A new approach to amino acid racemization in enamel: testing of a less destructive sampling methodology

Aspartic acid racemization has been found to be an accurate measure of age at death for recent forensic material. This paper examines the practicality of using acid etching of the tooth surface to extract amino acids from the enamel for racemization analysis. By serial etching of the tooth and contamination of the teeth with bovine serum albumin prior to etching, the ability of etching to remove contamination was assessed. The destructiveness of the method was visualized and quantified using micro-computed tomography (micro-CT). By bleaching the teeth and by deeper etching it was possible to obtain more consistent values. While etching had little effect on the enamel at the macroscale, it did have an impact at the microscale. The quantities of enamel removed varied depending upon the tooth morphology, but were not large. Acid etching of enamel thus appears to be a promising new method for extracting proteins for amino acid racemization age estimation noninvasively.     

Divesting from Climate Change: The Road to Influence

Is fossil fuels divestment likely to achieve its aims? This article evaluates the rationales for divestment in terms of their capacity to give the campaign influence. It focuses on the direct effects of divestment on financial actors because divestment is a specific means of exerting influence outside of conventional political channels. In seeking to end fossil fuel industries in order to halt climate change, the campaign deploys a variety of arguments to win support and wield influence, namely, the legality of divestment and, indeed, the emerging duty to divest; investors’ moral responsibility to avoid complicity in the fossil fuel economy; investors’ moral responsibility to use their leverage against climate polluters; and the power of financial sanctions to create a business case for abandoning fossil fuels. Although in combination they may be effective, each of these asserted rationales has some limitations that may diminish the influence of the divestment movement. Moreover, the movement does not engage sufficiently with the systemic qualities of finance capitalism that must also be reckoned with in order to address broader patterns of environmental unsustainability. Although the divestment movement aspires to ultimately change government policies on climate change, it may achieve greater influence by also seeking better government regulation of the financial economy.     

Suicidal Fatality from Azide Ingestion

A 35-year-old man ingested an unknown amount of sodium azide and died within 2 h. The postmortem interval was 3 days. No alcohol or drugs were found in the blood and urine. Azide was derivatized in the peripheral blood, urine, and vitreous fluid with propionic anhydride. A portion of the headspace was injected onto a gas chromatograph with a nitrogen–phosphorus detector. Azide was quantitated in the peripheral blood (1.1 μg/mL), urine (7.5 μg/mL), and vitreous (43 μg/mL). The vitreous appears to be a better fluid for azide screening because of slower degradation.     

Meeting the demand for skilled and experienced humanitarian workers

The humanitarian aid sector faces a growing skills shortage, at a time when it aspires to expand the scale, quality, and impact of its response to humanitarian needs. Rapid staff turnover has been identified as one of the major constraints on both staff capacity building and organisational learning. A study undertaken for Oxfam GB supports previous findings that traditional human-resource practices in the humanitarian field, with many staff employed on short-term contracts, have inhibited skills development and constrained programme and organisational learning.     

A discounting framework for regulatory impact analysis

This article presents a methodology designed to facilitate the systematic comparison of alternative discounting procedures for the costs and benefits of industrial regulatory activity. A discounting framework developed by Bradford is adapted for use in the context of industry regulation. Within this framework, the choice among the various discounting procedures is reduced to a choice between assumptions about various economic and financial parameter values. As an illustration of the way in which the framework can be applied, the article includes an examination of the validity of parameter assumptions implied by the discounting approach currently used by regulatory agencies in their analyses of regulations affecting the motor vehicle industry. Several hypothetical programs are analyzed to demonstrate the broad differences in program treatment that might be expected if this current discounting approach were replaced by procedures generated within the framework from more reasonable parameter assumptions. Sensitivity of the benefit/cost calculations to uncertainty about underlying parameters is also briefly discussed.