Rupture of splenic artery aneurysm.

Three cases of death from splenic artery aneurysm rupture were encountered from 1988 to 1991 at the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office. In two cases, cocaine was detected in the blood and was believed to have precipitated the rupture. Toxicologic testing for cocaine should be performed in all cases of splenic artery aneurysm rupture and its presence should be interpreted properly as contributory rather than incidental to death.     

Hydromorphone detected in bile following hydrocodone ingestion

Two similar cases are reported here in which Tussionex, a preparation containing hydrocodone and phenyltoloxamine, caused or contributed to death. Toxicological analyses revealed a high concentration ratio of hydromorphone to hydrocodone in the bile in both cases. It is postulated that the finding of hydromorphone is due to the metabolism of hydrocodone.     

The power of presidency in UN climate change negotiations: comparison between Denmark and Mexico

In December 2010, the 16th Conference of Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ended with adopting Cancun Agreements as official decisions under the UN process. The international community determined the meeting a success. This was a substantial change compared to the previous year’s Copenhagen climate conference, which failed to reach consensus at the official level and thus having come under severe criticism as “diplomatic failure.” This article aims to explain the stark contrast between the two consecutive COP meetings and argues that the leadership style of the president of the conference is one important factor propelling negotiations forward. While the current literature scarcely addresses the role of the president, this article explores multiple variables that condition the president’s effectiveness in moving negotiations forward. This article concludes that the Mexican government successfully chaired the negotiations with excellent agenda management and process management capability, which the Danish government lacked. In particular, its transparent and embracing manner in handling subgroup meetings and the production of a single negotiation text facilitated trust among negotiators, which in turn made the parties tend to cooperate better. More importantly, the case study reveals that the Mexican government had a significant influence on given conditions of the negotiation process, such as the international environment surrounding the negotiation and the decision-making rules.     

Reviews

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Quest for a stronger regional leadership and an upgraded global profile

The Korean economy has suffered two major economic crises over the past 15?years — the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the 2008 global financial crisis. After analyzing both the changes in policy environments and Korea’s policy responses, the article argues that the ongoing global financial crisis provided a welcomed opportunity for Korea to increase its regional and global influence. Korea’s regional leadership has been strengthened especially in promoting the “development” issue in a number of international forums and in establishing a more effective crisis-prevention framework in the Asian region. As the host country of the 5th G20 Summit Meeting in 2010, Korea initiated a number of global issues, such as “development”, “global financial safety net”, “green growth strategy”, and has been successful in fortifying its position in the global arena. As a result, the global profile of Korea appears to have been raised both substantially and substantively.     

Direct STR amplification from whole blood and blood- or saliva-spotted FTA without DNA purification

The DNA purification step has been thought to be essential for typing of STR DNA. However, this process is time-consuming, and there is a risk of unexpected cross-contamination during purification. We report a new method for direct short tandem repeat (STR) amplification using a newly developed direct PCR buffer, AnyDirect, which can amplify STR loci from whole blood and blood- or saliva-spotted FTA cards without DNA purification. The autosomal and Y chromosomal STR loci were analyzed for whole blood and blood or saliva spots of random individuals, followed by comparison of the results with those of corresponding purified DNA. The results from whole blood and blood spots showed perfect concordance with those from purified DNA without allele or locus drop-out. However, in the case of saliva spots, no amplification or locus drop-out was observed in some of the samples, which offers a topic for further study. Additionally, some commercial hot-start DNA polymerases other than AmpliTaq Gold DNA polymerase were also found to be compatible with this buffer system. Therefore, this direct PCR buffer was demonstrated to be useful for fast forensic DNA analysis or criminal DNA databases for which there is no need to store DNA samples.