Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)--standardised investigations and classification: recommendations

Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) still accounts for considerable numbers of unexpected infant deaths in many countries. While numerous theories have been advanced to explain these events, it is increasingly clear that this group of infant deaths results from the complex interaction of a variety of heritable and idiosyncratic endogenous factors interacting with exogenous factors. This has been elegantly summarised in the "three hit" or "triple risk" model. Contradictions and lack of consistencies in the literature have arisen from diverse autopsy approaches, variable applications of diagnostic criteria and inconsistent use of definitions. An approach to sudden infant death is outlined with discussion of appropriate tissue sampling, ancillary investigations and the use of controls in research projects. Standardisation of infant death investigations with the application of uniform definitions and protocols will ensure optimal investigation of individual cases and enable international comparisons of trends.     

Autopsy at 2 months after death: brain is satisfactorily preserved for neuropathology

Disclosure of neurological disorders by neuropathological examination may be one important aim of forensic autopsies. There are insufficient data on human brain tissue preservation after prolonged postmortem periods. Here, we describe neuropathological findings in a brain of a 77-year-old woman that was fixed at autopsy 2 months after death. The body had been stored in a cooling chamber at 3 degrees C temperature. Gross inspection of the brain was satisfactorily possible. Histomorphology was excellently preserved. Many histochemical and immunohistochemical stains allowed satisfactory neuropathological evaluation of brain tissue and the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. Nevertheless, some immunohistochemical stainings repeatedly yielded negative or suboptimal results. We conclude that neuropathological examination of human brain tissue extracted from the skull and fixed after prolonged body storage in a cool environment is feasible for forensic diagnosis of neurological disorders even several months after death. However, in such cases the significance of negative immunohistochemical staining results must be interpreted with caution.     

The Ethical Health Lawyer: An Empirical Assessment of Moral Decision Making

Writing in 1999, legal ethics scholar Brad Wendel noted that "[v]ery little empirical work has been done on the moral decision making of lawyers." Indeed, since the mid-1990s, few empirical studies have attempted to explore how attorneys deliberate about ethical dilemmas they encounter in their practice. Moreover, while past research has explored some of the ethical issues confronting lawyers practicing in certain specific areas of practice, no published data exists probing the moral mind of health care lawyers. As signaled by the creation of a regular column "devoted to ethical issues arising in the practice of health law" in the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , the time to address the empirical gap in the professional ethics literature is now. Accordingly, this article presents data collected from 120 health care lawyers. Presenting this population with a number of hypothetical scenarios relating to how they would respond when confronting an ethical dilemma without an obvious solution or when facing a situation in which their personal values were in tension with their professional obligations, this article represents a first step toward better understanding how lawyers who practice in health care settings understand and resolve the moral discomfort they encounter in their professional lives.     

Perceived Justice of Compensation Process for Return-to-Work: Development and Validation of a Scale

The experience of injured workers is influenced by multiple systems—the workplace, the healthcare system, and the workers’ compensation system. Little research has been conducted on the impact of the workers’ compensation system on injured workers’ personal experience and on the justice of the workers’ compensation process. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a measure of the justice of the compensation process. Injured workers (n?=?446) with musculoskeletal injuries, in Ontario, Canada, filing a lost-time claim, completed a telephone survey 6 months post-injury. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted with two separate samples, and concurrent validity was examined. The four hypothesized factors emerged: distributive justice, procedural justice, informational justice, and interpersonal justice factors accounted for 96.3% of the variance. Confirmatory factor analyses had satisfactory fit indices to confirm the initial model. Alpha coefficients ranged from 0.86 to 0.92. Concurrent validity of the scale was supported: relationships of distributive and procedural justice with claim status, claim processing delay, perception of going back to work too soon, duration of work accommodation, and satisfaction with work accommodation were in the expected direction. Workers’ experience of the justice of the compensation process can now be measured with a psychometrically sound and theoretically based instrument. This instrument offers researchers the opportunity to focus on the justice of the compensation process of injured workers. It can increase the attention that policy-makers, compensation management, healthcare providers, and other return-to-work stakeholders give to the impact of the compensation system and provide a broadened view of workers’ experience.     

Measuring the Frequency Occurrence of Handwritten Numeral Characteristics

The premise of this follow‐up sister study to “Measuring the Frequency Occurrence of Handwriting and Handprinting Characteristics” was to collect a representative population sampling of numerals and assess how many participants utilize each of the predetermined characteristics as found in their specimens. A total of 1410 handwriting specimen forms were collected from across the United States and pared to 1025 to obtain a proper representative sample of the U.S. adult population based on the same demographics used in the original 2017 study. This study provides frequency of occurrence proportions and 95% confidence limits for 25 handwritten numeral characteristics. A total of 277 intercharacter pairs of handwritten numeral characteristics were cross‐analyzed for interdependence. The results were that 72.92% of all intercharacter pairs had a coefficient of correlation between ?0.2 and +0.2 in this study.     

Age difference in political decision making: Strategies for evaluating political candidates

To investigate age-related differences in strategies used to evaluate political candidates, an experimental study employed protocol tracing techniques with a computerized information matrix. Forty younger and forty older adults gathered information about and evaluated candidates in national and local elections. Older adults accessed less information but took longer to examine information and make choices. Differences in strategic processing suggest that young adults were more likely to organize their information searches by issues and to eliminate candidates based on issue stances. In contrast, older adults were more likely to organize their information searches by candidates and to engage in satisficing.