Occurrences of flesh flies (Diptera: Sarcophagidae) on human cadavers in Switzerland, and their importance as forensic indicators.

From 1993 to 2008, criminal investigations were conducted in the western part of Switzerland with special attention to blowfly and flesh fly species in order to estimate the post-mortem interval when requested by the police authorities. Flesh flies were found in only 33 cases out of 160. Five species of the genus Sarcophaga were identified (S. africa, S. argyrostoma, S. caerulescens, S. similis and S. sp.). The main species found on corpses (larval stage) was S. argyrostoma. The thermal constant (K) calculated for this species in Switzerland is 380.6 ± 16.3 (mean ± S.D.) degree-days. With the exception of S. caerulescens, found three times in the larval stage on corpses, the three other species are of minor forensic importance. S. argyrostoma is found during summer and indoors. This species colonises dead bodies, usually the same day as blowfly species, and it could be used to estimate the post-mortem interval. Other species are discussed in the light of current knowledge on their biology and ecology. It is recommended that voucher material be deposited in a museum, allowing further studies by relevant specialists, thereby helping investigators and avoiding misidentifications.

Monitoring de la problématique du cannabis en Suisse: étude sentinelle: panels 2008 = Monitoring der Cannabisproblematik in der Schweiz: Sentinella-Studie: Panels 2008

A l'heure actuelle, le monitoring de la problématique du cannabis en Suisse constitue un ensemble de travaux qui permettent le suivi de la situation au niveau national et qui sont mis en oeuvre par un consortium d'instituts. Ce monitoring comprend l'étude présentée dans ce rapport, l'étude sentinelle. Elle s'intéresse à l'évolution de la situation en matière de cannabis ainsi qu'à la gestion de cette situation au niveau local. Ainsi, les observations relevées par des professionnels de terrain dans différents domaines (santé/social, école/formation professionnelle, police/justice) et dans quatre cantons suisses (St Gall, Tessin, Vaud, Zurich), dits "sentinelle", sont récoltées et analysées annuellement.

Worker policing in the german wasp Vespula germanica

In some ants, bees, and wasps, workers kill or "police" male eggs laid by other workers in order to maintain the reproductive primacy of the queen. Kin selection theory predicts that multiple mating by the queen is one factor that can selectively favor worker policing. This is because when the queen is mated to multiple males, workers are more closely related to the queen's sons than to the sons of other workers. Earlier work has suggested that reproductive patterns in the German wasp Vespula germanica may contradict this theory, because in some colonies a large fraction of the adult males were inferred to be the workers' sons, despite the effective queen mating frequency being greater than 2 (2.4). In the present study, we reexamine the V. germanica case and show that it does support the theory. First, genetic analysis confirms that the effective queen mating frequency is high, 2.9, resulting in workers being more related to the queen's sons than to other workers' sons. Second, behavioral assays show that worker-laid eggs are effectively killed by other workers, despite worker-laid eggs having the same intrinsic viability as queen-laid ones. Finally, we estimate that approximately 58.4% of the male eggs but only 0.44% of the adult males are worker derived in queenright colonies, consistent with worker reproduction being effectively policed.

Involvement of amphetamines in sudden and unexpected death.

In the present study, the effects of amphetamine-class drugs were examined in cases reported to the Victorian coroner from 2001 to 2005 to determine if death can occur from the use of amphetamine-class drugs alone. A total of 169 cases were reviewed where a forensic autopsy detected amphetamine(s) in the blood. Pathology, toxicology, and police reports were analyzed in all cases to ascertain the involvement of amphetamine-class drugs in these deaths. In Victoria, methamphetamine (MA) is the principal abused amphetamine-class followed by methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA). There were six cases in which a cerebral hemorrhage caused death and three cases in which serotonin syndrome was established as being caused by the interaction of MDMA and moclobemide. There were 19 cases in which long-term use of amphetamines was associated with heart disease. There were three cases where amphetamine-class drugs alone were regarded as the cause of death, of which two cases exhibited high levels of MDMA and lesser amounts of MA and/or amphetamine. There were no cases in which significant natural disease was absent and death was regarded as caused by the use of MA. There was no correlation between blood concentration of drug and outcome.

Publicizing insecurity, privatizing security: Chinese wholesalers' surveillance cameras in a Paris suburb

Since the early nineties, several hundreds of Chinese immigrants have settled in what has become known as the 'Chinese wholesalers area'. For the past two years, Chinese wholesalers in Aubervilliers have been calling on public authorities to address the problem of street robberies and violent thefts, which they experience on a daily basis. Yet, they have been encouraged by the authorities to ensure their own protection, by - amongst other things - installing surveillance cameras to film the streets. This is illegal according to French legislation on camera surveillance. Knowing this, why have surveillance cameras been adopted as a solution? This question guides the ethnographic analysis presented here of a situation where the installation of surveillance cameras was locally negotiated by the main actors involved - namely, the wholesalers' representatives and the police.

Noninvasive detection of macrophage-rich atherosclerotic plaque in hyperlipidemic rabbits using "positive contrast" magnetic resonance imaging.

OBJECTIVES: This study was designed to identify macrophage-rich atherosclerotic plaque noninvasively by imaging the tissue uptake of long-circulating superparamagnetic nanoparticles with a positive contrast off-resonance imaging sequence (inversion recovery with ON-resonant water suppression [IRON]). BACKGROUND: The sudden rupture of macrophage-rich atherosclerotic plaques can trigger the formation of an occlusive thrombus in coronary vessels, resulting in acute myocardial infarction. Therefore, a noninvasive technique that can identify macrophage-rich plaques and thereby assist with risk stratification of patients with atherosclerosis would be of great potential clinical utility. METHODS: Experiments were conducted on a clinical 3-T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner in 7 heritable hyperlipidemic and 4 control rabbits. Monocrystalline iron-oxide nanoparticles (MION)-47 were administrated intravenously (2 doses of 250 mumol Fe/kg), and animals underwent serial IRON-MRI before injection of the nanoparticles and serially after 1, 3, and 6 days. RESULTS: After administration of MION-47, a striking signal enhancement was found in areas of plaque only in hyperlipidemic rabbits. The magnitude of enhancement on magnetic resonance images had a high correlation with the number of macrophages determined by histology (p < 0.001) and allowed for the detection of macrophage-rich plaque with high accuracy (area under the curve: 0.92, SE: 0.04, 95% confidence interval: 0.84 to 0.96, p < 0.001). No significant signal enhancement was measured in remote areas without plaque by histology and in control rabbits without atherosclerosis. CONCLUSIONS: Using IRON-MRI in conjunction with superparamagnetic nanoparticles is a promising approach for the noninvasive evaluation of macrophage-rich, vulnerable plaques.

Monitoring de la problématique du cannabis en Suisse: étude sentinelle 2004-2009 = Monitoring der Cannabisproblematik in der Schweiz: Sentinella-Studie 2004-2009 = Monitoraggio della problematica della canapa in Svizzera: studio sentinella 2004-2009

Le monitoring de la problématique du cannabis en Suisse constitue un ensemble de travaux qui permet un suivi de la situation au niveau national et dont la mise en oeuvre est le fait d'un consortium d'instituts. Ce monitoring comprend l'étude présentée dans ce rapport, l'étude sentinelle. Elle s'intéresse à l'évolution de la situation en matière de cannabis ainsi qu'à la gestion de cette situation au niveau local. Ainsi, les observations relevées par des professionnels de terrain dans différents domaines (santé/social, école/formation professionnelle, police/justice) et dans quatre cantons suisses (St Gall, Tessin, Vaud, Zurich), dits "sentinelles", sont récoltées et analysées annuellement.

Public sector rationing and private sector selection [paper accepted and forthcoming in Journal of Public Economic Theory]

We study the interaction between nonprice public rationing and prices in the private market. Under a limited budget, the public supplier uses a rationing policy. A private firm may supply the good to those consumers who are rationed by the public system. Consumers have different amounts of wealth, and costs of providing the good to them vary. We consider two regimes. First, the public supplier observes consumers' wealth information; second, the public supplier observes both wealth and cost information. The public supplier chooses a rationing policy, and, simultaneously, the private firm, observing only cost but not wealth information, chooses a pricing policy. In the first regime, there is a continuum of equilibria. The Pareto dominant equilibrium is a means-test equilibrium: poor consumers are supplied while rich consumers are rationed. Prices in the private market increase with the budget. In the second regime, there is a unique equilibrium. This exhibits a cost-effectiveness rationing rule; consumers are supplied if and only if their costbenefit ratios are low. Prices in the private market do not change with the budget. Equilibrium consumer utility is higher in the cost-effectiveness equilibrium than the means-test equilibrium [Authors]

Imaging Properties of MS Lesions Correlate with Attention Deficits in Early Multiple Sclerosis

Introduction: Cognitive impairment affects 40-65% of multiple sclerosis (MS) patients, often since early stages of the disease (relapsing remitting MS, RRMS). Frequently affected functions are memory, attention or executive abilities but the most sensitive measure of cognitive deficits in early MS is the information processing speed (Amato, 2008). MRI has been extensively exploited to investigate the substrate of cognitive dysfunction in MS but the underlying physiopathological mechanisms remain unclear. White matter lesion load, whole-brain atrophy and cortical lesions' number play a role but correlations are in some cases modest (Rovaris, 2006; Calabrese, 2009). In this study, we aimed at characterizing and correlating the T1 relaxation times of cortical and sub-cortical lesions with cognitive deficits detected by neuropsychological tests in a group of very early RR MS patients. Methods: Ten female patients with very early RRMS (age: 31.6 ±4.7y; disease duration: 3.8 ±1.9y; EDSS disability score: 1.8 ±0.4) and 10 age- and gender-matched healthy volunteers (mean age: 31.2 ±5.8y) were included in the study. All participants underwent the following neuropsychological tests: Rao's Brief Repeatable Battery of Neuropsychological tests (BRB-N), Stockings of Cambridge, Trail Making Test (TMT, part A and B), Boston Naming Test, Hooper Visual Organization Test and copy of the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure. Within 2 weeks from neuropsychological assessment, participants underwent brain MRI at 3T (Magnetom Trio a Tim System, Siemens, Germany) using a 32-channel head coil. The imaging protocol included 3D sequences with 1x1x1.2 mm3 resolution and 256x256x160 matrix, except for axial 2D-FLAIR: -DIR (T2-weighted, suppressing both WM and CSF; Pouwels, 2006) -MPRAGE (T1-weighted; Mugler, 1991) -MP2RAGE (T1-weighted with T1 maps; Marques, 2010) -FLAIR SPACE (only for patient 4-10, T2-weighted; Mugler, 2001) -2D Axial FLAIR (0.9x0.9x2.5 mm3, 256x256x44 matrix). Lesions were identified by one experienced neurologist and radiologist using all contrasts, manually contoured and assigned to regional locations (cortical or sub-cortical). Lesion number, volume and T1 relaxation time were calculated for lesions in each contrast and in a merged mask representing the union of the lesions from all contrasts. T1 relaxation times of lesions were normalized with the mean T1 value in corresponding control regions of the healthy subjects. Statistical analysis was performed using GraphPad InStat software. Cognitive scores were compared between patients and controls with paired t-tests; p values ≤ 0.05 were considered significant. Spearmann correlation tests were performed between the cognitive tests, which differed significantly between patients and controls, and lesions' i) number ii) volume iii) T1 relaxation time iv) disease duration and v) years of study. Results: Cortical and sub-cortical lesions count, T1 values and volume are reported in Table 1 (A and B). All early RRMS patients showed cortical lesions (CLs) and the majority consisted of CLs type I (lesions with a cortical component extending to the sub-cortical tissue). The rest of cortical lesions were characterized as type II (intra-cortical lesions). No type III/IV lesions (large sub-pial lesions) were detected. RRMS patients were slightly less educated (13.5±2.5y vs. 16.3±1.8y of study, p=0.02) than the controls. Signs of cortical dysfunction (i.e. impaired learning, language, visuo-spatial skills or gnosis) were rare in all patients. However, patients showed on average lower scores on measures of visual attention and information processing speed (TMT-part A: p=0.01; TMT-part B: p=0.006; PASAT-included in the BRB-N: p=0.04). The T1 relaxation values of CLs type I negatively correlated with the TMT-part A score (r=0.78, p<0.01). The correlations of TMT-part B score and PASAT score with T1 relaxation time of lesions as well and the correlation between TMT-part A, TMT-part B and PASAT score with lesions' i) number ii) volume iii) disease duration and iv) years of study did not reach significance. In order to preclude possible influences from partial volume effects on the T1 values, the correlation between lesion volume and T1 value of CLs type I was calculated; no correlation was found, suggesting that partial volume effects did not affect the statistics. Conclusions: The present pilot study reports for the first time the presence and the T1 characteristics at 3 T of cortical lesions in very early RRMS (< 6 y disease duration). It also shows that CLS type I represents the most frequent cortical lesion type in this cohort of RRMS patients. In addition, it reveals a negative correlation between the attentional test TMT-part A and the T1 properties of cortical lesions type I. In other words, lower attention deficits are concomitant with longer T1-relaxation time in cortical lesions. In respect to this last finding, it could be speculated that long relaxation time correspond to a certain degree of tissue loss that is enough to stimulate compensatory mechanisms. This hypothesis is in line with previous fMRI studies showing functional compensatory mechanisms to help maintaining normal or sub-normal attention performances in RR MS patients (Penner, 2003).

The use of methylamphetamine chemical profiling in an intelligence-led perspective and the observation of inhomogeneity within seizures

This study focuses on methylamphetamine (MA) seizures made by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) to investigate the use of chemical profiling in an intelligence perspective. Correlation coefficients were used to obtain a similarity degree between a population of linked samples and a population of unlinked samples. Although it was demonstrated that a general framework can be followed for the use of any forensic case data in an intelligence-led perspective, threshold values have to be re-evaluated for each type of illicit drug investigated. Unlike the results obtained in a previous study on 3,4-methylenedioxymethylamphetamine (MDMA) seizures, chemical profiles of MA samples coming from the same seizure showed relative inhomogeneity, limiting their ability to link seizures. Different hypotheses were investigated to obtain a better understanding of this inhomogeneity although no trend was observed. These findings raise an interesting discussion in regards to the homogeneity and representativeness of illicit drug seizures (for intelligence purposes). Further, it also provides some grounds to discuss the initial hypotheses and assumptions that most forensic science studies are based on.

Copwatching et perception publique de la police. L'intervention policière comme performance sous surveillance

Envisagée comme une situation sociale de rassemblement en rue, l'intervention policière se caractérise par sa nature publique et observable. Le « copwatching », en tant que pratique amateur de captation vidéo des interventions de police, problématise la visibilité des agents sur la voie publique en les soumettant à une surveillance médiatique. M'appuyant sur des exemples vidéos, j'explore les dimensions visuelles et symboliques du travail policier. De la performance policière en rue à la figuration médiatique du policier, l'étude des médiations entre action et image permet d'interroger la perception publique de la police engagée dans les rassemblements. Abstract Cop-watching and the public perception of the police. Police intervention as performance under surveillance. This paper deals with police work as a public performance on the street. Cop-watching, a way of publicly observing and documenting police activities, reveals the complex relationship between public perceptions of law enforcement and the visual nature of much police work. Three methodological approaches to cop-watching videos allow us to highlight the visual dimensions of police work : the study of mass-media images of cops, the study of street performance by real cops, and the study of the ways people make sense of the visual symbolic environment present in everyday police work.