A rapid gas chromatographic method for the fingerprinting of illicit cocaine samples.

A gas chromatographic (GC) fingerprint method, based on the presence or absence of six congeners, was developed for illicit cocaine samples. The fingerprint utilizes the relative abundances of these congeners towards each other, disregarding cocaine as the main constituent, and can be expressed numerically or graphically in the form of pictograms for rapid visual comparison. The method can be applied directly to a solution of the sample in chloroform, without previous workup procedures. More than 70 unrelated samples were analyzed and a great variation was observed in the parameter composition. On the other hand, a remarkable similarity could be seen between related samples. The GC fingerprint method may be considered an important contribution for sample comparison, as is exemplified by a subdivision of the analyzed samples in different categories, based on the number and types of congeners found.     

Measuring carbon monoxide content in muscles

A method ist described to determine the CO-content in the tissue of muscles. The prepared tissue is pulverized in a swinging mill at the temperature of liquid nitrogen. Parts of the powder are weighed into headspace vessels. Carbon monoxide ist ejected by a formerly described method and measured gaschromatographically. The Fe-content is determined after an acid disintegration by AAS. Acute intoxications lead to higher CO-contents in heart than in periphere muscles. Chronic exposure to carbon monoxide does not produce these differences.     

The Schengen Law: A Challenge for Legal Accountability in the European Union

This article examines challenges for accountability arising from the development of the Schengen law within the framework of the European Union. Building upon the substantive body of research by other authors on general implications of the integration of the Schengen acquis , it focuses on recent developments after the entry into force of the Treaty of Amsterdam and evaluates to what extent the European institutions have so far met the challenges for accountability stemming from the intergovernmental origin of the Schengen law. The article identifies various persisting deficiencies in the areas of transparency, institutional balance and judicial review and proposes specific actions, which should be addressed vigorously by the European institutions.     

Child's play: The political imaginary of international relations and contemporary popular children's films

Many scholars in International Relations (IR) have drawn from popular films to examine various problématiques that have informed the discipline's main theorisations. As Cynthia Weber remarks, popular films are powerful because they engage in the very ‘serious political work’ of mythologising the ‘truths’ and ‘realities’ which provide the foundation for many of IR's main theoretical envisionings of our world. To date, however, children's films have received very little attention. For the purpose of this paper, three have been isolated: Toy Story (1995), A Bug's Life (1998) and Rescue Heroes: The Movie (2003). Children's films, it can be argued, help to craft and restore certain perspectives for each new generation of young minds during the crucial years when the world is being textualised for the first time. The objective of this paper, therefore, is to read these films as working towards producing and sustaining the power/knowledge that seeks to defend contemporary forms of world order while concurrently extending and disseminating the rule of these forms of world order through the medium of children's popular cinema.