Spontaneous rupture of the urinary bladder

The report presents the case of a 33-year-old man under the primary assumption of homicide in which the court-ordered autopsy revealed death as a result of bleeding due to a spontaneous rupture of the urinary bladder. The article gives a short summary of the pathomorphological findings and their respective causes, for example the typical location of the rupture at the posterior wall and roof of the bladder and the common concomitant drunkenness. Furthermore, obligatory forensic investigations--beside the autopsy--are mentioned and discussed.     

Arsenic speciation of two specimens of Napoleon's hair

Since 1960, it has been demonstrated by various analytical procedures that high concentrations of arsenic were present in Napoleon's hair. Various authors, indicating that the detected arsenic levels are a consequence of external contamination, have challenged the results of these examinations. We have tested two strands of hair, referenced as Noverraz and Grand Maréchal Bertrand. Samples were incubated 6 h in water at 90 °C, and arsenic speciation was carried out by HPLC–ICP/MS. The residue was injected on a cation-exchange PRP-X200 column that allows the detection of arsenobetaine and on an anion-exchange PRP-X100 column to test for the mineral forms. In these conditions, the inorganic species As(III), As(V) and their metabolites (DMA and MMA) were separated. Analysis of hair samples highlighted massive amounts of total arsenic (42.1 and 37.4 ng/mg). Arsenical species found in the two samples of analyzed hair are distributed in the following: As(III) 31.1 and 44.7%; As(V) 66.3 and 53.2%; DMA 0.42 and 0.15%. Traces of MMA were detected, and 2% of the species could not be identified. These results prove that more than 97% of the arsenic found in the hair of Napoleon is in inorganic form, which is consistent with a chronic intoxication to arsenic.     

‘Death is painful so it is better to be holding a gun’: the socio-ecologically situated dis/rearmament decisions of formerly abducted persons in northern Uganda

In northern Uganda, children and youth once abducted by the notorious Lord's Resistance Army now live in internally displaced persons camps, facing challenging social, economic and security conditions. Within this context, former combatants state they would prefer to rearm than face a ‘painful’ and inevitable death. Drawing on qualitative interviews and focus group discussions with over 300 former combatants, we apply a socio-ecological lens to determine the push/pull factors that influence their decision to rearm or disarm. A lack of personal security, levels of stigmatisation and poor economic and educational opportunities are among the highest push factors toward rearmament. These findings point to a broad range of causes and actors responsible for child and youth militarisation and call for more holistic DDR approaches.     

Veto Players in Post-Conflict DDR Programs: Evidence From Nepal and the DRC

ABSTRACT

Under what conditions are Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) programs successfully implemented following intrastate conflict? Previous research is dominated by under-theorized case studies that lack the ability to detect the precise factors and mechanisms that lead to successful DDR. In this article, we draw on game theory and ask how the number of veto players, their policy distance, and their internal cohesion impact DDR implementation. Using empirical evidence from Nepal and the Democratic Republic of Congo, we show that the number of veto players, rather than their distance and cohesion, explains the (lack of) implementation of DDR.     

‘Think of the Children!’ Desire and Innocence in British Queer Fiction of the Early Twentieth Century

Nearly all relationships have power imbalances, none more so than age-dissimilar ones. Women writers of the early twentieth century addressed the issues of sexual innocence and ignorance in literary same-sex relationships with differing levels of perception and tangents of criticism. This article examines how innocence is portrayed, deployed and perceived in Clemence Dane’s Regiment of Women (1917), Rosamond Lehmann’s Dusty Answer (1927), Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness (1928) and Mary Renault’s The Charioteer (1953) and how the idea of queerness complicates the issue of childhood innocence. It explores to what extent characters cast as innocent become vehicles for their female authors to express sexually and socially transgressive desires at a time when feminism was publicly and scientifically linked to lesbianism.     

Mediating Effects of Existential and Religious Well-Being Among Abused,Suicidal African American Women

Intimate partner violence (IPV), an international public health matter, is linked to psychological distress including suicidal behavior. Despite the noted sequelae associated with IPV, many individuals display resilience in the face of IPV exposure. This study examines two potential protective factors in the IPV-suicidal ideation link, namely existential and religious well-being, in a sample of African American women. Low-income, African American, female suicide attempters who were abused by a partner within the previous year (N?=?111) were administered the Conflicts Tactics Scale-2, Spiritual Well-Being Scale, and Beck Scale for Suicide Ideation. Mediational models testing indirect effects through the bootstrapping method revealed that the total effect of IPV on suicidal ideation was positive and significant, confirming suicidal ideation as a consequential outcome of IPV among African American women. This effect was mediated by existential well-being; however, religious well-being was not a significant mediator, suggesting that existential well-being serves a unique protective role in the IPV-suicidal ideation relation. The results provide additional support for the well-known positive effects of existential well-being on mental health among African American samples. Culturally-informed, meaning-making interventions to enhance existential well-being appear to be effective in reducing suicidal ideation in this population.     

Die Produktion sozialer Sicherheit.

In the current public discourse the phenomenon of insecurity is widely discussed since various kinds of social risks are becoming more widespread throughout European societies threatening biographical stability and status security. Given this there is a quest for a realignment of state interventions aiming at the (re-)production of stability and security. It is assumed that institutional arrangements and interventions such as employment protection, income maintenance schemes and healthcare provision not only contribute to objective but also to subjective security. Using data from the European Social Survey 2008 for the labor force in 20 European nations, we test this assumption by scrutinizing three kinds of perceived social risks: the risk of job loss, the risk of lack of monetary means and the risk of insufficient healthcare provision. We take on a cross-national perspective and conduct ordinal multi-level regression analyses in order to measure the extent to which different levels of social policy interventions can be accounted for differences in subjective insecurity. We find that a high degree of employment protection??astonishingly??does not enhance the perceived employment security significantly, whereas higher levels of social security spending and healthcare expenditure indeed go along with higher levels of subjective security. This relationship is moderated by the general level of economic development.     

EU update

This is the latest edition of the Bristows column on developments in EU law relating to IP, IT and telecommunications. This news article summarises recent developments that are considered important for practitioners, students and academics in a wide range of information technology, e-commerce, telecommunications and intellectual property areas. It cannot be exhaustive but intends to address the important points. This is a hard copy reference guide, but links to outside web sites are included where possible. No responsibility is assumed for the accuracy of information contained in these links.     

Police Response to Intimate Partner Violence in Canada: Do Victim Characteristics Matter?

This study examines the role of sociodemographic factors and violence characteristics in influencing women's reporting behaviors and types of police intervention received in response to intimate partner violence (IPV) in Canada. A subset of female respondents to Canada's 1999 General Social Survey who experienced physical or sexual IPV by a male perpetrator and who had contact with the police as a result of the violence was used for this analysis (n = 383). Findings suggest significant racial, economic, and social variations in women's motivation for self-reporting violence to the police as well as in the types of law enforcement interventions administered by police in response to reports of IPV. Implications for policy development are examined.