Second-order elections

Abstract The composition of the directly elected European Parliament does not precisely reflect the 'real' balance of political forces in the European Community. As long as the national political systems decide most of what there is to be decided politically, and everything really important, European elections are additional national second-order elections. They are determined more by the domestic political cleavages than by alternatives originating in the EC, but in a different way than if nine first-order national elections took place simultaneously. This is the case because European elections occur at different stages of the national political systems' respective 'electoral cycles'. Such a relationship between a second-order arena and the chief arena of a political system is not at all unusual. What is new here, is that one second-order political arena is related to nine different first-order arenas. A first analysis of European election results satisfactorily justifies the assumption mat European Parliament direct elections should be treated as nine simultaneous national second-order elections.     

A new method for the evaluation of matches in non-recombining genomes: application to Y-chromosomal short tandem repeat (STR) haplotypes in European males

A 9-locus microsatellite framework (minimal haplotype), previously developed for forensic purposes so as to facilitate stain analysis, personal identification and kinship testing, has been adopted for the establishment of a large reference database of male European Y-chromosomal haplotypes. The extent of population stratification pertaining to this database, an issue crucial for its practical forensic application, was assessed through analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) of the 20 regional samples included. Despite the notion of some significant haplotype frequency differences, which were found to correlate with known demographic and historic features of Europeans, AMOVA generally revealed a high level of genetic homogeneity among the populations analyzed. Owing to their high diversity, however, accurate frequency estimation is difficult for Y-STR haplotypes when realistic (i.e. moderately sized) datasets are being used. As expected, strong pair-wise and higher order allelic associations were found to exist between all markers studied, implying that haplotype frequencies cannot be estimated as products of allele frequencies. A new extrapolation method was therefore developed which treats haplotype frequencies as random variables and generates estimates of the underlying distribution functions on the basis of closely related haplotypes. This approach, termed frequency 'surveying', is based upon standard population genetics theory and can in principle be applied to any combination of markers located on the Y-chromosome or in the mitochondrial genome. Application of the method to the quality assured reference Y-STR haplotype database described herein will prove very useful for the evaluation of positive trace-donor matches in forensic casework.     

Gc subtypes: demonstration using isoelectric focusing. Study of population and formal genetics

Gc-subtypes were determined by isoelectric focusing and immunfixation on samples from 492 unrelated blood donors from Berlin. The frequency of the three genes was found to be GcIF = 0.1270, GcIS = 0.6006, Gc2 = 0.2724. Analysis of 78 parents with 190 children did not show deviations from the expected mode of inheritance. Investigation of the adults from paternity cases and of their children on the other hand obtained similar results. No rare alleles were observed.     

Animal bites caused by a song bird?

The report describes a case of post-mortem scavenging by a songbird. A married couple had opened the cage of an astrild (finch) prior to their joint death. The body of the wife showed unusual patchy epidermal lesions on parts of the body not covered by the clothing, which were obviously caused by the songbird. According to the observations made by Roll and Rous they are attributable to "pecking and pulling". The behaviour of the bird was most probably due to lack of fluid.