Personalisierung der Politik in Mehrparteiensystemen am Beispiel deutscher Bundestagswahlen seit 1980

Personalization of politics is investigated as relative importance of leading politicians for the party vote (Zweitstimme) in German Bundestag elections, compared to the importance of parties and the recall of voting behavior in the last federal election. Contrary to recent German research on the impact of special candidate attributes (competence, integrity etc.) we interpret general evaluations of parties and the leading politicians as the most immediate utility attributes or distance measures of the options listed on the ballot. On the basis of this model, of discrete choice analysis as the statistical method and of the Politbarometer data of the Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, Mannheim, we estimate candidate effects in three regions of Germany, characterized by slightly different party systems (West Germany without Bavaria, Bavaria with the CSU instead of the CDU and East Germany with the PDS as a more important party than the FDP or the Greens). It is shown that region is important for personalization, that a general trend towards increasing personalization does not exist, that the most popular politicians sometimes lose their capacity to attract voters to their party and that both attractiveness for floating voters and repulsiveness for former party voters must be taken into account when interpreting effect parameters.     

Age estimation by measuring the racemization of aspartic acid from total amino acid content of several types of bone and rib cartilage: a preliminary account

Age estimation has been often performed based on the rate of aspartic acid racemization using bones. In this study, we investigated various kinds of bone and a cartilage for suitability to estimate age by racemization. Ten male cadavers aged 22 to 77 years at death were selected, and bone specimens and cartilage were taken from seven sites in each individual. The rate of racemization of aspartic acid among total amino acid contained in each specimen was analyzed by gas chromatography. The correlation coefficient between the rate of racemization and chronological age was relatively high in the sternum, skull, and femur. The rates of aspartic acid racemization were high in the costal cartilage, femur, and skull. In addition, we found that the rate of racemization was only slightly lower after the second irrigation than after the first irrigation in femur and skull bone specimens, but those of others were significantly lower. These findings showed that among the six different bones and rib cartilage, the skull and femur might be used most effectively for age estimation using total amino acid fraction.     

Comparison of Age Estimation in Japanese and Scandinavian Teeth Using Amino Acid Racemization*

Abstract: Racemization method is currently considered to be one of the most accurate methods for age estimation. There are many factors that affect racemization reaction velocities. We investigated ethnic differences in the racemization reaction velocities between Japanese and Scandinavian teeth. After a heating experiment, the Arrhenius equation was used to obtain a rate constant (k). Both groups presented almost identical velocities, indicating that there was no difference in the tooth racemization reaction between the two groups. However, because 14 of the 18 Scandinavian teeth had multiple roots, it is possible that accurate racemization rates of the teeth themselves were not reflected in the results. These findings reconfirm that the type of tooth selected is extremely important when evaluating age by racemization.