Characterization of lesions in hanging deaths

Hanging is a common method of committing suicide and a routine task in medico-legal autopsies. The hanging mark is the most relevant external sign and its characteristics are well known, but, for unknown reasons, there are major differences in reports on internal findings. We retrospectively studied 228 consecutive cases of hanging deaths. A complete standard autopsy was performed for every case. We investigated the association between the characteristics of the hanging mark and the frequency of bone, cartilage, soft tissue, and vascular injuries with the mode of suspension. Most cases (75.3%) presented some kind of bone or cartilage fracture, but these were unrelated to any of the variables studied. Vascular lesions are clearly more infrequent: intimal injuries were found in the carotid artery (9.1%), the jugular vein (2.2%), and ruptures of the carotid adventitial layer (21.7%). These could be partially associated with the use of a hard fixed noose and body weight.     

Y-chromosome STR haplotypes in three different population groups from Ecuador (South America)

POPULATIONS: Over 102 unrelated Mestizos, 102 Native Amerindian (Kichwas), and 102 African Americans who represent the three largest communities of the country Ecuador (South America).     

Pass the Buck If You Can: How Partisan Competition Triggers Attribution Bias in Multilevel Democracies

Voters’ ability to hold politicians accountable has been shown to be limited in systems of multilevel government. The existence of multiple tiers of government blurs the lines of responsibility, making it more difficult for voters to assign credit or blame for policy performance. However, much less is known about how the vertical division of responsibility affects citizens’ propensity to rationalize responsibility attributions on the basis of group attachment. While these two processes have similar observable implications, they imply markedly different micro-mechanisms. Using experimental and observational data, this paper examines how the partisan division of power moderates the impact of voters’ partisanship and feelings of territorial attachment on attributions of responsibility for the regional economy. Our analyses show that partisan-based attribution bias varies systematically with the partisan context, such that it only emerges in regions where a party other than the national incumbent controls the regional government. We also find that responsibility judgments are rationalized on the basis of territorial identities only when a regional nationalist party is in control of the regional government. Our results contribute to explaining the contextual variations in the strength of regional economic voting and more generally to understanding one of the mechanisms through which low clarity of responsibility reduces government accountability.     

“They Tried to Bury Us”: Scholar Advocacy in the Wake of the DACA Rescission

On September 5, 2017, the Trump Administration announced that it would rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Initiated in 2012 via an Executive Order, DACA sought to provide a provisional fix to the legal status of the nation’s growing number of “Dreamers” – the approximately 1.2 million young adults who have lived the majority of their lives in the United States, but were brought into the country without proper entry documentation. The termination of DACA has presented unique challenges for the 241,000 Dreamers currently enrolled in US colleges and universities. While several institutions proudly declared themselves to be “sanctuary campuses,” this paper focuses on a restrained if not conservative, land-grant university, detailing how two faculty members incorporated scholar-activist and community organizing strategies to support a Dreamer-driven institutional response.

Abbreviation DACA:- Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, ICE:- Immigration and Customs Enforcement, USCIS:- United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, CR:- continuing resolution, CHIP:- Children's Health Insurance Program, DHS:- Department of Homeland Security, TPS:- temporary protected status, NMSU:- New Mexico State University, ORS:- Oregon Revised Statues, CSU:- Colorado State University, FTFT:- first-time, full-time     

The Image is the Message: Instagram Marketing and the 2016 Presidential Primary Season

The 2016 presidential primary candidates expanded their social media marketing campaigns to include the image- and video-centered social network platform Instagram. To explore the role that images play in framing political character development and to identify which images received higher levels of engagement, content analyses were performed on the top seven primary candidates’ Instagram accounts. Results indicate that candidates most frequently employ the ideal candidate frame in their images, which also garnered the highest number of user likes and comments. Results also reveal that among Instagram image attributes, candidates frequently and successfully used text within their images, but filters were inconsistently applied across the candidates.     

Social Media Social Capital,Offline Social Capital,and Citizenship: Exploring Asymmetrical Social Capital Effects

In pursuit of a healthier and participatory democracy, scholars have long established the positive effects of social capital, values derived from resources embedded in social ties with others which characterize the structure of opportunity and action in communities. Today, social media afford members of digital communities the ability to relate in new ways. In these contexts, the question that arises is whether new forms of social capital associated with the use of social media are a mere extension of traditional social capital or if they are in fact a different construct with a unique and distinct palette of attributes and effects. This study introduces social media social capital as a new conceptual and empirical construct to complement face-to-face social capital. Based on a two-wave panel data set collected in the United States, this study tests whether social capital in social media and offline settings are indeed two distinct empirical constructs. Then, the article examines how these two modes of social capital may relate to different types of citizenship online and offline. Results show that social media social capital is empirically distinct from face-to-face social capital. In addition, the two constructs exhibit different patterns of effects over online and offline political participatory behaviors. Results are discussed in light of theoretical developments in the area of social capital and pro-democratic political engagement.     

Traumatic Events and Symptoms Among Mexican Deportees in a Border Community

Research on traumatic events experienced among Mexicans deported from the United States is scant. Using clinical interviews, this study assessed the frequency of traumatic events and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among 47 Mexican deportees in a U.S.-Mexico border community. The majority of participants (98%) reported having experienced one or more traumatic events (M = 9, SD = 5) and nearly half met DSM-IV-TR criteria for PTSD. Meeting criteria for PTSD was associated with a higher number of traumatic events. Results suggest that prevention, intervention, and policy efforts are necessary to improve the well-being of this understudied immigrant subgroup.     

Personal Identity Development in Hispanic Immigrant Adolescents: Links with Positive Psychosocial Functioning,Depressive Symptoms,and Externalizing Problems

The present study was designed to examine trajectories of personal identity coherence and confusion among Hispanic recent-immigrant adolescents, as well as the effects of these trajectories on psychosocial and risk-taking outcomes. Personal identity is extremely important in anchoring young immigrants during a time of acute cultural change. A sample of 302 recently immigrated (5 years or less in the United States at baseline) Hispanic adolescents (M_age?=?14.51 years at baseline; SD?=?0.88 years, range 14–17) from Miami and Los Angeles (47?% girls) completed measures of personal identity coherence and confusion at the first five waves of a six-wave longitudinal study; and reported on positive psychosocial functioning, depressive symptoms, and externalizing problems at baseline and at Time 6. Results indicated that identity coherence increased linearly across time, but that there were no significant changes in confusion over time and no individual differences in confusion trajectories. Higher baseline levels of, and improvements in, coherence predicted higher levels of self-esteem, optimism, and prosocial behavior at the final study timepoint. Higher baseline levels of confusion predicted lower self-esteem, greater depressive symptoms, more aggressive behavior, and more rule breaking at the final study timepoint. These results are discussed in terms of the importance of personal identity for Hispanic immigrant adolescents, and in terms of implications for intervention.     

Setting the agenda: Social influence in the effects of the Human Rights Committee in Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe

Analyzing original data from Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe, this article explores the influence of the Human Rights Committee (HRC) of the United Nations (UN) in the configuration of states' normative agendas and the roles they seek to play. Focusing on the HRC's reporting procedure, the article investigates whether states adjust the substantive content of their periodic reports to mimic the human rights agenda explicitly set by the HRC through its concluding observations reports. The article finds that states take the HRC seriously and play the role of “good,” committed members of the human rights regime, following in their periodic reports the agenda of rights previously set by the HRC. The article, therefore, offers a specific theoretical argument and systematic, original evidence on the potential and the limits of the influence of the organs of the international human rights regime.     

Electoral volatility and the dynamics of electoral reform

Recent elections in Europe have shown that a context of increasing citizen distrust towards democratic institutions may lead to very high levels of electoral volatility and to the emergence of new parties. On the other hand, institutional reforms are sometimes presented as a solution to citizens’ discontent with political institutions. Focusing on a specific type of political institution ? electoral systems ? the question addressed in this study is whether high levels of electoral volatility may trigger electoral reforms. The article investigates the conditions under which reforms affecting the electoral system’s degree of openness to new parties were enacted in 25 European countries between 1945 and 2012. The findings demonstrate that volatility due to the emergence of new parties is the most powerful explanation to account for the introduction of electoral reforms, particularly those that hinder the entry of new parties into the system.