A case of sudden cardiac death in connection with Salmonella typhimurium infection

A case of fatal myocarditis in a 24-year-old otherwise healthy man is described. It was possible to cultivate Salmonella typhimurium from the alimentary tract, the blood, the liver and skeletal muscles. The possibility of a solitary myocarditis with fatal outcome due to Salmonella typhimurium infection is discussed. Such a case seems not to have been mentioned previously in the literature.The problems concerning the statistical registration of such a death are briefly discussed.     

The Danish parliamentary election of 1981

The parliamentary election of 8 December 1981 brought no solution to Denmark's perennial problem of unstable minority government. On the contrary, the election weakened the Social Democratic government without significantly strengthening the Liberal-Conservative opposition. Electoral victory went to two relatively small parties, the People's Socialists on the left and Centre Democrats to the right of the centre. The election was followed by a two weeks' government crisis, after which the Prime Minister Anker Jørgensen reassumed the office which he has occupied continuously since January 1975.     

Drug abuse in Denmark (Jutland and Funen). A forensic study based upon drugs seized in 1982-1987

Two thousand fifty-three samples submitted to forensic chemical analysis during the period 1982-1987 were characterized according to their content of narcotics and the year of seizure. Heroin and cannabis dominated the material, but a significant decrease in the number of heroin samples was observed in 1987. Amphetamine, on the contrary, hardly seen during the period 1982-1984, accounted for half of the narcotics submitted in 1987. The misuse of morphine, especially in the form of poppy capsules, was a problem for some years, whereas cocaine has not yet been a drug of abuse in Denmark. The mean concentrations of the heroin and the amphetamine samples were 30% and 44%, respectively, both for retail drugs and the entire material.     

Suicide by carbon monoxide from car exhaust-gas in Denmark 1995-1999

In the period 1995-1999 there were 388 car exhaust-gas suicides in Denmark. Of these 343 (88.4%) were men and 45 (11.6%) were women, the average age being 47 years. The car exhaust-gas suicides made up 9.3% of all suicides in Denmark in the period. The corresponding rate was 11.7% for men and 3.7% for women. In rural areas a larger part of all suicides were committed with car exhaust-gas compared to the more densely populated areas. Mental disease was diagnosed in 124 (32.0%) cases. A suicide note was found in 165 (42.5%) cases. A hose was fitted to the exhaust pipe in 334 (86.1%) cases. Of these the 234 (60.3%) occurred outside, typically in a forest area, while 76 (19.6%) occurred in a closed garage. All the 54 (13.9%) cases with no hose fitted to the exhaust pipe occurred in a garage. Seven (1.8%) victims were found in a burning or burnt-out car, where the following investigation revealed that it was actually a car exhaust-gas suicide. Carboxyhemoglobin was measured in 26 (6.7%) victims. In two of these victims no carboxyhemoglobin was found, as they had survived for some time after the poisoning. The average saturation of the remaining victims was 67%, the lowest saturation being 20% and the highest being 84%. In the period 1969-1987 the number of car exhaust-gas suicides in Denmark increased from 50 to approximately 190 per year and the rate of car exhaust-gas suicides compared to all suicides increased from approximately 5% to approximately 13%. In 1987-1999 these figures decreased from approximately 190 to 63 per year and from 13% to approximately 8%. During these 30 years the number of passenger cars in Denmark doubled, which explains the increase in car exhaust-gas suicides during 1969-1987. A possible explanation for the decrease in 1987-1999 is the introduction of the catalytic converter, which was made mandatory in 1990. We anticipate that car exhaust-gas suicides will continue to decrease in numbers, as more cars are equipped with catalytic converters.     

An unusual case of sudden unexpected death: postmortem investigation and biomechanical analysis of the cervical spine

A naked man died under peculiar circumstances and the postmortem examination revealed unexpected lesions in the cervical spine. Investigations of the cervical spine (computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, and histological examination) showed that a piece of bone was torn of the anterior part of vertebra C6 and that there was fresh bleeding in the surrounding tissue. The cause of death remained unclear but was most likely cardiac arrhythmia initiated by beta-2 agonist inhalation due to an acute asthmatic attack. Data from biomechanical investigation using finite element analysis supported the conclusion that the cervical spine injury was secondary to impact during falling as a consequence of the cardiac arrhythmia.     

Effects on academia-industry collaboration of extending university property rights

Several recent studies show European university scientists contributing far more frequently to company-owned patented inventions than they do to patents owned by universities or by the academic scientists themselves. Recognising the significance of this channel for direct commercialisation of European academic research makes it important to understand its response to current Bayh-Dole inspired reforms of university patenting rights. This paper studies the contribution from university scientists to inventions patented by dedicated biotech firms (DBFs) specialised in drug discovery in Denmark and Sweden, which in this respect share a number of structural and historic characteristics. It examines effects of the Danish Law on University Patenting (LUP) effective January 2000, which transferred to the employer university rights to patents on inventions made by Danish university scientists alone or as participants in collaborative research with industry. Sweden so far has left property rights with academic scientists, as they also were in Denmark prior to the reform. Consequently, comparison of Danish and Swedish research collaboration before and after LUP offers a quasi-controlled experiment, bringing out effects on joint research of university IPR reform. In original data on all 3,640 inventor contributions behind the 1,087 patents filed by Danish and Swedish DBFs 1990–2004, Difference-in-Difference regressions uncover notable LUP-induced effects in the form of significant reductions in contributions from Danish domestic academic inventors, combined with a simultaneous substitutive increase of non-Danish academic inventors. A moderate increase in academic inventions channelled into university owned-patents does appear after LUP. But the larger part of the inventive potential of academia, previously mobilised into company-owned patents, seems to have been rendered inactive as a result of the reform. As a likely explanation of these effects the paper suggests that exploratory research, the typical target of joint university-DBF projects in drug discovery, fits poorly into LUP’s requirement for ex ante allocation of IPR. The Pre-LUP convention of IPR allocated to the industrial partner in return for research funding and publication rights to the academic partner may have offered more effective contracting for this type of research. There are indications that LUP, outside the exploratory agenda of drug discovery, offers a more productive framework for inventions requiring less complicated and uncertain post-discovery R&D.

The political economy of regulatory change: The case of British merger control

This article aims to explain the broader evolution of British merger control. To this end it outlines a novel critical political economy perspective on regulation and regulatory change which differs from established political economy approaches, such as the regulatory capitalism/state perspectives, in three main ways: it places regulatory ideas at the heart of the analysis, it differentiates between different degrees of regulatory change, and it links regulatory change in delineated issue areas with changing power balances between fractions of capital and labor. The application of this perspective to the analysis of the evolution of British merger control provides some important new insights, most notably that the content, form, and scope of merger control in Britain have been deeply transformed in accordance with neoliberal ideas since the 1980s and that this process, which was part of a broader regulatory and ideational shift, was premised on the ascendancy of transnational capital.     

How does Intergroup Contact Generate Ethnic Tolerance? The Contact Hypothesis in a Scandinavian Context

As European majority members are often hostile toward ethnic minorities, it is important to identify sources that reduce opposition to immigrants. First, focusing on Denmark, this article examines whether intergroup contact influences attitudes toward ethnic minority rights (henceforth: ‘ethnic tolerance’). Second, this study tests whether the contact‐tolerance relationship is mediated by self‐disclosure and symbolic threat. Furthermore, contact is measured as workplace contact in order to reduce self‐selection biases. The empirical tests are performed on a Danish high‐quality national probability sample from 2009 (N = 1,929). Analysis shows that intergroup contact generates ethnic tolerance because workplace contact weakens threat perceptions and stimulates disclosure of personal information. Generally, these results suggest that regular intergroup contact can improve ethnic relations in contemporary democracies.