Gelatine lifting, a novel technique for the examination of indented writing

The limitations of the examination of indented writing impressions using electrostatic detection are often paper related. Paper types such as glossy paper, paper of high basis weight, and lithography or gravure-printed papers often give rise to problems resulting in a decrease in sensitivity or a lack of detection altogether. In this paper, a novel technique for the examination of indented writing is presented, which is in a sense complimentary to the technique of electrostatic detection as it is especially suitable for glossy-coated and printed paper types and can in some instances also deal with paper types of higher basis weight. Indented writing grooves will normally contain more particles than the surrounding nonindented areas due to damage of the surface layer resulting in a build-up of filler powder. The method presented uses black gelatine lifter slabs to lift the paper dust image off the surface of the paper. This image can quite easily be photographed using near-to-coaxial lighting. The gelatine lifting method outperforms oblique lighting for the detection of indented writing and is almost as sensitive as electrostatic detection if compared on the types of paper where both perform well. The main advantage of this new technique is, however, that it is especially suitable for those types of paper where electrostatic detection fails and is therefore a welcome addition to the range of methods available to a forensic document examiner for the examination of indented writing.     

Searching for political business cycles in Germany

One reslt of the revitalised literature on political business cycles is that there are signs in German data that elections and ideology have an impact. However, using monthly data for the period 1950-1989, and standard methods of time series analysis, we reject both the Nordhaus hypothesis of opportunistic cycles and the partisan approaches by Hibbs ans Alesina. We show that some results are sensitive to the assumption of stationarity. There are signs of policy cycles in M1. It is hard, though, to bring this in line with the Rogoff hypothesis of rational opportunistic cycles because of the German institutional setting.     

Molecular characterization and Austrian Caucasian population data of the multi-copy Y-chromosomal STR DYS464

DYS464 is a multi-copy STR system with four positions on the Y-chromosome (DYS464a, b, c, and d) which was recently identified and characterized [Forensic Sci. Int. 130 (2002) 97]. The aims of our study were to perform a population study, to estimate the mutation rate and an extensive sequence analysis in order to confirm the nomenclature. Fourteen different alleles were found in an Austrian population sample with an allele length varying from 9 to 19 repeats. All alleles were cloned and sequenced. Alleles 9-19 showed the general repeat structure (CCTT)n...(CCTT)2...(CCTT)3...(CCTT)4...(CCTT)2...(CCTT)2. The nomenclature is based on the number of repeated units of the variable (CCTT)n-stretch only. In 13% of the samples intermediate alleles, namely 14.3A, 14.3B and 15.3 were detected. In these alleles the variable repeat block is interrupted by a CTT motif (14.3A: (CCTT)3CTT(CCTT)11; 14.3B and 15.3: (CCTT)7CTT(CCTT)7/8). A comparison with GenBank entries revealed the existence of a length variant due to a deletion of one cytosine in the 5' flanking region of the first repeat block. We designed an alternative forward primer to circumvent possible ambiguities in the allele designation. A total of 54 different genotypes were identified in 135 men corresponding to a discrimination capacity (DC) of 40% and a gene diversity (GD) of 0.97. These values are much higher than those of other Y-chromosomal short tandem repeats (Y-STRs). DYS464 has the same haplotype diversity (HD) as the combination of the five Y-STR loci with the lowest gene diversities of the Y-STR core set. On the other hand, a combination of the three most diverse loci (DYS464, DYS385 and DYS390) has the same capacity to distinguish between paternal lineages than the complete minimal haplotype (minHT) consisting of eight Y-STR loci. In our population sample the addition of DYS464 to the minHT increases the number of different haplotypes from 110 to 122. The mutation-rate estimate based on the 70 meioses analyzed amounts to 2.86 x 10(-2) (95% confidence interval 3.5 x 10(-3) to 9.95 x 10(-2)). This value is approximately 10 times higher than the average mutation-rate estimate for Y-STRs.