Surveillance of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) antibodies in medicolegal autopsies in Finland--monitoring early changes in HIV-seropositivity among risk groups and average population.

In order to cooperate with voluntary screening programs aimed at the surveillance of the HIV epidemic in Finland, we have studied medicolegal autopsies for HIV antibodies since 1986 using an enzyme immunoassay on postmortem sera. The investigation covered 47.4% and 39.2%, respectively, of all deaths under the age of 65 years in the metropolitan areas of Helsinki and Turku--two cities on the densely populated southern coast of Finland from which most HIV infections have thus far been detected. Nine HIV-positive cases (0.12%) were detected among the 7305 medicolegal autopsies tested in 1986 to 1990. This figure is higher than the prevalence of 0.01 to 0.03% in voluntary screening programs for the general population would suggest. Seven of our cases had previously tested positive, and two were previously unknown cases, indicating that people at high risk are clustered in the medicolegal autopsy series. Of the six cases in an early stage of infection, three committed suicide suggesting the importance of HIV-screening in suicide cases in tracing symptomless HIV carriers. Five of the cases were detected in 1990, a year when the number of new HIV infections had more than doubled compared to the previous two years. This suggests that testing of medicolegal autopsies as surrogate tests for the population gives useful information even in low-prevalence areas like Finland. Such testing has none of the ethical problems of many other back-up surveys, and may be particularly sensitive to early changes in epidemiology.     

The 2015 Catalan Election: The Independence Bid at the Polls

This paper examines the context, campaign and main determinants of how Catalans voted in the 2015 regional election. The elections were exceptional because the incumbent and the remaining Catalan nationalist parties framed the contest as a de facto referendum on secession. In this paper we scrutinise whether attitudes towards independence affected vote choice and whether they eclipsed other traditional significant vote-driving factors such as the state of the economy or government performance. Results show that, although the independence issue became a major determinant of vote choice, the elections did not become a pure plebiscite on secession, since voters also used their vote to hold the regional government accountable for its past performance.     

Construct validity and internal reliability of the Finnish risk and needs assessment form

Validation of risk and needs assessment instruments used to predict, and reduce, recidivism and misconduct is of ethical, practical and scientific importance. We argue for a focus on variable (i.e. changeable over time) risk factors, and that validation begins with establishing construct validity. The Finnish Risk and Needs Assessment Form, in Finnish Riski- ja tarvearvio (RITA), is a semi-structured interview form adapted from the Offender Assessment System used in England and Wales and consists primarily of variable risk factors. In this study, we examined the construct validity and internal reliability of RITA. The results suggest that the original RITA sections do not provide an adequate statistical model for describing the relationship between scored questions, and we, therefore, offer an improved model. In our proposed model, several scores are influenced by more than one dimension of risk and the dimensions correlate with each other considerably. We suggest that the dimensions that can be measured with RITA are Problems managing economy, Alcohol problems, Resistance to change, Drug abuse and associated behaviour, Aggressiveness and Employment problems. All factors except Drug abuse and associated behaviour had very good internal reliability. We propose this new model to be used in future research with, and in development of, RITA.     

Comparing the performance of IBIS and BulletTRAX-3D technology using bullets fired through 10 consecutively rifled barrels

This study evaluates the abilities of the Integrated Ballistics Identification System (IBIS) and BulletTRAX-3D electronic imaging systems to identify bullets fired by the same weapon in a large database of images. Ten consecutively rifled handgun barrels were test fired to obtain reference sample and known match sample pairs for upload onto both bullet acquisition systems. Both copper-jacketed and lead bullets were uploaded, to account for variations in the manner in which markings are reproduced on the different metal compositions. Ranked correlation lists were examined and evaluated. For copper-jacketed bullet correlations, both IBIS and BulletTRAX-3D identified all reference samples to their known matches within the top 10 positions. For lead bullets, BulletTRAX-3D identified all reference samples to their known match in the top 10 positions while IBIS identified only 30%. For inter composition comparisons, BulletTRAX-3D was more successful than IBIS, identifying 100% of reference samples to their known match in the top 20 for copper-jacketed to lead comparisons and 90% for lead to copper-jacketed comparisons. These results suggest that BulletTRAX-3D is more effective than IBIS in the analysis of a wider range of bullet types and it was also found to produce images of superior quality.     

Reading the spirits in Julia Alvarez’s A Wedding in Haiti

Dominican writer Julia Alvarez’s 2012 memoir, A Wedding in Haiti: The Story of a Friendship, documents her first-time travel from the Dominican Republic to Haiti over land in order to attend the wedding of Piti, a young Haitian man who had worked for her and her husband for a number of years. She deploys the literary non-fiction genre of memoir, a genre that is relatively new to her, to explore both the Dominican (collective) relationship with Haiti and her individual relationship with both Haiti and its people centering on her connection to Piti and his family. Drawing on Vodou, a nature religion that strives for balance, this article explores Alvarez’s memoir through several lwa. I argue that the lwa are deployed and manifest as mechanisms from within Vodou epistemology to restore balance to a world relationship between Haiti and the DR that reverberates in the metaphysical world. Examinations of this unequal relationship between the two nations are even more prescient contemporarily considering the recent decision by the Dominican Constitutional Court to strip children of “irregular” migrants born in the DR after 1929 of their Dominican citizenship.     

""Blood on the UN's Hands'? Assigning Duties and Apportioning Blame to an Intergovernmental Organisation

The United Nations is frequently the object of blame for "failing' ' to act in response to what are deemed to be ethical imperatives. Implicit in such condemnations is an understanding of the United Nations as a body that has moral duties, and possesses the various capacities for deliberating and acting that would make this a reasonable conception. Yet this portrayal of the United Nations as a moral agent is one that should only be invoked with great care, and some qualification. By constructing a model of "institutional moral agency'', and examining whether the United Nations meets its criteria, this article aims to offer a preliminary account of the internal features, and enabling conditions that would allow the United Nations to bear the related burdens of duty and blame in international politics. It also suggests who—or what— might bear these burdens when the United Nations is incapable of acting.     

Population data of four X-chromosome markers in Tuscany, and their use in a deficiency paternity case

Four X-chromosome markers (DXS101, HPRTB, DXS8377, and STRX-1) were typed in a population sample from Tuscany, Italy, using a single amplification reaction. Resolution of a deficiency paternity case involving two women (either they were half-sisters or non-relatives) was made possible by typing these marker in addition to 16 conventional autosomal markers.