Using FastID to analyze complex SNP mixtures from indoor dust

Forensically relevant single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) can provide valuable supplemental information to short tandem repeats (STRs) for investigative leads, and genotyping can now be streamlined using massively parallel sequencing (MPS). Dust is an attractive evidence source, as it accumulates on undisturbed surfaces, often is overlooked by perpetrators, and contains sufficient human DNA for analysis. To assess whether SNPs genotyped from indoor dust using MPS could be used to detect known household occupants, 13 households were recruited and provided buccal samples from each occupant and dust from five predefined indoor locations. Thermo Fisher Scientific Precision ID Identity and Ancestry Panels were utilized for SNP genotyping, and sequencing was completed using Illumina^® chemistry. FastID, a software developed to permit mixture analysis and identity searching, was used to assess whether known occupants could be detected from associated household dust samples. A modified “subtraction” method was also used in FastID to estimate the percentage of alleles in each dust sample contributed by known and unknown occupants. On average, 72% of autosomal SNPs were recovered from dust samples. When using FastID, (a) 93% of known occupants were detected in at least one indoor dust sample and could not be excluded as contributors to the mixture, and (b) non-contributor alleles were detected in 54% of dust samples (29 ± 11 alleles per dust sample). Overall, this study highlights the potential of analyzing human DNA present in indoor dust to detect known household occupants, which could be valuable for investigative leads.     

Escherichia coli,Corporate Discipline and the Failure of the Sewer State

Recent panics over adulterated beef have led the US federal government to institute what it calls a ‘risk-based, science-based’ approach to food safety. Rather than having federal inspectors monitoring carcasses for microbial contamination, the USDA has implemented a system known as HACCP that asks firms to regulate their own production processes. HACCP is an incidence of audit, a new method of governmentality widely used by state agencies. This paper argues that although ‘sewer states’ try to create trust in government by eliminating contamination, audit-based systems paradoxically create anxiety by highlighting overflows of filth and ‘zones of wildness’ where contamination is rampant.     

Deaths Involving Methylenedioxypyrovalerone (MDPV) in Upper East Tennessee

Two deaths involving 3, 4‐methylenedioxypyrovalerone (MDPV) are reported. MDPV is a synthetic cathinone stimulant found in “bath salts” with neurological and cardiovascular toxicity. Biological specimens were analyzed for MDPV by GC/MS and LC/MS. A White man was found dead with signs of nausea and vomiting after repeatedly abusing bath salts during a weekend binge. Femoral venous blood and urine had MDPV concentrations of 39 ng/mL and 760 ng/mL. The second fatality was a White man with a history of drug and bath salt abuse found dead at a scene in total disarray after exhibiting fits of anger and psychotic behavior. Femoral venous blood and urine had MDPV concentrations of 130 ng/mL and 3800 ng/mL. The blood and urine MDPV concentrations are within the reported recreational concentration ranges (blood 24–241 ng/mL and urine 34–3900 ng/mL). Both decedents’ deaths were attributed to relevant natural causes in a setting of MDPV abuse.     

Adult child-parent bonds and life course criminality

Parents and parenting practices are often implicated as predictors of early childhood offending in criminological research, but little is known about the role of parents in adulthood in promoting or inhibiting criminal behavior. As juveniles mature into adult roles, parents also continue to mature and interact with their children in numerous roles throughout the life course. Unlike peers and romantic partners, parents are not easily discarded. Adults who have built a good foundation with their parents, then, possess additional social capital that has the potential to better adult life course outcomes, including criminal behavior. Social bonds formed within romantic relationships and stable employment have been the dominant factors identified within criminological literature in promoting criminal desistance, but in today's society with high rates of divorce and an unstable low-skilled job market, parents of origin may be an important stabilizing force in the lives of adults, particularly those lacking other conventional bonds. Using three waves of data from the Ohio Lifecourse Study, a project that spans some twenty-one years, the findings showed that strong relationships with parents are a significant predictor of criminal desistance for adult children, mainly through the emotional benefits these relationships have for the adult children. Furthermore, the data revealed that the adult child-parent relationship is a stronger predictor of desistance among the subjects with poor romantic relationship bonds. Implications for the life course theory are discussed.     

Accuracy and Reliability of Total Body Mass Estimation Techniques from Stature and Bi‐iliac Breadth in Non‐Hispanic U.S. Whites from the Bass Donated Skeletal Collection

This paper tests the fidelity of a recent method that used the NHANES III dataset as a proxy to estimate total body mass from stature and bi‐iliac breadth in U.S. White males and females. The bi‐iliac breadths of 230 males and 152 females identified as non‐Hispanic U.S. White from the Bass Donated Skeletal Collection were measured, and along with stature from predonor paperwork, total body mass estimates were calculated and then compared to body masses recorded on predonor paperwork. Male and female samples were subdivided by body mass index (BMI [kg/m²]) categories established by the World Health Organization. Our results suggest that total body mass estimates can be accurately assessed provided that the individual is within 18.50 ≤ BMI ≤ 29.99 for White males and 18.50 ≤ BMI ≤ 24.99 for White females. Recommendations on how to report total body mass estimates are also presented.     

The formation of in-formation by the US military: articulation and enactment of infomanic threat imaginaries on the immaterial battlefield of perception

This article explores the role of perception management as a doctrinal concept in the construction and deconstruction of threats. Threat construction involves a continual, reciprocal and constitutive relationship between the attribution of meaning and practice. It takes place in an environment changed by the multiple forces of the so-called information revolution, in which discursive links are forged between technology and victory as well as between scientific progress and military superiority. Through articulation and enactment, information and information technology are represented as both threatening and threatened in three dimensions: dependency on information as data, possible loss of information superiority, and loss of control over information as image. The enemy ‘Other’ in these threat constructions is everywhere and nowhere at the same time, and is seen as being greatly empowered by the same tools that empower the United States military establishment. But while, for many military actors, regaining control in the information domain through technological innovation seems more or less straightforward, the immaterial battlefield of perception proves harder to master. We purport that military strategists do not seem to fully grasp the illusionary nature of the belief that the information space is a thing to be shaped at will and without restrictions.     

Tenderness,for Lynda Hart

Pedro Almodóvar and Judith Butler's respective projects have long shared an interest in the performativity of gender. More recently, Butler has turned her attention to thinking of rupture as constitutive of identity. Talk to Her reveals a similar turn in the director's work. This essay argues that Talk to Her employs the figure of a comatose woman who awakens in order to investigate the condition of wakefulness as a newly achieved consciousness. In doing so, the director also investigates the parameters of his own authorial condition: alternately embodied and disembodied, he reveals it to be effectively dispossessed. This essay rotates around the opening five minutes of the film, which introduce, in parallel, the space of the theater and that of the hospital–one a space of silence and the other a space for ‘talk,’ a place where the impetus of narrative cures. I argue that these two spaces underscore our condition of existing as bodies. I furthermore consider the role that melodrama–a genre described by its inclination toward embodiment, muteness, and excess–plays in articulating these themes.     

On the Prospects of a Return to Keynes: Taking Keynes’s Political Philosophy Seriously

This article addresses the prospects of a “return to Keynes” in terms of Keynes's own philosophy. It shows that Keynes's moral and political philosophy provide little guide to how Keynesian economics might now be achieved. Keynes's gradualist reformism, derived from both Burke and Moore, leaves a gulf between his economic agenda and the means of its implementation, which is widened in attempts to transpose his proposals onto the global political economy of the 21st century. Keynes's faith in elite intuition and enlightened rule are never securely established and are undermined by his own insights into uncertainty. However, the priority of the short-run and Keynes's depictions of organic unity suggest potential if underdeveloped avenues for alternative social choices and policy re-direction.