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Background: This case presents a detailed forensic examination of a unique femicide case followed by the perpetrator's suicide., Case Report: On a Sunday afternoon, a 52 year old man killed his 43 year old partner in their home with eleven stab wounds. A few minutes later, he committed suicide by suspending himself to a tree in their home garden by means of a rope. This unique case is interesting because of the combination of methods used for both homicide and suicide, as well as the relationship dynamics between the victim and perpetrator. The perpetrator committed homicide by stabbing and then hanged himself., Conclusion: The case adds valuable knowledge to Forensic Medicine, advocating for increased awareness and preventive measures against domestic and gender-based violence. This report provides an in-depth analysis of a homicide-suicide incident, focusing on a unique case of homicide-suicide. It serves to highlight the global crisis of femicide. The case is situated within the context of gender- based violence, illustrating how such acts are deeply rooted in societal norms. It highlights patterns of intimate partner violence, where emotional factors play a significant role. Forensic analysis uncovered the overkill nature of the homicide, indicating excessive injuries beyond what was necessary for death, reflecting the psychological turmoil of the perpetrator. It emphasizes the importance of identifying signs of potential violence in domestic settings and implementing interventions for mental health support and the prevention of genderbased violence.

Introduction: The term "overkilling" is not clearly defined in medico-legal literature; it is used freely in reference to homicides with extremely numerous injuries., Aim of the Study: The authors' objective was to find relationships between the extent and nature of injuries, the impact of the victims' sex and blood alcohol content., Material and Methods: The authors analyzed 160 cases of homicides from 2004-2011 examined in the Department of Forensic Medicine of the Jagiellonian University Medical College in Krakow, committed with a sharp or blunt instrument., Results: The authors found differences in the location of wounds on the body, depending on the type of tool used, the differences in the number of wounds in relation to the victim's sex and disproportion of the number of fatal injuries in relation to the total number of injuries increasing with the total number of injuries. Alcohol in the victims' blood was found as frequently in cases with defensive injuries, as in other cases., Conclusions: Most of the homicide victims are men, but in cases involving particularly numerous wounds the proportion of male and female victims becomes more balanced. In the case of a very high number of wounds, the share of lethal injuries remains small. The presence of alcohol in the blood has no effect on defense attempts of homicide victims.

Background. This case presents a detailed forensic examination of a unique femicide case followed by the perpetrator's suicide. Case report. On a Sunday afternoon, a 52 year old man killed his 43 year old partner in their home with eleven stab wounds. A few minutes later, he committed suicide by suspending himself to a tree in their home garden by means of a rope. This unique case is interesting because of the combination of methods used for both homicide and suicide, as well as the relationship dynamics between the victim and perpetrator. The perpetrator committed homicide by stabbing and then hanged himself. Conclusion. The case adds valuable knowledge to Forensic Medicine, advocating for increased awareness and preventive measures against domestic and gender-based violence. This report provides an in-depth analysis of a homicide-suicide incident, focusing on a unique case of homicide-suicide. It serves to highlight the global crisis of femicide. The case is situated within the context of gender- based violence, illustrating how such acts are deeply rooted in societal norms. It highlights patterns of intimate partner violence, where emotional factors play a significant role. Forensic analysis uncovered the overkill nature of the homicide, indicating excessive injuries beyond what was necessary for death, reflecting the psychological turmoil of the perpetrator. It emphasizes the importance of identifying signs of potential violence in domestic settings and implementing interventions for mental health support and the prevention of genderbased violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. Gender-based violence against women and its lethal outcome, femicide, represent important issues around the world. Although governments have passed specific laws, official data on gender-related violence and femicide are often absent and/or incomplete, difficult to access, rarely updated, contested and underestimated due to stigma, victim blaming or issues of legal interpretation. Femicide is an intentional killing in which a woman is murdered by an individual for misogyny and gender-related reasons. The most common type is in fact intimate femicide, which occurs when the murdered woman and the aggressor have an intimate, family, cohabitation or similar relationship. Case series. We analyzed 15 cases of femicide for which crime scene investigation and autopsy were carried out. For each case, a psychological autopsy was carried out and the means used to determine the individual's death were analysed. The circumstances in which the murder occurred were also examined. Discussion. Overkilling was evidenced in all cases analyzed. Overkilling in forensic medicine is known as a specific type of homicide in which the number of injuries inflicted far exceeds the number of injuries required to kill the victim. Therefore, the medico-legal management of the cases examined is complicated due to the multiple lesions present on the corpse on the victims which make difficult: 1) the reconstruction of the dynamics of the crime 2) the number of blows inflicted 3) the analysis of the fatal blow 4) the imputability of the offender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Violence against women is a disabler of dignity, liberty, and rights of the person, with murder being its extreme form for silencing the individual. Despite psycho-criminological research providing evidence that violence can happen across cultures, sexes, and societies, other findings show that some forms of violence i.e. Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), which involves more frequently women as victims, is not rare in contemporary society. The aim of this study is to analyze the violence against women, and how it escalates up to the point in which it aggravates into femicide. In order to carry out this study, data from both the Turin Archive of the Institute of Legal Medicine (1970–1997), and the Archive of the Central Morgue (1998–2016) were collected. The interest was to focus on those women who were killed in Turin, between 1970 and 2016, by a male with whom they were involved in a more or less intimate relationship (e.g., matrimonial, sexual, friendship, professional, etc.). Collateral information was also gathered from forensic files that reported sufficient details about the criminal events. The sample was composed of 275 women killed by violence in Turin, Italy, by 260 males. This research was based on two questions: Is murder the worst possible scenario of a long-lasting abusive relationship? Are we witnessing a shift in how violence now happens, becoming perhaps less striking than murder, but not less painful from the victim's point of view? These findings show that escalation into femicide featured more likely within an intimate and affective relationship between victim and perpetrator; they also show that when the perpetrator knew the victim, it was more likely that an overkilling took place. When victims sustained multiple injuries that went beyond those necessary to cause their death, one is in front of an overkilling. These results also suggest that motives behind intimate partner femicide could account for a differential degree of violence, so that the longer and closer the relationship was between victim and perpetrator, the higher the risk of IPV escalating into femicide, and of femicide being executed with extreme and severe force.

The objective is to compare the characteristics of individuals involved in homicides with (OBH) and without overkill and brutal features (NBH) assessed by the Council of Forensic Medicine. In the OBH group, female victims and child and adolescent victims were significantly higher. Significantly elevated usage of piercing and cutting instruments was noted in the OBH group. Homicides with overkilling and brutal features – representing the ultimate manifestation of violent homicide cases – exhibiting distinctive features that contrast with typical characteristics of general homicides. These acts are frequently motivated by jealousy and hostility, transcending the mere act of killing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the methods aimed at assessing carabid beetle diversity, pitfall trapping (PFT) is currently much more widely used than hand searching (HS). However, few studies have evaluated the effectiveness of these two methods based on the same sampling effort, none in mountain areas. Here, we compared PFT and HS in terms of accuracy of the species richness estimate, detection of threatened species and cost-effectiveness, based on equal time spent in the field. The study was conducted along an elevational gradient in the alpine zone of the French Pyrenees. Our results showed that recorded species richness was significantly greater when sampling was performed using HS, suggesting that PFT only detected a subset of the ground beetle assemblage existing at each sampling plot. HS was more effective at characterizing rare species, especially microendemic species threatened by climate change. HS also enabled better detection of small species and of winged species. Additionally, HS involves fewer logistical constraints in performing field work and prevents overkilling in fragile alpine populations. However, some of the benefits we have highlighted in favour of HS may be specific to the studied habitat type, calling for more studies in different mountain habitats. Implications for insect conservation: Our results show that PFT alone does not allow for an accurate assessment of the conservation status of highly specialised alpine species, if they are small in size. Moreover, HS has a lower lethal impact on local insect populations. HS should therefore be recommended, whenever it is practically feasible, in the most sensitive and threatened high-alpine environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Violence against women is a disabler of dignity, liberty, and rights of the person, with murder being its extreme form for silencing the individual. Despite psycho-criminological research providing evidence that violence can happen across cultures, sexes, and societies, other findings show that some forms of violence i.e. Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), which involves more frequently women as victims, is not rare in contemporary society. The aim of this study is to analyze the violence against women, and how it escalates up to the point in which it aggravates into femicide. In order to carry out this study, data from both the Turin Archive of the Institute of Legal Medicine (1970–1997), and the Archive of the Central Morgue (1998–2016) were collected. The interest was to focus on those women who were killed in Turin, between 1970 and 2016, by a male with whom they were involved in a more or less intimate relationship (e.g., matrimonial, sexual, friendship, professional, etc.). Collateral information was also gathered from forensic files that reported sufficient details about the criminal events. The sample was composed of 275 women killed by violence in Turin, Italy, by 260 males. This research was based on two questions: Is murder the worst possible scenario of a long-lasting abusive relationship? Are we witnessing a shift in how violence now happens, becoming perhaps less striking than murder, but not less painful from the victim's point of view? These findings show that escalation into femicide featured more likely within an intimate and affective relationship between victim and perpetrator; they also show that when the perpetrator knew the victim, it was more likely that an overkilling took place. When victims sustained multiple injuries that went beyond those necessary to cause their death, one is in front of an overkilling. These results also suggest that motives behind intimate partner femicide could account for a differential degree of violence, so that the longer and closer the relationship was between victim and perpetrator, the higher the risk of IPV escalating into femicide, and of femicide being executed with extreme and severe force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous liver cancer oncologists suggest bridging therapies to limit cancer growth until donors are available. Interventional radiology including radiofrequency ablation (RFA) is one such bridging therapy. This locoregional therapy aims to produce an optimal amount of heat to kill cancer cells, where the heat is produced by a radiofrequency (RF) needle. Less experienced Interventional Radiologists (IRs) require a software-assisted smart solution to predict the optimal heat distribution as both overkilling and untreated cancer cells are problematic treatments. Therefore, two of the big three partial differential equations, 1) heat equation (Pennes, Journal of Applied Physiology, 1948, 1, 93-122) to predict the heat distribution and 2) Laplace equation (Prakash, Open Biomed. Eng. J., 2010, 4, 27-38) for electric potential along with different cell death models (O'Neill et al., Ann. Biomed. Eng., 2011, 39, 570-579) are widely used in the last three decades. However, solving two differential equations and a cell death model is computationally expensive when the number of finite compact coverings of a liver topological structure increases in millions. Since the heat source from the Joule losses Qr = σ|∇V|2 is obtained from Laplace equation σΔV = 0, it is called the Joule heat model. The traditional Joule heat model can be replaced by a point source model to obtain the heat source term. The idea behind this model is to solve σΔV = δ0 where δ0 is a Diracdelta function. Therefore, using the fundamental solution of the Laplace equation (Evans, Partial Differential Equations, 2010) we represent the solution of the Joule heat model using an alternative model called the point source model which is given by the Gaussian distribution. ... where K and ci are obtained by using needle parameters. This model is employed in one of our software solutions called RFA Guardian (Voglreiter et al., Sci. Rep., 2018, 8, 787) which predicted the treatment outcome very well for more than 100 patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethiopian immigrant women in Israel are overrepresented as victims of femicide; they are killed at more than 16 times the rate of the general population. This article suggests integrating current theoretical and empirical models to explain Ethiopian femicide, and stresses that considering psychological or sociocultural explanations as risk factors alone is not enough to understand this phenomenon. We distinguish between risk factors and triggers for femicide against Ethiopian women. While sociocultural and even psychological changes are risk factors for femicide, one, two, or three main triggers may activate such potential risk factors, such as the woman's willingness (WW) to leave the intimate relationship, sexual jealousy (SJ), and formal complaints against the abusive partner. The first two triggers are jealousy oriented. To analyze this phenomenon in Israel, we examined all court decisions on intimate partner homicide (IPH) from 1990 to 2010. After reading former studies on IPH and identifying important variables that could explain the phenomenon, we first catalogued the data in every decision and verdict according to main independent variables mentioned in the literature. The study population consists of first-generation immigrants, N = 194: native Israelis (47%), new immigrants from the former Soviet Union (FSU; 31%), and Ethiopians (16%). Our analysis of court decisions reveals that triggers containing jealousy components are responsible for 83% of femicide cases committed by Ethiopian men, in comparison with native Israelis (77%) and immigrant Russian men (66%) who murdered their intimate partners. In addition, there is a significant correlation among motive (jealousy), method of killing (stabbing), and "overkilling" (excessive force). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neonicotinoids are thought to have negligible repellent or anti-feeding effects. Based on our preliminary observations, we hypothesized that the contamination of spider prey with commonly used neonicotinoids has repellent or feeding deterrent effects on spiders. We tested this hypothesis by providing prey treated or not with field-realistic concentrations of neonicotinoids to the spiders and determining the number of (a) killed only and (b) killed and eaten prey. We exposed adult freshly molted and starved Pardosa agrestis, a common agrobiont lycosid species, to flies treated with neonicotinoids (acetamiprid, imidacloprid, thiacloprid and thiamethoxam) at field-realistic concentrations or with distilled water as a control. There were no effects of the exposure of the prey to neonicotinoids on the number of flies captured. However, the spiders consumed less of the prey treated with neonicotinoids compared to the ratio of control prey consumed, which resulted in increased overkilling (i.e., killing without feeding). In female P. agrestis, the overkilling increased from only 2.6% of control flies to 25–45% of neonicotinoid-treated flies. As the spiders avoided consuming the already captured neonicotinoid-treated prey, the sublethal effects of neonicotinoids extend beyond the simple attractivity/deterrence of the prey itself. The present study demonstrated that prey overkilling serves as a physiological response of spiders to the contact with the prey contaminated with agrochemicals. We speculate that primary contact with neonicotinoids during prey capture may play a role in this unexpected behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efficient automated presswork defect detection is valuable to the printing industry since such defects dramatically depress the presswork grad and manually detecting them is cost-ineffective. Instead of using real defect annotating data, the goal of this paper is to just use defect-free high-resolution images to complete the detection of defect in presswork (SWDF). In this paper, we first propose an end-to-end cropping method to balance the number of samples which cropped from different patterns in the defect-free high-resolution images, and thus, we can solve the quantity imbalance between different patterns (image level). Secondly, we designed an simple but effective loss function to solve the severe imbalance which caused by the larger quantity difference between the defective pixels and background pixels (pixel level). In order to solve the absence of the real defect annotating data and replace the time-consuming acquisition of defect data, we designed a high-speed defect generation algorithm, which directly generate defect on defect-free samples (obtained from the cropping process). As for the detection of defects, we use self-attention to design a novel and effective semantic segmentation head (GST), which can exploit global information from the feature map to repair the detection results, so as to obtain a better performance. In the experimental part, we will use a presswork defect dataset from the Zhentu Cup Competition (ZCC) and a public dataset DAGM 2007 to test the effect of our scheme. Especially, compared with existing supervised models, our model has also reached the state of the art in DAGM 2007. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the Supreme Court ruling in Miller banning mandatory juvenile life without parole (JLWOP) sentences, many states have gone one step further and completely eliminated JLWOP sentences. However, this trend has stagnated. One potential reason is society's "tough on crime" framework, which legislators are hesitant to deviate from. To understand public opinion on adolescent adolescent development and sentencing of youth, we surveyed residents in one state considering legislation that would ban JLWOP and similar sentences, Michigan. Most participants had sufficient understanding of adolescent development and viewed adolescents as having the capacity for change. Additionally, most participants supported alternative sentences to JLWOP, with support primarily given to sentences that were rehabilitative in nature. Our results can help policymakers better understand their constituents' beliefs regarding adolescent sentencing, which can inform policy decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]