Do governments delay the implementation of parliamentary requests? Examining time variation in implementing legislative requests in Switzerland

Policy Sciences - This paper investigates time variations in the implementation of legislative requests by the Swiss government. Combining the literature on executive–legislative relations...     

Pathology of sudden death during recreational sports activity: an autopsy study of 31 cases

A growing number of people are involved in recreational physical activity. It is therefore not uncommon for a medical examiner to encounter sports-related sudden deaths and to be faced with the legal implications. The authors examined the clinical and cardiac pathologic patterns in 31 persons who died suddenly during sports activities and underwent autopsy at the Institute of Forensic Medicine of Paris between 1991 and 2001. Twenty-nine male subjects, ranging in age from 7 to 57 years (mean 30 years) and two female subjects, 8 and 60 years old, died suddenly during sports activities. The sports involved were various, with running the most frequent: 13 cases. Cardiomyopathies (10 cases) and coronary artery disease (9 cases) were the most frequent causes of deaths. Despite the severity of lesions, only 4 subjects had a known cardiovascular disease. In conclusion, with regard to prevention, efforts should be continued to improve the sensitivity and specificity of diagnostic tools and screening strategies. In this regard, medicolegal autopsies should be systematically performed in cases of sudden death during sports activities, because they provide accurate and useful information for a better knowledge of sports-related mortality.     

Adult Hirschsprung's disease diagnosed during forensic autopsy

We report a case of fatal Hirschsprung's disease (HD) discovered at autopsy. A 20-year-old man collapsed at home. Emergency medical personnel found him in cardiac arrest and all resuscitative efforts failed. He had a past history of chronic constipation since infancy. Forensic autopsy revealed a megacolon full of gas and stools. Microscopic examination showed absence of ganglion cells in a short segment of the rectum and enterocolitis in the left and transverse colon. HD is rarely described in adults. In many cases, patients complained of constipation since infancy but the affection remained misdiagnosed. The relative good tolerance of the disease is usually due to a short aganglionic bowel segment. Enterocolitis is a frequent and severe complication of HD in children but is rarely described in adults. This case suggests the importance of HD diagnosis in childhood in order to avoid fatal complications with forensic consequences.     

The importance of national laws in the implementation of European legislation of biomedical research

The industrialization and internationalization of biomedical research is not without consequences on the regulation of research or, at least, on the interpretation of that regulation. As more research is done at the international level, the pharmaceutical industry and the research community are calling for a harmonized regulation to limit the administrative burden of controlling clinical trials and to fasten the R&D process. The purpose of this paper is to analyse briefly the role of the national laws in that process. Part I will outline the structure and the nature of the international regulation of research in a European perspective. Using the examples of research ethics committees (RECs), informed consent and the question of liability and liability insurance, Part II will analyze the importance of the national laws in the implementation of this international regulation.     

Determination of Sex: Interest of Frontal Sinus 3D Reconstructions

Frontal sinuses (FSs) have been studied in radiology, anthropology, and forensic anthropology. This study aimed to determine whether it was possible to predict the age and sex of an individual using FS volume. Sixty‐nine anonymized CT scans were imported to MIMICS 10.01^® software (Materialise N.V.), and each FS volume was calculated in mm³. There was an absence of significant difference between right and left FS volume (p = 0.173) and an absence of correlation between age and FS volume (Pearson's test; p = 0.705). Sexual dimorphism was significantly different (p = 0.001). However, the most discriminant datum for determining sex was found to be the total FS volume (sum of an individual's right and left FS volumes) with linear discriminant Fisher's function coefficients of ?2.759 for the male group and ?1.275 for the female group. With this model, 72.5% of our sample was correctly classified according to sex.     

Canada’s integration into global intelligence-sharing networks: from Gouzenko to the Montreal Olympics

The following article demonstrates how the 1945–6 Gouzenko Affair and the 1976 Montreal Olympics contributed to Canada’s integration into global intelligence-sharing networks. It also argues that the Olympics instigated a significant shift in national security priorities in Canada from communism to international terrorism. It is based on more than 2000 pages of documents released by the British government related to the Gouzenko Affair as well as over 50,000 pages of RCMP records on the security plan for the Montreal Olympics.     

Using immersive virtual reality and ecological psychology to probe into child molesters' phenomenology

Abstract

Child molesters (n=13) and sexually non-deviant subjects (n=29) were immersed with virtual characters depicting relevant sexual features while their sexual arousal and gaze behaviour were assessed to characterise their sexual preferences and intentional dynamics. Sexual arousal was measured using circumferential penile plethysmography (PPG). Gaze behaviour dynamics were derived from average gaze radial angular deviation (GRAD) and GRAD coefficient of variation (GRADCV). Results show distinct sexual arousal profiles according to sexual preferences and point towards the existence of specific gaze behaviour dynamics guided by sexual intentions. Theoretical interpretations are based on the ecological psychology of J. J. Gibson, the extended mind theory and the integrated theory of sexual offending. Theoretical underpinnings stemming from these approaches are advocated as being especially well suited to explain how virtual reality can help probing into child molesters' phenomenology as lived from the “first-person” stance.     

Police and the Public

In this article two features of the theme police and the public are discussed. The first part deals with the public opinion of the police and how the police deal with the public. This is a well-documented issue, but only very generally related to 'policing'. The problem of dealing with the public arises in very similar terms in all administrations, public services and community services. The qualities expected of a 'front office' (speed, competence, confidentiality, etc.) are not peculiar to the police. On the other hand, the situation of a public policing service as an urban police force is currently very specific, has an unusual, virtually undocumented historical background and is therefore worth dealing with in much greater detail. This is done in the second part of the article. To grasp this role, one needs to consider the way in which the public police service has evolved in the last half-century. Admittedly, the situation in France has certain special features, but these are simply magnified versions of things which exist elsewhere. It may be true that the institutional background has precipitated developments in France, but that same background is present in all comparable countries.     

Sacred or Secular? ‘Memorial’, the Russian Orthodox Church,and the Contested Commemoration of Soviet Repressions

The reconstruction of the history from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s of Soviet repressions critically influenced the social formation of Gulag memory in Russia. Amongst those re-narrating the past, the ‘Memorial’ Society and the Russian Orthodox Church most actively shaped the collective memory of Soviet repressions, trying to establish multi-layered explanatory constructs of the Gulag. Their interpretations were crystallised through contemporary memorialisation acts in significant landscapes of the past. Focusing on Solovki, Ekaterinburg, Butovo and Magadan, and analysing tensions in their memorialisation processes, we discuss secular and Orthodox interpretations of the Gulag, and their impact on the memory of the Soviet repressions in contemporary Russia.     

Functioning strategies of the research groups' leaders in the context of funding and policy instabilities☆

We explore the strategies implemented by Research Groups' Leaders while coping with unstable contexts, characterized by incoherence and lack of coordination among different policy discourses and instruments, and scarce resources. We focus on a country where these conditions are present: Colombia. In doing so, we study two cases, one in nanotechnology and another one in biomedical engineering. Interviews, focus groups and workshops allowed us to identify and validate strategies grouped in four popular sayings, proper to local idiosyncrasy, highlighting the role of home institutions and principal investigators in facing such situations with resilience and resourcefulness, and even taking advantage of them. We find that Research Groups' Leaders use strategies such as: adapting, balancing agendas and funding sources, networking, and taking advantage of the support programs available at their home institution to continue functioning. These are setting the ground for a further survey which could pretend some generalization. However, policymakers could consider these findings when defining policy instruments or for assessing their effectiveness or impacts.