1,720,955 research outputs found
Deaths Due to Child Abuse: A 6-Year Review of Cases in the Cook County Medical Examiner's Office
No full textCase files from the Cook County Medical Examiner's Office from 2007 to 2012 were reviewed to analyze homicides due to physical child abuse in children <3 years old. Fatal cases mostly involved younger subjects. Intracranial injuries were the leading cause of death, while death due to extracranial injuries was uncommon. Eyes were involved in most of the cases. Spinal cord was involved in about 1/3 of the cases, mostly in the thoracic area. In some cases, previous injuries were present. There were significant differences in the pattern of injuries between age groups. Subjects showing signs of impact to the head and subjects with no evidence of an impact showed no significant difference in internal injuries. The association of multiple injuries is highly suggestive of child abuse. In suspected child abuse, a postmortem examination including neuropathological, ophthalmological, and radiological information should be always evaluated, together with investigative reports and the medical history
Sudden Unexpected Deaths Due to Intracranial Meningioma: A Presentation of Six Fatal Cases and a Discussion of the Mechanisms of Death.
No full textAfter attending this presentation, attendees will have a better understanding of the importance of sudden death due to undiagnosed meningiomas in subjects in apparently good health found dead in the absence of known causes. This presentation will impact the forensic science community by highlighting the pathological theories that explain sudden deaths due to meningioma. Intracranial tumors usually produce clinical signs and symptoms due to a combination of local tissue compression and damage, edema, and the alteration and shift of intracranial structures. An individual may present with focal neurological signs and symptoms as a result of the particular location of the neoplasm or with generalized symptoms due to increased intracranial pressure that may include headache, nausea and vomiting, altered mental status, papilledema, and seizures. The severity of these clinical manifestations is often progressive and directly related to tumor growth. Death usually occurs after a variable period of time characterized by a declining clinical course. Occasionally, sudden death due to asymptomatic intracranial neoplasms may be encountered in forensic settings. Meningiomas arise from the dura mater and are composed of neoplastic meningothelial (arachnoidal cap) cells. Many meningiomas are found incidentally following neuroimaging for unrelated reasons. Family history studies suggest a role for inherited susceptibility for meningioma in addition to multiple genetic abnormalities involving different genes. Deaths due to meningiomas are routinely diagnosed in clinical practice because this neoplasm tends to present with the typical progression of neurological deficits. On the other hand, sudden unexpected death due to meningiomas are rarely described in the literature. Six fatal cases of previously undiagnosed intracranial meningiomas from the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office from 1998 to 2014 are presented. Case 1: Meningioma of the cerebellopontine angle. Case 2: Meningioma of the middle cerebral fossa in the area of the left temporal lobe. Case 3: Suprasellar meningioma. Case 4: Meningioma of the basilar portion of the occipital bone. Case 5: Meningioma (based on clinical history — not specified). Case 6: Intraventricular meningioma. The most common explanation of the mechanism of sudden death due to intracranial neoplasms — despite their vast biological and morphological diversity — is a rapid increase in intracranial pressure produced by the mass effect of the neoplasm. Increased intracranial pressure may in turn lead to seizures, acute hydrocephalous, brain edema, hypothalamic dysfunction, herniation due to mass effect, and brainstem compression with death due to direct involvement of respiratory and cardiac centers. Other mechanisms of death include acute intracranial and intra-tumoral hemorrhage and benign neoplasms that grow in the vicinity of vital centers (such as the hypothalamus) disrupting thermoregulation or neural discharge in autonomic pathways leading to cardiac suppression or lethal arrhythmias. Forensic pathologists must keep in mind that sudden unexpected death caused by intracranial meningiomas, although extremely rare, may be encountered in the forensic setting. In cases of sudden death due to intracranial meningiomas or other intracranial neoplasms, consultation with a neuropathologist may be useful. Accurate diagnosis of the tumor may assist family members of the deceased by identifying any genetic or environmental risk factors and benefit public health by providing information about the natural evolution of untreated disease
Deaths Due to Child Abuse: A 5-Year Review of Cases in the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office.
No full textAfter attending this presentation, attendees will have a better understanding of the incidence and the significance of the injuries observed in fatal child abuse cases. This presentation will impact the forensic science community by providing a review of the pattern of injuries in deaths due to child abuse. Deliberately inflicted pediatric injuries are a significant issue in forensic pathology, with special regard to head injuries. Often questions arise regarding the plausibility of possible mechanisms of injury. This study reviewed case files from the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office from 2007 to 2012 to study the characteristics of homicides due to child abuse in children less than three years of age. The manner of death was determined to be homicide based on the autopsy findings and the investigation. The cases were divided into the following age ranges: 0-11 months (group A); 12-23 months (group B); and, 24-35 months (group C). Data regarding age; race; sex; facial injuries; scalp injuries; presence and types of skull fractures; suture diastasis; extradural, intradural, subdural, and subarachnoid hemorrhages; cerebral edema; intracranial pressure; intracerebral findings; retinal and optic nerve hemorrhages; spinal cord findings; and extracranial injuries were collected using an electronic spreadsheet. Clinical details and information concerning the traumatic mechanism, where available, were also considered. Fifty-one cases (25 females and 26 males) were identified. Most of the cases fell into the group A (26 cases; 51%), followed by group B (17 cases; 33%), and by group C (8 cases; 16%). Females were more numerous than males in group A (15 cases; 57%); in group B, males were more numerous (11 cases; 65%); in group C, children of both sexes were present in equal number. External signs of impact to the head, that is to the face and/or scalp, were present in 42 cases (82%). Most of the examples of impact to the head consisted of bruises and abrasions of the skin and/or lacerations of the oral mucosa. Skull fractures were reported in 9 cases (18%), and showed a predominately linear appearance. Diastasis of the sutures was reported in 14 cases (27%). As might be expected, most of these examples were found in the youngest age range. Epidural hemorrhage was found in 10 cases (20%). Subdural hemorrhage was seen in 42 cases (82%). Subdural hemorrhage represented the most common intracranial pathology encountered, apart from cerebral edema, which was found in each case. Subdural hemorrhage was described as remote or recent, and/or with a thin film or layer of blood or a larger collection of blood. Subarachnoid hemorrhages were present in 27 cases (53%). In 24 cases (47%), there were intracerebral findings, such as hemorrhages, contusions, herniations, and areas of infarction. In eight cases (16%), brain evaluation was affected by marked non-perfusion changes (so-called “respirator brain”). Retinal hemorrhages were a very common finding in head trauma (38 cases, 75%). Most were bilateral and sometimes involved multiple layers of the retina (preretinal, intraretinal, subretinal). Optic nerve hemorrhages were present in 37 cases (73%). Intravitreal hemorrhages and macular folds were rare. In 19 cases (37%) there were spinal cord injuries, such as hemorrhages, but no spinal fractures were observed. This study reveals that in the cases surveyed, the majority of children who sustained abusive injuries fell into the 0-11 months of age range. Head injuries were the leading cause of death. Signs of impact to the head defined by the presence of skull fractures and/or bruises/abrasions to the head, often together with intracranial injuries, were present in 73% of the cases (19 out of 26) in group A, 94% (16 out of 17) of the cases in group B, and 88% (7 out of 8) of the cases in group C. As expected, epidural hemorrhages were rare and spinal fractures were not observed at all. Death due to extracranial injuries was an uncommon finding and it occurred when internal organs were damaged. Among these, blunt force abdominal injuries were the most commonly encountered (10 cases; 19%). These findings agree with other researchers who have found that head injuries are the leading cause of death in children less than three years of age. Moreover, in the cases reviewed for this study, retinal hemorrhages seemed to be strictly associated with head injuries
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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