Use of Autopsy to Determine Live or Stillbirth: New Approaches in Decision‐support Systems

Fetal deaths are important cases for forensic medicine, as well as for criminal and civil law. From a legal perspective, the determination of whether a deceased infant was stillborn is a difficult process. Such a determination is generally made during autopsy; however, no standardized procedures for this determination exist. Therefore, new facilitative approaches are needed. In this study, three new support systems based on 10 autopsy parameters were tested for their ability to correctly determine whether deceased infants were alive or stillborn. Performances were analyzed and compared with one another. The artificial neural networks and radial basis function network models had 90% accuracy (the highest among the models tested), 100% sensitivity, and 83.3% specificity. Thus, the models presented here provide additional insights for future studies concerning infant autopsies.     

Examining the Impact of Early Childhood School Investments on Neighborhood Crime

This study tested the hypothesis that investments in early childhood schools have short-term crime reducing effects in neighborhoods. Time series data from the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, were analyzed to evaluate the effects of an early childhood school built in the neighborhood of Kendall-Whittier as part of a larger neighborhood revitalization plan, on violent and property crime. Results revealed that after controlling for city-wide crime trends and monthly fluctuations, violent crime declined significantly in Kendall-Whittier. Further analysis indicated that the possible crime-reducing effects of school investments on violent crime spread beyond Kendall-Whittier, and no displacement was found. The results for property crime were mixed. The study demonstrates the use of clustering analysis, a useful tool in neighborhood-level research to identify comparison neighborhoods. The findings shed light on the possibility that investments in early childhood schools can yield results in a shorter term than anticipated, making them a desirable component of urban revitalization.     

Medico-Legal Evaluation of Adolescent Parricide Offenders: Thirty Nine Cases from Turkey

Parricide which is defined as the murder of one’s parents is a rare event. We describe a consecutive series of adolescent parricide offenders referred to the Council of Forensic Medicine for medico-legal evaluation. Majority of the adolescent parricide offenders were male with a frequency of 79.5%. Age of the offenders ranged from 12 to 18 years old with a median age of 15.13. The majority of the victims were the fathers of the offenders (27; 69.2%). Firearms and cutting devices were the most frequently used weapons. The history of abuse in the family as a motive for the murder was detected in 51.2% of the offenders. The major abuse type was physical abuse. There was no history of psychiatric disorders in the majority of the offenders (37; 94.9%). After the medico-legal evaluation of the adolescent parricide offenders in the Council of Forensic Medicine, psychiatric disorder was diagnosed only in 4 offenders. Schizophrenia was the final diagnosis in 3 cases and paranoid disorder (otherwise unclassified) in only 1 offender. Our study confirmed the frequency of mental illness among adolescent parricide offenders to be very low when compared to adult offenders. Adolescent parricide offenders differ from the other perpetrators particularly in terms of motives of the murder and psychiatric illnesses. Abuse in the family seems to play an important role in these murders. Therefore, it is extremely important that individuals in the legal, criminal justice, social work, psychology, educational and other professional communities be more conscious and informed of child maltreatment and family violence and more research is essential in understanding and preventing adolescent parricide offenders.     

Preliminary validation of the Child Abuse Potential Inventory in Turkey

This study aims to provide preliminary findings on the validity of Child Abuse Potential Inventory (CAP Inventory) on Turkish sample of 23 abuser and 47 nonabuser parents. To investigate validity in two groups, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) Psychopathic Deviate (MMPI-PD) scale is also used along with CAP. The results show that, with the 200.5 cutoff point, which is the average score of the whole Turkish sample, Abuse Scale correctly classified 83% of the participants in the abuse group and 78.8% of the participants in the control group, which gives 21.2% false-positive result. MMPI-PD to all group and Pearson correlation coefficient analysis is found to be significant for both groups. These results show us high reliability and validity of the abuse scale for Turkey.     

Mole guns in Turkey in 2003-2005

This study describes the frequency of mole guns in Turkey by examining the cases sent to the Council of Forensic Medicine of Turkey between 2003 and 2005. In total, 11 mole guns were examined. Mole guns are manufactured to be used as a trap against detrimental animals. Although they are not meant to be used as a firearm, they are able to cause death. Mole guns appearing in regular casework were evaluated in terms of type of the gun, number of barrels, size and caliber, rifling, design, mechanism, fitness for use, legality, and geographical distribution. Ninety-one percent of the guns were 12 gauge. Most commonly they originate from Inner Anatolia. Mole guns are typically handmade. Some examples of injuries and deaths caused by mole guns are also offered.     

Handmade Guns in Trabzon, Turkey

Abstract:  A wide variety of handmade firearms have been involved in criminal cases in the city of Trabzon, Turkey. Although they are often very similar to commercially manufactured firearms in terms of design, loading and locking mechanisms, and cocking and firing arrangements, these guns are constructed from cheap materials and are not safe for firing. Handmade firearms manufactured in the Black Sea region of Turkey, particularly in the city of Trabzon, are similar to pistols manufactured by Browning, Luger, Star, Smith and Wesson, Berretta, and MAB. A total of 201 handmade guns referred to the Criminal Police Laboratories for examination from 2003 to 2005 were evaluated with respect to type, number of barrels, size and caliber, rifling, design, mechanism, operability, legality, and similarity to commercial models. We found that most of these handmade guns resembled commercial models in several aspects.     

Definability and Textural Rough Set Algebras

In this paper, a counterpart of definability is studied in texture spaces. The concept of textural complete field is defined and the relations with textural definable sets are investigated. If a texture is discrete, then textural definability coincides with definability. Using this fact, we obtain some basic results for definability in rough set algebras. Further, we discuss on definability for fuzzy rough sets considering textural fuzzy direlations     

How the World Bank manages social risks: implementation of the Social Risk Mitigation Project in Turkey

This paper aims to assess the World Bank’s social risk management approach to poverty by focusing on the implementation details of the Social Risk Mitigation Project in Turkey, a World Bank project that depends on this approach. The paper looks at the approach through the concept of neoliberal governmentality, as an attempt to produce responsible poor citizens during a period when the responsibility for providing social services is transferred to the market and the family. By using field research it demonstrates that, with the intervention of local factors, several unintended consequences emerge in the implementation of a social risk management project. The article concludes that these outcomes, although not planned or intended, have all been instrumental in depoliticising poverty and the poor in the country. Moreover, in spite of all the problems and dissatisfaction, thanks to the Bank’s own portrayal, this project has contributed to the image of the Bank as a development institution that achieves successes in its fight with poverty.