Expert assessment of coital injuries from the forensic medicine viewpoint

A 38-year-old woman was transmitted to hospital with profuse vaginal bleeding. The origin of the vaginal injuries (resulting from "normal" sexual intercourse vs. use of instruments for manipulation in the vagina) was obscure. The wound pattern is presented and the literature on the subject is reviewed with special reference to predisposing factors and genesis of coital injuries. Concerning the wound pattern, reflecting a blunt trauma, a manipulation with a (so far unknown) instrument, but also with finger or hand could not be proved with the required certainty. In the presented case the origin of the vaginal injuries from "normal" sexual intercourse as described by the accused man could not be excluded.     

A systematic review of the literature on patient priorities for general practice care. Part 1: Description of the research domain

To make health care more responsive to patient needs, insight into patient priorities is needed. A systematic literature review, using electronic and manual searches, was made of studies on patient priorities with regard to primary health care. Data-extraction was performed by two researchers, followed by systematic analyses of study features. 57 studies were included. The aspects of care and methods used showed a wide variation. Aspects most often included were "informativeness", "humaneness" and "competence/accuracy". Based on an analysis of 19 studies, the following aspects were seen by patients as most important in more than 50% of the studies that included them: "humaneness", "competence/accuracy", "patients' involvement in decisions", "time for care", "other aspects of availability/accessibility", "informativeness", "exploring patients' needs", "other aspects of relation and communication" and "availability of special services".     

Two legs, thing using and talking: The origins of the creative engineering mind

Instead of seeing technology as outside ourselves, it is argued that it is an innate human function and the main driving force in human evolution. Opportunistic thing using, long before stone tools appeared, was the likeliest cause of bipedalism. It also forced brain development and the emergence of creativity. The neural basis for this creative technical activity later provided the brain functions on which language could develop. This simple unifying hypothesis has interesting implications for the way that we see technology in history, and for determinist theories of the future. It also bears on the way engineers are trained, and more important, the human faculties which need to be fostered in children.     

Tunnel vision information: a paradox of ethics, economics, politics and science

BACKGROUND: Improvement in vision with spinal manipulation was first observed in the early 1970s. Reports of the phenomenon appeared in the 1980s in the popular press and at scientific meetings, but it was not until the mid-1990s that general discussion of the potential value of this knowledge occurred. Considering the far-reaching implications of the possible ability to improve brain function by spinal manipulation, the delay in consideration and implementation of this concept is a paradox in general terms and a total mystery in the case of the chiropractic profession. OBJECTIVE: To provide explanations for the delay in scientific assessment of the discovery that vision improves, in appropriate patients, when the spine is manipulated and to discuss the implications of this finding. This discovery is now called the "tunnel vision information." DISCUSSION: A schema of pathological hierarchy is depicted in which the level of intervention of spinal manipulation outranks other forms of treatment. The significance of this precedence is portrayed. Possible reasons for the failure to address this hierarchy in light of the tunnel vision information are discussed with reference to established protocols, medical politics, the presentation of the data, the failure of scientific editorship and the illogical aspects of the illness itself. CONCLUSION: In the future, the delay from the initial observation of the tunnel vision discovery to its free discussion in scientific literature may seem incongruous, particularly if the health benefits which it augurs are realized.     

Intestinal gas dynamics and tolerance in humans

Carbohydrate-deficient-glycoprotein syndrome type 1 (CDG1; also known as "Jaeken syndrome") is an autosomal recessive disorder characterized by defective glycosylation. Most patients show a deficiency of phosphomannomutase (PMM), the enzyme that converts mannose 6-phosphate to mannose 1-phosphate in the synthesis of GDP-mannose. The disease is linked to chromosome 16p13, and mutations have recently been identified in the PMM2 gene in CDG1 patients with a PMM deficiency (CDG1A). The availability of the genomic sequences of PMM2 allowed us to screen for mutations in 56 CDG1 patients from different geographic origins. By SSCP analysis and by sequencing, we identified 23 different missense mutations and 1 single-base-pair deletion. In total, mutations were found on 99% of the disease chromosomes in CDG1A patients. The R141H substitution is present on 43 of the 112 disease alleles. However, this mutation was never observed in the homozygous state, suggesting that homozygosity for these alterations is incompatible with life. On the other hand, patients were found homozygous for the D65Y and F119L mutations, which must therefore be mild mutations. One particular genotype, R141H/D188G, which is prevalent in Belgium and the Netherlands, is associated with a severe phenotype and a high mortality. Apart from this, there is only a limited relation between the genotype and the clinical phenotype.     

Discriminating constant from variable angular velocities in structure from motion

We investigated accuracy in discriminating between constant and variable angular velocities for orthographic projections of three-dimensional rotating objects. The reported judgments of "constant" or "variable" angular velocity were only slightly influenced by the projected angular velocities, but they were greatly affected by the variations of the deformation, a first-order component of the optic flow. When viewing either a rotating ellipsoidal volume or a planar surface that accelerated and decelerated over the course of rotation, observers' tendencies to report a variable angular velocity were increased when the temporal phase of the acceleration pattern increased the range of variation of the median deformation; the tendencies were decreased when the same acceleration pattern was used to decrease the range of variation of the median deformation. These results provide evidence contrary to the hypothesis that the visual system performs a mathematically correct analysis of the optic flow.     

Coherent addition of adjacent lasers by forked eigenstate operation

Forked laser eigenstates are shown to provide a powerful tool both to phase lock spatially separated laser oscillators and to add their powers coherently into a TEM(00) output beam. Coherent addition of the powers extracted from two fiber-coupled diode-pumped Nd:YAG channels is theoretically and experimentally demonstrated. Pure TEM(00) oscillation is obtained with a 20% optical-to-optical conversion efficiency. The coherence of the two-propagation-axis laser is proved, and single-frequency operation is demonstrated. The scalability of the scheme is discussed.     

Fluid jet polishing of optical surfaces

We present a new finishing process that is capable of locally shaping and polishing optical surfaces of complex shapes. A fluid jet system is used to guide a premixed slurry at pressures less than 6 bars to the optical surface. We used a slurry comprising water and 10% #800 SiC abrasives (21.8 mum) to reduce the surface roughness of a BK7 sample from 350 to 25 nm rms and to vary the shape of a polished sample BK7, maintaining its surface roughness of 1.6 nm rms, thereby proving both the shaping and polishing possibilities of the presented method.     

Measurement of transient deformations with dual-pulse addition electronic speckle-pattern interferometry

We describe an electronic speckle-pattern interferometry system for analyzing addition fringes generated by the transient deformation of a test object. The system is based on a frequency-doubled twin Nd:YAG laser emitting dual pulses at a TV camera field rate (50 Hz). The main advance has been the automatic, quantitative analysis of dual-pulse addition electronic speckle-pattern interferometry data by the introduction of carrier fringes and the application of Fourier methods. The carrier fringes are introduced between dual pulses by a rotating mirror that tilts the reference beam. The resulting deformation-modulated addition fringes are enhanced with a deviation filter, giving fringe visibility close to that of subtraction fringes. The phase distribution is evaluated with a Fourier-transform method with bandpass filtering. From the wrapped phase distribution, a continuous phase map is reconstructed with an iterative weighted least-squares unwrapper. Preliminary results for a thin plate excited by an acoustic shock show the suitability of the system for the quantitative evaluation of transient deformation fields.