Independence day explosion on lovers key

The display of fireworks is a popular holiday celebration in the United States. Because injuries due to recreational fireworks-related explosions among private consumers are relatively common, the sale of fireworks is regulated by the federal government and is also limited by state and local laws. In contrast, because fireworks display companies are under tight safety regulations, explosions in the professional pyrotechnics industry are uncommon occurrences, and the literature contains rare reports of injuries and fatalities resulting from such explosions. We report the 2003 Fourth of July commercial fireworks explosion on Lovers Key in southwest Florida that resulted in five fatalities. Events occurring during the investigation of the scene of this explosion illustrate the unique considerations and hazards for medicolegal death investigators, law enforcement and other investigative agencies. Additionally, this case demonstrates unusual aspects of the postmortem examinations performed on victims of fireworks-related incidents.     

Recovery and detection of urea nitrate in traces

Urea nitrate (uronium nitrate, UN) is a powerful improvised explosive, frequently used by terrorists in the Israeli arena. It was also used in the first World Trade Center bombing in New York in February 1993. It is difficult to identify UN in postexplosion debris, because in the presence of water it readily decomposes to its original components, urea and nitric acid. A method for the recovery and detection of urea nitrate in traces is described. The residues are extracted with hot acetone, and the extract chromatographed on chromosorb G-HP. The eluent is analyzed by liquid chromatography mass spectrometry using atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI). By applying this technique, we were able to identify urea nitrate in actual exhibits. It was found that UN can be also formed during the analytical procedure, by certain combinations of urea, nitrate ions, and a source of protons and, hence, the presence of the characteristic adduct ion does not necessarily indicate an "authentic" urea nitrate. Several solutions are suggested to overcome this ambiguity.     

Sudden cardiac death due to giant cell inflammatory processes

Granulomatous inflammation of the myocardium may occur in a number of systemic disease processes including those with infectious etiologies such as fungal, mycobacterial and parasitic infections, as well as hypersensitivity reactions, and rarely autoimmune disorders. In many of these disorders, giant cells are components of the inflammatory infiltrate. Systemic granulomatous processes of unknown pathogenesis, most notably sarcoidosis, may also be associated with involvement of the myocardium. Occasionally, these disorders are associated with sudden death due to pathologic involvement of the heart. In contrast, giant cell myocarditis, also known as idiopathic myocarditis, a rare, frequently fulminant and fatal disorder of unknown etiology, is isolated to the heart and lacks systemic involvement. This disorder is most commonly diagnosed at autopsy. We present two cases in which sudden death resulted from a giant cell inflammatory process affecting the myocardium. Both individuals lacked antemortem diagnoses and collapsed at their respective places of employment. These cases compare and contrast the clinical and pathologic issues involved in the differential diagnoses of the subgroup of sudden cardiac deaths resulting from giant cell inflammatory processes that affect the myocardium, as well as the value of histologic examination and immunohistochemical studies.     

Is breast really best? Risk and total motherhood in the National Breastfeeding Awareness Campaign

From June 2004 to April 2006, cosponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council, the National Breastfeeding Awareness Campaign (NBAC) warned women that not breast-feeding put babies at risk for a variety of health problems. "You'd never take risks before your baby is born. Why start after?" asked televised public service announcements over images of pregnant women logrolling and riding a mechanical bull. The NBAC, and particularly its message of fear, neglected fundamental ethical principles regarding evidence quality, message framing, and cultural sensitivity in public health campaigns. The campaign was based on research that is inconsistent, lacks strong associations, and does not account for plausible confounding variables, such as the role of parental behavior, in various health outcomes. It capitalized on public misunderstanding of risk and risk assessment by portraying infant nutrition as a matter of safety versus danger and then creating spurious analogies. It also exploited deep-seated normative assumptions about the responsibility that mothers have to protect babies and children from harm and was insufficiently attentive to the psychological, socioeconomic, and political concerns of its intended audience. Critical analysis of the NBAC suggests that future health campaigns would benefit from more diverse review panels and from a greater focus on providing accurate risk information about probabilities and trade-offs in order to enable informed decision making.     

Estimation of age at death based on quantitation of the 4977-bp deletion of human mitochondrial DNA in skeletal muscle

The 4977-bp deletion in human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is known to accumulate in various tissues with age. Since this deletion in mtDNA correlates closest with age in muscle tissue, iliopsoas muscle tissue was taken at autopsy from 50 persons aged 24-97 years to determine whether age at death can be estimated based on the amount of the 4977-bp deletion in skeletal muscle. Total DNA (nuclear and mtDNA) was extracted from 100 mg tissue and the 4977-bp deletion quantified using a kinetic polymerase chain reaction (PCR) followed by visualization of the products on silver stained polyacrylamide gels. The amount of the 4977-bp deletion of mtDNA ranged from 0.00049% to 0.14% depending on age, with a correlation coefficient of r = 0.83 (P = 0.0001). In forensic practice this method can aid in the estimation of age at death with a relatively wide confidence interval, thus enabling a discrimination between young and elderly persons in the identification of human remains based solely on skeletal muscle.     

International regimes and environmental policy integration: introducing the special issue

Pressure is mounting for states to become better at integrating its environmental policies into sector policy, a challenge often referred to as environmental policy integration (EPI). Policy research on EPI has grown to become a distinct and substantial field of study at the national and EU levels, where political commitment and interest in the topic have been large. In the study of international regimes, EPI analytical concepts have so far not been applied although the EPI quest is at least as important and critical at this level. This special issue addresses this gap, by combining these two sets of literature and examining various aspects of EPI in international regimes, its manifestations and its challenges. This introductory paper introduces key conceptual discussions underlying the development of this special issue, distils and discusses some of the key findings and messages from the four ensuing research articles and presents directions for future research. It finds that many EPI challenges and institutional barriers are strongly accentuated at international levels of governance, but also that similarities with the national level suggest that closer interactions between the two fields of study are warranted. At both levels, the EPI “game” is full of inherent tensions and goal conflicts, institutional constraints abound, and cognitive interactions and learning processes appear as key mechanisms to advance EPI. Suggestions for how to enhance EPI in international regimes are still tentative, and analysis beyond international relations and regime theory is needed to capture potential institutional innovations for advancing EPI.     

Bioinformatics Approach to Assess the Biogeographical Patterns of Soil Communities: The Utility for Soil Provenance,

Soil DNA profiling has potential as a forensic tool to establish a link between soil collected at a crime scene and soil recovered from a suspect. However, a quantitative measure is needed to investigate the spatial/temporal variability across multiple scales prior to their application in forensic science. In this study, soil DNA profiles across Miami‐Dade, FL, were generated using length heterogeneity PCR to target four taxa. The objectives of this study were to (i) assess the biogeographical patterns of soils to determine whether soil biota is spatially correlated with geographic location and (ii) evaluate five machine learning algorithms for their predictive ability to recognize biotic patterns which could accurately classify soils at different spatial scales regardless of seasonal collection. Results demonstrate that soil communities have unique patterns and are spatially autocorrelated. Bioinformatic algorithms could accurately classify soils across all scales with Random Forest significantly outperforming all other algorithms regardless of spatial level.