Chemical Enhancement of Bloody Footwear Impressions from Buried Substrates

Footwear impressions are regarded as one of the most common forensic evidence types left at crime scenes. A review of research to date describes previous tests on the survival of footwear impressions in a range of contaminants on a myriad of surfaces. None, however, examined the effects of the burial environment on such impressions. Using human blood as a contaminant, footwear impressions were made on samples of white cotton, newspaper, and black plastic trash bags and were buried for specific time frames, from one to four weeks. The study examines the subsequent development of the surviving impressions postexcavation, using chemical enhancement techniques of ninhydrin, acid black 1, leucocrystal violet (LCV), and Bluestar. The majority of impressions recovered were from the substrates that were in the soil for the shortest period. Poor recovery rates and loss of impressions were observed on substrates buried for more than two weeks. LCV and Bluestar proved most effective for enhancing and retrieving impressions. Impressions were able to be examined by a trained forensic footwear investigator to identify class, individual, and wear characteristics of the impression itself. Potential survival of such identifying features is of paramount importance to an investigation

Promoting Pollution Prevention in Small Businesses: Costs and Benefits of the “Enviroclub” Initiative

The Enviroclub initiative was developed by three federal government agencies—Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions, Environment Canada and the National Research Council Canada—and launched in 2001 to assist small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in improving their profitability and competitiveness through enhanced environmental performance. An Enviroclub consists of a group of 10-15 SMEs involved in training sessions on environmental management and carrying out at least one profitable in-plant pollution prevention project. The objective of this article is to provide a cost benefit analysis (CBA) of this original initiative in order to inform policy makers as to the social desirability of such programs. One of the main social benefits of this initiative is to reduce emissions of various pollutants, so that one of our largest challenges is to place a value on these environmental improvements. To do so, we use the “environmental value transfer” method to obtain values from previous relevant studies. We conduct our CBA at three different levels: we consider the costs and benefits first for the whole of society, then from the participating firms’ point of view and, finally, from the governments’ perspective. We conclude that, whichever perspective we choose, The Enviroclub initiative has been highly profitable.cost-benefit analysis, SMEs, environment training, environmental performance

Healthcare Seeking Behaviors of Sexually Assaulted Women

Background: Sexual assault is a crime that leaves long term psychological and physical effects on survivors, including panic attacks, trust issues, somatic body pain, and poor overall health. Seeking out health services is important in treating these lasting effects. However, research is lacking into the health care seeking behaviors of sexually assaulted women and whether or not the sexual assault plays a role into their habits. Objective: The purpose of this study was to explore the long-term effect that sexual assault has on the health care seeking behavior of female survivors. Methods: An integrative literature review was conducted that included recent primary peer reviewed sources. Results: Many factors were discovered to affect the health care seeking habits including fear of the health care provider reaction to disclosure and fear of medical procedures. Sexual assault survivors also expressed more dissatisfaction with health care services than non-assaulted women. Interventions to improve the satisfaction of survivors include provided guidelines to trauma informed care, appropriate responses to disclosure, “inform before perform” care and explanations and reassurance during procedures. Conclusion: Sexual assault is a crime that leads to long term effects on the survivor. There is a relationship between the sexual assault and future health care seeking behaviors of survivors both during the initial aftermath and in future encounters with HCPs. Interventions by HCPs, including nurses, can ensure better more appropriate care for survivors

Equivalence checking for weak bi-Kleene algebra

Pomset automata are an operational model of weak bi-Kleene algebra, which describes programs that can fork an execution into parallel threads, upon completion of which execution can join to resume as a single thread. We characterize a fragment of pomset automata that admits a decision procedure for language equivalence. Furthermore, we prove that this fragment corresponds precisely to series-rational expressions, i.e., rational expressions with an additional operator for bounded parallelism. As a consequence, we obtain a new proof that equivalence of series-rational expressions is decidable

Polarization and valley switching in monolayer group-IV monochalcogenides

Group-IV monochalcogenides are a family of two-dimensional puckered materials with an orthorhombic structure that is comprised of polar layers. In this article, we use first principles calculations to show the multistability of monolayer SnS and GeSe, two prototype materials where the direction of the puckering can be switched by application of tensile stress or electric field. Furthermore, the two inequivalent valleys in momentum space, which are dictated by the puckering orientation, can be excited selectively using linearly polarized light, and this provides an additional tool to identify the polarization direction. Our findings suggest that SnS and GeSe monolayers may have observable ferroelectricity and multistability, with potential applications in information storage