November 15-17, 2013
Plano, Texas

The World Congress on Infant Head Trauma brings together international speakers to find common ground and debate controversial topics in pediatric forensic pathology.  This unique congress focuses primarily on the pathology and etiology of head trauma (and its mimics) and not the overarching issue of child abuse.

Two teams have been assembled with each team having up to 10 hours to present their science to the audience.  You should attend if you are a forensic pathologist or forensic pathology fellow, pediatrician or child advocate, law enforcement officer or attorney.  Up to 20 CME credits are available for eligible physicians.

See attached for more details

On November 28, 2012, the NYC Office of the Chief Medical Examiner successfully deployed the UVIS-CMS application phasing out its current case management system (MEANS).  The successful implementation of UVIS-CMS is a major milestone in this critical Homeland Security funded initiative.

As a result of this achievement, the NYCOCME and the Office of the NJ State Medical Examiner have initiated a major collaborative effort in support of the full implementation of the UVIS-CMS application in NYC and throughout the NJ State Medical Examiner system.  When this program is fully implemented, the NY-NJ region will have a fully integrated and data interoperable disaster/case management system in a population area that exceeds 20 million and encompasses 20 medicolegal jurisdictions.

Additional information is available at https://www.uvistraining.com or http://www.nyc.gov/ocme.

2013 UVIS Handout

Online Training for Forensic Scientists and Managers

Two new precorded online training courses are available:

• Fundamentals of Mass Spectrometry Used in Forensic Toxicology

 Course Description:  The module will review combining chromatography and mass spectrometry for the confirmatory test to identify and quantify the specific compound, drug, or drug metabolite.  The purpose of mass spectrometry is to obtain a unique, reproducible fragmentation pattern of a particular molecular species.  Whether a mass spectrometer uses a direct introduction source, gas chromatography (or GC), or liquid chromatography (or LC), some components are common for all instruments.

• Administrative Management of an Medicolegal Death Investigator's Office

Course Description:  The purpose of this course is to help professionals who have accepted the responsibility of managing an MDI office understand the priorities that they should focus on in this position.  We will begin by providing some areas that administrators can research at the outset to help familiarize themselves with their duties.  We will also discuss methods of managing staff and operations.  We will then cover an overview of information that administrators should have regarding medicolegal death investigations and death notifications.  Finally, we will share some valuable resources that can be used to help support administrators and their organizations.

The New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner (NYC OCME) and the Regional Catastrophic Planning Team (RCPT) will host the Regional Mass Fatality Management Response System Training Event in Bergen County, NJ from June 3 – 7, 2013.

The primary objective of this conference is to bring together international and domestic experts and leaders in mass fatality management to explore past incident management, discuss lessons learned and define best practices to enhance future responses and decision-making in complex disasters.

Latent Print Examination and Human Factors: Improving the Practice through a Systems Approach

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Law Enforcement Standards Office (OLES) developed this recently published report and is currently available on the NIST OLES website.

The Expert Working Group on Human Factors in Lantent Print Analysis included experts from forensic disciplines, statisticians, psychologists, engineers, other scientific experts, legal scholars, and representatives of professional organizations.

Galesburg, IL - The Knox and Warren County coroners are teaming up in a new effort to combat underage drinking and help save young lives. The coroners will show juveniles who are in the court system because of problems with underage drinking images of the aftermath of DUI fatalities to try to make them aware of the potential consequences of their decisions.  The Register-Mail

The Department of Justice (DOJ) recently announced the launch of the National Missing and Unidentified Persons Initiative (NamUs), which is designed to provide officials and the general public with the ability to search the records of missing persons and unidentified human remains in order to solve cases. We are urging all offices to enter their cases!

The NamUs initiative unites two programs and their online, searchable database http://www.namus.gov.