It’s Who’s on the Inside that Counts: Campaign Practitioner Personality and Campaign Electoral Integrity

Political Behavior - Candidates for public office (and the individuals who run their campaigns) are not a randomly selected subset of the general population. Individuals with certain personality...     

The Party's Primary Preferences: Race,Gender, and Party Support of Congressional Primary Candidates

Party support has a strong influence on candidate success in the primary. What remains unexplored is whether party actions during the primary are biased along racial and gender lines. Using candidate demographic data at the congressional level and measures of party support for primary candidates, we test whether parties discriminate against women and minority candidates in congressional primaries and also whether parties are strategic in their support of minority candidates in certain primaries. Our findings show parties are not biased against minority candidates and also that white women candidates receive more support from the Democratic Party than do other types of candidates. Our findings also suggest that parties do not appear to strategically support minority candidates in districts with larger populations of minorities. Lastly, we also find no significant differences in the effects of party support on the likelihood of success in the primary by candidate race or gender.     

Development of a harmonised method for the profiling of amphetamines: III. Development of the gas chromatographic method

This study focused on gas chromatographic analysis of target compounds found in illicit amphetamine synthesised by the Leuckart reaction, reductive amination of benzyl methyl ketone, and the nitrostyrene route. The analytical method was investigated and optimised with respect to introduction of amphetamine samples into the gas chromatograph and separation and detection of the target substances. Sample introduction using split and splitless injection was tested at different injector temperatures, and their ability to transfer the target compounds to the GC column was evaluated using cold on column injection as a reference. Taking the results from both techniques into consideration a temperature of 250 degrees C was considered to be the best compromise. The most efficient separation was achieved with a DB-35MS capillary column (35% diphenyl 65% dimethyl silicone; 30 m x 0.25 mm, d(f) 0.25 microm) and an oven temperature program that started at 90 degrees C (1 min) and was increased by 8 degrees C/min to 300 degrees C (10 min). Reproducibility, repeatability, linearity, and limits of determination for the flame ionisation detector (FID), nitrogen phosphorous detector (NPD), and mass spectrometry (MS) in scan mode and selected ion monitoring (SIM) mode were evaluated. In addition, selectivity was studied applying FID and MS in both scan and SIM mode. It was found that reproducibility, repeatability, and limits of determination were similar for FID, NPD, and MS in scan mode. Moreover, the linearity was better when applying FID or NPD whereas the selectivity was better when utilising the MS. Finally, the introduction of target compounds to the GC column when applying injection volumes of 0.2 microl, 1 microl, 2 microl, and 4 microl with splitless injection respectively 1 microl with split injection (split ratio, 1:40) were compared. It was demonstrated that splitless injections of 1 microl, 2 microl, and 4 microl could be employed in the developed method, while split injection and splitless injections of 0.2 microl should be avoided.     

Criminal Behavior in Opioid‐Dependent Patients Before and During Maintenance Therapy: 6‐year Follow‐Up of a Nationally Representative Cohort Sample

Lifetime prevalence of opioid dependence is about 0.4% in western countries. Opioid‐dependent patients have high morbidity and mortality and a high risk of criminal behavior. Few studies have addressed the long‐term impact of opioid maintenance therapy on convictions and criminal behavior. The PREMOS study is a prospective, longitudinal, naturalistic clinical study of a nationally representative sample of 2694 opioid‐dependent patients to investigate convictions and criminal behavior at baseline and after 6 years of maintenance treatment. At follow‐up, 2284 patients still were eligible (84.7%). A comprehensive assessment including a patient and doctor questionnaire, and the EuropASI was completed at baseline and follow‐up. Data on criminality at follow‐up had been received for 1147 (70.6%) patients. A large number (84.5%) of them had been charged or convicted at any time before baseline assessment, most frequently with drug‐related offenses (66.8%), acquisitive crime (49.1%), or acts of violence (22.0%). Reported charges and convictions had declined to 17.9% for the last 12 months before follow‐up, which was also reflected by a significant decrease in the EuropASI subscore “legal problems” from 1.52 at baseline to 0.98 after 6 years. These data indicate a significant and clinically relevant reduction in criminal behavior in opioid‐dependent patients in long‐term maintenance treatment. Maintenance therapy is effective in the reduction in both narcotics‐related and acquisition crime.     

Analytical Fingerprint of Wolframite Ore Concentrates

Ongoing violent conflicts in Central Africa are fueled by illegal mining and trading of tantalum, tin, and tungsten ores. The credibility of document‐based traceability systems can be improved by an analytical fingerprint applied as an independent method to confirm or doubt the documented origin of ore minerals. Wolframite (Fe,Mn)WO₄ is the most important ore mineral for tungsten and is subject to artisanal mining in Central Africa. Element concentrations of wolframite grains analyzed by laser ablation‐inductively coupled plasma‐mass spectrometry are used to establish the analytical fingerprint. The data from ore concentrate samples are multivariate, not normal or log‐normal distributed. The samples cannot be regarded as representative aliquots of a population. Based on the Kolmogorov–Smirnov distance, a measure of similarity between a sample in question and reference samples from a database is determined. A decision criterion is deduced to recognize samples which do not originate from the declared mine site.     

Jahresregister 2008

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