Assessing organized crime: Provisional situation report on trafficking in contraband cigarettes

This report has a dual purpose. On one hand it aims at providing an assessment of the cigarette black market in Northwest Europe, based on a review of open source data. On the other hand, it serves to tentatively explore the possibilities for a comprehensive and meaningful assessment of the organized crime situation in this particular sector.     

Population genetics and the coagulation factor XIII A polymorphism

Platelets of 235 blood donors were typed for FXIII A polymorphism using agarose gel electrophoresis with subsequent immunofixation with anti-FXIIIA serum. The allele frequencies obtained (FXIIIA 1 = 0.7787, FXIIIA 2 = 0.2212) are in agreement with previously published data for Caucasoid populations. FXIIIA may be an additional valuable marker for paternity and linkage studies.     

All Quiet on the Eastern Front? Media Images of the West and Russian Foreign Political Identity1

National and foreign political identities are discursively constructed, not least through the media. Starting from the contention that Europe serves as the main Other used to define the idea of Russia, this article uses media texts (online and press) to analyse how Russia is constructed as a foreign policy actor in relation to Europe and the ‘West’ more generally. In so doing, the article draws on three discourses around Russia’s foreign policy: ‘Russia as Europe’; ‘Russia as part of Greater Europe’; and ‘Russia as Alternative Europe’. The article suggests that discursive developments in the 2000s have paved the way for a return of Cold War discourses in characterising relations between Russia and the West.     

Problems of assessing sibship probabilities by means of genetic analysis

Nowadays, kinship studies based only on STR analysis are a very common practice. Apart from regular paternity cases, there is a rising number of cases in which the type of sibship between two persons has to be determined. Very often the parents or further relatives are unavailable for testing, so that the probability e. g. for a half-sibship has to be calculated as a deficiency situation. 50 unrelated persons (Group 1), 50 full siblings (Group 2), and 50 half-siblings (Group 3) were genotyped using the 15 STRs comprised by the AmpFlSTR Identifiler multiplex PCR-kit to investigate the reliability of common statistics programs and the indicative value of the calculated probabilities. Using a commercially available statistics program, we calculated probabilities for the following hypotheses: 1. The persons investigated are full siblings; 2. the persons investigated are half-siblings; 3. the persons investigated are unrelated. After STR analysis, half-sibling probabilities between 0.03 %-97.56% for group 1, between 0.01%-78.46% for group 2, and between 24.28%-90.18% for group 3 were calculated. In addition, the authors present two complicated deficiency cases which could be resolved only by extensive DNA typing using X- and Y-chromosomal loci, respectively, as well as the investigation of further relatives. The results of this study suggest that typing of autosomal STRs alone is no sufficient tool for resolving cases of possible half-sibship, even if probabilities of more than 90.0% are obtained. Due to the results of our study we suggest the implementation of mandatory standards for the investigation and interpretation of complicated kinship cases.     

Possible pitfalls in motherless paternity analysis with related putative fathers

Nowadays, more and more paternity cases are carried out investigating only child and putative father, mostly for economical or private reasons. Usually, reliable results can be obtained and the putative father can be included or ruled out with a high certainty. Considerable problems might arise when a relative of the biological father is investigated as being the putative father. In this study, we investigated 164 persons from 27 families creating artificial deficiency cases using the AmpFlSTRIdentifiler kit, which amplifies 15 STRs simultaneously. We analyzed 93 child/biological father pairs and the corresponding uncles, respectively the brothers of the biological fathers. The average paternity probability for the biological father was 99.9699% (paternity index (PI): 3321.26); only in three cases the results were under 99.9%. In five out of 125 child/uncle pairs no STR mismatches were found and paternity probabilities between 99.9726% (PI 3652) and 99.9970% (PI 33,545) were calculated. The average number of excluding loci was 3.4, but in 31.2% of the cases only zero, one or two mismatches were found. When both putative fathers were genetically typed, the biological father usually had a statistically higher paternity probability. Nevertheless, the differences between probabilities for father and uncle were only small. These results show that a reliable investigation of deficiency cases (i.e. child and putative father) seems to be more difficult than generally assumed. Especially in cases with an unknown familiar background and/or when investigating foreigners for immigration purposes, the laboratory expert should include the mother, increase the number of investigated loci or include a second method such as RFLP-analysis, some serological systems or typing of X-chromosome specific STRs to further ascertain the results.     

Development of a capillary zone electrophoresis method including a factorial design and simplex optimisation for analysis of amphetamine, amphetamine analogues, cocaine, and heroin

A capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE) method was developed for the analysis of amphetamine and 13 amphetamine analogues. A full factorial design was used to screen for important design variables (i.e. carrier electrolyte concentration, pH, and separation temperature), and a modified simplex was employed in a final optimisation step. The resolution values of the target compounds were used as responses in the screening and optimisation phases. This approach made it possible to control the effects of the design variables on the separation of the target compounds. The best results were obtained using a 100mM Tris/phosphate buffer (pH 3.1) at a separation temperature of 10 degrees C, and the analysis time was 23 min under these conditions. After slight modification, the method also enabled baseline resolution of the most commonly encountered amphetamine derivatives, as well as cocaine and heroin, within 7 min. There was a linear relationship between peak area and concentration for all substances, with correlation coefficients in the range of 0.9975-0.9999. Moreover, the technique was repeatable and exhibited relative standard deviation (R.S.D.) values in the ranges of 0.01-0.11% and 0.54-1.60% for relative migration time and corrected peak area, respectively. Lastly, the method was successfully applied to analyse street samples.