A serological and histological study of the Egyptian mummy 'Iset Iri Hetes' from the Ptolemaic period III-I B.C

Serological and histological examinations of the muscles of the calf of an Egyptian mummy dated between the third and first centuries B.C. were performed. Human protein was identified, the ABO phenotype was determined as type B, and morphological disruption of the cells was observed.     

Homicide in the elderly. A study of homicide in the aged based on an Aachen autopsy sample of the 10-year period 1976-1985

Investigations on the peculiarities of homicides of the elderly are missing in the German literature up to the present date. Therefore we undertook an evaluation of the case files collected at the Aachen Institute of Forensic Medicine from the ten-year-period 1976-1985. Among 3736 autopsies we found 183 cases of homicide with 35 victims of 60 years and older. We collected peculiarities of modus operandi related to victim, suspect and offence and compared the data with such from police criminal statistics and partially with German population statistics. Two types of homicide of the elderly can be differentiated: One is independent of the victim's age whereas the other exploits the living conditions in the higher age (living alone, socially isolated, ailing, helpless etc.) For these latter cases the name "Gerontocide" is proposed. The paper deals with the peculiar difficulties of criminal investigation and clarification in such cases, resulting on the one hand from the lack of suspicion if elderly people die, on the other hand from the more difficult detection of causal relationship between offence and death--especially in the presence of severe illness of the victim.     

A preliminary study of changes in scalp impedance during the early post-mortem period in rats.

An accurate and reproducible technique was used for estimation of scalp impedance (1 kHz) in each of eight rat cadavers, maintained at 9.0 +/- 0.7 degrees C, during the 1 to 144 hour post-mortem period. Scalp impedance increased non-linearly, and in a bimodal manner, between 24 and 144 hours post-mortem. The relationship between scalp impedance and post-mortem interval, and the degree of individual variation in the time course of impedance change, were such that scalp impedance is unlikely to be a suitable tool for estimation of time since death.     

关于租船合同提单构成信用证不符点的案例评析

如何理解UCP 600第22（a）条款关于租船合同提单的描述,将直接导致构成信用证议付的不符点以及开证行送达拒付通知的严重后果。从案例分析的角度考量租船合同提单的表现形式以及何谓合法、有效的拒付通知,探寻妥善、合理地解决此类信用证款项议付纠纷的新途径。     

超生反应阶段人骨骼肌对电刺激反应的形态学研究

利用人骨骼肌在死亡早期阶段能对电刺激产生兴奋和收缩的特点，以加大刺激强度为手段，对18例死亡早期阶段（1小时25分至6小时40分）具有超生反应能力的尸检骨骼肌和17例稍晚阶段（10～60小时）不具有超生反应能力的尸检骨骼肌，进行了电刺激损伤的系列形态学对比研究。结果表明，死亡早期阶段的肢体骨骼肌，经电刺激后，能产生整个肌肉或局部肌肉的收缩；在电极周围以及电路中的肌纤维形成大片的极具特点的收缩带、条带状嗜酸性变、高度变形的节段状和盘片状崩解等改变；稍晚期阶段受刺激的肌纤维则未见上述改变。探讨形态学改变的形成机理及意义，为研究死亡早期阶段的电损伤提供形态学基础。     

Performance of the supervised learning algorithms in sex estimation of the proximal femur: A comparative study in contemporary Egyptian and Turkish samples

Sex estimation standards are population specific however, we argue that machine learning techniques (ML) may enhance the biological sex determination on trans-population application. Linear discriminant analysis (LDA) versus nine ML including quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA), support vector machine (SVM), Decision Tree (DT), Gaussian process (GPC), Naïve Bayesian (NBC), K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN), Random Forest (RFM) and Adaptive boosting (Adaboost) were compared. The experiments involve two contemporary populations: Turkish (n = 300) and Egyptian populations (n = 100) for training and validation, respectively. Base models were calibrated using isotonic and sigmoid calibration schemes. Results were analyzed at posterior probabilities (pp) thresholds >0.95 and >0.80. At pp = 0.5, ML algorithms yielded comparable accuracies in the training (90% to 97%) and test sets (81% to 88%) which are not modified after employing the calibration techniques. At pp >0.95, the raw RFM, LDA, QDA, and SVM models have shown the best performance however, calibration techniques improved the performance of various classifier especially NBC and Adaboost. By contrast, the performance of GPC, KNN, QDA models worsened by calibration. RFM has shown the best performance among all models at both thresholds whereas LDA benefited the best from using both calibration methods at pp >0.80. Complex ML models are not necessarily achieving better performance metrics. LDA and QDA remain the fastest and simplest classifiers. We demonstrated the capability of enhancing sex estimation using ML on an independent population sample however, differences in the underlying probability distribution generated by models were detected which warranted more cautious application by forensic practitioners.     

电喷雾和大气压化学法对大麻酚类物质离子化的比较

目的比较电喷雾电离(ESI)和大气压化学电离(APCI)两种模式对大麻酚类物质的离子化效果。方法采用UFLC-(ESI/APCI)MS分析方法,分别考察使用ESI和APCI时雾化电压、雾化气流量、干燥气流量、加热块温度、解离管温度等参数变化对大麻酚类物质的影响规律,确定最优条件参数组合,并比较ESI和APCI对大麻酚类物质的离子化效果。结果对于0.5μg/mL大麻二酚、大麻酚和四氢大麻酚标准品,ESI峰高分别为215 006、143 051、216 944,信噪比41.74、49.88、42.12,峰面积日内标准偏差(RSD)<3.96%;APCI峰高分别为140 238、226 505、247 753,信噪比78.37、131.03、138.46,峰面积日内标准偏差(RSD)<11.98%。结论检测大麻样品时,ESI为首选,基质复杂时可以使用APCI作为ESI的补充手段。     

凋亡相关基因表达与早期脑损伤时间关系研究

目的 探讨脑挫伤早期细胞凋亡相关基因Bcl-2、Fas表达的变化规律与损伤时间关系。方法 运用光镜观察脑挫伤后脑组织的形态学变化,同时应用图像分析技术检测脑挫伤早期不同时程Bcl-2、Fas免疫组化染色平均光度值的变化规律。结果 伤后8h在脑挫伤周围可见典型的凋亡神经细胞;伤后30min损伤灶周围神经细胞出现Bcl-2、Fas阳性表达,以后呈逐渐上升趋势且表达范围亦逐渐扩大,其中Bcl-2蛋白表达在伤后4h达高峰,随后呈下降的趋势,至伤后10～12h其表达程度与伤后1h相比无明显差异。结论检测细胞凋亡相关基因的表达可用于早期脑损伤时间的推断及生前与死后脑损伤的鉴别。     

Inflammation in the lungs of infants dying suddenly. A comparative study from two countries

An investigation of lung tissue samples from sudden unexpected infant deaths from the German Democratic Republic (G.D.R.) (n = 106) and Finland (n = 94) shows the German material to contain 54 cases (51%) with advanced inflammatory changes allowing a definite pathologico-anatomical diagnosis and explanation for the death, whereas there were only 19 such cases (20%) in the Finnish material. Slight changes indicating an inflammatory process but not allowing a definite diagnosis ("borderline cases") were seen in one fifth of the cases in both countries. Thus a greater proportion of the child deaths below the age of 1 year in Finland are real cot deaths than in the G.D.R. where signs of respiratory infection can be found more often.     

A further study to investigate the detection and enhancement of latent fingerprints using visible absorption and luminescence chemical imaging

This study investigated the application of chemical imaging to the detection of latent fingerprints using the Condor macroscopic chemical imaging system (ChemImage Corp., Pittsburgh, USA). Methods were developed and optimised for the visualisation of untreated latent fingerprints and fingerprints processed with DFO, ninhydrin, cyanoacrylate, and cyanoacrylate plus rhodamine 6G stain. The results obtained with chemical imaging were compared to the detection achieved using conventional imaging techniques. The Condor significantly improved the detection of many prints, especially those that might be considered poor quality or borderline prints. Prints on newspaper treated with ninhydrin and DFO, and prints on white and yellow paper treated with ninhydrin, benefited the most from chemical imaging detection. In many cases, fingerprints undetectable using conventional imaging techniques could be visualised with chemical imaging. Ridge detail from untreated prints on yellow paper was also detected using the Condor. When prints of high quality were examined, both detection techniques produced quality results. The results of this project demonstrate that chemical imaging offers advantages over conventional visualisation techniques when examining latent fingerprints, especially those that would be considered difficult, such as weak prints or prints on surfaces that produce highly luminescent backgrounds. Standard testing procedures for the detection and enhancement of fingerprints by chemical imaging are presented and discussed.     

Stability of plasma total cholesterol, triglycerides, and apolipoproteins B and A-I during the early postmortem period

The stability of plasma lipids and apolipoproteins during the early postmortem period was studied by taking four duplicate blood samples from eight cadavers 2, 6, 12, and 24 h after death. The bodies were kept at +4 degrees C. The plasma samples were analyzed for total cholesterol (TC), triglycerides (TG), apolipoprotein B (apo B), and apolipoprotein A-I (apo A-I). In TC, values rose by 6 and 11% in two cases, and in six cases diminished 3 to 15% during the first 6 h compared to values obtained 2 h postmortem. The greatest changes were a continuing rise in one case by 33% and a fall by 21% in another case during 24 h. In TG values marked changes took place including one case with a rise of 67% within 24 h. The concentrations of apo B rose by 9 to 11% in three cases and fell by 3 and 4% in two cases during 6 h, but during the whole study period a rise up to 78% occurred. In the concentrations of apo A-I, cases fell by as much as 42% in 6 h, and in one case rose by 20% during 6 h. The results indicate that unpredictable fluctuations occur in plasma lipid and apolipoprotein values within 24 h after death, and they should be interpreted cautiously if the samples have been taken after a prolonged postmortem period.     

A specific G. C. method for the determination of carbamazepine in blood.

Carbamazepine is extracted with dichloromethane from whole blood. After a rinsing procedure the residue is gaschromatographed partly in methanol, where two peaks occur, and partly in a methylating reagent, where the same two peaks are seen, the heights of these now being reversed. This reversal is used as a means of identification. Recovery was found to be 94 +/- 12 %. Blood analysis from 12 patients being treated with carbamazepine gave values from 0.6 - 6.5 mg/kg.     

Beyond incubation: an analysis of firm survival and exit dynamics in the post-graduation period

With regard to the survival rates of business incubator (BI) firms, the literature mainly presents findings of failure rates only during the incubation period. Little is known about the survival or exit dynamics of firms after leaving the incubator facilities. This study approaches this research question by examining the survival of 352 firms from five German BIs after their graduation. The findings suggest that graduation causes an immediate negative effect on survivability that lasts up to 3 years after leaving the incubators. Furthermore, heterogeneous patterns of post-graduation exit dynamics between the BIs were observed. It was also found that performance during the incubation period is an indicator of the propensity of business closure after graduation. This study offers valuable insights and implications for all stakeholders of BI-initiatives.      

The murder-suicide. A study of the postagressional suicide

The authors studied a series of 18 cases of homicide followed by suicide or attempted suicide by the aggressor, analyzing: 1) the frequency of such acts; 2) the age and sex of the aggressors; 3) the means or arms used for the murder and suicide; 4) the period of time between the two events; and 5) the motives for the homicides and the relationship between the victims and their aggressors.