Distribution of D1S80 alleles in the Bahrainian population

This study demonstrates that the locus D1S80 is highly polymorphic in the Bahrainian population. There were 24 different D1S80 alleles and 51 distinct genotypes observed in 198 Bahrainians. There was one allele observed that was smaller than the 14 repeat allele. This data set meets the Hardy-Weinberg expectations (HWE) and could be a useful marker for parentage testing and forensic applications.     

Beliefs about Wife Beating among Medical Students from Turkey

The paper presents a study conducted among 173 Turkish medical students, which examined their beliefs about wife beating through a self-administered questionnaire. An integrative conceptual framework was tested as the basis for explaining the students’ beliefs. The results revealed that between 4.5 and 38.7% of the participants justified wife beating, between 3.5 and 5.3% of them tended to believe that battered women benefit from beating, and between 4.7 and 28.5% of them tended to believe that battered women are responsible for their beating. In addition, between 68.4 and 90.6% of the students expressed willingness to help battered women, and although nearly half of them perceived the violent husbands as responsible for their behavior, only about one-quarter of them supported punishing violent husbands. The results also indicate that significant amounts of the variance in students’ beliefs about wife beating can be attributed to their patriarchal ideology toward family life and to their exposure to family violence during childhood and adolescence. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the results for future research, theory development, and training of medical students. Both authors contributed equally to this paper. The order of the names does not indicate seniority of either author.     

Young Chinese consumers' brand perception; the role of mianzi as moderator

The basic purpose of this study was to investigate the role of exposure and past experience on consumers' brand perception, as mediated by three variables (perceived quality, brand recall, and satisfaction) and moderated by mianzi. Using data collected from a survey of 331 customers, brand perception models for two diverse kinds of products (high and low involvement) were tested. SmartPLS structural equation modeling was applied to produce models for both types of products. Exposure and experience significantly influences brand perception in different product categories, which suggests that customers perceive both high and low involvement. Our study also established that mianzi has a significant moderating role in high‐involvement product category. Ultimately, the findings suggest significant differences in the brand perception of product types with respect to mianzi and the mediational role of perceived quality and satisfaction, providing a structure for future research on brand perception.     

Impact of financial leverage on sustainable growth,market performance,and profitability

Economic Change and Restructuring - The purpose of this study was to measure the impact of financial leverage on the performance of 424 Pakistani nonfinancial listed companies over the...     

A Relationship Beyond The Realm of Diplomacy

The recently concluded visit to Pakistan by President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping has surely been instrumental for exponential expansion in the bilateral relations between the two countries and has elevated them to a new level of abiding strategic cooperation that holds the promise of not only serving the geo-political,economic and security interests of both of them but also the South Asian region as well as Central Asia.     

Use of thermal drone in detection and assessment of larval mass temperature in decomposed rabbit carcasses

Manual ground searches and cadaver dogs are traditional methods for locating remains, but they can be time- and resource-intensive, resulting in the decomposition of bodies and delay in victim identification. Therefore, thermal imaging has been proposed as a potentially useful tool for detecting remains based on their temperature. This study investigated the potential of a novel search technique of thermal drones to detect surface remains through the detection of maggot mass temperatures. Two trials were carried out at Selangor, Malaysia, each utilizing 12 healthy male Oryctolagus cuniculus European white rabbits and DJI Matrice 300 RTK drone China, equipped with a thermal camera; Zenmuse H20T to record the thermal imaging footage of the carcasses at various heights (15, 30, 60–100 m) for 14 days for each trial. Our results demonstrated that the larval masses and corresponding heat emissions were at their largest during the active decay stage; therefore, all the carcasses were observable in thermal images on day 5 and remained until day 7. Statistical analyses showed that (1) no statistically significant differences in thermal images between clothed and unclothed subjects (p > 0.05); (2) 15 m above ground level was proven to be the optimal height, as it showed the greatest contrast between the carcass heat signature and the background (p < 0.005). Our data suggested the potential window of detection of thermal signatures was detectable up to 7 days post-deposition. This could be an important guideline for the search and recovery teams for operational implementation in this tropical region.     

Rapid and nondestructive analysis of lipstick on different substrates using ATR-FTIR spectroscopy and chemometrics

Lipstick can be an important piece of evidence in crimes like murders, rapes, and suicides. Due to its prevalence, it can be an important corroborative evidence in crime reconstruction. The analysis of such evidence can provide an evidentiary link between the suspect, the victim, object, or the crime scene. We report the use of nondestructive ATR-FTIR spectroscopy combined with chemometrics for the classification of 10 brands of lipsticks with nine samples each. Chemometric method of partial least square-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) has been employed to interpret the data and classify the samples into their respective classes. The PLS-DA model provides an AUC figure above 0.99 in all brands except one; for which it is slightly less at 0.94. We have also tested the traces of these lipstick samples on different substrates treating them as unknowns in the already trained PLS-DA model. 100% of the samples on nine substrates viz. a cotton, nylon, plastic, dry tissue, denim (blue jeans), wet tissue, nitrile gloves, white paper, and polyester were correctly attributed to their source brand. In conclusion, the results suggest that ATR-FTIR combined with the chemometrics is a rapid, nondestructive, and accurate method for the discrimination and source attribution of lipstick. This study has potential for use in actual forensic casework conditions.     

Anthropological analyses of 30 insertion/deletion autosomal markers in five major ethnic groups of Pakistan

We investigated the forensic efficacy of the 30 insertion/deletion (Indel) markers included in the Qiagen Investigator® DIPplex kit in 529 Pakistani individuals from five major subpopulations in Pakistan (Punjabi, Pashtun, Sindhi, Saraiki, and Baloch). In the Sindhi population, the distribution of HLD81 and HLD97 alleles deviated from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium after Bonferroni correction. The combined match probability ranged from 2.0E-12 (Pashtun and Baloch) to 1.0E-12 (Sindhi), and the mean paternity exclusion power varied from 0.995 (Punjabi, Sindhi, and Saraiki) to 0.996 (Pashtun and Baloch). The high combined power of discrimination (0.999 999 999 999 97) and low combined match probability (1.7E-12) for all subpopulations studied support the utility of the 30 Indel markers for forensic identification in the studied subpopulations. The allele frequencies of the Indel markers in the Pakistani subpopulations were compared with those from 18 other populations. The results show that the populations clustered according to geography. The subpopulations investigated in this work showed a close genetic relationship with others from Pakistan, as well as with South Central Asian and Middle Eastern populations. The results suggest that the Investigator^® DIPplex kit can be useful as a supplementary tool for human identification in the five Pakistani subpopulations investigated in this study.Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/20961790.2021.1933366 .