies of the 15 AmpF/Str Identifiler loci in the population of Metztitlán (Estado de Hidalgo), México

The 15 AmpF/STR Identifiler loci (D8S1179, D21S11, D7S820, CSF1PO, D3S1358, TH01, D13S317, D16S539, D2S1338, D19S433, vWA, TPOX, D18S51, D5S818 and FGA) were analyzed in the sample of 180 unrelated autochthonous healthy adults born in Meztitlán City from the valley of Metztitlán (Estado de Hidalgo, México). The agreement with Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium was confirmed for all loci. From the forensic point of view, the heterozygosity value, power of discrimination and the a priori chance of exclusion were calculated.     

The black soldier-fly, Hermetia illucens (Diptera, Stratiomyidae), used to estimate the postmortem interval in a case in Amapá State, Brazil

The black soldier-fly (Hermetia illucens) is a generalist detritivore which is commonly present in corpses in later stages of decomposition and may be useful in forensic entomology. This paper describes the estimation of the postmortem interval (PMI) based on the life cycle of the black soldier-fly in a case in northern Brazil. A male child was abducted from his home and 42 days later his corpse was found in an advanced stage of decay. Two black soldier-fly larvae were found associated with the body. The larvae emerged as adults after 25-26 days. Considering the development cycle of H. illucens, the date of oviposition was estimated as 24-25 days after abduction. Since H. illucens usually (but not always) colonizes corpses in more advanced stages of decay, this estimate is consistent with the hypothesis that the child was killed immediately after abduction.