1,720,978 research outputs found
Law proposal "provisions on the post-mortem body donation and the use of bodies for the purposes of study, scientific research and training": Comment and analysis of the bill and the historical-juridical-ethical aspects of cadaveric dissection and practice of the donation of a corpse for scientific and medical training purposes
No full textIntroduction: The practice of human cadaveric dissection represents an irreplaceable tool for learning, training and scientific research. However, the lack in some countries including Italy, of a regulatory framework aimed at regulating cadaveric donation for study and research makes it an activity poorly proposed within the educational paths of students and young doctors. Materials and methods: After discussing the historical-juridical evolution of cadaveric dissection, the authors analyzed in detail and commented the bill recently adopted by the Senate of the Italian Republic concerning the institution of body donation programs. The authors further considered in the analysis also the state of the art in some other European countries. Results: The analysis carried out showed that nowadays there are many differences in the legislation of the states. The adoption of this law proposal equates the Italian regulatory framework with that of other European nations. Conclusion: The law proposal analyzed, updating the now outdated Italian legislation about cadaveric donation, represents a major step forward. It will facilitate scientific research and medical training in our country. It is nevertheless necessary, to make an additional effort in order to raise public awareness on this topic in order to ensure a successful application of the rule in question. Conclusion: The law proposal analyzed, updating the now outdated Italian legislation about cadaveric donation, represents a major step forward. It will facilitate scientific research and medical training in our country. It is nevertheless necessary, to make an additional effort in order to raise public awareness on this topic in order to ensure a successful application of the rule in question
Drug detection in decomposed cadavers confirms testimonial evidence in a case of serial homicides
No full textToxicology investigation on human's buried dead bodies is a rare and challenging task in the forensic field. As requested by the Judicial Authority, this work aimed to verify testimonial evidence that emerged during a criminal investigation involving multiple murder cases. The statements indicated an improper medical administration of one or more alleged drugs (propofol, morphine, diazepam, and midazolam) which presumably caused the deaths. Since the supposed crimes took place several years before, the task of the present work was to obtain results to support the charges. The analyses involved 18 biological samples taken from four exhumed bodies, three of which were female and one male, each buried in a different date and mode. Each sample was treated with specific purification and extraction techniques (LLE - SPE) after the addition of the deuterated analogs of the searched analytes (propofol-d17, morphine-d3, diazepam-d5, midazolam-d4) as internal standards. Afterwards, the extracts were subjected to qualitative analysis by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry-Electron Impact (GC/MS - EI), both in full scan and SIM mode. Propofol, morphine, and diazepam were identified in the corpses. It supports testimonials that were administered just before the deaths occurred
A rapid fatal outcome of Iliopsoas hematoma: clinical and autopsy findings
Full text linkA case of massive muscular bleeding of iliopsoas resulting in lethal exsanguination is presented. The intramuscular bleeding occurred spontaneously in an old man with heart failure, presented to the emergency department after the acute onset of shortness of breath, and treated with therapeutic doses of antiplatelets and heparin to prevent thrombosis. On the sixth day of recovery, pain in the left lumbar region develops while there was a decrease in hemoglobin level. Computed tomography (CT) scan revealed a 10 × 3 cm hematoma of the left iliac muscle. The treatment was immediately stopped, but within 6 hours, the death was confirmed. The autopsy revealed that the hematoma, and its increased size since the latest imaging assessment, was the leading cause of death. Particularly in older patients with comorbidity, even in those with clotting parameters in the therapeutic range, the potential for fatal result of iliopsoas muscle bleeding should be considered. Identifying potential patience with increased risk of this complication could be important, especially in pandemic time of COVID-19, when the use of anticoagulant therapy—both for treatment and for prevention of severe disease—has become massive and addressed also to people without previous and specific pathologies
Femicide in a central Italy district (Southern Latium) in the period 1998-2018
No full textBACKGROUND: Violence against women is a major issue worldwide. This category of crime includes many subtypes such as verbal harassment and other forms of emotional abuse, physical or sexual abuse up to femicide. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines femicide as "murder of women because they are women,"even though broader definitions include any killings of women or girls. The aim of this study is to examine this widespread phenomenon. METHODS: The authors examined the murders of women analyzed by the Section of Forensic Medicine of the Tor Vergata University, Rome, from January 1, 1998 to December 31, 2018. RESULTS: The sample involved in this study included 36 cases and 40 deaths. The victim was in most of the cases Italian and in 27% between 30 and 39 years old and in the 30% of the cases there was no underlying relationship with the murderer. The death was caused mostly by stab/slash wounds. CONCLUSIONS: This paper, based on the study of past cases at the Forensic Medicine Institute of the Tor Vergata University, concentrates on the one hand on the whole phenomenon of murdered women and on the other hand studies the profiles of the perpetrators of these crimes and their victims, so as to provide a better understanding of the context of the crime, how it was committed and also to supply supportive data for the investigation of the murderer's identity
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
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