Still Connected? Attitudinal Representativeness of German Party Memberships

In modern representative democracies political parties are the main institutions responsible for providing linkage between citizens and the state. One way to do this is through organizational linkage mechanisms, especially the representation of a party’s voters through the party membership. This paper tries to describe the attitudinal representativeness of German party memberships in terms of left-right positions using data from two party membership studies from 1998 and 2009. In a second step, the determinants of divergent attitudes of party members from the position of the parties’ voters are analyzed on an individual level, testing four possible explanations for this.     

Abschichtung bei der Umweltprüfung in der Raumordnung und der Bauleitplanung

Ziel der Abschichtung bei der Umweltprüfung in der Bauleitplanung und der Raumordnung ist die Vermeidung von Doppelprüfungen auf verschiedenen Planungsebenen durch den Rückgriff auf bereits durchgeführte Umweltprüfungen auf anderen Plaungsebenen. Wird die Abschichtung formal richtig und strukturiert durchgeführt, kann sie einen Beitrag zur Verfahrensvereinfachung bei der Umweltprüfung von Raumordnungs- oder Bauleitpl?nen leisten.     

Intellectual property protection and enforcement at major events: Practical lessons learnt from the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games

LEGAL CONTEXT: Commercial sponsorship is a integral part of major sportingevents. The ability to attract commercial sponsors relies notjust on the attractiveness of the event. It depends also onwhether the organisers can offer to prospective sponsors anintellectual property regime which gives sponsors the comfortthat counterfeiters and ambush marketers are not able to obtaina "free ride" from an unauthorised association with the event.Prospective sponsors will be far less likely to pay rights for"exclusivity" in circumstances where there is no confidencethat that exclusivity will be protected. KEY POINTS: This article details the steps that were taken in relation tosuch issues for the 2006 Commonwealth Games, held in Melbourne,Australia. The matters addressed include not only trade markregistration and copyright assignments, but also special purposelegislation and practical strategies to ensure the effectivenessand community acceptance of the intellectual property enforcementregime. PRACTICAL SIGNIFICANCE: Numerous suggestions are made in the article for the benefitof others who are looking to be involved in major sporting orother events where sponsorship and licensing are important andwhere counterfeits and ambush marketing therefore need to beaddressed.     

The Shale Gas Revolution: U.S. and EU Policy and Research Agendas

The “shale gas revolution” raises a host of questions for policy makers and researchers on both sides of the Atlantic. We provide a brief overview of the regulatory environment as it relates to hydraulic fracturing for natural gas in the United States and the European Union. We then pose a set of open questions, which we believe should shape policy and research agendas surrounding shale gas wherever the development of this resource is being pursued or considered.     

Police oversight in the United Kingdom: The balance of independence and collaboration

A key feature of modern policing is external oversight of alleged police misconduct. The present paper focuses on the three UK oversight agencies: the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), the Police Complaints Commissioner for Scotland (PCCS); and the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland (PONI). Document analysis and interviews were utilized to highlight the different models of oversight with regard to the balance of responsibility for complaint investigations. The PONI exemplifies a model of regulatory independence that provides a strong challenge to the very limited PCCS model and intermediate IPCC model. An emerging trend was indentified of co-operation between external and internal agency personnel working towards police reform and areas in which oversight agencies can contribute to reform are presented.     

Estimating Time Since Death from Postmortem Human Gut Microbial Communities

Postmortem succession of human‐associated microbial communities (“human microbiome”) has been suggested as a possible method for estimating postmortem interval (PMI) for forensic analyses. Here we evaluate human gut bacterial populations to determine quantifiable, time‐dependent changes postmortem. Gut microflora were repeatedly sampled from the proximal large intestine of 12 deceased human individuals as they decayed under environmental conditions. Three intestinal bacterial genera were quantified by quantitative PCR (qPCR) using group‐specific primers targeting 16S rRNA genes. Bacteroides and Lactobacillus relative abundances declined exponentially with increasing PMI at rates of N_t = 0.977e^?0.0144t (r² = 0.537, p < 0.001) and N_t = 0.019e^?0.0087t (r² = 0.396, p < 0.001), respectively, where N_t is relative abundance at time (t) in cumulative degree hours. Bifidobacterium relative abundances did not change significantly: N_t = 0.003e^?0.002t (r² = 0.033, p = 0.284). Therefore, Bacteroides and Lactobacillus abundances could be used as quantitative indicators of PMI.