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In many countries, assessment of legal age, also known as age of majority, has become increasingly important over the years. In China, individuals older than 18 years of age have full capacity regarding civil conduct and can be tried as an adult for criminal charges. Therefore, from a legal point of view, it is crucial to determine whether an individual is an adult. The developmental degree of the third molar is widely recognized as a suitable site for age estimation in late adolescence. This article uses the third molar maturity index (I) with a cutoff value of I = 0.08, which was established by Cameriere et al. in 2008, to distinguish whether an individual is a minor or an adult (≥ 18 years of age) in a northern Chinese population. A total of 840 digital orthopantomograms (OPTs) from 420 male and 420 female northern Chinese subjects aged 12 to 25 years were evaluated. It was found that an increase in I corresponded to a decrease in chronological age. In our study, I = 0.10 showed better accuracy in age discrimination in both men and women. This threshold also resulted in high sensitivity (0.929 and 0.809) and specificity (0.940 and 0.973) in males and females, respectively. The proportion of correctly classified subjects was 0.917 (95% CI, 0.898 to 0.935) in total, 0.938 (95% CI, 0.915 to 0.961) in male and 0.895 (95% CI, 0.866 to 0.925) in female subjects. Bayes post-test probabilities were 0.967 (95% CI, 0.947 to 0.986) in males and 0.983 (95% CI, 0.966 to 0.998) in females. These differences in threshold values between Chinese and Caucasian populations might be because the development of third molars is delayed in the Chinese population compared to the Caucasian population. In conclusion, I might be a useful method in legal and forensic practices to determine ages in late adolescence in northern Chinese individuals. However, a specific population should be tested before I is used for legal age estimation.

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We reported for the first time the utilization of hexadentate benzothiazole-based diamine-bisphenolate ligands to synthesize structurally well-characterized dinickel dicarboxylate complexes and studied their catalysis for copolymerization of carbon dioxide with epoxides. Dinickel carboxylate complexes having a 1,3-diamine-bridged backbone were demonstrated to be high-performance catalysts for alternating copolymerization of CO 2 and cyclohexene oxide (CHO) with high product selectivity. Particularly, acetate-supported nickel complex 2 enabled us to promote such CO 2 -copolymerization of this kind with a maximum turnover frequency of up to 2600 h −1 and gave good molecular weight controllability under high-pressure conditions. It is worth noting that bimetallic Ni catalyst 2 was also capable of mediating the catalytic CO 2 -polymerization of alicyclic epoxides at atmospheric pressure. Kinetic investigations of CO 2 /CHO copolymerization by 2 allowed us to determine the rate equation of −d[CHO]/dt = k p [2] 1 [CHO] 1 , and such catalysis exhibited a first-order dependence on both dinickel complex and CHO concentrations.