Forensic analysis of carbohydrate-deficient transferrin (CDT): implementation of a screening and confirmatory analysis concept is hampered by the lack of CDT isoform standards

The aim of the study was to test combinations of commercially available carbohydrate-deficient transferrin (CDT) assays for their usefulness as screening and confirmatory CDT analysis systems. A set of 292 serum samples from routine CDT analysis was analyzed by two assays based on anion-exchanger microcolumn CDT and non-CDT fractionation followed by a turbidimetric immunoassay (ChronAlcoI.D. and %CDT TIA) and a high-performance liquid chromatography with on-line sample preparation (ClinRep CDT on-line). The CDT analysis results were divided into four groups based on the test-specific borderlines of the compared methods: NN with negative CDT results by both tests, PN with positive screening but negative confirmation results, NP with negative screening and positive confirmation results, and PP with positive results by both tests. Regardless of the test combination and whether applying the lower or upper limits of the borderlines, approximately one-third of contradictory (positive screening and negative confirmation or vice versa corresponding to groups PN and NP) were obtained. This was not due to analytical outliers (only 6 of 292 serum samples). Indeed, parametric and non-parametric ANOVA analysis pointed to different calibrations and/or recoveries of the three CDT assays. Our data give again evidence for the urgent need of an international CDT isoform standard material. At this time, we cannot recommend a combination of the three tests for screening and confirmatory analysis in forensic CDT testing.     

Beating Social Democracy on Its Own Turf: Issue Convergence as Winning Formula for the Centre‐Right in Universal Welfare States

Recent elections yielded sweeping majorities for the centre‐right in Scandinavia with a decade of pure centre‐right majorities in Denmark and the longest sitting centre‐right coalition in Sweden for decades. This is a blind spot in the issue voting literature, which would not expect centre‐right parties to flourish in contexts where welfare issues have a natural salience as in the case of universal welfare states. In contrast, Scandinavian universal welfare states ought to benefit social democracy when it comes to issue voting on welfare issues. It is argued in this article that centre‐right parties can beat social democrats by credibly converging to its social democratic opponent on issues of universal welfare. Issue ownership voting to the benefit of centre‐right parties will then be strongest among voters perceiving the centre‐right to have converged to social democracy and perceiving the centre‐right as issue‐owner. Using Danish National Election Studies, 1998–2007, the article shows that the Danish Liberal Party outperformed the Social Democrats on traditional welfare issues among those voters perceiving the Liberals to be ideologically close to the social democrats. The findings help us to understand why centre‐right parties have recently turned into serious competitors on social democracy's turf: the universal welfare state.     

Pares Inter Pares? The Bargaining Success of the Commission,the Council,and the Parliament in European Union Legislative Negotiations

This research note tries to determine how politically successful the Council, the Commission, and the European Parliament are in the area of EU legislative decision‐making. After reviewing the literature, a research design is presented which incorporates information on the policy preferences of the different institutional actors for 70 recent EU legislative decisions that were negotiated under the consultation and the codecision procedure. We use correlation and OLS regression to analyze the distances between what the EU institutional actors want and what they eventually get out of the process. The findings of the analysis are that (1) the preference profiles of the three actors are rather dissimilar, and that (2) the success rates of the Council are higher than the rates of the Commission and Parliament.     

Erbguth, Wilfried/Schlacke, Sabine:Umweltrecht

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Does Power Drive Out Trust? Relations between Labour Market Actors in Sweden

Although power and trust are crucial to human cooperation, and considerable attention has been paid to both these concepts in the social sciences, the relationship between them has been poorly investigated. In this article, based on data about a complete network of labour market actors in Sweden, it is investigated whether power 'drives out trust' or if power is a requirement of trust. In contrast to previous research, the article concludes that there is a positive relationship between power and trust, although it levels out when power is at a very high level. Also in disagreement with previous findings, it is shown that symmetry in power relations is not a guarantee of trust: two actors with symmetric low power do not trust each other, at least not in this specific institutional setting. Moreover, the theoretical argument is developed and refined by showing that shared beliefs and group membership also have an independent impact on trust, as well as a perception that the other actor is pursuing the common good. Hence, the presumed negative impact of power on trust is not only neutralised, but also transformed into a positive impact in the social context investigated here. However, more research is needed to show whether this finding is true only within certain institutional settings and, if so, within which ones.     

Firing Back at the Backfire Effect: The Influence of Mortality Salience and Nullification Beliefs on Reactions to Inadmissible Evidence

Two studies were conducted to explore psychological factors that contribute to the influence of inadmissible evidence (i.e., the backfire effect) on jurors' verdicts. On the basis of hypotheses derived from terror management theory, we predicted that reminders of mortality, in contrast to an aversive control topic, should lead participants to be less punitive when confronted with inadmissible (as opposed to admissible) evidence, when participants were either situationally induced or dispositionally prone to follow their personal sense of justice. In Study 1, control participants who scored high on a measure of nullification beliefs, and thus were prone to relying on their own sense of justice rather than the law, exhibited the backfire effect. However, reminding participants of their mortality reduced the damaging influence of inadmissible evidence. Study 2 extended these findings by showing parallel effects with a manipulation of nullification proneness via judicial instructions. The implications of these factors on the judicial process are discussed.     

Das institutionelle Erbe des „Treuhand-Regimes“ in Ostdeutschland: Zentralisierung oder Auflösung in der bundesstaatlichen Normalverfassung?

The unification of Germany in 1990 deeply affected the traditional structure and mechanisms of the former West German federal state. The grave and deeply rooted economic problems in East Germany as well as the strong position of the federal government and the relative weakness of the East German state governments during the economic transformation made it highly possible that a centralization within the federal state even beyond East Germany would occur. Empirical research on the privatisation agency ‘Treuhandanstalt’ and its successor organisations, which is presented in the article, demonstrates what development the relationship between the federal and the East German states has taken in this policy area since 1990. The article further analyses if the centralization thesis can be confirmed and what can generally be concluded about the essential characteristics of the current federal system.     

Examination of acetone findings in suspected drug-facilitated sexual assaults: A case series

Acetone presence in human biological specimens can result from exogenous administration or endogenous production, resulting from diabetes, dietary composition, alcoholism, and stress response. Victims of drug-facilitated sexual assaults (DFSA) are understood to experience enhanced stress. At the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences (HCIFS), DFSA drug testing includes analysis of volatile compounds, ethanol, methanol, isopropanol, and acetone, by headspace gas chromatography/flame ionization detection. The prevalence of acetone-positive specimens in DFSA casework has been observed to exceed that of other human performance case types. In this report, DFSA cases received between 2019 and 2021 (n = 393) were reviewed and 41 acetone-positive cases were detailed. Overall, nearly 11% of the DFSA cases had acetone-positive blood or urine specimens, where 3% identified acetone only, 6% identified acetone and other drug(s), and 2% identified acetone, ethanol, and other drug(s). Acetone concentrations ranged from 0.010 to 0.147 g/100 mL in urine. Other drugs such as nor-carboxy-Δ⁹-tetrahydrocannabinol, amphetamine, methamphetamine, ethanol, and benzoylecgonine were commonly detected. Elevated stress response encountered during DFSAs may facilitate the mechanism behind enhanced acetone production leading to increased identification. Limited availability of victim medical history precludes understanding the contribution of other disease states or physiological conditions. Nonetheless, the identification of acetone in DFSA specimens supports its potential as a biomarker of trauma in forensic toxicology casework and warrants future research within the community.