42 research outputs found
Aquatic Decomposition in Chlorinated and Freshwater Environments
No full textForensic investigations involving human remains frequently occur in aqueous environments. Deceased individuals have been discovered in aqueous environments such as fresh water, sea water, and chlorinated water. Of the numerous questions posed when a human body is found, “when did this individual die,” is always near the top of the list. In any forensic investigation, the establishment of the postmortem interval (PMI) is a priority. The estimation of PMI in aqueous environments is complex and has just begun to be researched (Payne and King 1972, Reh et al. 1977, Haskell et al. 1989, Haglund 1993, Rodriguez 1997, O’Brien 1997, Haglund and Sorg 2002, Seet 2005). Additionally, of the research that has been conducted in regards to aquatic environments, there is an absence of research utilizing chlorinated water. The absence of such research could be the result of the assumption that a deceased individual would be quickly discovered in such an environment. However, there has been a failure to establish whether the chemical composition of the chlorinated water will have an impact on the PMI when compared with freshwater.
This research attempts to make a comparison between rates of decomposition in freshwater and chlorinated water environments. In establishing a research design, it is the intention of the author to create a constant environment in which the effect of chlorine on PMI could be observed. The chlorinated water environments that were created for this research were adjusted to be as close to a standard pool environment as possible. Factors that were considered when designing these environments for accuracy consisted of: water movement, filtration, and chlorine level of the water. Freshwater environments acted as controls for the study and were compared to the chlorinated water environments. The freshwater environments mimicked the chlorinated environments with the exception of the chlorine. Additionally, diatoms and other freshwater inhabitants were absent allowing for a more consistent and accurate comparison for the chlorinated subjects.
The ability of investigators to establish the PMI of an individual can not only expedite the identification of the individual, but in a homicide investigation could help establish possible suspects of the crime. This study is an attempt to bring to light the possible significance of alternative chlorinated water environments during the process of decomposition. This thesis is a preliminary study into the possible effect that a chlorinated water environment could have on the process of decomposition. If a distinction can be made between the processes of decay in freshwater and chlorinated water environments, this research could assist investigators in more accurately determining the postmortem interval.
This thesis will try to explicate the following questions:
- Does the presence of chlorine in a water decomposition situation have an effect on the postmortem interval?
- What additional factors could contribute to the rate of decomposition in freshwater and chlorinated environments?
- Does the addition of superficial trauma have an effect on the rate of decomposition in these environments?
- How could this be valuable information to forensic anthropologists.Anthropolog
Stress during Pregnancy and Offspring Pediatric Disease: A National Cohort Study
No full textBackground: Identifying risk factors for adverse health outcomes in children is important. The intrauterine environment plays a pivotal role for health and disease across life. Objectives: To conduct a comprehensive study to determine whether common psychosocial stress during pregnancy is a risk factor of a wide spectrum of pediatric diseases in the offspring. Methods: The study was conducted in a population-based sample of mothers with live singleton births (N=66203, 71.4% of those eligible) from the Danish National Birth Cohort, using prospective data. We estimated the association between maternal stress during pregnancy (classified based on two a priori defined indicators of common stress forms, life stress and emotional stress) and offspring diseases during childhood (grouped into 16 categories of ICD-10 diagnoses based on data from national registries), controlling for maternal stress after pregnancy. Results: Median age at end of follow-up was 6.2 (3.6-8.9) years. Life stress (highest compared to lowest quartile) was associated with an increased risk of conditions originating in the perinatal period [odds ratio (OR)=1.13; 95% confidence interval (CI)=1.06-1.21] and congenital malformations (OR=1.17; CI=1.06-1.28), and of the first diagnosis of infection [hazard ratio (HR)=1.28; CI=1.17-1.39], mental disorders (age 0-2.5 years: HR=2.03; CI=1.32-3.14), eye (age 0-4.5 years: HR=1.27; CI=1.06-1.53), ear (HR=1.36; CI=1.23-1.51), respiratory (HR=1.27; CI=1.19-1.35), digestive (HR=1.23; CI=1.11-1.37), skin (HR=1.24; CI=1.09-1.43), musculoskeletal (HR=1.15; CI=1.01-1.30), and genitourinary diseases (HR=1.25; CI=1.08-1.45). Emotional stress was associated with an increased risk for the first diagnosis of infection (HR=1.09; CI=1.01-1.18) and a decreased risk for the first diagnosis of endocrine (HR=0.81; CI=0.67-0.99), eye (HR=0.84; CI=0.71-0.99), and circulatory diseases (age 0-3 years: HR=0.63; CI=0.42-0.95). Conclusions: Maternal life stress during pregnancy be a common risk factor for impaired child health. The results suggest new approaches to reduce childhood diseases
Self-Determination: What can we Learn from Persons with Profound Intellectual and Multiple Disabilities?
No full textThis is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Self-determination is often equated with independence and individual choices, which limits its relevance for persons with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (PIMD) due to their dependency. This paper challenges the notion of independence by arguing for a rethinking of self-determination that is sensitive to lives characterised by dependency and non-verbal being. An ethnographic study informed by phenomenology emphasising embodiment shed light on how self-determination can unfold in the lives of persons with PIMD in relationships with professionals. These data are engaged in a theoretical discussion, dialoguing with theories of self-determination and ethics of care. We advocate that a rethinking involving embodied communication, partnership and ongoing processes of being understood can offer a sound way of grasping the phenomenon of self-determination, both for persons with and without PIMD.publishedVersio
Bilateral Assessment of Functional Tasks for Robot-assisted Therapy Applications
No full textThis article presents a novel evaluation system along with methods to evaluate bilateral coordination of arm function on activities of daily living tasks before and after robot-assisted therapy. An affordable bilateral assessment system (BiAS) consisting of two mini-passive measuring units modeled as three degree of freedom robots is described. The process for evaluating functional tasks using the BiAS is presented and we demonstrate its ability to measure wrist kinematic trajectories. Three metrics, phase difference, movement overlap, and task completion time, are used to evaluate the BiAS system on a bilateral symmetric (bi-drink) and a bilateral asymmetric (bi-pour) functional task. Wrist position and velocity trajectories are evaluated using these metrics to provide insight into temporal and spatial bilateral deficits after stroke. The BiAS system quantified movements of the wrists during functional tasks and detected differences in impaired and unimpaired arm movements. Case studies showed that stroke patients compared to healthy subjects move slower and are less likely to use their arm simultaneously even when the functional task requires simultaneous movement. After robot-assisted therapy, interlimb coordination spatial deficits moved toward normal coordination on functional tasks
Author Correction: Genetic effects on the timing of parturition and links to fetal birth weight
No full textCorrection to: Nature Genetics. Published online 3 April 2023. In the version of this article originally published, the surname of author Stefan Johansson was misspelled as Johanson. In the abstract and “Genome-wide association analyses” section of the Results, the number of loci associated with preterm birth was shown as six instead of seven. In addition, there was a production error in the Figure 1a y-axis units shown below 0, where “10” and “20” were shown as negative numbers. The errors have been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article
Author Correction:Genetic effects on the timing of parturition and links to fetal birth weight (Nature Genetics, (2023), 55, 4, (559-567), 10.1038/s41588-023-01343-9)
No full textCorrection to: Nature Genetics. Published online 3 April 2023. In the version of this article originally published, the surname of author Stefan Johansson was misspelled as Johanson. In the abstract and “Genome-wide association analyses” section of the Results, the number of loci associated with preterm birth was shown as six instead of seven. In addition, there was a production error in the Figure 1a y-axis units shown below 0, where “10” and “20” were shown as negative numbers. The errors have been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.</p
Merkel cell carcinoma:Incidence, mortality, and risk of other cancers
No full textBackgroundMerkel cell carcinoma (MCC) is a rare skin cancer that was recently found to be associated with a polyomavirus and with immunosuppression, provoking new interest in its epidemiology. We conducted a nationwide study in Denmark to describe MCC incidence and mortality and the association between MCC and other cancers. MethodsWe used data from Danish national health and population registers on MCC diagnoses, deaths, and population counts during the study period (1978-2006) to calculate MCC incidence rates, cumulative risks of MCC at age 100 years, and MCC mortality rates by tumor stage. We used Poisson regression to estimate the excess mortality rate ratio attributable to MCC and examined associations between MCC and other cancers diagnosed before and after the MCC diagnosis using standardized incidence rate ratios (SIRs). All statistical tests were two-sided. ResultsBetween January 1, 1978, and December 31, 2006, 185 persons were diagnosed with MCC in Denmark. MCC incidence between 1995 and 2006 was 2.2 cases per million person-years. In the first year after MCC diagnosis, 22% of persons with localized disease died compared with 54% of patients with nonlocalized disease; by 5 years after diagnosis, the proportions of MCC patients who had died increased to 55% and 84%, respectively. MCC incidence was statistically significantly increased more than 1 year after a diagnosis of squamous cell carcinoma of the skin (SIR = 14.6, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 8.4 to 25.6), basal cell carcinoma (SIR = 4.3, 95% CI = 2.7 to 6.6), malignant melanoma (SIR = 3.3, 95% CI = 1.1 to 10.3), chronic lymphocytic leukemia (SIR = 12.0, 95% CI = 3.8 to 37.8), Hodgkin lymphoma (SIR = 17.6, 95% CI = 2.5 to 126), and non-Hodgkin lymphoma (SIR = 5.6, 95% CI = 1.4 to 22.4). Squamous cell carcinoma (SIR = 12.1, 95% CI = 5.1 to 29.1) and chronic lymphocytic leukemia (SIR = 14.7, 95% CI = 3.7 to 58.8) occurred in statistically significant excess more than 1 year after MCC diagnosis. ConclusionsThese results support the existence of shared risk factors for MCC and other cancers. Heightened awareness of the association between MCC and other cancers, particularly squamous cell carcinoma and chronic lymphocytic leukemia, may facilitate earlier clinical detection and treatment of MCC, thereby improving patient survival. The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press.</p
Correction: The Influence of Age and Sex on Genetic Associations with Adult Body Size and Shape: A Large-Scale Genome-Wide Interaction Study
No full textThe arcOGEN Consortium should be listed as an author of this article. They contributed to the genome-wide association study results presented in this work. They should be listed in the author byline at position 292 and affiliated with The Arthritis Research UK Osteoarthritis Genetics Consortium. They should also be included in the footnote designating consortia which is underneath the author affiliation list in the PDF version of the article, and in the S2 Text. Please view the correct S2 Text below, containing correct consortia members
Correction: The Influence of Age and Sex on Genetic Associations with Adult Body Size and Shape: A Large-Scale Genome-Wide Interaction Study.
No full textThe arcOGEN Consortium should be listed as an author of this article. They contributed to the genome-wide association study results presented in this work. They should be listed in the author byline at position 292 and affiliated with The Arthritis Research UK Osteoarthritis Genetics Consortium. They should also be included in the footnote designating consortia which is underneath the author affiliation list in the PDF version of the article, and in the S2 Text. Please view the correct S2 Text below, containing correct consortia members. S2 Text. Consortia members and extended acknowledgments.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1006166.s001
(DOCX) [This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1005378.]
Correction: The Influence of Age and Sex on Genetic Associations with Adult Body Size and Shape: A Large-Scale Genome-Wide Interaction Study.
No full textThe arcOGEN Consortium should be listed as an author of this article. They contributed to the genome-wide association study results presented in this work. They should be listed in the author byline at position 292 and affiliated with The Arthritis Research UK Osteoarthritis Genetics Consortium. They should also be included in the footnote designating consortia which is underneath the author affiliation list in the PDF version of the article, and in the S2 Text. Please view the correct S2 Text below, containing correct consortia members. S2 Text. Consortia members and extended acknowledgments.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1006166.s001
(DOCX) [This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1005378.]
