Heat Induced Changes to Dental Resin Composites: A Reference in Forensic Investigations?*

The objective was to investigate color change and surface damage in dental resin composites exposed to high temperatures over different time intervals for comparative purposes. Samples were prepared using two resins - Z100(R) (R1) and Charisma (R2), heated at the following temperatures: 200 degrees C, 400 degrees C, 600 degrees C, 1000 degrees C, for 15, 30 and 45 min (n = 104 for each resin sample). Color (DeltaE) and brightness (DeltaL) changes were analyzed by spectrophotometry using the CIE Lab system and surface changes by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). R1 showed more intense color changes after heat exposure than R2. DeltaL values were found to be the best parameter for evaluation of light and color change. A biphasic pattern after thermal exposure was detected, from dark brown to light white. SEM showed more intense alterations in R2 than in R1. These results indicate that the parameters observed in both resins are useful as a guide in forensic analyses.     

In defense of human rights of indigenous people

The nations of the world are generally shaped by a cultural diversity, which must be preserved. This leads to a fundamental and essential defense of indigenous groups and their human rights. The purpose of this article is to highlight the importance of defending human rights of indigenous cucapa, natives settled in the northeast of the state of Baja California in the Delta of the Colorado River, especially with regards to their fishing rights, which is their main source of food and survival. The environmental laws that have been issued in the country have greatly affected them, banning commercial fishing in some areas and totally in many other areas, adding to that a not to subtle performance by the appropriate regulation authorities, preventing them from fishing sea bass, hence their consumption and marketing, which is reflected in their socioeconomic status. For this reason and in response to this violation of their human rights, women have decided to enter a cucapa womb strike, which threatens the existence of the tribe by not reproducing.     

Evaluation of Lip Prints on Different Supports Using a Batch Image Processing Algorithm and Image Superimposition

This study aimed to develop and to assess an algorithm to facilitate lip print visualization, and to digitally analyze lip prints on different supports, by superimposition. It also aimed to classify lip prints according to sex. A batch image processing algorithm was developed, which facilitated the identification and extraction of information about lip grooves. However, it performed better for lip print images with a uniform background. Paper and glass slab allowed more correct identifications than glass and the both sides of compact disks. There was no significant difference between the type of support and the amount of matching structures located in the middle area of the lower lip. There was no evidence of association between types of lip grooves and sex. Lip groove patterns of type III and type I were the most common for both sexes. The development of systems for lip print analysis is necessary, mainly concerning digital methods.     

EMPLOYMENT BENEFITS IN MEXICO OF OLDER ADULTS AS A FUNCTION OF THEIR ANTIQUITY

The population grows and ages. Older adults, which is the group of people sixty years of age and older, increasingly represents a numerically larger group. Therefore, the legal rules are issued, and must be of such a nature that adequately protects them. In particular labor standards in Mexico, containing general provisions, but are emissive in relation to work of older adults subordinate.     

The Permeability of Urban Cultures

Stephen Dovers (ed.): Australian Environmental History: Essays and Cases . Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Tim Flannery: The Future Eaters: An Ecological History of Australasian Lands and People . Chatswood, NSW: Reed Books, 1994. Distributed in the USA by George Braziller Inc., New York.

Stephen J. Pyne: Burning Bush: A Fire History of Australia , New York: Henry Holt, 1991.     

Veni,vidi, vici: postcolonial studies comes of age

This review article offers a critical assessment of Ato Quayson's Cambridge History of Postcolonial Literature (2012), engaging in passing with a debate between postcolonial theorists that appeared also in 2012 in the New Literary History (43.1 & 2). It posits that the History presents postcolonial literature, and indeed postcolonial studies, as much too settled fields, a view clearly at odds both with their genesis and with that reflected in the essays in NLH.     

Democratization and Transitional Justice

Any country which attempts to establish accountability for past abuses of human rights during the process of democratization faces political, judicial, and ethical problems. With regard to politics, the question of which transitional justice measures are appropriate, functional, and feasible has to be decided for every individual case. A judicial approach has to decide which judicial standards to apply and how to justify prosecution. Finally, the ethical dilemmas of dealing with historical injustices have to be understood. There are no ready-made concepts to define guilt and justice. In many cases it is even difficult to tell the victims from the perpetrators. This study examines the different strategies subsumed under the term ‘transitional justice’ used by emerging democracies to deal with a legacy of human rights abuses. It explores the problems and challenges posed by different mechanisms of reconciliation and societal reintegration. While existing analyses of the contribution that transitional justice measures make to the process of social re-integration stress the importance of consensus among citizens and social groups for the emergence of trust and solidarity, this study suggests also thinking about how conflicts over competing ‘truths’ can help to build social capital and reconciliation. Noting a global diffusion of international legal norms, which means at least formal universal acceptance of basic rights and judicial procedures, it is argued that international justice cannot be a substitute for transitional justice measures taken by the domestic regime itself.     

Public Reason and the Need to Identify State-Relevant Desert

Plausible retributivist justifications for punishment assert that the commission of a moral wrong creates a pro tanto reason to punish the person who committed it. Yet there are good case-based and theoretical reasons to believe that not all moral wrongs are the proper subjects of criminal law or that they are within the proper domain of the state. This article provides these reasons, which suggest that a plausible retributivist justification for punishment must make distinctions between state-relevant and non-state-relevant moral wrongs and (consequently) state-relevant and non-state-relevant desert. The article makes the case for Rawlsian public reason as a plausible method for making these distinctions.     

Statistical analyses of 14 short tandem repeat loci in Brazilian populations from Rio de Janeiro and Mato Grosso do Sul states for forensic and identity testing purposes

This work describes the statistical features of a database for two Brazilian populations (one from the Rio de Janeiro State (southeast region), and one from the Mato Grosso do Sul State (central western region) using fourteen short tandem repeat loci (STR).