Identifying chop marks on cremated bone: a preliminary study

The purpose of this analysis is to evaluate the effects of burning on hacking trauma inflicted with a cleaver and to assess the diagnostic potential of cleaver marks exposed to fire. Thirty pig forelimbs (radius and ulna) and 30 beef ribs were each subjected to five blows with a cleaver and five cuts with a knife prior to burning in an outdoor fire. Bones were deliberately agitated to ensure maximum cremation and induce fragmentation. Results indicate that hacking weakens bone, making fire-induced fragmentation more likely at the sites of trauma. Chop marks were easily identified on burned bone, their characteristics largely unaffected by cremation.     

HbA1c as a postmortem tool to identify glycemic control

Estimates suggest that more than 5A million U.S. citizens unknowingly have diabetes and are at increased risk of morbidity and mortality. We evaluated an immunoturbidimetric measurement of glycated hemoglobin (%HbA1c) as a postmortem tool to identify such individuals. Although postmortem samples undergo some degradation, the effects are not sufficient to invalidate the use of the test or method. Using two study populations whose medical history of diabetes was known, we found the mean %HbA1c of the non-diabetics (5.8+/-0.3) to be statistically different from that of the diabetics (12.4+/-2.8). For the population whose disease status was unknown, the %HbA1c ranged from 4.7 to 16.8. For six unknowns whose values exceeded 7.0%. the mean was 11.7%, which did not differ statistically from the diabetic mean (p = 0.6615). These studies suggest that postmortem blood samples can be used to characterize HbA1c values.     

A shift towards collaboration: Examining practitioner's economic development practices in Ontario during the COVID-19 pandemic

Regional collaboration has been suggested as a more effective way to promote economic development than competitive approaches. In Ontario, despite attempts by the provincial government to encourage regional collaboration, research finds that municipalities are still engaging in inter-territorial competition. In this article, we conducted interviews with thirty-seven practitioners to determine if economic development practices in Ontario have shifted towards more collaborative approaches during the COVID-19 pandemic. The article finds that regional collaboration, as an economic development practice, has intensified in the province during the recent pandemic. Practitioners noted three reasons for engaging in regional collaboration: pool resources, reduce duplication, and complete regionally task-oriented goals.     

Land tenure regimes and state structure in rural Africa: implications for forms of resistance to large-scale land acquisitions by outsiders

This paper argues for seeing African land tenure regimes as institutional configurations that have been defined and redefined as part of state-building projects. Land regimes have built state authority in the rural areas, fixed populations in rural territories, and organised rural society into political collectivities subject to central control. Land tenure regimes can be understood as varying across subnational jurisdictions (rather than as invariant across space) in ways that can be grasped in terms of a conceptual distinction between neo-customary and statist forms (rather than as infinitely diverse). Differences between the two have implications for the character of political authority in the rural areas, the nature of political identities and community structure, and the nature of property and land claims. These political effects are visible in differences in the forms of local protest and resistance to commercial land acquisitions in peri-urban Kumasi, Ghana, where a neo-customary land regime prevails, and the Kiru Valley of northern Tanzania, where land institutions are decidedly statist.     

Injuries of the Head from Backface Deformation of Ballistic Protective Helmets Under Ballistic Impact

Modern ballistic helmets defeat penetrating bullets by energy transfer from the projectile to the helmet, producing helmet deformation. This deformation may cause severe injuries without completely perforating the helmet, termed “behind armor blunt trauma” (BABT). As helmets become lighter, the likelihood of larger helmet backface deformation under ballistic impact increases. To characterize the potential for BABT, seven postmortem human head/neck specimens wearing a ballistic protective helmet were exposed to nonperforating impact, using a 9 mm, full metal jacket, 124 grain bullet with velocities of 400–460 m/s. An increasing trend of injury severity was observed, ranging from simple linear fractures to combinations of linear and depressed fractures. Overall, the ability to identify skull fractures resulting from BABT can be used in forensic investigations. Our results demonstrate a high risk of skull fracture due to BABT and necessitate the prevention of BABT as a design factor in future generations of protective gear.     

Gender Determination of Adult Individuals by Three‐Dimensional Modeling of Canines

Gender determination is a fundamental issue in forensic anthropology. Many techniques based on bone and dental remains have been proposed. It is not always possible to implement the techniques using bones, but teeth are often perfectly preserved. It has been demonstrated that the canine has the greatest sexual dimorphism, and the aim of this work was to provide an easy and accurate dental technique for determining the gender in the absence of other skeletal elements. The sample was composed of 210 CT scans with four healthy canines. The 840 canines were modeled using MIMICS^® 10.01 software. The total volume of each tooth was determined. Seven mathematical models were determined by binary logistic regressions and ranked in order of relative performance. The seven proposed predictive models thus performed (0.910 ≤ AUC ≤ 0.938), with overall rates of correct predictions between 82.38 and 85.24%. The 4‐canine model is the most powerful for predicting the gender.     

Exploring the Impacts of Ordinary Laboratory Alterations During Forensic DNA Processing on Peak Height Variation,Thresholds, and Probability of Dropout,

Impacts of validation design on DNA signal were explored, and the level of variation introduced by injection, capillary changes, amplification, and kit lot was surveyed by examining a set of replicate samples ranging in mass from 0.25 to 0.008 ng. The variations in peak height, heterozygous balance, dropout probabilities, and baseline noise were compared using common statistical techniques. Data indicate that amplification is the source of the majority of the variation observed in the peak heights, followed by capillary lots. The use of different amplification kit lots did not introduce variability into the peak heights, heterozygous balance, dropout, or baseline. Thus, if data from case samples run over a significant time period are not available during validation, the validation must be designed to, at a minimum, include the amplification of multiple samples of varying quantity, with known genotype, amplified and run over an extended period of time using multiple pipettes and capillaries.