Age Ranges of Epiphyseal Fusion in the Distal Tibia and Fibula of Contemporary Males and Females
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The range of variation in epiphyseal fusion in North American populations has not been sufficiently established. This significant oversight can lead to exclusion of persons of interest in a forensic investigation. This study evaluates epiphyseal fusion of the distal tibia and fibula in 570 European-, African-, and Mexican-American children and young adults. Radiographs of 270 females aged 9 to 17 and 300 males aged 11 to 20 were analyzed to assess the range of variation of epiphyseal fusion at each age. Results indicate that complete fusion in females occurs as early as 12 years in the distal tibia and fibula. All females demonstrated complete fusion by 16 years with no significant differences between ancestral groups. Complete fusion in males occurs as early as 14 years in both epiphyses. All males demonstrated complete fusion by 19 years. Significant differences in the earliest age of complete fusion showed that African- and Mexican-American males demonstrate complete fusion as early as 14 years in both epiphyses while European-American males do not express complete fusion until 16 years.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".