Distribution of HLA-DQA1, polymarker, CSF1PO, vWA, TH01, TPOX, D16S539, D7S820, D13S317, and D5S818 alleles in East Bengali and West Punjabi populations from Indo-Pak Subcontinent

Blood samples were collected from 115 individuals residing in the Pakistani state of West Punjab and 81 Bengali individuals residing in the state of East Bengal, India. These samples were analyzed for the loci HLA-DQA1, PM (LDLR, GYPA, HBGG, D7S8, and GC) and eight short tandem repeats: CSF1PO, TPOX, THO1, vWA, D16S539, D7S820, D13S317, and D5S818. Departures from Hardy-Weinberg (HWE) were observed in Punjabi population at LDLR, THO1, D13S317, D5S818, and D16S539 and at CSF1PO and THO1 in Bengali population.     

Improper claim dependency invalidates US Lipitor patent

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has confirmedthat a patent claim may be invalidated for what was previouslyconsidered to be a minor technical defect: in essence, a dependentclaim is invalid if it is not a subset of the claim from whichit purports to depend. While Ranbaxy succeeded on this point,its generic Lipitor product was still held to have infringedPfizer's enantiomer patent, which expires on 24 March 2010,with pediatric exclusivity.     

Broad claim scope invalidates formulation patent despite 'powerful arguments' to the contrary

A lack of narrow dependent claims, which focus on the technicaladvance of the invention, meant that the main claim was heldinvalid as being obvious.     

Pluralism and the Hobbesian Logic of Negative Constitutionalism

According to an essentially Hobbesian account of political order, the claims of cultural and national minorities within a state to some form of constitutional or institutional recognition are morally suspect and politically undesirable. Underlying this Hobbesian logic is a particular understanding of the relation between law and politics. 'Negative constitutionalism' is focused primarily on limiting the damage government can do. However the pursuit of constitutional minimalism runs up against the challenges presented by deeply diverse political communities. By investigating the manner in which Hobbes has been invoked in arguments concerning the relation between the rule of law and the 'politics of recognition', I argue (i) that the distinction between the rule of law and politics is fundamentally unstable, and (ii) that in invoking Hobbes, modern theorists have missed an important element of Hobbes's own argument—namely, his appreciation of this instability. As an example, I examine the way Hobbes is used in some of John Gray's recent writings on pluralism and liberalism.     

The Austrian Parliamentary Election of 1995

The unexpectedly early Austrian elections of 1995 resulted in the first setback for Jor Haider's dynamic far-right 'Freieitlichen' movement since he became party leader in 1986. The Austrian Social Democrats managed to overcome early inertia and mobilise the collective fear of many Austrians about the political and economic future and increase their parliamentary strength. Nevertheless, after the elections they used their strengthened position to introduce a programme of sharp cuts in the traditionally generous welfare budget which had been previously demanded by their opponents.     

Assessing preferences in cost-benefit analysis: Reflections on rural water supply evaluation in haiti

This article examines an area of cost-benefit methodology which has come under increasing philosophical scrutiny in recent years: the appropriate treatment of individuals' preferences. We illustrate some of the difficulties involved in assessing preferences in the context of a concrete example: the evaluation of a rural water supply project in southern Haiti. Four problems in the application of cost-benefit principles are discussed: (1) how to count the social value of private water taps connected to homes if they are preferred for prestige reasons, (2) how to assess husbands' preferences concerning the time savings by wives who previously carried water from more distant sources, (3) how to count preferences based on a respondent's desire to support general community welfare, and (4) how to evaluate a water project when people's preferences may change after the new water system is installed. We argue that policy analysis will be improved by presenting philosophical arguments as to why some preferences should be included in the evaluation and others ignored.     

Immigration and integration policy and the Austrian radical right in office: the FPÖ/BZÖ, 2000–2006

This article focuses on the radical right's influence on immigration and migrant integration policy by scrutinising the 6-year period in national government of the Austrian Freedom Party and Alliance for Austria's Future. Specifically, it investigates the radical right's influence on migration control, migrant integration, citizenship and asylum policy. While previous studies have often credited the Austrian radical right with policy influence, it is argued that such work ignores both the problematic adjustment of the radical right to public office and the insights of immigration policy theory. By integrating these criticisms into the analysis, it is argued that although immigration policy was restrictive, the policies pursued did not deviate too greatly from past and subsequent government policy nor with the policies being implemented elsewhere in Europe. Furthermore, the radical right's influence on immigration policy was limited by the role of intra-coalition dynamics and the moderating effect of the policy process.     

THE INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL VALIDITY OF THE REGRESSION DISCONTINUITY DESIGN: A META‐ANALYSIS OF 15 WITHIN‐STUDY COMPARISONS

Theory predicts that regression discontinuity (RD) provides valid causal inference at the cutoff score that determines treatment assignment. One purpose of this paper is to test RD's internal validity across 15 studies. Each of them assesses the correspondence between causal estimates from an RD study and a randomized control trial (RCT) when the estimates are made at the same cutoff point where they should not differ asymptotically. However, statistical error, imperfect design implementation, and a plethora of different possible analysis options, mean that they might nonetheless differ. We test whether they do, assuming that the bias potential is greater with RDs than RCTs. A second purpose of this paper is to investigate the external validity of RD by exploring how the size of the bias estimates varies across the 15 studies, for they differ in their settings, interventions, analyses, and implementation details. Both Bayesian and frequentist meta‐analysis methods show that the RD bias is below 0.01 standard deviations on average, indicating RD's high internal validity. When the study‐specific estimates are shrunken to capitalize on the information the other studies provide, all the RD causal estimates fall within 0.07 standard deviations of their RCT counterparts, now indicating high external validity. With unshrunken estimates, the mean RD bias is still essentially zero, but the distribution of RD bias estimates is less tight, especially with smaller samples and when parametric RD analyses are used.     

The wonderful world of patent drafting

To anyone involved in patent litigation, it is clear that thetask of drafting is not for the faint-hearted. Those who draftpatents are acutely aware of the pitfalls which await theirclients following even a mere slip of the pen. This commentator,who is daily involved in the pre-filing review and prosecutionof patents and, alongside clients, assisting lawyers in manycountries with patent litigation,