The significance of gas chromatographic impurity patterns obtained from illicitly produced amphetamine

This paper describes a series of experiments designed to assess the evidential significance of gas chromatographic impurity patterns obtained from illicitly produced amphetamine. The experiments, based on the Leuckart route of amphetamine manufacture, were designed to investigate: the effect of reaction conditions on the production of known impurities, and the possibility that different chemists could produce amphetamine with identical impurity patterns by rigidly following the same synthetic procedure. The study provides strong support for the assumption that, if two illicit samples have the same impurity pattern, they have originated from the same batch.     

Mining Electronic Health Records Data: Domestic Violence and Adverse Health Effects

Intimate partner violence (IPV) often culminates in acute physical injury, sexual assault, and mental health issues. It is crucial to understand the healthcare habits of victims to develop interventions that can drastically improve a victim’s quality of life and prevent future abuse. The objective of this study is to mine de-identified and aggregated Electronic Health Record data to identify women’s health issues that are potentially associated with IPV. In this study we compared health issues of female domestic abuse victims to female non-domestic abuse victims. The Domestic abuse population contained 5870 patients, while the Non-Domestic Abuse population contained 14,315,140 patients. Explorys provides National Big Data from the entire USA. Statistical analysis identified 2429 terms as significantly more prevalent among victims of domestic abuse, compared to the general population. These terms were classified into broad categories, including acute injury, chronic conditions, substance abuse, mental health, disorders, gynecological and pregnancy related problems.     

The determination of toxic metals in simulated stomach contents by energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence analysis and a fatal case of mercury poisoning

Soup is used as a simulated stomach contents matrix to determine the lower level of detection for 16 metals. All of the metals can be detected at the levels which might be expected for acute fatal doses even if the stomach contents are considerably diluted. However where small doses are administered over a prolonged period this method may not be sufficiently sensitive. A case of fatal poisoning by the ingestion of mercuric chloride is described to illustrate the effectiveness of the method. In this case mercury was also detected and determined at highly significant levels in blood and liver by the same technique. This energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence (EDXRF) method is easy to use, rapid and non-destructive.