Death Due to Decapitation in Two Motorcyclists: A Description of a Unique Case and a Brief Review of the Literature

Deaths due to decapitation, especially related to traffic accidents, are rarely found in forensic practice. The present case involves a man and a woman who died from decapitation due to an unusual mechanism while they were riding on a motorbike down a mountain road. The autopsy, which was completed as a physics study, allowed the accident to be reconstructed as follows: A plastic cable that had detached from a timber‐transporting machine whipped the road and hit the two motorcyclists. The impact resulted in the complete severing of both riders’ heads. Involving different scientists in this accident investigation was crucial to understanding the dynamics of the accident. In fact, in addition to scene inspection and autopsy, a physics study was carried out on the cable and the clamp involved, which led to an explanation for the abrupt movement of the cable and, thus, to a thorough reconstruction of the accident.     

Evaluating the Effectiveness of the National Curriculum and Training Institute’s “Cognitive Life Skills” Program among Parolees Supervised by Pennsylvania’s Board of Probation & Parole

Recently, cognitive-behavioral approaches for rehabilitation have shown measured success for reducing recidivism rates among offenders after release from prison. The present analysis utilized data provided by Pennsylvania’s Board of Probation & Parole about offenders who completed the Cognitive Life Skills program developed by the National Curriculum and Training Institute. Propensity scoring techniques were employed to match a group of offenders who completed the program (treatment) with a statistically equivalent group who did not receive it (control). Matching variables included location and year of release, risk level, gender, age, race, offense category, and history of violent offending. General findings from a Cox proportional hazard model revealed gender, age, and criminal history impacted future incidents of recidivism, measured as re-incarceration. More importantly, the hazard model revealed, on average, a 24 % reduction in recidivism among the treatment group offenders and, on average, a 31 % reduction among high risk offenders exclusively. Policy implications will be discussed.     

A Survey of Arts Management Educators' Teaching on Diversity Issues

This study answered two research questions: (1) do arts management educators teach about diversity issues in their courses? If so, how and why? If not, why? (2) Do demographic characteristics impact if an arts management educator teaches about diversity issues in their courses? Most respondents (eighty-six percent) teach about diversity issues in their courses, primarily through discussion (ninety-one percent), and most (ninety-nine percent) believe arts management students should receive education on diversity issues in the arts. This study is significant because no known inquiry into the teaching practices of arts management educators relative to diversity issues in the arts previously existed.     

Allele frequencies of 15 autosomal STR loci in the Iraq population with comparisons to other populations from the middle-eastern region

Allele frequencies for the 15 autosomal STR loci included in the AmpFlSTR((R)) IdentifilerTM PCR Amplification Kit panel from Applied Biosystems (D3S1358, vWA, FGA, D8S1179, D21S11, D18S51, D5S818, D13S317, D7S820, TH01, TPOX, CSF1PO, D19S433, D2S1338, D16S539) and several statistical parameters were estimated from a sample of 103 unrelated individuals, mostly Shia and Sunni Arabs, living in most of central and southern Iraq provinces. We compared the allele frequency spectrum detected in the Iraqi population to allele frequencies from 11 other data sets from published studies of individuals from Turkey, Iraqi-Kurdistan, Saudi Arabia, Arab Emarates, Oman, Iran, Syria, and Jordan. Significant global differences in allele frequencies were detected in 9 of the 11 comparisons following sequential Bonferroni corrections. Comparisons with the two independent panels from Saudi Arabia were not significant after applying Bonferroni corrections, however, low P-values (P<0.05) associated with these two contrasts nonetheless suggested that at least slight genetic differences between populations may exist.     

On Some Merits of the Israeli Judgment on Targeted Killings

The recent judgment by the Israeli Supreme Court on targetedkillings is a landmark decision in many respects. Its main meritlies in trying to give precision to, and therefore make concretelyapplicable by the belligerents, some loose standards of internationalhumanitarian law on the conduct of hostilities. In particular,the judgment is significant because (i) it concluded that theissue of targeted killings did not amount to a non-justiciablequestion, (ii) it suggested a novel and imaginative way of narrowingdown the vague scope of imprecise international rules on methodsof combat, and in addition (iii) it set out a range of measuresthat belligerents must take both before and after armed attacksagainst civilians participating in hostilities, so as to avoiddamage to innocent civilians as far as possible. The measuresauthoritatively suggested in the judgment may serve both toturn some unclear international rules into workable standardsof conduct, and also to open the way to the possible prosecutionof individuals (superiors and subordinates) who do not complywith such standards.     

Isolating Target And Neighbourhood Vulnerabilities In Crime Forecasting

Risk terrain modelling (RTM) is emerging as an effective approach for predicting how and where crimes concentrate within cities and regions. However, in its previous applications there is a tendency to overestimate the influence of external environmental risks and preventive factors. Most studies applying RTM have investigated factors associated with the characteristics of the urban setting, whilst only a limited number have focused on identifying the risks associated with the availability and the characteristics of potential targets for criminals. This study uses RTM to identify the spatial risk and protective factors related to residential burglaries in the city of Milan, Italy. Factors considered are the neighbourhood- and target-related contextual factors, the exposure to crime and potential mitigating strategies. The results show that when the place and target of the offence are intrinsically related a target-oriented approach to select factors is useful for increasing the understanding of why some locations are most likely to experience future crimes. Indeed, the peculiarities of the target itself are integral to understan both the decision-making of criminals and the overall level of crime risk. Related policy implications are discussed.     

The Role of Ego-Resiliency as Mediator of the Longitudinal Relationship between Family Socio-Economic Status and School Grades

Family socio-economic status (SES) represents one of the major determinants of youth’s scholastic achievement, and thus it is important to unravel the psychological factors underlining this relation. In this article, we examined youth’s ability to flexibly adapt and, thus, cope with harsh environmental conditions—assessed by the construct of ego-resiliency—as a mediating mechanism in the across-time association between family SES and academic achievement. The longitudinal sample was composed of 265 (56% females) Italian students who were about 13 years old at Time 1 (T1) and about 18 years old at Time 2 (T2). In a structural equation model analysis, family SES significantly predicted ego-resiliency 6 years later while controlling for the latter’s strong longitudinal stability. Students’ school grades at the end of senior high school were also predicted by ego-resiliency assessed at the age of 13, controlling for grades in the last year of junior high school, gender, and initial differences in ages. In accordance with the posited hypothesis, this study provided support for a two-wave meditational model in which the relation between family SES at 13 years and later school grades at 19 years was mediated by ego-resiliency. All in all, results support the argument that being resilient, and thus being able to flexibly adapt one’s own emotional state and resultant behavior, matters to school success.     

Classifying political regimes

This study presents a classification of political regimes as democracies and dictatorships for a set of 141 countries between 1950 or the year of independence and 1990. It improves existing classifications by a better grounding in political theory, an exclusive reliance on observables rather than on subjective judgements, an explicit distinction between systematic and random errors, and a more extensive coverage.