The Accuracy of Handheld Pre‐Arrest Breath Test Instruments as a Predictor of the Evidential Breath Alcohol Test Results

Drunk driving is a serious threat to public safety. All available and appropriate tools for curbing this threat should be employed to their full extent. The handheld pre‐arrest breath test instrument (PBT) is one tool for identifying the alcohol‐impaired driver and enforcing drunk driving legislation. A set of data was evaluated (n = 1779) where the PBT instrument was employed in drunk driving arrests to develop a multivariate predictive model. When maintained and operated by trained personnel, the PBT provides a reasonable estimate of the evidential test result within the relevant forensic range (95% prediction interval:  ± 0.003 g/210 L). ROC analysis shows that a multivariate model for PBT prediction of the evidentiary alcohol concentration above versus below the legal limit of 0.08 g/210 L has excellent performance with an AUC of 0.96. These results would be of value in evidential hearings seeking to admit the PBT results in drunk driving trials.     

Nondestructive Methods for Recovery of Biological Material from Human Teeth for DNA Extraction

The extraction of DNA from human skeletal remains applied to forensic, and evolutionary studies do not exclude risks, which are to be evaluated when working with unique specimens that could be damaged or even destroyed. In the present study were evaluated several nondestructive methods for recovering DNA instead of the most currently used pulverization method. Three different procedures to access inside the dental pieces (occlusal perforation, cervical perforation, and cervical cut) have been compared with the aim of recovering as many cell remains as possible to carry out a DNA extraction. Given the DNA quantitation results, a method was proposed that consists of a cervical cut to facilitate the access to the pulp cavity and a subsequent filing of the root canals down to the apex of the dental root. This methodology allows the recovery of both mitochondrial and nuclear DNA, with the minimum deterioration for the dental pieces.     

Differences in Handwritings of Schizophrenia Patients and Examination of the Change after Treatment

The aim of this study was to analyze the differences between the handwritings of schizophrenia patients and healthy subjects in addition to the changes that occurred in schizophrenia patients' handwriting in response to the treatment. The test subjects were 29 schizophrenia patients and 29 healthy individuals with the same age, gender, and dominant hand. The changes in the handwritings were examined according to 14 different parameters. On the day of admittance, the percentage of extra letters was 16.7%, and after 7–10 days of hospitalization, it rose to 33.3%. The percentage of skipped words decreased from 29.2% to 16.7% after 7–10 days of hospitalization, and to 10% after 3 weeks. The letters written by schizophrenia patients are significantly larger in height and width compared to the control group. The schizophrenia patients showed a higher incidence of crossed-out letters, adding extra words, missing punctuation as well as missing words.     

The Real Dirt on Responsible Agricultural Investments at Rio+20: Multilateralism versus Corporate Self‐Regulation

This article uses a fine‐grained anthropological and linguistic analysis to expose the routine negotiating practices and power games behind the conclusion of paragraph 115 on responsible agricultural investments during the Rio+20 Conference in June 2012. These negotiations are simultaneously a telling example for the quotidian stuff of international governance—an arena in which much larger forces are played out through small language‐based tactics, and they are representative of an exceptional moment when global multilateral policy making in the frame of the United Nations was challenged by the legitimation of private authority and corporate self‐regulation. Combining anthropological and linguistic methods, the article focused on language use, analyzing the ways in which people interact in a highly coded language, how they “perform,” by exploring, playing with, and twisting the grammatical structures of the spoken language. At issue is the large‐scale appropriation of agricultural land all over the world by multinational corporations, investment funds, and foreign governments.

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Copper toxicity following massive ingestion of coins

Two hundred seventy-five United States coins were discovered in the stomach of a mentally disturbed individual at autopsy. Many coins containing copper were corroded by prolonged contact with gastric juice, with subsequent absorption and deposition of copper in the liver and kidneys. The patient died from complications related to the acute toxic phase of chronic copper poisoning. A discussion of the case, foreign-body ingestion, gastric bezoars and the mechanism of copper toxicity is presented. To our knowledge, this is the first death due to copper intoxication following a massive ingestion of coins.     

Assessing Newspaper Coverage of Corporate Violence: The Dance Hall Fire in Qoteborg, Sweden

The media disproportionately focus on conventional crime while neglecting the impact of corporate misbehavior. The present research examines U.S. newspaper coverage of a deadly fire at a dance hall in Goteborg, Sweden. This particular incident facilitates an examination of how newspapers treat issues involving culpability of conventional offenders (arsonists) and white collar offenders (the owners of the nightclub and the promoters of the dance). It was found that newspapers disproportionately focused on the direct harm associated with the fire, and generally neglected the role played by the organizers/promoters. Suggestions are offered regarding the need for more complete media coverage of crime, particularly white collar crime. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.