Jahresregister 2007

Zusammenfassung Seit einem Jahr liegen die thematische Strategie für den Bodenschutz und der Entwurf der Bodenrahmenrichtlinie vor, mit denen die Europ?ische Kommission das europ?ische Umweltrecht komplettieren und einen nachhaltigen Umgang mit den Bodenressourcen erreichen will. Jahrzehnte vorher hatten schon die Welt-Boden-Charta und die Europ?ische Bodencharta eine nachhaltige Bodennutzung gefordert, um der anhaltenden Bodendegradation Einhalt zu gebieten. Vor 15 Jahren hatte die Weltgemeinschaft die Rio-Deklaration über Umwelt und Entwicklung und einen Aktionsplan für diese Deklaration, mit denen nachhaltige Entwicklung, nachhaltige Ressourcennutzung und nachhaltiger Bodenschutz umgesetzt werden sollen, vereinbart. Der Beitrag stellt die Strategie, die Rahmenrichtlinie und den Diskurs zwischen den am Entscheidungsprozess beteiligten Organen und Interessenvertretungen von Landwirtschaft und Industrie, der noch im Gange ist, dar. Auch werden einige Schlüsselthemen der Weiterentwicklung des Bodenschutzes, l?sungsbedürftige theoretische Fragen, die im Hintergrund der Auseinandersetzungen stehen, skizziert.     

Class, Capital and Crisis: A Return to Fundamentals

The financial crisis that currently threatens the stability of global capitalism is the latest in a long line of similar episodes stretching back some 200 years. While many orthodox economists explain the crisis in terms of the failure of the proper operation of the market mechanism, radical accounts see crisis as an aspect of the constitution of capital and of the process of the accumulation of capital itself. This article explores the extent to which Marx's understanding of accumulation and crisis can provide the basis for a general theory of capitalist crisis. It concludes that the growing and chronic separation between financial (fictitious) accumulation and productive accumulation is the key to understanding the latest crisis of capital expressed as a global credit crunch. Furthermore, Marx opens the door to the development of an overtly 'political' theory of crisis stressing the 'capitalist use of crisis' as a means for the violent reassertion of the fundamental class relation.     

Unions in Restructured States: Laborism in Australia and Economic Liberalism in the United Kingdom

There have been major reforms in the public sector in both Australia and the United Kingdom from the 1980s onwards. In each case, governments restructured their state sectors. These initiatives brought about not only widely acknowledged changes in organisation but also changes in the labour process and class relations as well as differing prospects for state sector trade unions.     

Survival analysis: A survey

This paper is a survey of statistical methods used to analyze the length of time until a specified event occurs. These models have often been used to analyze the survival times (i.e., time until death) of medical patients, and so the term survival analysis is natural. In criminology, the main application of these models has been to analyze the time until recidivism, but many other applications are possible. The paper summarizes the statistical literature on survival analysis, and describes its applications in criminology. The methods are illustrated by an application to the prediction of time until recidivism for a sample of North Carolina prison releasees.     

Persistence of vaginal spermatozoa as assessed by routine cervicovaginal (Pap) smears

Retrospective review of cervicovaginal (Pap) smears of women with known sexual histories affords an opportunity to assess the potential for postcoital sperm recovery for large numbers of individuals. This study reviewed 542 individuals' Pap smears with accompanying sexual histories. Three hundred forty-nine respondents reported at least one act of sexual intercourse during the five days preceding the Pap smear. Unlike a previous report, the current study showed very poor sperm recovery (maximum of 25% during the first postcoital day). The observed results roughly correlate with the incidence of sperm noted on screening of large numbers of routine clinical Pap smears in a private reference laboratory. Routine Pap smears can detect sperm but do not appear to be an ideal method to substantiate recent sexual intercourse.     

Allele frequency distribution for 21 autosomal STR loci in Bhutan

We studied the allele frequency distribution of 21 autosomal STR loci contained in the AmpFlSTR^® Identifiler™ (Applied Biosystems), the Powerplex^®16 (Promega) and the FFFL (Promega) multiplex PCR kits among 936 individuals from the Royal Kingdom of Bhutan. As such these are the first published autosomal DNA results from this country.