Economic policy elites and democratization

Is the authoritarian potential of policy elites a mortal threat to the consolidation of democracy in Latin America? This article suggests that in the context of democratic transitions, significant variations may exist in the performance of technocratic roles. In most countries in the region, elected governments faced the crisis of the 1980s by retaining markedly technocratic and exclusionary styles of policy-making. In Chile, a highly technocratic form of authoritarianism was succeeded by a novel pattern of pragmatic cooperation between technical and political elites. Democratic institutions were reestablished while a strong economic team enforced coherence and continuity in economic policy. Historical and institutional factors are used to show that Chile may now be nearer the democratic pole than other “hybrid” democratic-authoritarian regimes in the region.     

Vital reactions in Pacchioni granulations

By means of histological methods the authors examined the blood and fluid circulatory disturbances associated with cranial and cerebral injuries. The presence of vital reactions was studied by means of the combined histological study of the dura mater, pacchionian granulations and the central nervous system. Samples for histological study were taken from 115 cadavers who had suffered cranial injuries, from 15 individuals who died from destructive cerebral apoplexy caused by a disease and from 30 individuals who died of natural causes. The authors applied a special fixation and sampling technique and, using various histological reactions, the following vital reactions were observed: the appearance of blood-cell elements in the granulation, a moderate fibrin degradation product and hemoglobin phagocytosis, and occasionally lipid phagocytosis. The authors worked out a method that was shown to be highly effective in the more precise determination of the induction time of cerebral apoplexy caused by a disease and that of traumatic injury of the brain.     

Direct carboxyhemoglobin determination by derivative spectroscopy

A fast and sensitive method for the determination of carboxyhemoglobin (COHb) in blood using derivative spectroscopy is described. The addition of sodium dithionite as a reducing agent is not required. The concentration interval studied was from 0.5% to 100% COHb.     

Mismatch distribution analysis of Y-STR haplotypes as a tool for the evaluation of identity-by-state proportions and significance of matches--the European picture

We suggest the use of the mismatch distribution methodology as an easy way to estimate the distance between all pairs of haplotypes present in a sample. This approach allows the evaluation of the proportion of pairs of Y-STR haplotypes that are prone to become identical by state (IBS), in one generation, by recurrent mutation, a statistic of major importance in the forensic field. The mismatch approach presents some advantages alternatively to the empirical one, since it is not necessary to have simultaneous information on STRs and SNPs, and it allows the evaluation of IBS also within-haplogroups. The estimation of IBS at an European scale showed that there is a high population substructuring for this parameter, increasing from southern-central European countries towards west and north, in accordance to what was found for Y-biallelic markers. This result seems to imply a more careful use of large databases for matching evaluation, even in the absence of population structure for general Y-STR diversity. Furthermore, mismatch distribution can be used to measure the distance between a particular haplotype and all the haplotypes in a sample. When applied to the most frequent haplotypes in Europe it revealed that the opportunity for IBS is not directly related to the frequency of a haplotype, but highly dependent on the proportion of neighbouring haplotypes--so, that reporting on the haplotype frequency for evaluating the significance of a match can be misleading.     

Pros and cons in the use of SNPs in forensic kinship investigation: a comparative analysis with STRs

Recent advances in single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) research have raised the possibility that these markers could replace the forensically established short tandem repeats (STRs). In this work, we compare STRs and SNPs applicability for kinship investigation in terms of expected informative content and probability of occurrence of "difficult cases" (when isolated Mendelian incompatibilities between alleged father and child are found). Since SNPs have a much lower mutation rate than STRs, these difficulties were expected to occur less frequently if SNPs were used instead of STRs. The purpose of this paper is to make some simulations allowing the estimation of how often such difficult cases are expected to occur using both types of markers and how serious can be their impact in routine work. Our results demonstrate that a battery based exclusively on SNPs matching the informative power of current STR kits would be prone, if applied to routine paternity investigation, to the occurrence of cases where the statistical evidence would be inconclusive. We infer that the introduction of a SNP based strategy, as a substitute to the now classical STR approach poses statistical problems that must be carefully evaluated.     

STR allelic frequencies for an African population sample (Equatorial Guinea) using AmpFlSTR Identifiler and Powerplex 16 kits

We present allele frequencies and forensic parameters for 17 STRs included in the AmpFlSTR Identifiler (CSF1PO, D2S1338, D3S1358, D5S818, D7S820, D8S1179, D13S317, D16S539, D18S51, D19S433, D21S11, FGA, TH01, TPO and VWA) and Powerplex 16 System (CSF1PO, D3S1358, D5S818, D7S820, D8S1179, D13S317, D16S539, D18S51, D21S11, FGA, Penta D, Penta E, TH01, TPO and VWA) in a sample of 134 unrelated individuals from Equatorial Guinea located in Western Africa, between Cameroon and Gabon. Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium was tested for each locus and the sample was compared with five African databases: Promega's and AB Applied Biosystems African-Americans and samples from Mozambique, from Cabinda (Angola) and Guinea-Bissau.     

Legal Cultures in the European Union

The introductory part of the essay deals with the notion of legal culture and its categories. Later, the author sets forth the characteristics of the common law and the Roman- German legal cultures, including the legal families within them. He also touches upon the tendencies of the development of the German legal and political culture. With respect to the integration of the legal systems into the EU, the author argues as an advocate of convergence. Both basic legal cultures are being modified as, besides statutory law, judicial law becomes significant in the continental legal systems and statutory law complements case law in the common law systems. As to the integration of the Hungarian legal culture into the EU, the essay points to two principal considerations. On the one hand, when working on making our legal culture "euro-conform", we must not forget about maintaining our own legal culture. On the other hand, the Hungarian legal culture can contribute to the development of the legal system of the EU, e. g. with some of the regulations of our statute on the ethnic minorities. At the end, the author shows that the efficacy of the European law is heavily dependant upon the national legal systems.