The legal concept of personhood in Colombia: are there biological reasons to change it?]

Nowadays, as a consequence of scientific advances in embryology, genetics and assisted reproduction techniques, the scientific community ask for new laws to establish new parameters to use with these recent discoveries. Discoveries that have changed the legal concept of "person". In many countries this concept is absolutely useless when facing new techniques such as cloning, stem cell research and embryo storage. That is why it is necessary to change its definition to guarantee the right to life and give a better protection to human embryos.     

Paternity analysis in deficiency cases with related putative fathers: simulation of a deficiency analysis in 27 families

During the last few years, the number of privately ordered paternity investigations has increased considerably. Probably due to financial reasons in more and more cases only the putative father and the child are investigated. Additionally, very often only one method, such as STR analysis, is employed. This raises the question whether such a reduced analysis leads to reliable and clear results when investigating cases with related putative fathers. We investigated 165 individuals from 27 families using the AmpFlSTRIdentifiler multiplex PCR and calculated the paternity probabilities of the children to their biological fathers, uncles, grand fathers and other relatives. In more than 30% less than three exclusions between child and relative were detected. In five cases no exclusions were found between child and uncle, always leading to paternity probabilities >99.9%. These results show that the calculation of high probabilities (>99.9%) does not necessarily lead to the accurate conclusion of fatherhood. In many of our cases misleadingly the brother of the real father or another close relative would have been declared to be the biological father.     

Competition policy for elections: Do campaign contribution limits matter?

This paper examines whether campaign contribution restrictions have consequences for election outcomes. States are a natural laboratory to examine this issue. We analyze elections to Assemblies from 1980 to 2001 and determine whether candidates' vote shares are altered by changes in state campaign contribution restrictions. We find that limits on giving narrow the margin of victory of the winning candidate. Limits lead to closer elections for future incumbents, but have less effect on the margin of victory of incumbents who passed the campaign finance legislation. We also find some evidence that contribution limits increase the number of candidates in the race.     

Mexican Democracy and Its Discontents

This article describes the first stage of a major research project on public opinion and democratic consolidation in Mexico. That project, the Mexico 2006 Panel Study, comprises approximately 7,000 in‐depth interviews with ordinary Mexicans over the course of the upcoming presidential campaign. Its purpose is two‐fold: (1) to assess the degree to which Mexican political attitudes are supportive of democratic governance, and (2) to understand the role played by voters, politicians, party leaders, and the mass media in shaping Mexico's political agenda. Ultimately, the project aims to assess how faithfully Mexico's new political system can be expected to respond to the desires and beliefs of ordinary citizens.     

Genetic polymorphisms at four STR loci from the HLA region in a Venezuelan population

POPULATIONS: Whole blood samples from 74 unrelated healthy individuals were collected. The donors' sample included Venezuelan mestizos from various regions of the country, but mostly from the resident population of Caracas City. A Venezuelan mestizo is the offspring of a mating between a native Venezuelan and a person born in Europe, mainly in Spain.