The use of moxibustion scars in the identification of individuals in forensic medicine

The use of moxibustion today does not only take place in Eastern Asia, but recently also in Europe and the United States. Moxibustion scars are often seen in autopsy cases in Japan. However, no reports of the use of moxibustion in autopsy cases have been reported. This paper reports on an autopsy case in which moxibustion scars were used to extrapolate on the past symptoms of the deceased, date of therapy and the location of the moxibustion clinic which administered the moxibustion.     

Transactional Relations between Motivational Beliefs and Help Seeking from Teachers and Peers across Adolescence

Adolescents often avoid seeking academic help when needed, making it important to understand the motivational processes that support help seeking behavior. Using expectancy-value theory as a framework, this study examined transactional relations between motivational beliefs (i.e., academic self-concept or academic importance) and seeking help from teachers and peers across adolescence (i.e., from approximately age 12 to 17 years). Data were collected from 1479 adolescents (49% female; 61.9% African American, 31.2% European American, 6.9% other race). Analyses were conducted with cross-lagged panel models using three waves of data from seventh, ninth, and eleventh grade. Results indicated that both academic self-concept and academic importance were associated with increases in teacher help seeking in earlier adolescence, but were associated only with increases in peer help seeking in later adolescence. Help-seeking behavior positively influenced motivational beliefs, with teacher help seeking increasing academic self-concept earlier in adolescence and peer help seeking increasing academic importance later in adolescence. These transactional relations differed by adolescents’ prior achievement and racial background, but not by adolescents’ gender.     

Applying Crime Prediction Techniques to Japan: A Comparison Between Risk Terrain Modeling and Other Methods

In recent years, the field of crime prediction has drawn increasing attention in Japan. However, predicting crime in Japan is especially challenging because the crime rate is considerably lower than that of other developed countries, making the development of a statistical model for crime prediction quite difficult. Risk terrain modeling (RTM) may be the most suitable method, as it depends mainly on the environmental factors associated with crime and does not require past crime data. In this study, we applied RTM to cases of theft from vehicles in Fukuoka, Japan, in 2014 and evaluated the predictive performance (hit rate and predictive accuracy index) in comparison to other crime prediction techniques, including KDE, ProMap, and SEPP, which use past crime occurrences to predict future crime. RTM was approximately twice as effective as the other techniques. Based on the results, we discuss the merits of and drawbacks to using RTM in Japan.     

Age estimation using cytochrome c oxidase activity analysis

Recently, in the field of forensic medicine the number of unidentified cadavers has increased due to mass disasters and international terrorism. In addition to the conventional anthropological methods, a simple and precise method to estimate the age of these unidentified cadavers to assist in the personal identification is necessary. On the other hand, many researchers have reported that mitochondrial respiratory activity decreases with aging because of the production of reactive oxidative species in the process of ATP generation. Therefore, it may be possible for us to estimate human age by analyzing mitochondrial activity. In this report we attempted to analyze cytochrome c oxidase (CCO) activity, and the amount of protein and mRNA expression in various aged rats. The age of human subjects was estimated through the analysis of human CCO activity from 28 actual forensic cases. The CCO activity, the amount of protein and the mRNA expression increased in the 3rd week and decreased afterwards in rats. Furthermore, human CCO activity was decreased gradually with aging. Therefore, CCO activity analysis may be useful for age estimation in forensic cases.