How Reliable are Parenchymal Tissues for the Evaluation of Carbon Monoxide Poisoning? A Pilot Study

Dealing with burnt bodies, the forensic pathologist must first of all answer the question whether the victim was alive at the moment of the fire. This study aims at clarifying whether some human solid tissues may be reliably used for the forensic diagnosis of Co poisoning on burnt bodies providing no collectable blood during the autopsy. From 34 selected cases, both cardiac blood and parenchymal samples were collected to perform CO‐oxymeter, spectrophotometry, and gas chromatography tests: blood CO estimations (blood COHb% and blood[CO]) and parenchymal[CO] values have been compared with special focus on R values. The solid tissues having the best correlations with blood CO amount turned out to be the lung (R 0.84), the liver (R 0.83), the kidney (R 0.79), and the spleen (R 0.92).     

Microscopic Pattern of Bone Fractures as an Indicator of Blast Trauma: A Pilot Study

The assessment of fractures is a key issue in forensic anthropology; however, very few studies deal with the features of fractures due to explosion in comparison with other traumatic injuries. This study focuses on fractures resulting from blast trauma and two types of blunt force trauma (manual compression and running over), applied to corpses of pigs; 163 osteons were examined within forty fractures by the transmission light microscopy. Blast lesions showed a higher percentage of fracture lines through the Haversian canal, whereas in other types of trauma, the fractures went across the inner lamellae. Significant differences between samples hit by blast energy and those runover or manually compressed were observed (p < 0.05). The frequency of pattern A is significantly higher in exploded bones than in runover and compressed. Microscopic analysis of the fracture line may provide information about the type of trauma, especially for what concerns blast trauma.     

The Political Economy of Green Taxation in OECD Countries

This paper addresses the role of politics in environmental policymaking in OECD countries. The public interest theory of regulation assumes that politicians pursue the public good and employ economically efficient instruments such as Pigouvian taxes to discourage polluting activities. Alternative theories of regulation, however, explain more realistically the environmental policymaking process. The theory developed in this paper argues that the goals of raising revenue and industry competitiveness overwhelm the goal of improving environmental quality when politicians set green taxes. This theory is empirically tested with a political economy model using data on OECD countries. The results suggest that policymakers do not set taxes with a specific concern for the environment, but to generate revenues. The model also demonstrates the concavity of the revenue function with respect to emissions; taxes are raised up to an optimal point beyond which raising them would discourage emissions, and thus revenues. Harmful behavior is not discouraged through the imposition of the taxes, since less healthy populations are taxed less. Emissions generated by industries that are exempted from taxation are offset by the industries that are taxed. When polluting products constitute a high share of the exported products, revenues from environmentally related taxes drop. These results help explaining the lack of environmental orientation of green taxes in the OECD countries.     

EU–China relations in higher education

The internationalization of higher education systems has become critical to the educational success of a country. The purpose of this research is to carry out a study of the growing pace of internationalization in Chinese higher education in the contemporary period. The research focuses on the cooperation between China and Europe, especially the management of transnational projects related to improving collaboration between Chinese and European institutions of higher education. The move to mass higher education in the Chinese context and its implications stand as the starting point of the investigation. The project aims to analyze the main national policies for enhancing the internationalization of higher education both in China and Europe. Then, taking as examples some projects of particular relevance, it will consider the objectives and the consequences of these forms of cooperation and collaboration, especially for the development of the Chinese higher education system. Finally, a concise historical overview of the relations in higher education between China and Europe in the last 20 years will facilitate understanding of the changing role played by Europe in the Chinese context.     

Assessing Candidates at Home and Abroad: A Comparative Analysis of Colombian Expatriates in the 2010 Presidential Elections

This article examines candidate favorability among Colombian expatriates and Colombians in the home country in the 2010 Colombian presidential elections. It analyzes the influence of several socioeconomic, migratory, mobilizing, and contextual factors on candidate appraisal using a large exit poll conducted at Colombian consulates in five cities in the United States and Europe and five cities with high emigration rates in Colombia. Aside from differences in candidate favorability stemming from socioeconomic variables (education, income, and religious affiliation), Colombians living abroad largely evaluate candidates in ways similar to Colombians living in the country.     

The Difficult Task of Assessing Perimortem and Postmortem Fractures on the Skeleton: A Blind Text on 210 Fractures of Known Origin

The distinction between perimortem and postmortem fractures is an important challenge for forensic anthropology. Such a crucial task is presently based on macro‐morphological criteria widely accepted in the scientific community. However, several limits affect these parameters which have not yet been investigated thoroughly. This study aims at highlighting the pitfalls and errors in evaluating perimortem or postmortem fractures. Two trained forensic anthropologists were asked to classify 210 fractures of known origin in four skeletons (three victims of blunt force trauma and one natural death) as perimortem, postmortem, or dubious, twice in 6 months in order to assess intraobserver error also. Results show large errors, ranging from 14.8 to 37% for perimortem fractures and from 5.5 to 14.8% for postmortem ones; more than 80% of errors concerned trabecular bone. This supports the need for more objective and reliable criteria for a correct assessment of peri‐ and postmortem bone fractures.     

The Impact of the Housing Bubble on the Growth of Municipal Debt: Evidence from Spain

The aim of this paper is to analyse the impact of the recent Spanish housing boom and the subsequent burst on local public finances. Particularly, we investigate the effect of the rise and later fall in revenue from urban development on local government debt. Using a sample of the Spanish largest municipalities in the period 2003–2011, we find that debt was substituted by revenue from urban development during boom years and this substitution effect vanished after the burst of the boom. Our results also reveal that local public finances have worsened after the burst of the housing bubble since now they have larger current spending and smaller savings.     

Applicability of Cranial Models in Urethane Resin and Foam as a Substitute for Bone: Are Synthetic Materials Reliable?

As literature is poor in functional synthetic cranial models, in this study, synthetic handmade models of cranial vaults were produced in two different materials (a urethane resin and a self‐hardening foam), from multiple bone specimens (eight original cranial vaults: four human and four swine), in order to test their resemblance to bone structure in behavior, during fracture formation. All the vaults were mechanically tested with a 2‐kg impact weight and filmed with a high‐speed camera. Fracture patterns were homogeneous in all swine vaults and heterogeneous in human vaults, with resin fractures more similar to bone fractures. Mean fracture latency time extrapolated by videos were of 0.75 msec (bone), 1.5 msec (resin), 5.12 msec (foam) for human vaults and of 0.625 msec (bone), 1.87 msec (resin), 3.75 msec (foam) for swine vaults. These data showed that resin models are more similar to bone than foam reproductions, but that synthetic material may behave quite differently from bone as concerns fracture latency times.     

Examination of the consistency of interviewer performance across three distinct interview contexts

Abstract

The current study examined the consistency of investigative interviewers' performance (n=31) across three distinct interview paradigms: (a) a mock interview where an adult actor played the role of a child recalling abuse, (b) a mock interview where a school child recalled an innocuous event that was staged at the child's school, and (c) a field interview where the interviewer elicited a statement of abuse from a child. Performance was measured by calculating the proportion of open-ended and leading questions, and by eliciting expert ratings of the presence of a range of problem behaviours commonly exhibited by interviewers. Overall, the performance of individual interviewers was relatively stable across the tasks. Heterogeneity in stability, however, differed according to the type of question and the nature of the event being examined. In particular, the mock interview paradigm where the adult acted the role of an alleged child abuse victim produced a measure of performance that was more similar to the field interview than the interview where a school child recalled an innocuous event. The implications of the findings for trainers, and directions for future research, are discussed.