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Child abuse encompasses four major forms of abuse: physical abuse, sexual abuse, psychological abuse, and neglect. The United States retains one of the worst records of child abuse in the industrialized world. It has also been determined that a large portion of these cases are missed and go undocumented in state and federal reporting agencies. In addition, disparate risk factors have been identified for physical abuse and neglect cases, but substance abuse has been found to be a significant factor in all forms of abuse. Fatal child maltreatment and neglect investigations require a multi-pronged and multidisciplinary approach requiring the coordination and information gathering from various agencies. A major difficulty in determining the accidental or non-accidental nature of these cases is that the account surrounding the events of the death of child is acquired from the caretaker. In this review, we outline common diagnostic characteristics and patterns of non-accidental injuries and neglect as a result of nutritional deprivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, in 2005, an estimated 1460 children died of maltreatment. The purpose of this study is to further examine the pattern of bony injuries in child maltreatment fatalities, with an emphasis on the prevalence of antemortem fractures and the presence of associated perimortem fractures. The sample was 162 male and female children. The majority of the data were collected from the case files of the NC Child Fatality Prevention Team at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Chapel Hill, North Carolina (n =152) spanning from 2000 to 2005. An additional 10 cases from 2001 to 2006 were included from the Charleston County Coroner''s Office, Charleston, SC. Six age categories were used in this study: 0–3 months, 4–6 months, 7–9 months, 10–16 months, 17 months to 2 years, and 2–6 years. Lesions were documented and categorized into four general body loci: craniofacial, thoraco/abdominal, appendicular, and multiple. The peak age categories of death were 0–3 months (25%) and 2–6 years (19%), with 50% of deaths occurring in infants 9 months old or younger. The body locus most frequently affected was craniofacial. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

One of the four pillars of the anthropological protocol is the estimation of sex. The protocol generally consists of linear metric analysis or visually assessing individual skeletal traits on the skull and pelvis based on an ordinal scale of 1–5, ranging from very masculine to very feminine. The morphologic traits are then some how averaged by the investigator to estimate sex. Some skulls may be misclassified because of apparent morphologic features that appear more or less robust due to size differences among individuals. The question of misclassification may be further exemplified in light of comparisons across populations that may differ not only in cranial robusticity but also in stature and general physique. The purpose of this study is to further examine the effect of size and sex on craniofacial shape among American populations to better understand the allometric foundation of skeletal traits currently used for sex estimation. Three-dimensional coordinates of 16 standard craniofacial landmarks were collected using a Microscribe-3DX digitizer. Data were collected for 118 American White and Black males and females from the W.M. Bass Donated Collection and the Forensic Data Bank. The MANCOVA procedure tested shape differences as a function of sex and size. Sex had a significant influence on shape for both American Whites ( F = 2.90; d.f. = 19, 39; p > F = 0.0024) and Blacks ( F = 2.81; d.f. = 19, 37; p > F = 0.0035), whereas size did not have a significant influence on shape in either Whites ( F = 1.69; d.f. = 19, 39; p > F = 0.08) or Blacks ( F = 1.09; d.f. = 19, 37; p > F = 0.40). Therefore, for each sex, individuals of various sizes were statistically the same shape. In other words, while significant differences were present between the size of males and females (males on average were larger), there was no size effect beyond that accounted for by sex differences in size. Moreover, the consistency between American groups is interesting as it suggests that population differences in sexual dimorphism may result more from human variation in size than allometric variation in craniofacial morphology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a pilot study of the among-sample morphological variation of modern 19th Cubans, Precontact Cubans, 17th Century Spanish and Terry Blacks using landmarks-based Procrustes analysis from geometric morphometrics. Biological variation of Cuban Americans which will facilitate the development of identification criteria specific for the U.S. hybrid Hispanic community; Conclusion that the application of available traditional craniometric and non-metric methods are not appropriate for the Latin population in South Florida.

Abstract. Health science students, along with the health professionals they hope to become, are at increased risk for certain occupational injuries and illnesses. One of these risks is occupational exposure to blood-borne pathogens, such as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and hepatitis, which may result in severe illnesses or even death. Two case studies demonstrate postexposure care of exposed individuals at the University of Texas Medical Branch Student Health Services before and after policy changes and prevention strategies were strengthened in response to exposure incidents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has brought to the public eye longstanding issues of social and racial injustice which have permeated the experiences of individuals of African ancestry in the United States and abroad for centuries. Motivated by a desire to disassemble a framework of systemic racism, the BLM movement has infiltrated numerous social and political arenas including the sciences, demanding change. The impact of the BLM movement is evident in the attention recently garnered by protests of museum skeletal collections' acquisition and handling of African/African American human remains. It is from this vantage point that we explore the ethical issues pervasive within United States skeletal collections and forensically relevant issues surrounding the unclaimed decedents of marginalized populations; colonial/imperial ideological formations, which construct and sustain power differentials in anatomization; and conceive of a path forward that prioritizes personhood., (© 2021 American Association for Anatomy.)

The main objective is to investigate the geographical variation in ovarian cancer and uterine cancer mortality, and to test associations between some risk factors and these cancer types in the contiguous US for mortality and for incidence. The modern disease surveillance software SaTScan™ was used for a spatial cluster analysis to assess any observable geographical variation in ovarian and uterine cancer mortality rates and to identify and test for spatial clusters with elevated relative risk. The analyses were first completed using age adjusted cancer rates for ovarian cancer and for uterine cancer. The cancer data was then adjusted for the risk factors (or covariates) obesity rate, smoking rate, urban, poverty rate, college education rate, race, opioids mortality rate, and for arsenic intake from well water rate. All used data for cancer mortality were for 2000-2014 while incidence data were for 2011-2015. There exist seven significant mortality clusters of ovarian cancer, with large clusters in NW, NE and SE of the US, and there exist two large mortality clusters of uterine cancer in NE and Central US. Most risk factors studied for mortality and for incidence were significant at significance levels much lower than 0.05 for either of the two cancer types, except race for ovarian cancer mortality and arsenic for ovarian incidence. This study has identified several important factors, and these findings could be used for a more effective search for cancer prevention for uterine and ovarian cancer. LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY: The accuracy of the data could not be controlled as data were downloaded from websites. While the mortality data was complete, the incidence data had counties with missing data. The data were obtained at the county resolution. No data were available on women who had one type of cancer and then had the second type of cancer later in life. Only purely spatial clusters were studied and no temporal analysis was done., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Biological variation is investigated among contemporary Croatians, Bosnians, American whites, and other multitemporal Balkan populations (World War II Croatians, Macedonians, and Greeks) via multivariate statistics and distance measures of the craniofacial complex. This study demonstrates that there is considerable variation among groups of European ancestry. Bosnians and Croatians who are thought to be relatively homogenous and historically to originate from the same Slav ancestry show local variations. While environmental plasticity has been used to explain cranial changes among human groups, it does not adequately explain the variation observed between Bosnians and Croatians. It is an oversimplification to exclusively attribute the vast range of variability observed among local as well as geographic populations to environmental adaptations., (Copyright 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc.)