ABSTRACT
In recent years, several investigations have documented notable secular changes in human skull morphology. The present study is the next link in the series, addressing its possible effects in the cranial base in North Indian populations. The present study aims to examine the sexual dimorphism in cranial base of two temporally different samples of North Indian population to provide updated population specific osteometric standards. The contemporary and the subrecent samples are comprised of 158 (M 110; F 48) and 325 adult crania (M 206; F 119), respectively. Five variables of cranial base were measured, and data were subjected to discriminant function analysis using SPSS 16.0. The t-tests between the two temporally different samples showed significant sexual dimorphism and population variation. Contemporary females showed comparatively greater dimensions than subrecent. Contemporary population exhibited less sexual dimorphism than subrecent population. Factors associated with the changes in sexual dimorphism are likely to be a consequence of improved nutrition and population admixture in last 50 years. The accuracy of sex prediction ranged from 48.1 to 70.0 % in contemporary sample and 60.9 % to 77.2 % in subrecent sample. Overall, these findings support the conclusion that sexual dimorphism shows variation within few decades, so sex discriminating osteometric standards must be updated regularly.
Subject(s)
Sex Determination by Skeleton/methods , Skull/anatomy & histology , Adolescent , Adult , Aged , Cephalometry , Discriminant Analysis , Female , Humans , India , Male , Middle Aged , Reproducibility of Results , Young AdultABSTRACT
Determination of sex by morphological assessment has been one of the oldest approaches in forensic anthropology. Loth and Henneberg(6) introduced a morphological trait "Mandibular Ramus Flexure" for sex identification with a high accuracy of 99% in African Blacks. However, the population specificity of sexually dimorphic features is well known. The purpose of this study is to test the reliability of this trait in Indian population. A total number of 112 adult mandibles (88 males and 24 females) were studied from the Department of Forensic Medicine, Institute of Medical Sciences, Banaras Hindu University, India. The mandibles were scored according to the original method by two observers in three different sessions. This was done to test inter and intra-observer errors in identifying the trait. The result shows that this trait can be used to diagnose sex with an average accuracy of upto 82%. Though, inter and intra-observer errors were present but could be minimized with extended practice. So, the trait has the potential to be relied upon as a single morphological trait for determination of sex in Indian population.
Subject(s)
Mandible/anatomy & histology , Sex Determination by Skeleton/methods , Adolescent , Adult , Female , Forensic Anthropology/methods , Humans , Male , Middle Aged , Observer Variation , Young AdultABSTRACT
The low (1.2 mg/kg) and high (2.4 mg/kg) therapeutic dose of adriblastina, dissolved in 0.04 ml of distilled water was injected into the chick embryo at different duration of the incubation. The control chick embryo received equal volume of distilled water at the same duration. All groups of embryo were collected on day 19 of gestation. The treated embryo showed growth retardation and lethality in a dose dependence response. The lethality and growth retardation in both treated groups were found significantly different (p<0.001) as compared with the control chick embryo. Similarly the groups treated on different days showed a time sequential effect on the developing chick embryo. Our observation had revealed that the drug is teratogenic to the chick embryo.
