Is right coronary artery hypoplasia and sudden death an underdiagnosed association?

Determining whether hypoplasia of a coronary artery has caused or contributed to death is often complicated by an absence of histologic evidence of myocardial ischemia in the area of the heart supplied by the affected artery and also by the lack of data for assessing coronary artery size at autopsy. A 45-year-old woman is reported who collapsed and died and who was found at autopsy to have a dominant, small-caliber, right coronary artery, with acute and chronic ischemic changes in the posterior interventricular septum supplied by the diminutive vessel. This case provides evidence that small-caliber coronary arteries may be associated with a lethal outcome. Given the difficulties that may occur in determining whether there is a causal link between small coronary artery caliber and death, it is possible that this may be an underdiagnosed cause of sudden cardiac death, rather than a coincidental finding of minimal significance.     

The modern holy shroud

Testimonies disclosed that a 44-year-old pedestrian was struck head-on by a truck while she was roaming on the motorway; at the time of collision, the truck was travelling at a speed of about 90 km/h. In the second phase of the collision, the pedestrian was projected about 100 m before her body was run over by the truck and then by a car. The autopsy revealed extensive mutilations, making it impossible to verify the testimonies of witnesses to the collision as regards the pedestrian's position at the moment of the first impact. However, the reports produced by the technical expert and the forensic pathologist were able to confirm the testimonies, based on an impact zone on the front panel of the cab of the truck, where part of the pedestrian's face was reproduced like a "modern holy shroud".     

Measurement of eyeball protrusion and its application in facial reconstruction

The estimation of eyeball protrusion from the bony orbit has traditionally relied upon Wolff's theory (1976) that the cornea will be tangental to a line taken from the superior to the inferior orbital margin. This study tested this theory by taking measurements from MRI cranial images of 78 eyes of white adult subjects. Orbital depth had a significant negative linear correlation with eyeball protrusion, and protrusion of the eyeball was determined by the following standard: eyeball protrusion = 18.3 - (0.4 x orbit depth). Current eyeball position determination was shown to be as much as 3.9 mm too deep in the socket, and a practical application of this result to facial reconstruction is discussed.     

Do good deeds make bad people?

According to the so-called ‘self-licensing effect’, committing to a virtuous act in a preceding choice may lead to behave less virtuously in the succeeding decision. Consequently, well-intentioned policies can lead to overall counter-productive effects by licensing people to behave badly in related behaviors. On the other side, motivational crowding theory argues that constraining people to adopt a desirable behavior can backfire. We use of a classroom experiment to test whether a regulatory framework to incentivize individuals to adopt pro-environmental behavior generate similar spillovers in terms of licensing effect than a non-regulatory framework. We show that the way the good deed is caused doesn’t seem to influence the licensing effect. Nevertheless, we found that business- and environmental-orientated majors react adversely to the regulatory framework. We show that environmental-orientated students exhibit higher intrinsically motivations than business-orientated ones. Accordingly, we suggest that the licensing effect is more likely to arise when the preceding ‘virtuous’ act is freely chosen (respectively regulatory caused) for non-intrinsically (respectively intrinsically) motivated individuals.     

Intensive psychological treatment of high-risk violent offenders: Outcomes and pre-release mechanisms

Research on correlates of intervention programmes that reduce expected reconviction rates (‘what works’ literature, Risk–Need–Responsivity model) has been highly influential in criminal justice systems throughout much of the western world. But while this psychological research has been acquiring widespread recognition, a deeper understanding of how programmes work and of mechanisms for desistance more generally, has still to develop. This research reports results of a quasi-experimental recidivism outcome study for a series of prison units that provide intensive psychological treatment to high-risk, persistently violent prisoners. Four outcomes were examined over the first 12 months following release on parole: parole violations, new convictions, new convictions for violence, and imprisonment sentences resulting from new convictions. Alongside these results, we conducted preliminary analyses of two potential pre-release mechanisms for surviving the first 12 months on parole without reconviction: lower dynamic risk for violence, and greater release readiness. We found that dynamic violence risk fully accounted for differences between treatment completers and comparison prisoners in proportions reconvicted for violence. However, in all other cases, the proposed mechanisms did not significantly explain treatment-related differences. We close by considering possible explanations for these unexpected results, and reiterating the importance to our field of more sophisticated treatment outcome research.     

Post-feeding larval behaviour in the blowfly, Calliphora vicina: effects on post-mortem interval estimates

Using the rate of development of blowflies colonising a corpse, accumulated degree hours (ADH), or days (ADD), is an established method used by forensic entomologists to estimate the post-mortem interval (PMI). Derived from laboratory experiments, their application to field situations needs care. This study examines the effect of the post-feeding larval dispersal time on the ADH and therefore the PMI estimate. Post-feeding dispersal in blowfly larvae is typically very short in the laboratory but may extend for hours or days in the field, whilst the larvae try to find a suitable pupariation site. Increases in total ADH (to adult eclosion), due to time spent dispersing, are not simply equal to the dispersal time. The pupal period is increased by approximately 2 times the length of the dispersal period. In practice, this can introduce over-estimation errors in the PMI estimate of between 1 and 2 days if the total ADH calculations do not consider the possibility of an extended larval dispersal period.     

Should I help my neighbor? Self-interest,altruism and economic analyses of rescue laws

This article shows that the economic analyses of rescue laws developed in the ‘70s are the outcome of a long-term process that began at the end of the 1950s with the passing of the first legislations intended to promote and control rescue behaviour (the so-called “good Samaritan” legislations, acts or statutes) and that finally results in the economic models of rescue developed by Landes and Posner (The Journal of Legal Studies, 7(1):83–128, 1978a; The American Economic Review, 68(2):417–421, 1978b). The article investigates the context that made the occurrence of the economic analysis of rescue law possible and the controversies that it fueled in both the legal and economic fields. It also highlights the influence of the economic analysis of altruism on this particular field of law and economics.