Toolmark Identification of a Mattock to a Clod of Soil from a Grave

Abstract: At a recent bushland gravesite that contained a deceased male, a clod of soil displaying a striated toolmark was collected during the excavation of the grave. This clod was preserved, and the mark was cast using Mikrosil?. Shovels and a mattock, which had been discarded by the suspects, were subsequently found at another location. A toolmark comparison identified the hoe end of the mattock head as having produced the striated toolmark.     

Parallel imports, repackaging of pharmaceuticals, and the forfeiture defence under Article 242 of the German Civil Code

Trade mark owners cannot legitimately oppose further commercializationof repackaged pharmaceuticals if they fail to object in a timelymanner to a new type of repackaging after being notified ofit by a parallel importer.     

Impacts of abstinence education on teen sexual activity, risk of pregnancy, and risk of sexually transmitted diseases.

This paper examines the impacts of four abstinence-only education programs on adolescent sexual activity and risks of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Based on an experimental design, the impact analysis uses survey data collected in 2005 and early 2006 from more than 2,000 teens who had been randomly assigned to either a program group that was eligible to participate in one of the four programs or a control group that was not. The findings show no significant impact on teen sexual activity, no differences in rates of unprotected sex, and some impacts on knowledge of STDs and perceived effectiveness of condoms and birth control pills     

Psychological Injury: Systems, Change Processes, Development

This paper presents a model of chronic pain [Young and Chapman (Pain, affect, nonlinear dynamical systems, and chronic pain: Bringing order to disorder. In G. Young, A. W. Kane, & K. Nicholson (Eds.), Causality of psychological injury: Presenting evidence in court (pp. 197–241). New York: Springer, 2007)]. It includes extensive coverage of the systems perspective. The paper expands the model to medically unexplained symptoms and provides a developmental model of how these may unfold and influence adult presentation after events such as accidents. Similarly, the model is examined for the developmental roots of personality disorder. The paper examines other threats to validity of diagnosis in cases of psychological injury.     

Rebuilding the past: health care reform in post-Katrina Louisiana

After Hurricane Katrina, there was good reason to believe that a gaping window of opportunity had opened for Louisiana to revamp its safety-net health care system. But two years of discussions among stakeholders within Louisiana and extensive negotiations with federal officials resulted in no such change. This article argues that any explanation for this outcome needs to incorporate both structure and process. In terms of structure, the rules of the Medicaid disproportionate-share hospital (DSH) program give states substantial independent authority to decide which hospitals to fund. Federal authorities could not force Louisiana, which had historically turned its DSH money over to the state hospital system, to redirect it toward an insurance expansion. In the process of negotiation after Katrina, those who defended the institutions wedded to the prestorm status quo conducted a better strategy than their challengers. They narrowed the purview of the Louisiana Health Care Redesign Collaborative, set up to propose changes in the safety net to the federal government, such that the question of whether to rebuild Charity Hospital in New Orleans was off the table. Meanwhile, on a separate track, the state and the Department of Veterans Affairs successfully pursued a plan to jointly build replacement hospitals.     

Chronic Pain in the DSM-IV and the DSM-5 Draft: The Pain of It All

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, DSM-IV-TR (American Psychiatric Association 2000) includes the diagnosis of pain disorder, and it has been revised in major ways in the DSM-5 draft (American Psychiatric Association 2010). Pain disorder has been relegated as a specifier of the new diagnosis of complex somatic symptom disorder. It cannot be diagnosed prior to 6 months of the pain’s onset. Also, there are still the pejorative connotations with which the disorder is associated. In terms of treatment, it might be more difficult to get treatment plans accepted as a result of the changes, and in terms of the legal arena, it might prove more difficult to have the disorder serve as the basis of action in legal proceedings.