The PGM isoenzyme distribution among negroid people of Zimbabwe

The value of the phosphoglucomutase isoenzyme system as a method for typing negroid blood in Zimbabwe has been evaluated. Due to the high frequency of the 1 phenotype (70%) a significant improvement in discriminating power is obtained when isoelectric focussing is used.     

Explaining Capital Punishment Support in an Abolitionist Country: The Case of the Netherlands

A substantial minority (35%) of the Dutch population is in favor of capital punishment. In this paper, it is argued that in a staunchly abolitionist country such as The Netherlands, the existence and perseverance of such support can be better understood and explained by conceiving of capital punishment support in attitudinal terms as part of a law and order syndrome. Death penalty attitudes are analyzed by means of hierarchic logistic regression analysis. It is shown that support can be modeled quite well, partly in terms of general attitudes to criminal justice, partly in terms of political and sociodemographic parameters. Within the criminal justice attitudes complex, more support is found among those endorsing harsh treatment of offenders, those willing to grant far-reaching powers to justice authorities, those believing that the government is not delivering on the topic of crime fighting, and those who are concerned about the level of crime. Within the political context, more support is enlisted among people who abstain from voting and those who vote at either extreme of the political spectrum as opposed to central parties' supporters. In sociodemographic segments it is the younger and poorly educated who are the strongest supporters of capital punishment. It is suggested that endorsing capital punishment can be better understood as an expressive act, displaying dissatisfaction with judicial and political elites in the country.     

The 2000-2001 GEP-ISFG Collaborative Exercise on mtDNA: assessing the cause of unsuccessful mtDNA PCR amplification of hair shaft samples

We report the results of Spanish and Portuguese working group (GEP) of International Society of Forensic Genetics (ISFG) Collaborative Exercise 2001-2002 on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis. 64 laboratories from Spain, Portugal and several Latin-American countries participated in this quality control exercise. Five samples were sent to the participating laboratories, four blood stains (M1-M4) and a sample (M5) consisting of two hair shaft fragments. M4 was non-human (Felis catus) in origin; therefore, the capacity of the labs to identify the biological source of this sample was an integral part of the exercise. Some labs detected the non-human origin of M4 by carrying out immuno-diffussion techniques using antihuman serum, whereas others identified the specific animal origin by testing the sample against a set of animal antibodies or by means of the analysis of mtDNA regions (Cyt-b, 12S, and 16S genes). The results of the other three human blood stains (M1-M3) improved in relation to the last Collaborative Exercises but those related to hairs yielded a low rate of success which clearly contrasts with previous results. As a consequence of this, some labs performed additional analysis showing that the origin of this low efficiency was not the presence of inhibitors, but the low quantity of DNA present in these specific hair samples and the degradation.As a general conclusion the results emphasize the need of external proficiency testing as part of the accreditation procedure for the labs performing mtDNA analysis in forensic casework.     

Single-strand conformation polymorphism of hyper-variable regions HV1 and HV2 of human mitochondrial DNA: detection by silver staining

Human mitochondrial DNA from 50 trios consisting of mother (M), child (C) and father (F) was PCR amplified with primers flanking the hyper-variable regions, HVR1 and HVR2. The amplified products were then fractionated under non-denaturing conditions, silver-stained and compared by single-stranded conformational polymorphism (SSCP). In all but one case, mother and child displayed identical patterns, which could be promptly distinguished from that of the father. For the remaining cases, either set of primers was sufficient to resolve the familial ties. In no instance, M displayed alleles different from those of C within each trio, demonstrating that no false exclusions occurred. The SSCP approach proved to be a robust technique suitable as a preliminary screening in cases requiring identification of multiple samples.     

Results of the GEP-ISFG collaborative study on the Y chromosome STRs GATA A10, GATA C4, GATA H4, DYS437, DYS438, DYS439, DYS460 and DYS461: population data

The Spanish and Portuguese ISFG Working Group (GEP-ISFG) carried out a collaborative exercise in order to asses the performance of two Y chromosome STR tetraplexes, which include the loci DYS461, GATA C4, DYS437 and DYS438 (GEPY I), and DYS460, GATA A10, GATA H4 and DYS439 (GEPY II). The groups that reported correct results in all the systems were also asked to analyse a population sample in order to evaluate the informative content of these STRs in different populations. A total of 1020 males out of 13 population samples from Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Macao, Mozambique, Portugal and Spain were analysed for all the loci included in the present study. Haplotype and allele frequencies of these eight Y-STRs were estimated in all samples. The lowest haplotype diversity was found in the Lara (Argentina) population (95.44%) and the highest (99.90%) in Macao (China). Pairwise haplotype analysis showed the relative homogeneity of the Iberian origin samples, in accordance with what was previously found in the European populations for other Y-STR haplotypes (http://www.ystr.org). As expected, the four non-Caucasian samples, Macao (Chinese), Mozambique (Africans), Costa Rica (Africans) and Argentina (Lara, Amerindians), show highly significant Phist values in the pairwise comparisons with all the Caucasian samples.     

Survey reveals knowledge and attitudes of Canadians regarding HIV/AIDS

According to a national survey, almost two out of every three Canadians think the federal government should be spending more to fight HIV/AIDS. The survey also found that: (a) although most Canadians know a lot about HIV/AIDS, there are some significant gaps in their knowledge; and (b) although most Canadians think HIV/AIDS is a serious problem, the vast majority do not consider themselves to be at risk for HIV infection. Few Canadians blame people for contracting HIV through sex or drug use, but many Canadians are still uncomfortable associating with people with HIV/AIDS in certain settings.     

Conflict and Identity: Explaining Turnout and Anti-integrationist Voting in the Danish 2004 Elections for the European Parliament

This article investigates electoral participation and the antecedents of anti-integrationist voting (AIV) in the Danish 2004 European parliamentary elections. First, it focuses on the effects of the campaign and assesses the importance of social demographics and political predispositions vis-à-vis mediated and interpersonal communication on turnout. Second, it investigates AIV, focusing on 'hard' utilitarian predictors and 'soft' cultural predictors. It draws on the European Election Study (EES) post-electoral voter survey and a media content analysis of the most important news media outlets. Its findings corroborate previous research on political participation and shows significant positive effects of interpersonal political discussion and exposure to news media that portrayed the European elections as a conflict-laden contest on turnout. The analysis of AIV highlights the importance of proxies (lack of trust and dissatisfaction with the incumbent government) and political ideology, but also feelings of identity. The latter provides evidence from the Danish context in support of an emerging body of literature emphasizing 'soft' explanations of euroscepticism.     

Candidate uncertainty, mental models, and complexity: Some experimental results

Since the work of Downs (1957), spatial models of elections have been a mainstay of research in political science and public choice. Despite the plethora of theoretical and empirical research involving spatial models, researchers have not considered in great detail the complexity of the decision task that a candidate confronts. Two facets of a candidate’s decision process are investigated here, using a set of laboratory experiments where subjects face a fixed incumbent in a two-dimensional policy space. First, we analyze the effect that the complexity of the electoral landscape has on the ability of the subject to defeat the incumbent. Second, we analyze the impact that a subject’s “mental model” (which we infer from a pre-experiment questionnaire) has on her performance. The experimental results suggest that the complexity of a candidate’s decision task and her perception of the task may be important factors in electoral competition.