Analyzing and Interpreting Lime Burials from the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939): A Case Study from La Carcavilla Cemetery

Over 500 victims of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) were buried in the cemetery of La Carcavilla (Palencia, Spain). White material, observed in several burials, was analyzed with Raman spectroscopy and powder XRD, and confirmed to be lime. Archaeological findings at La Carcavilla's cemetery show that the application of lime was used in an organized way, mostly associated with coffinless interments of victims of Francoist repression. In burials with a lime cast, observations made it possible to draw conclusions regarding the presence of soft tissue at the moment of deposition, the sequence of events, and the presence of clothing and other evidence. This study illustrates the importance of analyzing a burial within the depositional environment and taphonomic context.     

Undocumented Border Crosser Deaths in Arizona: Expanding Intrastate Collaborative Efforts in Identification

Undocumented Border Crosser (UBC) deaths in Arizona are a major issue faced by medicolegal authorities. Currently, the Maricopa County Office of the Medical Examiner (MCOME) is in possession of over two hundred unidentified individuals, more than half of whom are presumed to be UBCs. The primary goal of this study was to address the growing number of UBC deaths in Maricopa County in order to provide a more comprehensive picture of this important anthropological issue within the state of Arizona. Of the 107 total UBC cases evaluated for the study, the majority were male and age estimates for all individuals were between 15 to 60 years old. Modeled after the recording system established by the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner, the biographic and geographic data for these cases were entered into a new UBC database at MCOME and later added to the online Map of Migrant Mortality.     

An Assessment of How Facial Mimicry Can Change Facial Morphology: Implications for Identification

The assessment of facial mimicry is important in forensic anthropology; in addition, the application of modern 3D image acquisition systems may help for the analysis of facial surfaces. This study aimed at exposing a novel method for comparing 3D profiles in different facial expressions. Ten male adults, aged between 30 and 40 years, underwent acquisitions by stereophotogrammetry (VECTRA‐3D ^® ) with different expressions (neutral, happy, sad, angry, surprised). The acquisition of each individual was then superimposed on the neutral one according to nine landmarks, and the root mean square (RMS) value between the two expressions was calculated. The highest difference in comparison with the neutral standard was shown by the happy expression (RMS 4.11 mm), followed by the surprised (RMS 2.74 mm), sad (RMS 1.3 mm), and angry ones (RMS 1.21 mm). This pilot study shows that the 3D–3D superimposition may provide reliable results concerning facial alteration due to mimicry.     

Identification of Mobile Phone and Analysis of Original Version of Videos through a Delay Time Analysis of Sound Signals from Mobile Phone Videos

This study designs a method of identifying the camera model used to take videos that are distributed through mobile phones and determines the original version of the mobile phone video for use as legal evidence. For this analysis, an experiment was conducted to find the unique characteristics of each mobile phone. The videos recorded by mobile phones were analyzed to establish the delay time of sound signals, and the differences between the delay times of sound signals for different mobile phones were traced by classifying their characteristics. Furthermore, the sound input signals for mobile phone videos used as legal evidence were analyzed to ascertain whether they have the unique characteristics of the original version. The objective of this study was to find a method for validating the use of mobile phone videos as legal evidence using mobile phones through differences in the delay times of sound input signals.     

The Reliability of Facial Recognition of Deceased Persons on Photographs

In humanitarian emergencies, such as the current deceased migrants in the Mediterranean, antemortem documentation needed for identification may be limited. The use of visual identification has been previously reported in cases of mass disasters such as Thai tsunami. This pilot study explores the ability of observers to match unfamiliar faces of living and dead persons and whether facial morphology can be used for identification. A questionnaire was given to 41 students and five professionals in the field of forensic identification with the task to choose whether a facial photograph corresponds to one of the five photographs in a lineup and to identify the most useful features used for recognition. Although the overall recognition score did not significantly differ between professionals and students, the median scores of 78.1% and 80.0%, respectively, were too low to consider this method as a reliable identification method and thus needs to be supported by other means.     

Can training improve eyewitness identification? The effect of internal feature focus on memory for faces

Evidence suggests that individuals rely on external features such as hair and face shape when processing and recognising unfamiliar faces. This is problematic in a forensic setting because hairstyle can be changed easily. In two studies we examined whether training individuals to focus more on the stable, internal features of the face (e.g. eyes, nose and mouth) and hence less on the changeable external features would improve identification accuracy. In Study 1, participants were instructed to focus on: (1) internal features, (2) external features, or (3) both internal and external features. Participants’ eye movements were monitored while they studied target faces, which they later tried to identify from an array that included the target with a changed appearance. In Study 2, participants were instructed to focus on: (1) internal features, (2) external features, or (3) given no instructions. Participants were required to identify target faces from line-ups, where they were presented either unchanged or with an altered hairstyle. Results suggested that training individuals to attend to internal features of unfamiliar faces may improve identification accuracy in the common situation where external features have changed between presentation and identification. However, internal feature focus may decrease identification accuracy when external features are unchanged.     

A local variance based approach to alleviate the scene content interference for source camera identification

Identifying the source camera of images is becoming increasingly important nowadays. A popular approach is to use a type of pattern noise called photo-response non-uniformity (PRNU). The noise of image contains the patterns which can be used as a fingerprint. Despite that, the PRNU-based approach is sensitive towards scene content and image intensity. The identification is poor in areas having low or saturated intensity, or in areas with complicated texture. The reliability of different regions is difficult to model in that it depends on the interaction of scene content and the characteristics of the denoising filter used to extract the noise. In this paper, we showed that the local variance of the noise residual can measure the reliability of the pixel for PRNU-based source camera identification. Hence, we proposed to use local variance to characterize the severeness of the scene content artifacts. The local variance is then incorporated to the general matched filter and peak to correlation energy (PCE) detector to provide an optimal framework for signal detection. The proposed method is tested against several state-of-art methods. The experimental results show that the local variance based approach outperformed other state-of-the-art methods in terms of identification accuracy.     

商事登记制度的立法完善

在我国市场经济发展的现阶段,法典意义上的"民商分立"既无可能,亦无必要。由于我国缺乏商法的传统,在商法明显的国际化与统一化的趋向下,制定《商事通则》亦是困难重重。在我国商事立法进程中,当务之急是制定一部统一的《商事登记法》。商事登记法作为商事立法的重要组成部分,体现着商法营利性的核心理念,应当以效率与安全作为立法的基本价值取向。同时在立法中应注意一些具体问题,如商事主体的确认,注册登记与营业登记的分离以及商事登记机关责任的强化等。     

农民工认同社会主义核心价值观的思考

农民工作为中国工人阶级的重要组成部分,其对社会主义核心价值观的认同非常重要.认同的内容包括农民工对中国特色社会主义社会政治的认同、改变和提升农民工的物质生活条件、社会保障内容和丰富农民工的精神文化生活等内容.农民工认同社会主义核心价值观的过程是“外化”过程和“内化”过程的统一.     

马流感病毒NP单克隆抗体的制备及特性鉴定

利用原核表达的马流感病毒(EIV)核蛋白(NP)为免疫原,经腹腔接种4周龄BALB/c小鼠,取其脾细胞与SP2/0骨髓瘤细胞进行融合,经4次有限稀释法克隆和间接ELISA法筛选,获得了3株稳定分泌单抗的杂交瘤细胞株2G11、3E10和4A1,并对它们进行了亚类鉴定、间接ELISA检测和特性鉴定。结果显示,单抗2G11为IgG1亚型,3E10为IgG2a亚型,4A1为IgM亚型,轻链均为κ链。单抗2G11、3E10和4A1的细胞上清液及腹水效价分别为1∶640、1∶640、1∶320和1∶409 600、1∶204 800、0。这3株单抗均能特异性识别EIV NP重组蛋白,并且能够与天然EIV结合;获得的3株单抗与马动脉炎病毒、马疱疹病毒1型、马疱疹病毒4型、马乙型脑炎病毒均不发生交叉反应。亲和力试验结果显示,单抗2G11和3E10与EIV的亲和力常数分别为4.39×106 M-1和2.20×106 M-1。