Women in the Corporate Channel: a Process of Natural Exclusion?*

This article examines Norwegian women's access to the public committee system. Women's relative underrepresentation is discussed in terms of their social status and their difficulties in gaining entry into the 'pool of eligibles'. Their corporate recruitment via political channels is compared to men's more frequent recruitment via professional channels and via economic interest organizations. The article concludes by comparing conditions for participation in the numerical and corporate channels as well as in issue-oriented, ad-hoc activities. These differ along two dimensions, both of which tend to channel women into the less formalized bodies for political participation.     

The New Zealand Health and Disability Commissioner: a comparative assessment of the commissioner's contribution to protecting the rights of mental health consumers

The Health and Disabliity Commissioner's contribution to the protection of mental health consumers' rights is examined. This assessment covers a number of aspects. It includes the scope of consumer rights jurisdiction, the breadth of legal entitlements, protective mechanisms used, and the effectiveness of that protection. The Commissioner's role is also assessed comparatively. It is contrasted domestically with District Inspectors of Mental Health and internationally with Scottish and United Kingdom reform proposals. While analysis reveals considerable similarities, the New Zealand Health and Disability Commissioner is favourably highlighted in contrast with Scotland and the United Kingdom, particularly in the area of enforceability of mental health consumer rights.     

Mismatch distribution analysis of Y-STR haplotypes as a tool for the evaluation of identity-by-state proportions and significance of matches--the European picture

We suggest the use of the mismatch distribution methodology as an easy way to estimate the distance between all pairs of haplotypes present in a sample. This approach allows the evaluation of the proportion of pairs of Y-STR haplotypes that are prone to become identical by state (IBS), in one generation, by recurrent mutation, a statistic of major importance in the forensic field. The mismatch approach presents some advantages alternatively to the empirical one, since it is not necessary to have simultaneous information on STRs and SNPs, and it allows the evaluation of IBS also within-haplogroups. The estimation of IBS at an European scale showed that there is a high population substructuring for this parameter, increasing from southern-central European countries towards west and north, in accordance to what was found for Y-biallelic markers. This result seems to imply a more careful use of large databases for matching evaluation, even in the absence of population structure for general Y-STR diversity. Furthermore, mismatch distribution can be used to measure the distance between a particular haplotype and all the haplotypes in a sample. When applied to the most frequent haplotypes in Europe it revealed that the opportunity for IBS is not directly related to the frequency of a haplotype, but highly dependent on the proportion of neighbouring haplotypes--so, that reporting on the haplotype frequency for evaluating the significance of a match can be misleading.     

Y-chromosome STR haplotypes and alleles in the ethnic group of Polish Tatars residing in the Northeastern Poland

Haplotype and allele frequencies for eight Y-STRs were determined in a population sample of the ethnic group of Polish Tatars residing in the Northeastern Poland. A total of 125 unrelated males produced 101 different haplotypes. Thirteen haplotypes occurred more than once, while 88 haplotypes were unique. The observed gene diversity was 0.9638. The ethnic group of Polish Tatars can be distinguished from the autochthonous Poles based on AMOVA estimates in all the analyzed systems except DYS385.     

Allele frequencies of sixteen STRs in the population of Northern Portugal

Allele frequencies of sixteen autossomal short tandem repeats (STRs), D3S1358, VWA, D16S539, D8S1179, D21S11, D18S51, TH01, FGA, D5S818, D13S317, D7S820, TPOX, CSF1PO, Penta D, Penta E (included in the PowerPlex 16 kit), and the SE33 (PowerPlex ES Monoplex System SE33) were determined in a sample of 200 healthy unrelated individuals from the north of Portugal.