Genome-wide analysis of nearly all the victims of a 6200 year old massacre.

Paleogenomic and bioanthropological studies of ancient massacres have highlighted sites where the victims were male and plausibly died all in battle, or were executed members of the same family as might be expected from a killing intentionally directed at subsets of a community, or where the massacred individuals were plausibly members of a migrant community in conflict with previously established groups, or where there was evidence that the killing was part of a religious ritual. Here we provide evidence of killing on a massive scale in prehistory that was not directed to a specific family, based on genome-wide ancient DNA for 38 of the 41 documented victims of a 6,200 year old massacre in Potocani, Croatia and combining our results with bioanthropological data. We highlight three results: (i) the majority of individuals were unrelated and instead were a sample of what was clearly a large farming population, (ii) the ancestry of the individuals was homogenous which makes it unlikely that the massacre was linked to the arrival of new genetic ancestry, and (iii) there were approximately equal numbers of males and females. Combined with the bioanthropological evidence that the victims were of a wide range of ages, these results show that large-scale indiscriminate killing is a horror that is not just a feature of the modern and historic periods, but was also a significant process in pre-state societies.

The Herculaneum victims of the 79 AD Vesuvius eruption: a review.

The scientific study of the victims of the 79 AD Vesuvius eruption began with the first discovery in the 1980s of hundreds of skeletons of people who had taken refuge in the suburban area of Herculaneum. Hundreds of human victims were found crowding the beach and a series of waterfront chambers, fixated into a final posture by the first of the deadly incoming pyroclastic currents. The towns of Herculaneum, Pompeii and other Roman settlements up to 20 kilometers away were suddenly hit and overwhelmed by successive ash-avalanches, fast moving clouds of hot volcanic ash and gases known as pyroclastic surges, capable of killing all residents who were not yet evacuated. Given the impossibility of access to the skeletal remains of the Pompeiians locked within the plaster casts and the sparse occasional finds of victims elsewhere, most of the anthropological studies focused on the victims discovered in Herculaneum. The first investigations were carried out to detect the biological and pathological features of these people. More recent multidisciplinary studies on the victims' skeletons and their volcanological context shed light on the dynamic impacts of the 79 AD Plinian eruption on the area around the volcano and on its inhabitants. The effects of the high temperatures of the surges as suffered by the remaining resident population were revealed, with crucial implications for the present-day risk of a similar outcome to around three million people living close to the volcano, including metropolitan Naples.

Clinical and demographic profile of admitted victims in a tertiary hospital after the 2015 earthquake in Nepal.

BACKGROUND: In 2015, an earthquake killing 9,000 and injuring 22,000 people hit Nepal. The Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital (TUTH), a reference tertiary hospital, was operational immediately after the earthquake. We studied the profile of earthquake victims admitted in TUTH and assessed what factors could influence hospital length of stay. METHODS: An earthquake victim dataset was created based on patient records, with information on sex, age, date of admission and discharge, diagnosis, and surgical intervention. We performed an initial descriptive overview of the earthquake victims followed by a time-to-event analysis to compare length of hospital stay in different groups, using log rank test and cox regression to calculate Hazard Ratios. RESULTS: There were in total 501 admitted victims, with the peak of admissions occurring on the fifth day after the earthquake. About 89% had injury as main diagnosis, mostly in lower limbs, and 66% of all injuries were fractures. Nearly 69% of all patients underwent surgery. The median length of hospital stay was 10 days. Lower limb and trunk injuries had longer hospital stays than injuries in the head and neck (HR = 0.68, p = 0.009, and HR = 0.62 p = 0.005, respectively). Plastic surgeries had longer hospital stays than orthopaedic surgeries (HR = 0.57 p = 0.006). Having a crush injury and undergoing an amputation also increased time to discharge (HR = 0.57, p = 0.013, and HR = 0.65 p = 0.045 respectively). CONCLUSIONS: Hospital stay was particularly long in this sample in comparison to other studies on earthquake victims, indirectly indicating the high burden TUTH had to bear to treat these patients. To strengthen resilience, tertiary hospitals should have preparedness plans to cope with a large influx of injured patients after a large-scale disaster, in particular for the initial days when there is limited external aid.

A hypothesis of sudden body fluid vaporization in the 79 AD victims of Vesuvius.

In AD 79 the town of Herculaneum was suddenly hit and overwhelmed by volcanic ash-avalanches that killed all its remaining residents, as also occurred in Pompeii and other settlements as far as 20 kilometers from Vesuvius. New investigations on the victims' skeletons unearthed from the ash deposit filling 12 waterfront chambers have now revealed widespread preservation of atypical red and black mineral residues encrusting the bones, which also impregnate the ash filling the intracranial cavity and the ash-bed encasing the skeletons. Here we show the unique detection of large amounts of iron and iron oxides from such residues, as revealed by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry and Raman microspectroscopy, thought to be the final products of heme iron upon thermal decomposition. The extraordinarily rare preservation of significant putative evidence of hemoprotein thermal degradation from the eruption victims strongly suggests the rapid vaporization of body fluids and soft tissues of people at death due to exposure to extreme heat.

A brief history of forensic odontology and disaster victim identification practices in Australia.

Today we consider forensic odontology to be a specialised and reliable method of identification of the deceased, particularly in multiple fatality incidents. While this reputation has been gained from the application of forensic odontology in both single identification and disaster situations over a number of years, the professional nature of the discipline and its practices have evolved only recently. This paper summarises some of early uses of forensic odontology internationally and in Australia and discusses the development of both forensic odontology and Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) practices in each of the states and territories of Australia. The earliest accounts of the use of forensic odontology in Australia date to the 1920's and 30's, and were characterised by inexperienced practitioners and little procedural formality. An organised and semi-formal service commenced in most states during the 1960's although its use by police forces was spasmodic. Today the service provided by qualified and experienced forensic odontologists is highly professional and regularly utilised by police and coronial services. The development of DVI Practices in Australia began following the crash of a Vickers Viscount aircraft into Botany Bay in 1961 and, as with practices internationally, have evolved into an equally professional and reliable specialist discipline of policing in which forensic odontology plays a significant part.

Coordinación general de las actuaciones en el hospital / General Coordination of Hospital Activity

En este trabajo describimos las medidas organizativas y de coordinación general que se tomaron desde la Dirección del hospital para dar atención a las 325 víctimas que, en las primeras horas del día 11 de marzo, llegaron a nuestro centro procedentes del atentado terrorista. En un primer apartado presentamos un resumen de los hechos referidos a las actuaciones que tuvieron que llevar a cabo los dispositivos de emergencia extrahospitalarios y la distribución de las víctimas por centros. En la segunda parte describimos más detalladamente las actuaciones que se llevaron a cabo para la puesta en marcha del Plan de Actuación ante Catástrofe Externa de nuestro hospital, el sistema de clasificación e identificación de pacientes que se utilizó, así como los recursos de camas, quirófanos y personal que se utilizaron ese día. Por último, a modo de discusión, en el tercer apartado realizamos un análisis crítico de nuestras actuaciones (AU)

The present article describes the organizational and general coordination measures taken by the hospital management to attend the 325 victims who arrived at our hospital after the terrorist attack on the morning of 11 March. Firstly, we summarize the activity performed by the extra-hospital emergency services and the distribution of the victims in centers. Secondly, we describe in greater detail the interventions performed to initiate the External Emergency Action Plan in our hospital, the triage system and identification of patients who used it, as well as the resources in terms of beds, operating rooms and personnel that were used on that day. Lastly, by way of discussion, we provide a critical analysis of our interventions (AU)