Guidelines for postmortem protocol for ocular investigation of sudden unexplained infant death and suspected physical child abuse

Postmortem examination is a cornerstone in identifying the cause of unexplained sudden death in children. Even in cases of suspected or known abuse, an autopsy may help characterize the nature of the abuse, which is particularly important in the forensic autopsy of children in the first 3 to 4 years of life when inflicted neurotrauma is most common. Forensic examinations are vital in cases that might otherwise be diagnosed as sudden infant death syndrome. The ocular autopsy in particular may demonstrate findings that were not appreciated on antemortem clinical examination. This protocol for postmortem examination of the eyes and orbits was developed to promote more consistent documentation of findings, improved clinical and forensic decision making, and more replicable and coherent research outcomes.     

Psychopathy (PCL-R) in a forensic psychiatric sample of homicide offenders: some reliability issues

Several studies have shown that psychopathy is overrepresented among homicide offenders. There is a consensus that Hare's Psychopathy Checklist-Revised PCL-R is currently the most valid and useful tool for rating psychopathy (e.g., [Fulero, S. M. (1995). Review of the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised. In J. C. Conoley & J. C. Impara (Eds.), Twelfth Mental Measurements Yearbook (pp. 453-454). Lincoln, NE: Buros Institute]). Usually, when making a rating of psychopathy, both an interview and an examination of the subject's files are used. However, it has been discussed what is really required to be able to rate psychopathy in a reliable manner. The aim of the present study was to retrospectively rate the degree of psychopathy in 35 homicide offenders being subjected to forensic psychiatric assessment. These ratings of psychopathy were carried out using forensic psychiatric files and courts'; verdicts only. Another aim was to examine the reliability of PCL-R in this specific Swedish sample of homicide offenders. There was a good agreement between the two raters with respect to the categorical diagnosis of psychopathy (Cohen's kappa=.81, p<.001), which indicates that retrospective ratings of psychopathy are well suited for research purposes. The prevalence of psychopathy among the homicide offenders was 31.4% (using a cut-off score of 30), which means that the construct of psychopathy may contribute to the understanding of the phenomenon of homicide. In the planning of treatment for homicide offenders, a consideration of possible psychopathy is necessary. As criminal psychopaths are known to relapse into violent criminality, it is very important that they are given efficient treatment, placement and management.     

An initial evaluation of stable isotopic characterisation of post-blast plastic debris from improvised explosive devices

A number of two-way radios, similar to those which have been employed to initiate Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), were acquired from a commercial supplier and grouped into four pairs. Samples of plastic material were collected from five distinct regions of each radio and analysed by Infrared and Raman spectroscopy to identify the nature of the material. One radio of each pair was then subjected to detonation with a commercially available plastic explosive. The combination of radio and explosive was considered to be representative of the components of an IED. Following detonation, fragments were recovered and, where possible, identified as specific sampling points of the radio.A combination of δ²H and δ¹³C stable isotopic analysis of material from each of the five sampling points was found to provide a pattern which was characteristic of a given radio and provided a means to associate pairs of radios. When few fragments were recovered, no positive association could be made between the fragments and the paired, undamaged radio. This was attributed, in part, to manufacturing variation in the radios. However, when three or more post-blast fragments were recovered it was possible to associate these with the paired, undamaged radio with a high degree of certainty.     

Elemental analysis of white cotton fiber evidence using solution ICP-MS and laser ablation ICP-MS (LA-ICP-MS)

The purpose of this research is to investigate a method for the forensic elemental analysis of cotton fibers for the purpose of increasing the discrimination between otherwise similar cotton evidence using microwave digestion inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) and laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS). A quadrupole ICP-MS and UV laser ablation (266 nm) instruments were used for the analysis. A cotton standard reference material (IAEA V-9) was used to validate the developed methods producing good accuracy with typically <10% bias and good precision (typically <5% RSD) for the element list: ²⁵Mg, ²⁷Al, ⁵⁵Mn, ⁵⁷Fe, ⁸⁸Sr and ¹³⁷Ba. It was found that the LA-ICP-MS method resulted in improved precision over the solution ICP-MS method. Twenty-four raw cotton samples and five white cotton T-shirts were analyzed with the developed methods. It was also found that all the raw cotton samples from different sources were distinguishable from each other, as were all the cotton T-shirts resulting in zero type I errors and zero type II errors for the pairwise comparisons. The laser ablation method was slightly faster than the solution-based analysis, requiring 3 h for the laser analysis of 10 samples vs. 3.5 h for the solution analysis, including sample preparation time. One additional advantage of the LA-ICP-MS method was the extremely low sample consumption (1.75 μg were consumed vs. 250 mg for the solution-based method) and the fact that the LA samples are amenable for reanalysis.     

The history of women in science a seminar at the University of Regensburg,FRG

We provide here an outline of a course on the role of women in the history of the natural sciences. All students and members of faculty were free to attend. We report our experiences in teaching the courses and some of the literature used. The conclusions we came to on researching this topic are summarised. A combined historical and biographical approach was the most useful. We divided history into epochs in which we examined the cultural political and religious roles of women in society. Then we reported on important women scientists in each period, looking at their autobiographies and summarising, where possible, their scientific contributions. We discussed how the contributions of women scientists are forgotten or suppressed and ways in which the course participants themselves had internalised the ‘androcentric’ view of science. The most important finding for us was that throughout history women scientists were numerous, gifted—and forgotten.