“The big sleep: Elucidating the sequence of events in the first hours of death to determine the postmortem interval”

Recent developments on postmortem interval estimation (PMI) take an advantage of the autolysis process, pointing out to the analysis of the expression of apoptosis and autophagy genes towards this purpose. Oxidative stress plays a role in this signaling as a regulatory mechanism and/or as a consequence of cell death. Additionally, melatonin has been implicated on apoptosis and autophagy signaling, making melatonin a suitable target for PMI determination. The aim of this study was to investigate the early PMI through the analysis of the expression of autophagy genes as well as oxidative stress and melatonin receptor. Our results demonstrated a rapidly increased on the expression of autophagy genes according to the expected sequence of events, then a marked decrease in this expression, matched with the switch to the apoptosis signaling. These results revealed potential candidates to analyze the PMI in the first hours of death, helping to estimate the time-since-death.     

Lascasianismo (y lucha de clases) en Tungsteno de César Vallejo

Tungsteno (1931) de César Vallejo es un texto “puente” entre el indigenismo tradicional y la novela proletaria emergente en la zona andina. El “problema del indio” y la “lucha de clases” están ligadas por una perspectiva “lascasiana” que reduce a los personajes a comportamientos binarios que se excluyen mutuamente: buenos o malos, víctimas o explotadores. Tungsteno es eficaz cuando – siguiendo el esquema lascasiano – muestra cuadros aislados de explotación e injusticia. Pero su ideología y estrategia textual tienen limitaciones para ser considerada la obra revolucionaria que muchos pretenden. Por un lado, porque el indio sólo es “indio,” falla en la construcción de una identidad indígena contestataria y alternativa basada en diferencias culturales y étnicas. Y, en el caso de la representación de los mineros, al resaltar la figura de Servando Huanca subsume la lucha de clases al comportamiento de un individuo ejemplar. Este sesgo narrativo determina la ausencia de la acción colectiva de los obreros de la Mining Society construidos como una mera “presencia” y, sobre todo, sin una conciencia de clase, la agenda privilegiada del marxismo ortodoxo de la época.     

STR data for 11 autosomal STR markers from Costa Rica, Central America

Allele frequencies for 11 STR autosomal loci (F13A01, F13B, FESFPS, LPL, CSF1PO, TH01, TPOX, VWA, D16S539, D7S820 and D13S317) were obtained from a sample of 200 unrelated individuals from Costa Rica, Central America.     

Some individual differences in perception of the evidence and the verdict choice

Abstract

For the last century, social research has provided evidence that contradicts the idea of objectivity in judicial procedure. As a result, research on jurors' potential bias has emerged. We propose an alternative to traditional jury, one in which social researchers collaborate with judges and lawyers, providing them with information on the juror bias. Legal authoritarianism is one of the characteristics of personality, which seems to be linked to juror verdicts. We present two studies, which develop a specific measure for this variable. The first study shows the relevance of legal authoritarianism as a variable to describe the psychological profile of juror-eligible respondents. The second study explores the relationship between legal authoritarianism and interpretation of the evidence, as well as the potential of this variable to predict verdicts.     

CEO qualities and codes of ethics

Ethical issues have received growing attention recently, after corporate scandals and during the current economic crisis. Several initiatives have been adopted to restore confidence and trust in businesses, such as ethics codes. In addition, as a result of those scandals and financial frauds, several rules have focused on the role played by Boards of Directors in the planning and monitoring of codes of ethics. However, the empirical evidence is still scarce and needs some degree of extension. The purpose of this study is to determine the influence of several corporate governance features—particularly, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO)—on the decision of developing an ethics code, among Spanish companies. Our main findings point out the lack of influence of the CEO’s characteristics (except for CEO reputation) on the likelihood of having a corporate code, indicating that this decision has to do with a choice made by the company overall, perhaps because of regulatory reasons or stakeholders’ expectations. Also, we have checked how other variables, such as the extent of a firm’s participation in defence or other government contracts or multiple listings of the company in different financial markets, can influence the decision of developing an ethics code.     

Evaluation of the efficacy and effectiveness of the Spanish security forces

This work aims to study the efficacy and effectiveness of Spanish police forces concerning major crimes—differentiating those against property, public safety, the person, and sexual liberty and indemnity—in the 2001–2006 period, using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). To study their efficacy we will consider both operational efficacy, defined as the ratio between solved crimes and tasks, and goals efficacy, intended to show the effect of operational efficacy on the level of crime in the subsequent year, which is measured by the annual variation in major crimes. The analysis of the effectiveness of Spanish police forces attempts to measure the impact of goals efficacy on how people perceive local security. To determine their effectiveness we will also consider the tourism variation index, population and economic activity and their influence on the variation in the number of crimes. The results show that the average operational effectiveness of police during the period analysed reaches 96%, with optimal behaviour in 19% of the stations analysed. Additionally, our findings show that the average goals effectiveness is 89% and the average effectiveness turns out to be 89%.     

Books received

Male Bias in the Development Process. Edited by Diane Elson. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1991. Pp.215‐ + viii. £29.95. ISBN 07190 2555 9.

Beyond the Family: The Social Organization of Human Reproduction. By A.F. Robertson. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991. Pp.231. £35 and £10.95. ISBN 07456 0885 X and 6 0886 8.

Gender and Population in the Adjustment of African Economies: Planning for Change. By Ingrid Palmer. Geneva: International Labour Office, 1991. Pp.xiv +187. 27.50 Swiss francs (paperback). ISBN 92 2 107739 X.

Economic Theories of Development: An Analysis of Competing Paradigms. By Diana Hunt. Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989. Pp.363. £10.95 (paperback). ISBN 0 7450 0237 4.

Economic Development and Environmental Protection in Latin America. Edited by Joseph S. Tulchin with Andrew I. Rudman. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers (Woodrow Wilson Center Current Studies on Latin America). Pp.vii + 143. $9.95 (paperback). ISBN 1 55587 288 3.

Nicaragua: The Land of Sandino. By Thomas W. Walker. Third Edition, Revised and Updated. Boulder, CO: Oxford: Westview Press, 1991. Pp.xvi + 202. $44 and $17.95. ISBN 0 8133 1089 X.

Dependence and Autonomy. By Hilary Standing. London: Routledge, 1990. Pp.x + 198. £10.99 (paperback). ISBN 0 415 04839.

Turtle Bogue: Afro‐Caribbean Life and Culture in a Costa Rican Village. By Harry G. Lefever. London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1992. Pp. 249. £29.95. ISBN 0 945636 23 7.     

A case of multiple assignments (paternity/maternity) in an equine-out breeding system

Recently, the use of DNA markers has provided a more accurate method of identifying individuals and verifying parentage. In this report, we describe foal assignment in a farm bred jumping horses (Silla argentino). Ten mares were freely served by two stallions, resulting in nine foals. Weaning occurred without registration of the mare of each offspring, resulting in a failure to identify either the mare or the sire of each foal. Animals were typed using 12 microsatellite systems and four biochemical polymorphisms in order to determine the paternity/maternity of each foal. We used the CERVUS program to evaluate the parentage of each offspring. It was possible to determine maternity in eight cases, and paternity in all of them. We concluded that this set of codominant markers analyzed following a likelihood-based approach included in the CERVUS package, are useful tools to solve parentage assignments in domestic horses.     

European integration from the agency theory perspective

European integration is a process in which national governments look for higher levels of integration and promote new requests for allocations from the supranational authority while the balance between the benefits and costs of the supranational collective action becomes increasingly favourable. This process may be analyzed as an agency problem where different national governments, acting as principals, try to lead a single agent—the supranational authority—to make a decision on the level of integration. In this paper, decisions on integration of equilibrium are studied as the result of a non co-operative two-stage game, where national governments outline their political support strategies in the first stage and the supranational authority decides the level of integration in the second stage. JEL Classification D72