Trade Measures and Climate Compliance: Institutional Interplay Between WTO and the Marrakesh Accords

This article examines the potential of trade measures to induce more climate-friendly policies, focusing on the relationship between global trade rules and the Kyoto climate regime. At the core of this interplay is the normative consistency of trade-related rules in the two regimes and any hierarchical relationship between them. The stronger clout of the WTO and its compulsory dispute settlement system suggest that issues involving competing claims would be referred to WTO bodies. Such bodies have so far been restrictive regarding the exceptions in WTO agreements to the general ban on embargoes and discrimination. The normative compatibility of the two regimes will also depend on their participatory interplay, specifically how they differentiate groups of actors as to rights and obligations. Non-members of WTO receive the least protection, and their vulnerability to climate-related trade measures is largely determined by their interdependence with states that consider employment of such measures. Among WTO members, the findings of a dispute settlement body would presumably differ depending on the status of the target under the Kyoto Protocol. A non-complier with Kyoto commitments would be more shielded than a non-party, because by joining the Kyoto regime a non-complier has exposed itself to regime-internal and less trade intrusive measures that should be exhausted first. A third dimension of interplay is linkage, or efforts to influence the regime interplay. To date there has only been moderate cross-agency coordination, but considerable attention is paid within each regime, including in the Millennium Round of trade negotiations, to the desirability of avoiding conflict between them.     

Parity,Power and Representative Politics: The Elusive Pursuit of Gender Equality in Europe

In recent years the concept of parity democracy has rapidly risen up the European political agenda. Using a threefold typology of sex-quotas, this article undertakes a classification of the measures taken by the 15 old E.U. member states to improve the gender balance in representative assemblies. This is then used as the basis for an exploration of the advantages and disadvantages of the parity approach as a tool to promote gender equality, including the constitutional obstacles which stand in its way. The article goes on to present a comparative study of several national systems in which attempts to achieve parity democracy have been pursued, concluding that, in order to maximise their effectiveness, parity measures must operate within a system of unbiased political structures and be properly adjusted to suit the particularities of individual national electoral regimes.     

Allele frequencies data and statistic parameters for 16 STR loci-D19S433, D2S1338, CSF1PO, D16S539, D7S820, D21S11, D18S51, D13S317, D5S818, FGA, Penta E, TH01, vWA, D8S1179, TPOX, D3S1358-in the Rio de Janeiro population, Brazil

Allele frequencies for 16 short tandem repeats (STR) loci were determined with a sample of 230-300 unrelated individuals from the population of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The loci are the most commonly used in forensic and paternity testing, being analysed by the Identifiler (Applied Biosystems) and PowerPlex 2.1 (Promega) commercial kits. It was proved that Penta E and D18S51 are the most polymorphic loci.     

Analysis of the CODIS autosomal STR loci in four main Colombian regions

Genotype polymorphism studies at the 13 loci STRs included in the combined DNA index system [CODIS and PCR-based short tandem repeat loci, in: Proceedings of the Second European Symposium on Human Identification, Promega Corporation, Madison, WI, 1998, pp. 73-88; J. Forensic Sci. 46 (2001) 453] (CODIS: D3S1358, HUMvWA31, HUMFGA, D8S1179 D21S11, D18S51, D5S818, D13S317, D7S820, HUMTH01, HUMTPOX, HUMCSF1PO and D16S539) were carried out in a sample of 1429 unrelated Colombian individuals belonging to 25 different departments. As many other countries in Latino-America, Colombia shows an important admixture component, basically integrated by Amerindians, European-descendants and African-descendants. Due to the fact that only partial population analyses have been carried out in the country, the main aim of the present analysis is to establish a database of forensic interest based on the widely used CODIS systems covering the main Colombian regions.     

Allelic frequencies at 12 STR loci in Colombian population

Three hundred and twenty-six to four hundred and fifty-one individuals were typed for 12 STR markers and revealed by silver stain method and assisted by a computer analysis. Forensic and Hardy-Weinberg values were found. The Kodak ds 1D Image Analysis Software V 2.0.3 EDAS DC 120 System was a useful tool for determining the correct size of pattern bands that were out allelic ladders, alleles 18 and 17 from F13A01, 15 from TPOX and 4 from TH01 were determined by this method and some corroborated by automatic analysis.     

STR data for 09 autosomal STR markers from Rio Grande do Sul (southern Brazil)

Allele frequencies for 09 STR autosomal loci (D3S1358, D5S818, D7S820, D8S1179, D13S317, D18S51, D21S11, FGA and VWA) included in the AmpFlSTR Profiler Plus were obtained from a sample of unrelated individuals from Rio Grande do Sul (southern Brazil).     

Consent,commercialisation and benefit-sharing

This article considers two issues in relation to the increasing commercial exploitation of biological materials: first, whether the consent of the individual who is the source of biological material is needed for the material to be used commercially; and secondly, whether the source has any right to share in the profits. Whilst the legal requirement for consent to commercial use is uncertain, the overwhelming view from ethical statements suggests that such consent is appropriate. With regard to profit-sharing, source individuals have no legal right to share in the profits of commercial exploitation of their sample. However, there is support in some ethical statements for benefit-sharing with source individuals and their communities.     

Glucose and lactate in vitreous humor compared with the determination of fructosamine for the postmortem diagnosis of diabetes mellitus

Diabetes mellitus is a chronic metabolic illness responsible for a great number of deaths. In postmortem diagnosis, because of the difficulty involved in interpreting blood glucose levels and relatively nonspecific pathologic features, biochemical markers in vitreous humor are useful. The aim of this study was to compare the results obtained for the combined determination of lactate and glucose with fructosamine levels recorded in the vitreous humor of two diagnostic groups (one diabetic and the other nondiabetic). The authors intended to ascertain the capacity of different markers measured in vitreous humor to diagnose diabetes mellitus. Fifty-one cadavers (mean age, 58.7 years; standard deviation, 17.09) were studied. The mean postmortem interval was 16.4 hours (standard deviation, 9.05). Cases were assigned to two diagnostic groups according to whether they were previously diagnosed as either diabetic or nondiabetic. Statistically significant differences for glucose, fructosamine, and the sum values of glucose and lactate were found between the two diagnostic groups. The highest levels were obtained in the group of cases with a previous diagnosis of diabetes mellitus. After the comparison of receiver operating characteristic curves, the sum values of glucose and lactate in vitreous humor is a better predictor of antemortem diabetes mellitus than the fructosamine.     

The use of the LightCycler for the detection of Y chromosome SNPs

A novel methodology based on PCR monitoring on-line with fluorescent formats using the LightCycler for Y chromosome SNP typing is proposed. The main advantages of the system are the time necessary for the analysis (which is around 20 min), the robustness and the accuracy of the method and especially its sensitivity, which permits the detection of the male component in male-female mixtures up to 1:300 for some of the SNPs.Singleplexes of four different SNPs (M9, sY81, SRY-1532 and SRY-2627) as well as two duplexes (M9 and sY81 on the one hand and SRY-1532 and SRY-2627 on the other) were efficiently implemented. A simultaneous amplification and analysis of the four SNPs is also possible. It seems difficult with the current methodology to implement more than a quadruplex.     

Juvenile Delinquency in Central European Cities: A Comparison of Registration and Processing Structures in the 1990s

The authors trace and compare the developments in recorded juvenile delinquency in Hamburg, Prague, Cracow and Budapest from 1991-1997 and then analyse the processing and selection procedures of the various justice systems. They devote special attention to ethnic minorities within this filtering process. The most salient feature is that the crime rates and processing structures in the former socialist countries display considerable similarities. It would almost be possible to speak of a specific type of criminal justice system with a typical form of reaction. While in the West, the large number of suspects is considerably reduced during later stages of selection to a much smaller number (those actually sentenced and/or imprisoned), what the authors call a funnel model, in the East a smaller number of suspected offenders enters this selection process, but tends to remain within it and be sentenced - the cylinder model. These procedural structures have changed little in the 1990s, and there has certainly not been any increasing alignment of the Eastern systems with the Western one. Indeed, the difference has, if anything, become greater. These lower crime statistics as compared with the West - represented here by Hamburg - are, however, not only the result of equally large discrepancies between the real crime rates, but in this regard the pro-active crime prevention measures of the police, which in Hamburg have caused the inclusion of an increased number of juveniles and foreigners in the crime statistics since 1995, have also had a great effect. The research project thus clearly demonstrates the importance of interpreting crime statistics neither as a true representation nor as a distorted reflection of the activities of a criminal justice system. Instead, these statistics should be seen as reflecting specific processing procedures and methods of crime control.