Marriage patterns among Lutherans from the parish of Trzebosz in the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century

The aim of this study is to characterize marriage patterns in a rural parish of Trzebosz in the borderland between Greater Poland (Wielkopolska) and Silesia in the years 1855–1913. A total of 343 data on marriages were gathered from the parish registers. The percentage of Lutheran–Catholic marriages was calculated. The distribution of age at marriage by martial status was assessed. The intensity of endogamy and exogamy was calculated as well as the coefficients of exogamy and biological polygamy. The annual rhythm of marriages was determined. In Trzebosz mixed marriages accounted for 3.94% in 1855–1899 and 14% in 1900–1913. The average age of brides and grooms was 25.36 and 26.22 years, while of widows and widowers they were 37.26 and 42.35 years, respectively. The average age of brides and grooms declined over time. In 1855–1899 the levels of endogamy and exogamy outside the parish were 19% and 81%, respectively. In 1900–1913 exogamy outside the parish decreased to 62%, while endogamy increased to 37%. The average mating distances for all marriages and exogamous ones were 24 and 42 km, respectively, in 1855–1899, while for 1900–1913 the respective figures were 7.4 and 8.7 km. The coefficient of exogamy declined from 0.78 in 1855–1899 to 0.67 in 1900–1913, while the coefficient of biological polygamy grew from 1.19 to 1.30 between those periods. The religious factor, apart from an economic strategy, shaped the annual rhythm of marriage. The outflow of the parishioners from Trzebosz in the early 20th century led to its ageing.     

Sexual Slander and the 1965/66 Mass Killings in Indonesia: Political and Methodological Considerations

Indonesia has been haunted by the “spectre of communism” since the putsch by military officers on 1 October 1965. That event saw the country's top brass murdered and the military attributing this putsch to the Communist Party. The genocide that followed was triggered by a campaign of sexual slander. This led to the real coup and the replacement of President Sukarno by General Suharto. Today, accusations about communism continue to play a major role in public life and state control remains shored up by control over women's bodies. This article introduces the putsch and the socialist women's organisation Gerwani, members of which were, at the time, accused of sexual debauchery. The focus is on the question of how Gerwani was portrayed in the aftermath of the putsch and how this affects the contemporary women's movement. It is found that women's political agency has been restricted, being associated with sexual debauchery and social turmoil. State women's organisations were set up and women's organisations forced to help build a “stable” society, based on women's subordination. The more independent women's groups were afraid to be labelled “new Gerwani ” as that would unleash strong state repression. This article assesses the implications of these events for the post-1998 period of Reformasi and reviews some recent analyses of 1965, state terrorism and violence and reveals blind spots in dealing with gender and sexual politics. It is argued that the slander against Gerwani is downplayed in these analyses. In fact, this slander was the spark without which the bloodbath would not have happened and would not have acquired its gruesome significance.     

Fatal Intoxication with α‐PVP,a Synthetic Cathinone Derivative

This study presents the fatal case of a young man who was admitted to the ICAU due to sudden cardiac arrest. An interview revealed that the patient had taken some unspecified crystals. From the moment of admission, his condition deteriorated dramatically as a result of increasing circulatory insufficiency. After a few hours, sudden cardiac arrest occurred again and the patient was pronounced dead. In the course of a medicolegal autopsy, samples of biological material were preserved for toxicology tests and histopathological examination. The analysis of samples using the LC‐MS/MS technique revealed the presence of α‐PVP in the following concentrations: blood—174 ng/mL, urine—401 ng/mL, brain—292 ng/g, liver—190 ng/g, kidney—122 ng/g, gastric contents—606 ng/g. The study also presents findings from the parallel histopathological examination. Based on these findings, cardiac arrest secondary to intoxication with alpha‐PVP was determined as the direct cause of the patient's death.     

Iatrogenic Burns of the Neckline in a Patient with Tetraparesis During Tracheotomy

The paper presents a case of an atypical iatrogenic complication after tracheotomy analyzed on the basis of the case dossier materials submitted to the authors by the court of justice to prepare a forensic medical opinion concerning the correctness of the medical procedure. A 37‐year‐old woman was brought by the ambulance service to the hospital with acute respiratory failure due to post‐tracheostomy tracheal stenosis. Tracheotomy was performed on an emergency basis. The patient suffered severe burns of the chest and neck. The experts concluded that the most probable cause of the incident was electrocautery‐induced ignition of the disinfectant used for cleaning the skin before the surgery. It was established that with correct handling of the procedure, the aforementioned incident should not have taken place. Therefore, it cannot be regarded as a normal complication inherent in the risk associated with the procedure, but as a consequence of a medical error.     

An academic perspective on the copyright reform

The recently proposed new Copyright Directive was released on 14 September 2016. It has been described by EU law-makers as the pillar of the copyright package promised by the European Commission (EC), to be delivered before the end of Mr. Juncker's mandate. In its Communication of 6 May 2015, the EC had stressed “the importance to enhance cross-border access to copyright-protected content services, facilitate new uses in the fields of research and education, and clarify the role of online services in the distribution of works and other subject-matter.” The proposed Copyright Directive is thus a key measure aiming to address two of these three issues. However it is not without shortfalls.We have therefore decided to publicly express our concerns and send an open letter to the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council to urge them to re-assess the new provisions dealing with mandatory filtering of user-generated content in the light of the CJEU case law and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.In a more extended statement, we examine in details the text of both the explanatory memorandum and the Directive itself.Our conclusions are:1. A comprehensive re-assessment of Article 13 and Recital 39 in the light of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and the E-commerce Directive (in particular Article 15) including CJEU case law is needed, as the proposed Copyright Directive does not expressly address the issue of its compatibility with both of these texts.2. Recital 38 does not clarify the domain and effect of Article 13. Rather, it creates confusion as it goes against settled CJEU case law (relating to Articles 14 and 15 of the E-commerce Directive and Article 3 of the Infosoc Directive). Recital 38 should therefore be deleted or substantially re-drafted/re-phrased. If the EU wants to introduce a change in this regard it should clearly justify its choice. In any case, a recital in the preamble to a directive is not an appropriate tool to achieve this effect.We hope that this exercise will prove useful for the debate that has now begun both in the European Parliament and in the Council.     

Regional parliamentary empowerment in EU affairs. Building an analytical framework

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the effects of the Lisbon Treaty provisions for regional parliaments in EU decentralised systems by looking at the early warning system (EWS) for subsidiarity control. It argues that the implications of this mechanism for parliamentary empowerment at the regional level should be assessed carefully and their links with political mobilisation, institutional restructuring and policy involvement in a particular context should be analysed as precisely as possible. For this reason, this article proposes a conceptual and analytical framework that allows the detection of several kinds of regional empowerment under the EWS and explains their transformative effects in different national contexts.     

Belarusian population genetic database for 15 autosomal STR loci

Allele frequencies of 15 short tandem repeat loci included in the AmpFlSTR Identifiler kit (Applied Biosystems) were obtained from a sample set of unrelated individuals living in Belarus (n=176). For all loci, no deviation from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium was found. Results were compared with data available for the Belarusian minority residing in northeastern Poland and for other Slavic populations. Statistically significant differences were observed between Belarusians and all compared populations. The values of heterozygosity, polymorphic information content (PIC), power of discrimination (PD), power of exclusion (PE), paternity index (PI) and matching probability (pM) were calculated.     

Juvenile Delinquency in Six New EU Member States

This article presents the results of the study conducted in six new member states that joined the European Union in 2004 (This article is based on the report “Juvenile delinquency in six new EU member states’, 2008. Participant and co-authors where Jiri Burianek from the Charles University in Prague, Bojan Dekleva from the University of Ljubljana, Andreas Karpadis from the University of Cyprus, Beata Gruszczyńska from the Warsaw University & Institute of Justice of Poland, Vidas Kalpokas from the Law Institute of Lithuania, Anna Markina from the Uni-versity of Tartu and Majone Steketee and Marit Moll from the Verwey-Jonker Institute) (The study has been financially supported by the European Coomunity-Daphne-2 Programme to Combat Violence against Children, Young People and Women.). Five former eastern European countries; the Czech Republic, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia and Cyprus, a southern European country and former British colony in the eastern Mediterranean. Often little is known about the prevalence of youth delinquency in these countries, let alone in a trans-national comparison. In this study we examined the variability in patterns of self-reported youth delinquency behaviour and the relative ranking of the prevalence of different types of juvenile delinquency. We also tested whether a number of sociological and criminological theories on prevalence and occurrence of youth delinquency are valid in these six countries.     

Changes in Fingerprints Depending on Physiological Factors

The aim of the study was to determine the effect of gender, body mass index, and time on the width of friction ridge impressions in fingerprints and the content of sweat and sebum forming the print. The research showed that the friction ridge impressions of women are significantly wider than those of men, and this tendency persists throughout the existence of the print. The differences may result from the anatomical structure of the skin, as well as from the use of protective products such as creams, which are used more often by women. The width of friction ridge impression is similar in underweight and overweight people, but greater than in those with normal body weight, and the amount of sweat and sebum increases with body weight. The passage of time significantly reduces both the width of the friction ridge impression and the content of sweat and sebum secretions in the print.     

The Feasibility of Cost of Crime Estimations in Eastern Europe – The Case of Poland

Estimates of cost of crime have gradually been introduced into the public debate on crime policy. Estimates differ in their scope and methodologies and this impedes international comparisons. This article follows the model of estimating costs of crime developed under the 6th Framework Programme and provides the comparable results of costs of crime in Poland. The total costs of crime have been estimated at 5.1% of GDP. In particular, the victimisation costs of violent crimes have been estimated at 1.94% of GDP and the costs of property crimes against individuals at 0.5% of GDP. The results are in line with estimates for other countries and provide the relevant measure for any cost-benefit analysis of a crime policy.