Antibiotics and probiotics in chronic pouchitis:A comparative proteomic approach

AIM:To profile protein expression in mucosal biopsies from patients with chronic refractory pouchitis following antibiotic or probiotic treatment,using a comparative proteomic approach. METHODS:Two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and matrix-assisted laser desorption/ ionization-time of flight mass spectrometry were used to characterize the changes related to antibiotic therapy in the protein expression profiles of biopsy samples from patients with chronic refractory pouchitis.The same proteom...     

Widowhood options and strategies in preindustrial northern Europe

This article reassesses the variety of demographic, social, and economic forces that shaped the residence patterns of widowed and intergenerational relationships in northern Europe in the past. Factors considered include occupational status (landholders and landless), retirement contracts, system of poor relief, age at widowhood, and number of children surviving from previous marriages. Detailed findings are presented for two communities in southwestern Finland. Women in rural western Finland should not be viewed as helpless or dependent. Legally they might never have been the equals of men, but if their lives were affected by a number of restrictions so were those of men. Cooperation with kin and the creation of strategies for maintaining the family land were not unique to southwestern Finland. The stem family indeed had the capacity to act as an institution providing for the maintenance of the old and the young whenever it was supported by stable property. The possibility that this property might pass from the family to nonrelatives provided the motive for detailed retirement contracts. Such contracts did not signal intergenerational tension with the parental generation trying to protect its interests in the face of pressure from the children, as Gaunt [The property and kin relationships of retired farmers in northern and central Europe. In R. Wall (Ed.), Family forms in historic Europe (pp. 249–279). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press] has suggested. With the proletarianization of society in the 19th century, the proportion of poor widows increased. These paupers circulated among farms being taken care of for a specific time at each place. However, even in the late 19th century, landless widows usually did not reside alone.     

Rural widows,economy and co-residence in the 18th and 19th centuries

Widows in the past have often been viewed either as poor and lonely or living under the control of their family members. The aim of this article is to show that the situation of widows in the 18th and 19th century Nordic countries does not necessarily correspond with these images. Law and custom provided landholding women with a certain amount of economic security in widowhood, and it seems to be relatively clear that women knew how to make use of their position. However, the frequency of co-habitation between mothers and children also indicates the creation and maintaining of mutually supportive strategies. The increasing stratification of 19th century society did on the other hand inflate the group of widows without property. As a result of running a household without a production element these widows had a greater need to launch their children into the labour market and therefore found themselves in greater need of assistance from the community in old age.     

Who to blame: An inquiry into universal factors accounting for output variations in public–private partnership initiatives across geographical locations. Who to be blamed for not meeting performance,innovativeness, and quality outputs?

With the current controversy and blame game on output of public–private partnership (PPP) initiatives concerns, we investigate why there may be variations in achieving innovativeness, perceived quality, and performance of PPP initiatives across different geographical locations. For instance, we investigate a scenario where “a private company involved in waste management will perform in country ‘A’ but fails to perform in country ‘B’ given the same assignment and target.” We empirically sampled and make conclusions with 475 respondents from the public sector, private sector, and academia based on a survey inquiry. We adopted the structural equation modeling method using the partial least square for the data analysis. The results show that environmental dynamism causes major variations in desired output of PPP initiatives followed by collaboration capacity, environmental fit, and absorptive capacity, respectively. The findings further show that one partner cannot be blamed entirely for causing the failure of PPP initiative. However, we conclude that because on the basis of our data, environmental dynamism, which is as a result of some governmental activities, depicts the highest effect on output, public partners might be more liable. The findings from this study are an explicit view of PPP technocrats, which makes the conclusions more reliable.     

Political institutions and debt crises

This paper shows that political institutions matter in explaining defaults on external and domestic debt obligations. We explore a large number of political and macroeconomic variables using a non-parametric technique to predict safety from default. The advantage of this technique is that it is able to identify patterns in the data that are not captured in standard probit analysis. We find that political factors matter, and do so in different ways for democratic and non-democratic regimes, and for domestic and external debt. In democracies, a parliamentary system or sufficient checks and balances almost guarantee the absence of default on external debt when economic fundamentals or liquidity are sufficiently strong. In dictatorships, high stability and tenure play a similar role for default on domestic debt.     

Molecular study of time dependent changes in DNA stability in soil buried skeletal residues

In the past years, many publications about identification and sex-determination of dry human bones by means of DNA analysis have been published. However, few studies exist that investigate the potential use of DNA technique to determine the postmortem interval (PMI). In the present study we analyzed the rate of increasingly smaller fragments of chromosomal DNA and PMI.     

Joint Criminal Enterprise

The doctrine of joint criminal enterprise is in disarray. Despite repeated judicial scrutiny at the highest level, the doctrine's scope, proper doctrinal basis and function in relation to other modes of complicity remain uncertain. This article examines the doctrine's elements and underlying principles. It argues that while joint criminal enterprise is largely used to make individuals liable for offences committed by their associates in excess of the common criminal purpose, its proper function is to police the limits of associate liability and thus to exculpate rather than inculpate. The doctrine governs not only instances of accessorial liability; it also applies where the parties involved are joint principal offenders. As this puts into question the prevalent view that joint criminal enterprise is a form of secondary participation that results in accessorial liability, the article concludes that it is best seen as a doctrine sui generis.