Combat Deaths Research Articles

Temporal Changes in Combat Casualties From Afghanistan by Nationality: 2006–2010

This study sought to evaluate temporal changes in combat deaths and improvised explosive device (IED)-related fatalities among three coalition allies in Afghanistan: the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. The website icasualties.org was used to identify American, Canadian, and British soldiers killed in combat in Afghanistan between 2006 and 2010. Population-at-risk was determined as the number of personnel serving within the Afghanistan theater for each coalition nation. Unadjusted incidence rates of combat deaths per deployed personnel, and IED deaths as a portion of total combat deaths, were derived and adjusted comparisons performed to control for confounders. Between 2006 and 2010, 1,673 combat deaths occurred in a population of 721,520 soldiers. Fifty percent of all combat deaths occurred as a result of IED attack. British personnel maintained the highest unadjusted risks of combat-related death, as well as IED-associated mortality. As compared to Americans, Canadian personnel were at a significantly increased risk of combat-related death and IED-related fatality. Among Americans, there was a significant reduction in IED-related deaths between 2010 and 2009. For Canadians, no significant change in IED fatalities as compared to total number of troops, or total combat deaths, was appreciated at any point in the study.

The Rush University Advanced Trauma Training Program, A Novel Approach for Military Trauma Training

Nearly 90% of combat deaths occur on the battlefield before the casualty reaches a treatment facility. It has been shown that early intervention in trauma patients improves morbidity and mortality. Hence, the training of military health care providers in lifesaving measures is imperative to saving lives on the battlefield. To date, few courses exist to provide skills in combat-zone trauma stabilization and treatment. Even fewer offer training in the identification and treatment of post-traumatic stress disorders and traumatic brain injury. We set out to develop a multidisciplinary, comprehensive course to include didactic lectures as well as hands-on training and observational modules. Ten courses have been delivered to date. Thus far, feedback from military personnel and course participants has revealed the positive impact of the training program. In this manuscript, we present the layout of the program and its contents.

Thrombosomes: a platelet‐derived hemostatic agent for control of noncompressible hemorrhage

Uncontrolled hemorrhage is responsible for ∼80% of the potentially survivable deaths in combat and over 40% of early mortality in the under 65 age group in the United States. Providing an easily used infusible hemostatic agent to first responders could significantly reduce these fatalities. We report on an infusible lyophilized platelet-derived hemostatic agent stabilized with trehalose and polysucrose prior to and during lyophilization. Characterization included determining the particle population size range, surface marker expression GPIb, GPIIbIIIa, and Annexin V binding. Function was assessed by aggregation, thromboelastography, and thrombin generation. Pharmacokinetics, biodistribution, and immunogenicity established using Indium(111) labeled Thrombosomes in healthy New Zealand white rabbits (NZWRs), efficacy in thrombocytopenic NZWR, and safety in NZWRs, canines, and nonhuman primates. Thrombosomes retained GPIIbIIIa expression (98.71% ± 0.18 of the rehydrated particles), a reduced expression of GPIb (47.77% ± 6.65), and Annexin V binding (86.05% ± 2.65). Aggregation to all agonists except thrombin in buffer (78.15% ± 2.5) was <50%. Thrombin generation and thromboelastography results demonstrated a concentration gradient that was consistent from lot to lot. There were no observed adverse events in any safety study and blood loss was reduced by >80% in the thrombocytopenic ear bleed model. Our in vitro characterization studies in conjunction with preclinical animal safety and efficacy studies demonstrated lot consistency in manufacturing, maintenance of hemostatic functions of Thrombosomes, safety at high dose concentrations, and the potential to provide an effective hemostatic agent at the site of injury.

Remote damage control resuscitation and the Solstrand Conference: defining the need, the language, and a way forward

Damage control resuscitation (DCR) is emerging as a standard practice in civilian and military trauma care. Primary objectives include resolution of immediate life threats followed by optimization of physiological status in the perioperative period. To accomplish this, DCR employs a unique hypotensive-hemostatic resuscitation strategy that avoids traditional crystalloid intravenous fluids in favor of early blood component use in ratios mimicking whole blood. The presence of uncontrolled major hemorrhage (UMH) coupled with a delay in access to hemostatic surgical intervention remains a primary contributor to preventable death in both combat and in many domestic settings, including rural areas and disaster sites. As a result, civilian and military emergency care leaders throughout the world have sought a means to project DCR principles forward of the traditional trauma resuscitation bay, into such remote environments as disaster scenes, rural health facilities, and the contemporary battlefield. After reflecting on experiences from past conflicts, defining current capability gaps, and examining available and potential solutions, a strategy for "remote damage control resuscitation" (RDCR) has been proposed. In order for RDCR to progress from concept to clinical strategy, it will be necessary to define existing gaps in knowledge and clinical capability; develop a lexicon so that investigators and operators may understand each other; establish coherent research and development agendas; and execute comprehensive investigations designed to predict, diagnose, and mitigate the consequences of hemorrhagic shock and acute traumatic coagulopathy before they become irreversible. This article seeks to introduce the concept of RDCR; to reinforce the importance of identifying and optimally managing UMH and the resulting shock state as part of a comprehensive approach to out-of-hospital stabilization and en route care; and to propose investigational strategies to enable the development and broad implementation of RDCR principles.

Management of Junctional Hemorrhage in Tactical Combat Casualty Care: TCCC Guidelines-Proposed Change 13-03

The vast majority of combat casualties who die from their injuries do so prior to reaching a medical treatment facility. Although most of these deaths result from nonsurvivable injuries, efforts to mitigate combat deaths can still be directed toward primary prevention through modification of techniques, tactics, and procedures and secondary prevention through improvement and use of personal protective equipment. For deaths that result from potentially survivable injuries, mitigation efforts should be directed toward primary and secondary prevention as well as tertiary prevention through medical care with an emphasis toward prehospital care as dictated by the fact that the preponderance of casualties die in the prehospital environment. Since the majority of casualties with potentially survivable injuries died from hemorrhage, priority must be placed on interventions, procedures, and training that mitigate death from truncal, junctional, and extremity exsanguination. In response to this need, multiple novel and effective junctional tourniquets have recently been developed.

1820 – Suicide in the US army

Introduction Suicide rates in the United States Army have steadily risen over the past eight years to record levels and continue to rise. The suicide rate now is greater than the general US population even after controlling for sex and age. This change is even more concerning based on the previous steady decreased rate compared to the US general population in the thirty years prior to 2004. In 2012, suicide deaths have outpaced combat deaths year to date. Objectives 1. Using epidemiologic surveillance data and new scientific data, describe factors associated with the increase in suicide deaths and potential targets for interventions. Aims Provide overview of factors associated with suicide in military populations and effects of combat on suicide rates. Methods Information provided will be based on current published and ongoing research synthesizing the larger suicide research literature. Results Suicide in the Army has steadily increased since 2004 along with other surrogate markers of increased psychiatric illness including post deployment surveillance, anonymous surveillance, clinical utilization rates and rates of drug misuse and abuse. Conclusions Integrating media and scientific reports on the increased rates of miltary suicide is challenging. However, clinically relevant targets to impact rates along with strategies to research factors associated with suicide and larger prevention efforts hold promise.

CBRNE TC3: A Hybrid Approach to Casualty Care in the CBRNE Environment

The implementation of Tactical Combat Casualty Care (TCCC) guidelines for the Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom contingency operations has dramatically reduced preventable combat deaths. A study of these principles and their application to medical treatment in the chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and high-yield explosives (CBRNE), weapons of mass destruction (WMD) environment is presented as a potential readiness and force multiplier for units engaged in this area of operations. Preparing medical operators for support of WMD sampling and mitigation missions requires extensive preventive medicine and post-exposure and downrange trauma threat preparedness. Training and equipping CBRN operators with treatment skills and appropriate interventional material requires pre-implementation planning specific to WMD threats (e.g., anthrax, radiation, organophosphates, and contaminated trauma). A scenario-based study reveals the tactics, techniques, and procedures for training, resourcing, and fielding the CBRN operator of the future.

Combating the Epidemic of Heart Disease

AT THE BEGINNING OF THE 20TH CENTURY, THE 3 leading causes of death in the United States were infectious diseases—pneumonia, tuberculosis, and diarrhea—which in combination claimed 539 lives per 100 000. Lurking in the background as the fourth leading cause of death was heart disease (137 deaths per 100 000). But this would change. With life expectancy of only 47 years at the beginning of the century, people did not live long enough for heart disease to claim many lives. Without a means for accurate diagnosis, many deaths from heart disease went unrecognized. With the advent of the electrocardiogram to facilitate the diagnosis of heart disease, antibiotics to treat infectious diseases, and increasing life expectancy, the number and proportion of deaths due to heart disease soared. During the Great Depression, the number of deaths due to heart disease was twice that of the next leading cause of death (pneumonia). In 1945, at the time of President Roosevelt’s fatal brain hemorrhage due to decades of uncontrolled hypertension, heart disease accounted for more deaths in the United States than the next 3 causes combined. Deaths due to heart disease peaked in 1968 at 374 per 100 000. Necropsy studies of soldiers killed in the wars in Korea and Vietnam provided an opportunity to define the prevalence of subclinical coronary atherosclerosis in young people. In 1953 Enos et al described coronary lesions discovered at autopsy in 300 male soldiers (mean age, 22 years) killed in the Korean War. Gross evidence of coronary disease was present in 77% of the decedents: 35% with fibrous thickening, 26% with a coronary artery narrowed by 10% to 49%, and 15% with a coronary occlusion of 50% or more. In 1971, McNamara et al reported evidence of coronary atherosclerosis in 45% of 105 Vietnam War combat deaths (mean age, 22 years), with 5% having severe coronary disease. In their concise descriptive narratives, these studies provided unequivocal evidence of the silent burden of coronary atherosclerosis in young, otherwise healthy adults, and in finding a “reservoir” of carriers of disease, they helped explain the emergence of heart disease as a 20th century epidemic among middle-aged and older adults. In this issue of JAMA, Webber and colleagues report on the prevalence of coronary and aortic atherosclerosis in 3832 US service members who died from combat or unintentional injuries from 2001 to 2011 while serving in support of military operations in Iraq or Afghanistan. With a mean age of 27 years, the service members’ prevalence of coronary atherosclerosis of any degree was 8.5%, a value considerably lower than reported by Enos et al (77%) and McNamara et al (45%). Minimal, moderate, and severe coronary atherosclerosis were present in only 1.5%, 4.7%, and 2.3% of the recent decedents, respectively. The large sample size of the study provided robust estimates of the low burden of subclinical atherosclerotic disease and permitted an exploration of differences in prevalence of disease across various demographic strata. The prevalence of atherosclerosis increased with age and was greater in those with lower education levels but was not associated with occupation, ethnicity, service branch, or military rank. Taken together, the reports by Enos et al, McNamara et al, and Webber et al offer cross-sectional perspectives on subclinical atherosclerosis in healthy young military service members, but unlike standardized, population-based, cross-sectional studies (eg, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey [NHANES], for example), these studies are not directly comparable and also might not be generalizable to the US population of young adults. Unlike NHANES, the 3 autopsy studies were conducted at irregular intervals and were restricted to military personnel who were likely to be healthier than the US population as a whole. The restrictive criteria used by Webber et al to establish the presence of cardiovascular disease risk factors, along with the “healthy warrior effect,” may have resulted in low measures of prevalence of key risk factors. Specifically, the prevalence of obesity (4%), smoking (3%), hypertension (1%), dyslipidemia (0.7%), and impaired fasting glucose (0.2%) were markedly lower than among comparable age groups in the US population or compared with published estimates of risk factor prevalence in the military. The methods used for ascertainment of several risk factors likely underrepresented their true prevalence and limited the authors’ ability to draw conclusions about risk factor associations with

Alan Seeger: Medievalism as an alternative ideology

The American poet Alan Seeger imagined the First World War as an opportunity to realize medieval values, which were embodied for him in Sir Philip Sidney. Sidney epitomized Seeger's three ideals: ‘Love and Arms and Song’, which contrasted with the materialism and sophistication of modernity. His embrace of ‘Arms’ and the desire for intense, authentic experience led Seeger, who was living in Paris in August 1914, to enlist in the French Foreign Legion, in which he served until his death in combat in July 1916. As an infantryman, Seeger had extensive experience of the Western Front. This concrete experience of the war, of the indignities of life in the trenches and the dominance of technology, contrasted in significant ways with war as constructed in Seeger's medievalist imagination. Seeger, however, reconciled this contradiction by seeing the war as part of the elemental ‘Strife’ of nature. By this means, Seeger avoided the potentially unsettling consequences of confronting the profoundly modern nature of the war. Interpreting the war as a form of ‘Strife’ and as an assertion of medieval values allowed Seeger to imagine himself and his comrades to be living outside the world of industrial capitalist modernity. Seeger shared with others involved in the war this medievalism and the belief that the war offered relief from the values of modernity, even if Seeger's medievalism was more intense, more thoroughgoing, than was common. However, Seeger's death as a result of wounds received from machine gun fire vividly displays the contradiction between his imagination and the reality of industrialized warfare. The example of Seeger thus suggests that the American effort in the First World War was underwritten in part by an ideology through which a modern, industrialized war was embraced in terms derived from the imagined medieval past. Insofar as this is true, medievalism functioned to provide an ideology that constructed, in the terminology of Raymond Williams, an alternative to the industrial capitalist modernity from which the war emerged, an alternative ideology that allowed the war to be imagined differently from what it was, but which posed no substantive challenge to the war's social and economic realities.

Control de la hemorragia en el ámbito militar

One of the basics of military medicine is the control of haemorrhagic shock. Haemorrhage is the first cause of preventable death in combat, with the adequate control of bleeding being considered as fundamental to estimate the survival of the combatant as well as therapeutic support aimed at minimising blood loss being a challenge within military health logistics.The aim of this work is to review the medical and logistics advances in the treatment of bleeding in the military environment and combat during the latest conflicts, and to describe what is the current contribution of the Spanish Armed Forces and to profile future lines of investigation.

Race Relations Within the US Military

Sociologists now often say that the US military is a model of good race relations. Although there is no denying progress made in military race relations, especially since establishment of the all-volunteer force, this review challenges that comfortable claim as research done over the past two decades supports it only in part. Instead, we conclude that disparities in military allocations of goods and burdens sometimes disadvantage racial minorities. This conclusion rests on a review of institutional analyses in five arenas to which researchers have paid close attention: racial patterns in enlistment, officer promotion rates, administration of military justice, risk of death in combat, and health care for wounded soldiers. Although not a direct or intended result of military policy and practice, in three of five cases there was evidence of racial bias and institutional racism. Further work is needed to identify mechanisms through which the bias and racism arose.

Deficit or creativity: Cesare Lombroso, Robert Hertz, and the meanings of left-handedness

In the first decade of the twentieth century two influential researchers attempted to explain the origin and impact of left-handedness in human history. The first, the Turin physician Cesare Lombroso, often referred to as the father of modern criminology, was nearing the end of his long distinguished career. Lombroso tied left-handedness to criminality, insanity, and feeble mindedness. According to Lombroso, these groups shared biological regressions to primitive mentalities that could not be reversed by education or training. The second, French sociologist Robert Hertz, was at the beginning of a career cut short by his death in combat during the First World War. Hertz challenged Lombroso's claims, insisting that the predominance of right-handedness, whatever its biological substrate, was ultimately a cultural artefact driven by a primitive human urge to make sense of the world by dividing it into binary oppositions in which the right was viewed as sacred and the left as profane. Ending discrimination against left-handedness would, according to Hertz, unleash access to both hands and thus both hemispheres. The results, he insisted, would allow repressed talents and creativity to flourish. The conflicting views of Lombroso and Hertz have informed investigations of the causes and consequences of left-handedness until today. While the language of the debate has been reframed in current scientific discourses, left-handedness continues to be portrayed in the contradictory ways first elaborated by Lombroso and Hertz more than a century ago as either the cause of a variety of learning disabilities or as the key that can unlock creativity and talent. The debate also exposed the extent to which other cultural concerns, particularly anti-Semitism, informed theories of handedness.

Incidence of Tension Pneumothorax in Police Officers Feloniously Killed in the Line of Duty: A Ten-Year Retrospective Analysis

According to US military data, tension pneumothorax (TPx) is the second leading cause of possibly preventable combat death after isolated extremity hemorrhage. The purpose of this study was to determine whether TPx similarly represents a significant cause of possibly preventable death in police officers. FBI data for the years 1998 through 2007 were reviewed. Cases were included if officers were on-duty at the time of fatal injury, and died within one hour from time of wounding from penetrating torso trauma. After case identification, letters were sent to the departments of victim officers requesting autopsy reports. One hundred and eight victim officers met inclusion criteria. Four charts were excluded due to inability to re-identify officers. Departmental response rate was 83.7%. Autopsy reports were provided for 60 officers (57.7%). All officers died from gunshot wounds. No coroner specifically identified TPx as either a direct cause of death or a contributing factor (95% CI, 0.00%-5.96%). In contrast to the military experience, TPx appears to be a rare cause of possibly preventable death in police officers. Further study of non-fatal "near miss" events will be required to determine the actual need for law enforcement-specific medical training in the recognition and management of TPx.

Tejanos in Gray: Civil War Letters of Captains Joseph Rafael de la Garza and Manuel Yturri (review)

Reviewed by: Tejanos in Gray: Civil War Letters of Captains Joseph Rafael de la Garza and Manuel Yturri Richard B. McCaslin Tejanos in Gray: Civil War Letters of Captains Joseph Rafael de la Garza and Manuel Yturri. Edited with an introduction by Jerry Thompson. Translated by José Roberto Juárez. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2011. Pp. 168. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 9781603442435, $29.95 cloth.) Thousands of Tejanos served in the Confederate and Texas military forces during [End Page 311] the Civil War, but few of the letters they wrote to family and friends are readily available to scholars of that period. Jerry Thompson draws upon a lifetime of extensive research to provide this slim volume, which helps to redress that lack of sources. The result is a welcome addition to the primary material on the history of Tejanos and the story of Texas in the Civil War. There are forty-one letters in this collection, written by two Confederate Tejano captains from San Antonio, Joseph Rafael de la Garza and Manuel Yturri. They were born into prominent families and became brothers-in-law, and both of them were educated outside of Texas, De la Garza at St. Joseph’s College in Kentucky and Yturri at St. Joseph’s and later the University of Pennsylvania. Both joined the Alamo Rifles of San Antonio in early 1862 when they were in their mid-twenties. De la Garza stayed with the Alamo Rifles when that unit became Company K of the 6th Texas Infantry, and he was killed at Mansfield during the Red River Campaign in April 1864. Yturri enlisted in Company H of the 6th Texas Infantry, then served in the 33rd Texas Cavalry for a year before securing a commission in the 3rd Texas Infantry, with which he served until the end of the war. The letters begin in April 1862 and, at least for Yturri, continue for three years. Most of them were written in Spanish, but they have been translated here. They primarily provide a touching litany of boredom, loneliness, illness, deprivation, and even desertion, but there are a few exceptions. Some excitement surfaces in those that focus on the Overland Campaign in Louisiana in 1863, there is a sad communication conveying a report of De la Garza’s death in combat, and Yturri provides a vivid account of the battle at Jenkins’ Ferry and its gory aftermath. Yturri also writes perhaps one of the most moving letters, which describes how a Texas captain who refused to take his troops east of the Mississippi River was tried and executed by a firing squad. But the material has its greatest impact in revealing perspectives on life at home in San Antonio, where the two Tejano officers’ families obviously struggled to survive without them. Absent from these documents is any clue about why they enlisted when they did, as conscription loomed on the horizon, though Yturri’s disgust with the war by 1865 and his strong desire to be home is quite clear. There are many names in the text that will be familiar to those who study Tejano history and that of Texas in the Civil War. Thompson provides effective notes, which are drawn from an impressive bibliography and comprise almost a fourth of the book, to explain the cast of characters and illuminate the letters. He also provides wonderful illustrations, many of them published from the collections of the two officers’ descendants or taken by Thompson himself. His introduction is somewhat unfocused, but it is gracefully written and provides a sufficient context for Tejano and Civil War scholars alike. Both groups should, and will, embrace this fine little work, and it will be cited in many footnotes. Richard B. McCaslin University of North Texas Copyright © 2012 The Texas State Historical Association

Eliminating Preventable Death on the Battlefield

To evaluate battlefield survival in a novel command-directed casualty response system that comprehensively integrates Tactical Combat Casualty Care guidelines and a prehospital trauma registry. Analysis of battle injury data collected during combat deployments. Afghanistan and Iraq from October 1, 2001, through March 31, 2010. Casualties from the 75th Ranger Regiment, US Army Special Operations Command. Casualties were scrutinized for preventable adverse outcomes and opportunities to improve care. Comparisons were made with Department of Defense casualty data for the military as a whole. A total of 419 battle injury casualties were incurred during 7 years of continuous combat in Iraq and 8.5 years in Afghanistan. Despite higher casualty severity indicated by return-to-duty rates, the regiment's rates of 10.7% killed in action and 1.7% who died of wounds were lower than the Department of Defense rates of 16.4% and 5.8%, respectively, for the larger US military population (P = .04 and P = .02, respectively). Of 32 fatalities incurred by the regiment, none died of wounds from infection, none were potentially survivable through additional prehospital medical intervention, and 1 was potentially survivable in the hospital setting. Substantial prehospital care was provided by nonmedical personnel. A command-directed casualty response system that trains all personnel in Tactical Combat Casualty Care and receives continuous feedback from prehospital trauma registry data facilitated Tactical Combat Casualty Care performance improvements centered on clinical outcomes that resulted in unprecedented reduction of killed-in-action deaths, casualties who died of wounds, and preventable combat death. This data-driven approach is the model for improving prehospital trauma care and casualty outcomes on the battlefield and has considerable implications for civilian trauma systems.

A Porcine Model for Evaluating the Management of Noncompressible Torso Hemorrhage

Noncompressible hemorrhage from central vascular injuries remains the leading cause of preventable death in modern combat. This report introduces a large animal model of noncompressible torso hemorrhage, which permits assessment of the various approaches to this problem. Yorkshire swine were anesthetized and monitoring devices for central aortic pressure, carotid flow, and intracerebral and transcutaneous brain oximetry were applied. Class IV hemorrhagic shock was induced through an iliac arterial injury and animals were subjected to different vascular control methods including thoracic aortic clamping, supraceliac aortic clamping, direct vascular control, and proximal endovascular balloon occlusion. After vascular control, the injury was shunted, and damage control resuscitation was continued. Serum markers, intravenous fluid volumes, and vasopressor requirements were tracked over a subsequent resuscitation period. Postmortem tissue analysis was performed to compare levels of acute ischemic injury between groups. The protocol for animal preparation, hemorrhage volume, open surgical technique, and posthemorrhage resuscitation was developed using four animals. The endovascular approach was developed using two additional animals. After model development, treatment animals subsequently underwent noncompressible hemorrhage with thoracic aortic clamping, supraceliac aortic clamping, direct vascular control, and endovascular aortic occlusion. Premature death occurred in one animal in the direct vascular control group. This study presents a large animal model of class IV hemorrhagic shock from noncompressible hemorrhage, which permits comparison of various vascular control methods to address this challenging problem. Future studies using this model as the standard will allow further development of strategies for the management of noncompressible hemorrhage.

US Navy Experience With Research on, and Development of, Hemoglobin-Based Oxygen Carriers

Abstract : Following 9/11 and the advent of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Naval Medical Research Center (NMRC, Silver Spring, MD} embarked on an effort to develop an improved resuscitation fluid for use in the prehospital phase of care when blood is not available for transfusion. The long-range goal of this program was to develop a multifunctional blood substitute that had oxygen-carrying, hemostatic, and anti-inflammatory capabilities. A shorter-term goal was to deliver an oxygen-carrying resuscitation fluid to both military and civilian trauma medical communities via clinical trial(s) leading to approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Trauma is the leading cause of mortality among young adults and causes significant disability among survivors. Exsanguinating hemorrhage causing hemorrhagic shock (HS} has been reported to account for 28% of combat deaths overall and for the preponderance of civilian and potentially salvageable combat deaths (60% vs. 33% and 6% for tension pneumothorax and airway obstruction, respectively). In Operation Iraqi Freedom (Iraq war) and Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan war}, 83% to 87% of potentially survivable fatalities were caused by hemorrhage occurring before hospital arrival in 55% of cases. In the event of traumatic cardiopulmonary arrest, mortality remains unacceptably high (84-98%). Traumatic anemia as a result of blood loss has been correlated directly with mortality.

Recovery of DNA and fingermarks following deployment of render-safe tools for vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIED)

Improvised explosive devices (IED) are responsible for a significant proportion of combat and civilian deaths around the world. Given the ease with which IEDs can be made, the large quantity of explosive which can be contained within or on a vehicle, and the use of VBIED in the past (for example the 2002 Bali bombing) in terrorist activities, VBIED are an ongoing concern for Defence and law enforcement agencies. Fingermark and DNA analyses are routinely used by police and forensic analysts to identify suspects involved in illegal activities. There is limited information available on the feasibility of obtaining fingermarks, fibres, hair and DNA samples following an explosive incident, or a situation whereby an IED has been rendered safe following the utilisation of an appropriate defeat or render-safe tool. The main objective of this study was to determine if fingermarks and/or DNA (from saliva and hair samples) placed on the interior and exterior of road vehicles, and on inanimate objects (such as plastic or glass bottles), are able to be obtained and analysed following the use of a vehicle-borne IED (VBIED) render-safe tool on a vehicle containing simulated explosives. The identification of fingermarks on the exterior (67.2±8.5%) and interior (43.8±17.8%) of the vehicles was possible following the use of the render-safe tool, though this was more challenging in the latter than the former. Fingermarks were also able to be identified from both plastic and glass bottles placed inside the vehicles. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) techniques yielded DNA profiles that were able to be identified from saliva and hair samples. These preliminary results suggest that both fingermarks and DNA profiles, obtained from vehicles that have been subjected to a VBIED render-safe tool, may be used to identify persons of interest.

Is there a Palestinian civil war? The concept and the impact

The article begins by discussing various criteria considered by different authors as indicators of the onset of a civil war, such as the number of combat deaths and the duration of the war. It then examines whether the Hamas-Fatah conflict can be considered a civil war, before assessing the impact of this conflict on the Palestinians and exploring its implications for the wider Arab–Israeli conflict. The article further investigates the reverberations of this conflict at the regional level and appraises its future course in terms of optimistic versus pessimistic views.

De minotauro yendo a mariposa: aproximación a los símbolos prehispánicos en la poesía de José Martí

El 8 de abril de 1895, en el trayecto de Montecristi a Cabo Haitiano, Martí escribía en su diario: “Leo sobre indios”. Más adelante precisaría que su lectura trataba sobre la heroica resistencia de los aztecas frente a las tropas de Hernán Cortés. Esos breves y concisos apuntes, hechos apenas seis semanas antes de su muerte en combate, dan una idea de la importancia que siempre concedió el poeta cubano a la temática del indio americano. Martí estuvo al tanto de los hallazgos arqueológicos de su tiempo, como lo demuestra su mención de algunos de los templos descubierto, de la escultura del Chac Mool o de los antiguos libros indígenas como el Chilam Balam y el Popol Vuh; así como del hallazgo en Veracruz de una piedra esculpida con la figura de un indio con un pescado y un conejo, lo que vino a ser uno de los primeros testimonios de la cultura olmeca. Fue amigo, además, de Alfredo Chavero, el ilustre arqueólogo mexicano, y por otra parte, es de suponer que visitara los principales centros arqueológicos de las culturas maya y náhuatl. En el ámbito público no dudó nunca en denunciar el saqueo y el tráfico de antigüedades prehispánicas.