Journal of Forensic Research

In the context of mass fatality incident, it is of utmost importance to identify the victims rapidly and accurately, both for judicial reasons and to provide closure for family members. DVI teams work in an interdisciplinary manner, engaging the services of experts in various disciplines, comprising of pathologists, anthropologists, odontologists, radiologists, fingerprint and DNA experts to work collaboratively towards the identification of victims. The DVI process is accomplished with four phases namely, scene, post-mortem, antemortem and reconciliation, adopting the fundamental principle where the highest possible quality standards should be applied and victims are to be treated with dignity and respect, in accordance to the internationally recognized INTERPOL DVI guide. This DVI guide has extensively adopted and used by many countries in numerous disasters with successful identification for victims. Nevertheless, the problem to positively identify victims lies with the case of insufficient or missing of the antemortem data. This paper focuses on the dynamic and continuous evolution, particularly the application of the DVI process in setting up a procedure for temporary controlled burial for all the unidentified remains in the two cases of Malaysia mass fatality incidents. It highlights the importance of temporary controlled burial for all the unidentified remains as means of forensic humanitarian reason as well as for criminal investigation where the extended version of the DVI protocol to include temporary controlled burial as a measure to treat victims with respect and dignity. The two cases convey the importance of expanding the DVI process to include procedures for future identification and archiving. DVI procedures are dynamic and have evolved as well as developed particularly in its application going beyond merely identification, to recording and documenting for future referencing by the victim's family to researchers.

A micro-anatomic study of mesenchyme involvement in the morphogenesis of human biosystem is intended. The research was carried out on 80 sagittal serial sections taken from a 12-week human fetus. Spatial distribution of mesenchyme within the gut tube, urogenital and endocrine systems was analyzed. The results are based on the assumption that there are two forms of mesenchyme if one takes into consideration the embryonic origin: mesenchyme originating from mesoderm (meso-mesenchyme) and mesenchyme originating from ectoderm (ectomesenchyme) within the neural crest. We believe that in the morphogenesis of human biosystem, the mesenchyme can be induced byphenotype changes or it can act as an inductor in other structures. The significance of mesenchyme space distribution and of its phenotype changes in pathology is discussed.

Objective: This research investigated the polymorphism of the X-chromosomal short tandem repeats (X-STR) DXS8377 in Northern Thai males. Methods: Genomic DNA was extracted from blood or buccal cells of 200 unrelated healthy individuals using Nucleospin® Blood or Nucleospin® Tissue (Macherey-Nagel), respectively. The DXS8377 locus was amplified by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and the PCR product was analyzed by agarose gel electrophoresis. The allelic ladder was constructed and the size of all PCR products was analyzed by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis using allelic ladder as a marker. The nucleotide sequences of the different-sized PCR products were analyzed to identify the DXS8377 alleles. Lastly, the Polymorphic information content (PIC) and Power of discrimination (PD) of DXS8377 DNA marker were calculated and the analysis of population relationships was performed using chi-square test of homogeneity. Results: Eleven DXS8377 alleles were observed in the study population, the allele 49 was the most frequent with the allele frequency of 0.4400. According to previous studies, allele 49 was found in all of the populations studied and it was common among various populations. The polymorphism and the probability of DXS8377 to discriminate two unrelated individuals were moderate with a PIC and PD of 0.6973 and 0.7305, respectively. Most interestingly, the DXS8377 DNA marker was able to differentiate Mongoloid from Caucasoid and Negroid and it was also able to differentiate Northern Thai males from other Asian populations, including Korean, Japanese and Chinese. Conclusion: Even though DXS8377 possessed moderate PIC and PD, this DNA marker was able to differentiate Mongoloid from Caucasoid and Negroid and it was also able to differentiate Northern Thai males from Korean, Japanese and Chinese.

Hallucinogenic mushrooms containing psilocin and psilocybin psychoactive compounds are permanent offers on the black market palette. Reliable quantifications of psilocin and psilocybin are especially important task of forensic analysis because their results have significant effect on the hardness of judgement to be punished by the court. For quantification of psilocybin mainly HPLC procedures are applied because the compound is thermally labile and converts into psilocin by dephosphorylation at gas chromatographic conditions. The majority of HPLC procedures available in the scientific literature is based on reversed phase separation which is not advantageous particularly for the psilocybin because of its insufficient retention caused by the high polarity of the compound. The elution at the unretained section may even hinder the mass spectrometric detection of psilocybin because of the quenching of formed ions by other unretained co-eluting matrix components. To overcome drawbacks outlined previously the application of hydrophilic interaction chromatography (HILIC) is promising which allows analysis of polar compounds with appropriate retention and allowing mass spectrometric detection. The aim of the present study was to develop a procedure for quantification of psilocin and psilocybin in hallucinogen mushrooms applying HPLC separation and subsequent UV-photometric and mass spectrometric detection. For this reason, an isocratic hydrophilic interaction chromatographic (HILIC) phase system consisting of a zwitterionic stationary phase and a mixture of acetonitrile and formate buffer as mobile phase was applied. The developed system assures sufficient retention for both psilocin and psilocybin, baseline separation of the compounds from each other and from matrix components, too. Unique feature of the applied system that psilocybin elutes with a retention factor of approximately two times greater than that of psilocin which is a scientific novelty. The applicability of the proposed procedure is demonstrated via results obtained by analysis of mushrooms seized by police.