Early Signs of Fracture Repair in the Human Rib Cage: Implications for Forensic Casework

The decomposed body of a woman discovered beneath a collapsed structure was examined at the C.A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory. Despite a mix of rib fractures with and without indications of healing, it is most likely that all fractures occurred as a result of a single, compressive event. Signs of intramembranous, and possibly direct, fracture healing at the incomplete fractures without signs of endochondral ossification at the complete fractures suggest the individual died very shortly—but not immediately—after injury. Given the case circumstances, the findings inform immediate cause of death. This case study highlights that differential healing as a result of a single event is possible. Further, it illustrates the importance of careful examination of micro‐discontinuities/cracks that can occur in association with major fractures. Fracture healing and dating data are discussed, as is the possible need for critical evaluation of the antemortem/perimortem boundary.     

Profiling the scent of weathered training aids for blood-detection dogs

At outdoor crime scenes, cadaver-detection and blood-detection dogs may be tasked with locating blood that is days, weeks or months old. Although it is known that the odour profile of blood will change during this time, it is currently unknown how the profile changes when exposed to the environment. Such variables must be studied in order to understand when the odour profile is no longer detectable by the scent-detection dogs and other crime scene tools should be implemented. In this study, blood was deposited onto concrete and varnished wood surfaces and weathered in an outdoor environment over a three-month period. Headspace samples were collected using solid phase microextraction (SPME) and analysed using comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography – time-of-flight mass spectrometry (GC×GC–TOFMS). The chemical odour profiles were compared with the behavioural responses of cadaver-detection and blood-detection dogs during training. Data interpretation using principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) established that the blood odour could no longer be detected using SPME–GC×GC–TOFMS after two months of weathering on both surfaces. Conversely, the blood-detection dogs had difficulty locating the blood samples after one month of weathering on concrete and after one week of weathering on varnished wood. The scent-detection dogs evaluated herein had not been previously exposed to environmentally weathered blood samples during training. Given that this study was conducted to test the dogs' baseline abilities, it is expected that with repeated exposure, the dogs' capabilities would likely improve. The knowledge gained from this study can assist in providing law enforcement with more accurate training aids for blood-detection dogs and can improve their efficiency when deployed to outdoor crime scenes.     

Children,COVID, and confusion: How frontline workers cope with the challenges of vaccine mandates

With the emergence of COVID-19, many governments around the world co-oped non-health actors into enforcing comprehensive mandatory vaccination policies. Implementing these policies can be challenging, creating irreconcilable goals and problems with knowledge and understanding of areas outside the implementers’ direct field of expertise or scope of work. We know very little about how such frontline workers cope with these challenges associated with implementing policies whose goals lie well outside their remit (which we describe as generating exogenous policy pressures), and what this means for the operation of the policies. This article uses policies in place prior to the pandemic to fill this gap. It examines attitudes and experiences of frontline childcare educators who implement Australia's No Jab, No Play childhood vaccine mandate policies within the states of New South Wales, Queensland, and Victoria. Through qualitative analysis of interview and focus group data, we find that these frontline workers cope with moral conflict, confusion, and a lack of knowledge by moving against clients: they rigidly follow the rules beyond legislative requirements, and sometimes break them, generating a new coping category we call ‘rigid rule breaking’. However, their need to employ coping strategies is informed by the extent to which government has designed the policy to coerce the behaviour of the providers, families, or both. The implementation of more coercive variants of No Jab, No Play policies deviates more from what legislators intended, while providers given scope to make their own decisions about enrolling unvaccinated children report satisfaction in their decision-making.

Points for practitioners

• Australian state mandatory vaccination policies generally require childcare providers to exclude unvaccinated children.
• Street level bureaucrats face pressures when implementing coercive policies exogenous to their remit.
• They may simplify policy implementation in ways that counter governments’ goals.
• Actors given more discretion about passing on coercion to policy targets demonstrate better understanding and ownership of policies.