Analysis of STR loci in Cartagena, a Caribbean city of Colombia

Allele frequencies, together with some parameters of forensic interest were estimated for nine STRs included in the AmpF/STR Profiler kit (CSF1PO, D3S1358, D5S818, D7S820, D13S317, FGA, TH01, TPOX and vWA) in a sample of 215 unrelated individuals from Cartagena (Colombia). For all loci, no significant deviations from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium were observed. Comparative analysis results between our data and those from other Colombian and African population samples revealed significant differences, except with two Colombian Caribbean Coast sub-regions.     

Hard responses to corruption: Penal standards and the repression of corruption in Britain, France and Portugal

Despite its difficulties and inconsistencies in framing those practices andconducts recently unveiled by the press and judicial investigations whichhave caused considerable public discontent, the penal definition ofcorruption still highlights an interesting conceptual diversity across spaceand time that should not be overlooked. Most official discussions about andreferences to corruption and its volume are still framed within these hardparameters. It is, therefore, important to look at the intricacies ofcorruption as a crime in order to understand the virtues and failures ofnational repressive efforts. While crime statistics are of limited use for itsmeasurement, they can nevertheless help to interpret the way corruptionhas been treated through repressive instruments cross-nationally over aperiod of time.The aim of this paper is to assess the dynamics of the various processes ofsetting and revising penal standards to the conduct of office holders and theresults observable from the application of corruption and related offencesacross countries with different legal traditions.     

embodying memory: women and the legacy of the military government in Chile

The article argues that the prohibition of abortion in Chile, other than when the mother's life is in danger, is a form of human rights violation targeting women specifically. The Pro-Birth Policy was established in Pinochet's Chile as a response to the previous government's attempts, under Allende, to encourage family planning and to educate and inform women about their choices. This had been done to put an end to the increase in back-street abortions with the inevitable toll on women's lives. Pinochet's regime reversed these women-oriented family planning policies, and criminalized abortion, on the basis of costs to the state and, more importantly, the need to increase the birth rate for reasons of national security. Women's bodies were used by the Pinochet regime, both by sexual violence and torture, and by the denial of women's reproductive and sexual rights, as a means to impose discipline and order on society. The fact that this is still not acknowledged in the construction of a collective memory indicates that the issue has not yet been resolved in democratic Chile.     

Neighborhood Context,Family Cultural Values,and Latinx Youth Externalizing Problems

Latinx youth living in the United States reside in a myriad of cultural and neighborhood contexts, yet little is known regarding how cultural values influence behavior problems across neighborhood contexts. Using a person–environment fit framework, the present study explored the degree to which youth cultural values were associated with their externalizing problems, and the degree to which this association was shaped by their neighborhood’s socioeconomic status (SES), and Latinx and immigrant concentration. The sample comprised of 998 Latinx youth (Female?=?54.2%), ages 10 to 14 years old (M_age?=?11.8), from three large United States metropolitan areas. Multilevel modeling methods indicated that increased fit between youth cultural values and neighborhood Latinx and immigrant concentration was associated with fewer externalizing problems, but only in higher SES neighborhoods. The results support the importance of studying social determinants of Latinx youth behavioral health, and provide implications for both neighborhood-level and individual-level prevention and intervention programming.     

Crises and unpredictability in developing countries

Developing countries have suffered most of the financial crises in the context of the process of economic and financial globalisation. Both current and previous crises have revealed that unpredictability is a feature common to all the episodes which occurred during the process of globalisation. Although certain alarms went off, any of those external financial crises were actually predicted by the advanced methods in use for prediction and country risk analysis. Taking into consideration the information above, the aim of this paper is to check the ability to foresee external financial crises in developing countries of both the country risk index published by Euromoney and the Credit Ratings variable included therein. We have focused on the external financial crises that took place between 1992 and 2011, that is, in a full globalisation era. The results are negative. It appears that neither the index nor the sovereign ratings are able to reflect early enough the vulnerabilities that arise previously to the setting off the crisis episodes. This leads us to conclude that the existing models of country risk have limits. Thus, it would necessary to develop new instruments to measure this risk, considering uncertainty as an essential feature of the current economic and financial environment.