Higher Capillary Electrophoresis Injection Settings as an Efficient Approach to Increase the Sensitivity of STR Typing

Abstract:  Evidentiary traces may contain low quantities of DNA, and regularly incomplete short tandem repeat (STR) profiles are obtained. In this study, higher capillary electrophoresis injection settings were used to efficiently improve incomplete STR profiles generated from low-level DNA samples under standard polymerase chain reaction (PCR) conditions. The method involves capillary electrophoresis with higher injection voltage and extended injection time. STR peak heights increased six-fold. Inherent to the analysis of low-level DNA samples, we observed stochastic amplification artifacts, mainly in the form of allele dropout and heterozygous peak imbalance. Increased stutter ratios and allele drop-in were rarely seen. Upon STR typing of 10:1 admixed samples, the profile of the major component did not become overloaded when using higher injection settings as was observed upon elevated cycling. Thereby an improved profile of the minor component was obtained. For low-level DNA casework samples, we adhere to independent replication of the PCR amplification and boosted capillary electrophoresis.     

Privatizing Environmental Resources: The Need for Supervision of Clean Development Mechanism Contracts?

This article argues that a current trend in global sustainable development governance is actively to engage the private sector in participating in the process of implementing global and national policy goals. This trend is based on the notion that the private sector has the ideas, technologies and resources at its disposal that can be channelled to addressing global environmental challenges. This new trend does not, however, take into account the past and present implications of private sector investment in fields such as mining and forestry. Nor does it closely examine how private sector rules will subsequently infiltrate and govern environmental management. On the basis of an examination of current policy developments and contracts in the area of environmental management and their implications for developing countries, this article argues in favour of establishing an authority that oversees the legitimacy and legality of these new contracts, especially in, but not limited to, the area of climate change.     

The role of institutional and governance factors in public–private partnerships infrastructure investments in emerging economies

The overall development and sustained growth of any economy depend heavily on its infrastructure provisioning. Emerging economies are usually characterised by constrained public investments in infrastructure. Budgetary constraints of the governments are one of the major hurdles to these investments. Due to these reasons that governments of emerging economies continuously seek collaborations with the private sector for additional sources of funding infrastructure. Economies with solid institutional and governance frameworks are known to provide a conducive environment for enhanced private sector attraction in the sector. However, emerging economies face greater institutional and governance issues than developed economies, and they sometimes fall short of luring private investments in the infrastructure sector. The objective of this study is to empirically evaluate the role of institutional and governance aspects in private sector attraction in emerging economies. This study provides empirical evidence with a sample of 114 emerging economies over a period of 20 years. Various econometric estimates were developed to explore the interplay between public-private partnership investments and governance factors. The results of the study provide an evidence of a positive association between these factors and private investments in public-private partnership arrangements.     

Peer Group Similarity in Perceptions of Pubertal Timing

Self-report measures of perceived pubertal timing correspond only weakly with clinical measures of “objective” physical development. Peer and school contexts shape adolescents’ self-perceptions of pubertal timing. The current study examined associations between perceived pubertal timing and the pubertal timing reported by nominated friends and schoolmates. Participants included 2817 adolescents (M_age = 16.6; 49 % female; 16 % Black; 20 % Hispanic) from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Three measures of pubertal timing were included: age-standardized ratings of body changes, comparisons of development relative to peers (relative timing), and, in females, age at menarche. It was hypothesized that relative timing, which explicitly asks adolescents to compare themselves to their peers, would be related to the age-standardized pubertal timing of nominated friends and schoolmates. Surprisingly, there were no associations between relative timing and age-standardized pubertal timing reported by peers, suggesting that pubertal self-perceptions do not fluctuate in response to the average level of development in a friend group. Instead, males were similar to nominated friends and schoolmates in age-standardized ratings of body changes, and females were similar to nominated friends in relative timing, controlling for race, ethnicity, and age. Different self-report measures of pubertal timing index different underlying constructs, and the social processes that influence adolescents’ perceptions of pubertal maturation may differ between genders.     

Determination of length of human upper limb long bones from their fragments

It is impossible to measure directly the length of fragmentary or broken long bones. It is in order to calculate the height (stature) of the individual, using magnification factors. An attempt has been made to devise a method of calculating the length from such fragments for the three long bones of the upper limb.     

Foreign capital inflows and output growth rate: A reformulation

A strategy of export promotion has evolved into the new conventional wisdom. The alleged superiority of this strategy draws on an extensive list of empirical studies, an important strand of which consists of tests in cross‐country format that use bivariate correlations and/or production function‐type regressions to demonstrate a strong positive relationship between exports and GDP growth. By showing that these same tests support the ‘promotion’ of all major components of GDP, this note argues that these tests have no bearing at all on the export‐promotion/import‐substitution controversy.