The rise and decline of homicide--and why.

A dramatic rise in homicide in the latter half of the 1980s peaked during the 1990s and then declined at an equally dramatic rate. Such trends in homicide rates can be understood only by examining rates in specific age, sex, and racial groups. The increase primarily involved young males, especially black males, occurred first in the big cities, and was related to the sudden appearance of crack cocaine in the drug markets of the big cities around 1985. This development led to an increased need for and use of guns and was accompanied by a general diffusion of guns into the larger community. The decline in homicide since the early 1990s has been caused by changes in the drug markets, police response to gun carrying by young males, especially those under 18 years old, the economic expansion, and efforts to decrease general access to guns, as well as an increase in the prison population and a continued decline in homicide among those over age 24. The lessons learned from the recent homicide trends and the factors associated with them have important implications for public health and the criminal justice system.

Non-hodgkin malignant lymphoma with tissue neutrophilia: a report of 3 cases.

CONTEXT: Neutrophils, in the absence of necrosis, are uncommon in non-Hodgkin malignant lymphoma. Recently, a neutrophil-rich type of Ki-1 (CD30)-positive, anaplastic large cell lymphoma was described. OBJECTIVES: We report 3 cases of nonanaplastic large cell lymphoma with an abundance of tissue neutrophils; 2 cases were associated with breast carcinoma and possible infection. RESULTS: Peripheral blood neutrophilia was noted in only 1 of these 3 patients. Neutrophilia in the lymph nodes occurred in either a sinusoidal or interstitial pattern. Multiple biopsies were available for review in 2 patients; however, tissue neutrophilia was present in only 1 biopsy each. CONCLUSION: These findings suggest that nonanaplastic large cell lymphoma-related tissue neutrophilia is a transient phenomenon.

Cytologic features of clear cell carcinoma of the urethra and urinary bladder.

Clear cell carcinoma (CCL) arising in the lower urinary tract is unusual and we report the cytohistologic findings of three cases retrieved from our files. All patients presented with bleeding, and the tumors were localized in either the urethra or bladder base. Filter and cytocentrifuge preparations of the urine were studied and all cases displayed numerous scattered aggregates or single tumor cells in an inflammatory background. The enlarged cells had abundant clear, wispy cytoplasm with discrete vacuolation. Hobnail and signet ring cells were apparent. The nuclei had granular to vesicular chromatin with prominent often multiple nucleoli. The tumors were histologically distinctive and typically had a tubulocystic configuration with varying proportions of papillary and diffuse patterns. One patient has died of metastatic cancer and two are presently free of tumor. The cytohistologic features of this cancer are characteristic and from our review we conclude that this lesion can be diagnosed by cytologic means.

Antioxidant effects of aqueous garlic extract. 1st communication: Direct detection using the photochemiluminescence.

The antioxidant effect of the aqueous extract from the garlic preparation Kwai was investigated using the method of photochemiluminescence. The method is based on the photo-induced, superoxide radical mediated autoxidation of luminol, and allows for the capability of substances to inhibit the free radical processes in this test system to be quantified, and hence for their antioxidant properties in respect of a standard substance (e.g. ascorbic acid, alpha-tocopherol) to be compared. The aqueous extract obtained from 1 mg of the garlic preparation was found to be anti-oxidatively as effective as 30 nmol of ascorbic acid and/or 3.6 nmol of alpha-tocopherol.

Characterizing criminal careers.

Most knowledge about crime and criminals derives from cross-sectional analyses that link crime rates in a community with a community's attributes. The criminal-career approach focuses on individual offenders and considers their crime-committing patterns as a longitudinal stochastic process. This approach, which invokes parameters characterizing participation rate, initiation rate, termination rate and the associated career length, and individual offending frequency, offers some important new insights. For example, annual offending frequency appears to be reasonably constant with age for those offenders who stay criminally active, termination rates are relatively low for active offenders in their 30s, and offending frequencies seem to be relatively insensitive to demographic attributes for active offenders. All these observations are opposite to those that would be derived from cross-sectional analysis.