While radioactive isotope analysis has proved to be a useful method in disciplines such as archaeology and forensic anthropology, more recently, radiocarbon dating has allowed for a more nuanced biological profile of human skeletal remains. Radiocarbon dating has been made possible by the above ground nuclear bomb test conducted in 1963, which raised the level of atmospheric radiocarbon concentration to almost twice the natural level. Because the annually measured tropospheric ¹⁴C concentrations are integrated into the bomb peak curve, the time of birth and death of an individual can be estimated by comparing the radiocarbon content of a skeletal sample to the bomb-curve value. In July 2017, about 1,000 skeletal remains were excavated at the construction site of Sokcho. For medico-legal purposes, we conducted anthropological and odontological examinations of all the human remains. We then conducted the radiocarbon analysis on seven femora (head and body portions), five mandibular teeth, and soil from the site through a request to the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources. The results demonstrated that the estimated year of birth or death was prior to the 1950s. Due to the diverse distribution of results, we deduced that the human remains were from the local mass grave. This study supports and suggests the use of radiocarbon dating more frequently in the analysis of human skeletal remains.
Archaeology ; Bombs ; Earth Sciences ; Forensic Anthropology ; Gangwon-do ; Humans ; Korea ; Methods ; Miners ; Parturition ; Radiometric Dating ; Soil ; Tooth

Stapes fractures without other ossicle problems are rare and ossicle problems due to explosion pressure are also rare. We describe a very rare case of stapes anterior crural fracture resulting from a land mine explosion. As this case suggests, a close examination of the ossicles is necessary during an exploration tympanotomy.
Bombs ; Explosions* ; Fractures, Bone ; Stapes*

Bombs ; Cesium ; poisoning ; Humans ; Polonium ; poisoning ; Radiation Injuries ; Terrorism

PURPOSE: To report a case of pupillary block and increased intraocular pressure caused by vitreous prolapse after Nd:YAG laser posterior capsulotomy. CASE SUMMARY: A 70-year-old male visited the hospital for decreasing visual acuity and ocular pain in the left eye. Two days earlier, he had undergone Nd:YAG laser posterior capsulotomy in the left eye. Best corrected visual acuity (BCVA) was 0.63 in the right eye and FC 60 cm in the left eye. Intraocular pressure (IOP) was 14 mm Hg in the right eye and 64 mm Hg in the left eye. Slit-lamp examination revealed diffuse corneal stromal edema and iris bombe with vitreous prolapse in the anterior chamber. Gonioscopy confirmed a closed angle. Pupillary block and increased intraocular pressure were diagnosed. A Nd:YAG laser iridotomy was performed. Three days after the iridotomy, BCVA was 0.2 and IOP was 11 mm Hg in the treated eye. Slit-lamp examination revealed reduced vitreous prolapse in the anterior chamber. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first report of pupillary block and increased IOP caused by vitreous prolapse after Nd:YAG laser posterior capsulotomy in Korea. Physicians should be aware that pupillary block could be caused by prolapsed vitreous after Nd:YAG laser posterior capsulotomy and Nd:YAG laser iridotomy could be performed effectively in such cases.
Anterior Chamber ; Bombs ; Edema ; Eye ; Gonioscopy ; Humans ; Intraocular Pressure ; Iris ; Korea ; Male ; Prolapse ; Visual Acuity

OBJECTIVETerrorism-related bomb attacks on civilian population have increased dramatically over the last decade. Craniocerebral injuries secondary to improvised explosive devices have not been widely reported in the context of unarmored civilians. This series intends to report the spectrum of these injuries secondary to suicidal and implanted bombs as encountered at the Aga Khan University Hospital, Pakistan (AKUH). Further, a few pertinent management guidelines have also been discussed.

METHODSThe hospital database and clinical coding during a 5-year period were examined for head injuries secondary to terrorism-associated blasts. In addition to patient demographics, data analysis for our series included initial Glasgow Coma Scale, presenting neurological complaints, associated non-neurological injuries, management (conservative or operative) to associated complications, and discharge neurological status.

RESULTSA total of 16 patients were included in this series. Among them 9 were victims of suicidal blasts while 7 were exposed to implanted devices. The patients presented with diverse patterns of injury secondary to a variety of shrapnel. A follow-up record was available for 12 of the 16 patients (mean follow-up: 7.8 months), with most patients having no active complaints.

CONCLUSIONThe results of this series show that civilian victims of suicidal and improvised bombings present with a wide range of neurological symptoms and injury patterns, which often differ from the neurological injuries incurred by military personnel in similar situations, and thereby often require individualized care.

Adolescent ; Adult ; Blast Injuries ; diagnostic imaging ; epidemiology ; therapy ; Bombs ; Child ; Child, Preschool ; Craniocerebral Trauma ; diagnostic imaging ; epidemiology ; Debridement ; Decompressive Craniectomy ; Female ; Glasgow Coma Scale ; Humans ; Male ; Middle Aged ; Pakistan ; epidemiology ; Skull Fractures ; epidemiology ; Suicide ; Terrorism ; statistics & numerical data ; Tomography, X-Ray Computed ; Urban Population ; statistics & numerical data ; Wounds, Penetrating ; epidemiology ; Young Adult

No abstract available.
Bombs

Professor Charles I. McLaren (1882-1957) was an Australian Christian missionary and a professor of psychiatry in Korea. As the first psychiatrist from a Western country, he accomplished tremendous achievements in clinical, teaching and writing activities as well as in his missionary work. He graduated from the University of Melbourne in 1906 and, after residency training under Professor Dr. Sir Richard Stawell at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, he and his wife came to Korea in 1911. He practised medicine at Margaret Whitecross Paton Memorial Hospital in Chinju, Korea and later was appointed as a professor of psychiatry at the Severance Union Medical School in Seoul, Korea. He left Korea for a while to participate in WWII as a military doctor and he also once traveled to Vienna to learn new skills, including fever therapy and psychoanalysis. Because of his love for the Korean people, Dr. McLaren not only introduced into Korean society modern Western psychiatry and a humanitarian approach to patients with mental disorders, but he also practised medicine according to his own unique medical philosophy drawn from Christian spirituality and he educated Korean native students in psychiatry and Christianity. He and his wife also made efforts to improve old customs in Korean society. Because he argued against Japan's enforcement of emperor-worship, he had to resign from the Severance Medical College in 1939, and he returned to Chinju. Immediately after the bombing of Pearl Harbour, he was arrested, imprisoned, interned, and subequently expelled to Australia in 1942. In Melbourne, received wide press coverage and great controversy. He lectured widely and contributed to various professional and other publications, covering not only subjects in Christianity and medicine/psychiatry, but also his opinions about the war and Japan, communism and the White Australia policy. As a Christian me-dical doctor and scientist, he was interested in the "nature of man", the relationship or interaction between body (brain and/or material) and mind/spirituality, the origin of human consciousness in relation to time-space energy, the healing of disease, and the etiology of mental illness and spiritual treatment. He was passionate in his stated belief that God's Word applied to the whole spec-trum of human relationships, from personal to international, as well as to the natural world. Dr. McLaren kept his conservative Christian beliefs, but he respected traditional Asian philosophies. His thoughts and experiences were publically expressed through lectures, journals and books, not only in Korea but also in China and Australia. He was a man of compassion, courage and ceaseless intellectual activity, a pioneer of psychiatry and a lifelong explorer of the Bible. Korean psych-iatrists, who may feel confused by the many complicated new medical theories and advanced technologies, still find Dr. McLaren's simple and clear teachings on science, medicine, and human nature and his practice of caring for mental patients with a compassionate, humanitarian and Christian attitude a challenging example to emulate.
Achievement ; Asian Continental Ancestry Group ; Australia ; Bible ; Bombs ; China ; Christianity ; Communism ; Consciousness ; Empathy ; Human Characteristics ; Humans ; Hyperthermia, Induced ; Internship and Residency ; Japan ; Korea ; Lectures ; Love ; Mental Disorders ; Mentally Ill Persons ; Military Personnel ; Missions and Missionaries ; Philosophy ; Philosophy, Medical ; Porphyrins ; Psychiatry ; Psychoanalysis ; Schools, Medical ; Spirituality ; Spouses ; Writing

Deaths caused by grenades hardly occur except for during wartime, and can be seen as a particular incident that can be observed only within the military or by acts of terrorism. However, there has never been any data which tried to analyze the damage patterns through mock grenade explosions. So far, the processes leading to deaths were merely inferred by reconstructing the situation with limited intelligence after the incidents have already occurred. Therefore, the authors believe that having mock grenade explosions in order to compare and study the observances with those of the actual incident will be helpful for a more precise and objective medical jurisprudence, and thus have summarized the damage patterned obtained on 8 butchered pigs, that were 6~8 months old, about 100 cm in length and 70~100 kg in weight by photographing with radioactive rays and running autopsies after detonating grenades on them. In conclusion, if there was extensive loss of body parts, the grenade probably exploded when in contact with the lost body parts. If fractures were found the grenade is likely to have detonated contacting or within 25 cm of distance with the body, and if there were no lacerations or loss of body parts the grenade probably exploded at a distance of at least 50 cm. If soot was prevalent on the deceased's body, the grenade is likely to have exploded within a distance of 25 cm from the body at a free floating state, in which it was not in contact with the ground or the body. Lastly, if no soot was found, the grenade most probably detonated at a distance of 50 cm or more. The posture or the direction of the body cannot give precise clues of the victim's state before theexplosion, and a hasty presupposition could be very dangerous in case of contact explosions especially.
Autopsy ; Bombs ; Explosions ; Hand ; Homicide ; Human Body ; Humans ; Intelligence ; Jurisprudence ; Lacerations ; Military Personnel ; Posture ; Running ; Soot ; Suicide ; Swine ; Terrorism

We conducted comparative study on metabolizable energy content of extracts of angelica keiskei and its byproduct. Total six different groups consisting of five test groups treated with angelica keiskei and one control group were compared. Each of the five test groups were given 30% of one of whole plant, extracts, fermented of extracts, byproduct and extracts plus byproduct, respectively, mixed with AIN93M. After 3 days of adjustment period, all groups were subjected to 4 days of test period during which the amounts of feed intake and excretion were measured everyday. All feces were treated for the prevention of decomposition and changes before its energy content were measured using a bomb calorimeter. The amount of excretion was 4.8 +/- 0.3 g/rat/3 days in control group and 9.9-15.0 g/rat/3 days in the groups were added with extracts of angelica keiskei indicating that the angelica keiskei-treated groups produce 2-3 times more excretion. Metabolic energy of control diet was 4,133.3 kcal. This was found to be 15 to 20% higher compared with the metabolic energy content ranging from 3,117.0 kcal/kg (extracts of angelica keiskei) to 3,259.8 kcal/kg (extracts plus byproducts) angelica keiskei-treated groups. This is interpreted as the result of the decreased metabolic energy in the test diets were substituted with 30% of ngelica keiskei-treated ingredient which has low metabolic content itself. One notable finding is that the metabolic content of the group mixed with byproducts and extracts (1,763.0 kcal/kg) is 27% higher than that of extracts of angelica keiskei (1,286.8 kcal/kg) indicating that mechanical grinding increases the rate of digestion and absorption increasing, in turn, the energy content used in the body. The results of analysis of overall caloric absorption showed absorption rate in order of Whole plant < extracts < byproduct < extract plus byproduct < fermented of extract.
Absorption ; Angelica ; Bombs ; Diet ; Digestion ; Feces ; Plants

The worst recorded man-made maritime disaster in the country and in Asia was the bombing of Super Ferry 14 last February 27, 2004. The pre-disaster and post disaster events surrounding the bombing incident were reviewed and summarized. The maritime disaster plan of the Philippine Coast Guard and the responding hospitals were reviewed and evaluation of the medical management of the casualties made. Investigation proved the incident to be due to explosive device brought in by a terrorist due to lapses in security. Prompt response of the disaster management team provided immediate rescue of survivors and provision of emergency management to the injured.

Military Personnel ; Philippines ; Bombs ; Terrorism ; Disasters ; Disaster Planning ; Survivors ; Asia