Youth Resilience: Can Schools Enhance Youth Factors for Hope,Optimism, and Success?

Resilience research requires attention to the factors that promote youth development and success. Youth success is associated with youth having adults in their lives who care about them and set high expectations for them to succeed; oftentimes these adults are presumed to be the children's parents. Because youth spend a great deal of time in schools, school settings may be a place where youth resilience can be fostered. In 2004, 6th-grade youth in 5 schools in Maricopa County, Arizona, were surveyed to determine if they had factors to promote their resilience. In these schools, teachers had been trained by an agency called Kids at Hope. Kids at Hope presupposes that “all children are capable of success, no exceptions” and offers an alternative paradigm to kids at risk. The results of this research show that youth who believe that they are successful and who are optimistic about themselves and their schools are more likely to find their schools to be places where they can be successful and optimistic.     

Grenzen der ärztlichen Behandlungspflicht bei einwilligungsunfähigen Patienten – Anmerkungen zu OGH 7. 7. 2008, 6 Ob 286/07p

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Rifle wounds: a review of range and location as pertaining to manner of death

Given the prevalence of rimfire and centerfire rifle usage in both suicidal and homicidal cases, there is a paucity of articles in the literature that focus specifically on rifle wounds. Gunshot wounds, in general, have been extensively studied with articles focusing on the types of injuries, weapons used, wound locations and weapon range. We designed a study to examine the characteristics of rifle wounds, including both centerfire and rimfire rifles, especially pertaining to location and range of the wound. All deaths due to rifles examined at the Bexar County Medical Examiner's Office between 1988 and 2004 were reviewed. A total of 509 cases were identified, with 233 suicides and 266 homicides. We found that the average age of suicide victims (41.6 years) tended to be older than that of homicide victims (32.6 years). Suicides tended to be contact wounds to the head whereas homicides most often had multiple wound locations sustained from a distant range. The most common location to the head of suicidal wounds was intraoral whereas homicidal head wounds were more often to the temporoparietal region. We developed odds ratios for assessing the manner of death given a wound location or range; however, we caution that every case should be analyzed based upon it's unique circumstances and not solely its statistical probability.     

A review of blunt force injury homicides of children aged 0 to 5 years in bexar county, Texas, from 1988 to 2009

ABSTRACT: It is essential that clinical physicians, medical personnel, medical examiners, and law enforcement agencies understand the types of injuries seen and demographics of children affected by intentional blunt force as this understanding can be crucial to the death and/or criminal investigations. An understanding of the injuries can also assist in drawing conclusions regarding how those injuries could have been sustained. This study discusses the types and patterns of injuries seen in blunt force homicides in children younger than 6 years. The study found that male infants are more often intentionally injured than are female infants and that fatal head injuries most frequently occur in the first year of life, whereas most fatal thoracoabdominal injuries occur in the first 3 years of life. In children with head injuries, subdural hemorrhage was the most common finding, followed by subarachnoid hemorrhage. In 2.5% of deaths due to head injury, concurrent neck injury was seen, a percentage far lower than previous literature would suggest if shaking was the primary mechanism of injury. Twelve legal confessions were also reviewed, none of which disclosed a pure mechanism of shaking the infant.     

Intoxication due to 1,4-butanediol

We report a case of intoxication resulting from the ingestion of a liquid, sold in the illicit market as "liquid ecstasy," which was found to contain 1,4-butanediol, a metabolic precursor of gamma-hydroxybutiric acid (GHB). Identification of the substance in the liquid was performed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS).The toxicological analysis of blood, urine and gastric content of the victim was performed by immunoassay and gas chromatography with nitrogen-phosphorus detection as screening techniques and by means of GC-MS for confirmation and quantitation of 1,4-butanediol and GHB. The following drug concentrations were found: 82 microg/ml (blood), 401 microg/ml (urine) and 7.4 microg/ml (gastric content) for 1,4-butanediol and 103 microg/ml (blood), 430.0 microg/ml (urine) for GHB. In addition to these, other drugs detected and their blood concentration found in this case were methylenedioxymethylamphetamine (MDMA) 0.23 microg/ml and its metabolite methylenedioxyphenylamphetamine (MDA) 0.10 microg/ml. In the urine, a concentration of 0.10 microg/ml of benzoylecgonine was also found.     

Testing Application of Geographical Information Systems,Forensic Geomorphology and Electrical Resistivity Tomography to Investigate Clandestine Grave Sites in Colombia,South America

Colombian forensic investigators required assistance locating clandestine burials of missing persons related to human right atrocities from 14 years ago. Geoscientific search methods were trialled, including a predictive spatial statistical model, using various input and database information, to select the most likely grave locations in difficult mountainous terrain. Groundwork using forensic geomorphology, near-surface geophysics (ERT) and subsequent probing identified suspect burial positions. One site was in mountainous terrain and the other in former school grounds, both difficult to access and in poor weather conditions. In the mountainous area, a negative resistivity anomaly area was identified and intrusively investigated, found to be a buried rock. In school grounds, after MESP and intelligence were used to identify a burial site, surface depressions were identified, and ERT datasets collected over the highest priority depression; intrusive investigations discovered a hand-dug pit containing animal bones. This approach is suggested for Latin American searches.     

Analyzing Territorial and Sectorial Dimensions of Public–Private Partnerships in Science,Technology, and Innovation policies

The performance of innovation systems depends, to a great extent, on the degree of public–private collaboration they involve. Thus, innovation policies often aim to enhance this collaboration through public–private partnerships. These partnerships are a multidimensional phenomenon whose success depends on factors related to each of their dimensions. This paper proposes the use of an analytical model that reflects the multidimensional nature of public–private partnerships and analyses to what extent they are applied in a specific innovation system in order to identify the territorial and sectorial factors that act as barriers or drivers to use them. This model aims to help policy makers design appropriate public–private partnerships in each context. The case under review is the Spanish innovation system, given that this system has been suffering from a structural lack of collaboration for several decades, despite the implementation of policies aimed to foster this. Thus, if the model works, it should be able to identify key factors that influence greater or more restricted use of the different PPP formulas.     

Accuracy of 3D Scanners in Tooth Mark Analysis

The objective of this study was to compare the accuracy of contact and laser 3D scanners in tooth mark analysis. Ten dental casts were scanned with both 3D scanners. Seven linear measurements were made from the 3D images of dental casts and biting edges generated with DentalPrint© software (University of Granada, Granada, Spain). The uncertainty value for contact 3D scanning was 0.833 for the upper dental cast and 0.660 mm for the lower cast; similar uncertainty values were found for 3D-laser scanning. Slightly higher uncertainty values were obtained for the 3D biting edges generated. The uncertainty values for single measurements ranged from 0.1 to 0.3 mm with the exception of the intercanine distance, in which higher values were obtained. Knowledge of the error rate in the 3D scanning of dental casts and biting edges is especially relevant to be applied in practical forensic cases.     

Manners of Death in Drug‐Related Fatalities in Florida

To understand the mortality patterns among drug users and potential risk factors, we evaluated drug‐related deaths reported to the Florida Medical Examiners Commission from 2001 to 2013, by substances, demographics, and manner of death. The annual drug‐related fatalities increased by 57% from 2001 to 2013 (total n = 100,882); 51.8% were accidental, 7.9% homicide, 18.6% natural, and 19.6% suicide. The different manners of death exhibited distinct demographic profiles and drug composition. The gender gap was more prominent in homicide. Age ≥55 years was more closely associated with natural death and suicide. Age <35 years and central nervous system (CNS) stimulants including amphetamines and cocaine showed higher relative risks for accidental death and homicide, whereas CNS depressants including benzodiazepines, carisoprodol, opioids, and zolpidem were more strongly associated with accidental death and/or suicide. The findings aid in identifying populations more vulnerable to drug‐related deaths, developing targeted interventions and thereby improving efficiency of preventive efforts.     

Responding to the New Europe and the Crisis: The Adaptation of Sub-national Governments' Strategies and its Effects on Inter-governmental Relations in Spain

This article analyses the evolution of the institutional setting that the Spanish multi-level system provides for regional European Union (EU) adaptation, and the effects that recent developments of the EU (the Eastern enlargement, the Treaty reform process and the Euro-zone crisis) have had on the more or less pro-European positions and adaptive strategies of Spanish regions and on inter-governmental arrangements. It thus describes the increasing institutionalization of regional participation and EU policy coordination, both at the domestic and supra-national level, and the evolution of regional strategies, looking at its effects both on the degree of vertical and horizontal coordination, and the actual relative power and discretion of both levels of government. It argues that regional strategies have increasingly become more defensive and less pro-European and that increasing participation in European matters seemed to have favoured multi-lateralism and increased coordination without having produced further centralization until the recent crisis and associated budget consolidation targets induced new coordination requirements and a centralization of power towards the central government and EU authorities. This has, as a side-effect, reinforced some centrifugal tendencies of the system and therefore may affect the operation of IGR.