The official art of the Khrushchev Thaw: The Severe Style as an ambassador of the Estonian national school at Baltic art exhibitions in Moscow

In Estonian post-Socialist art history writing, the term ‘national’ has mostly been introduced as a defense mechanism against the Soviet regime. The aim of this article is to indicate that concept ‘national’ also played quite an important role in ‘official’ Soviet cultural politics, especially after Stalin’s death. The processes of cultivating ‘national particularities’ in the arts will be exemplified by the Baltic exhibitions in Moscow in the end of 1950s and 1960s.     

Gemeindeaufsicht ein Spielball der (Partei-)Politik?

Für die politische Zusammensetzung der NÖ Landesregierung ist das Stärkeverhältnis der Parteien im NÖ Landtag maßgeblich. Ändern sich auf Grund des Ergebnisses einer Landtagswahl die Machtverhältnisse im Landtag, bedingt dies regelmäßig auch eine Änderung der Geschäftsordnung (Geschäftsverteilung) der Landesregierung. So geschehen nach der letzten Landtagswahl 2008. Nachstehend sollen die sich daraus ergebenden Probleme hinsichtlich der Gemeindeaufsicht einer näheren Betrachtung unterzogen werden.     

Vehicle Theft Reduction in Germany: The Long-Term Effectiveness of Electronic Immobilisation

From 1995 on all new vehicles sold in Germany must be fitted with an electronic immobiliser. This measure was part of a comprehensive police plan which, adopted in 1994, reacted to the unprecedented increase in vehicle theft after German re-unification and the breakdown of the former USSR. Whilst international research has already shown that electronic immobilisation is an effective tool to reduce vehicle thefts, comparable studies for Germany have not existed. Based on the situational crime prevention approach, this study indicates that the substantial vehicle theft reductions recorded over the last 15 years in Germany can be explained in particular by the introduction of electronic immobilisers as a ‘target hardening’ mechanism. It will be shown that immobilisers not only effectively obstruct opportunistic vehicle thieves, but also increase the efforts of professional vehicle trafficking groups. Since an external impact evaluation has never been planned for this measure, the study followed a mixed methods approach in using available police data as well as complementary interviews with key experts.     

Responsibilities for Human Capabilities: Avoiding a Comprehensive Global Program

Violence, poverty, and illness are all too prevalent in our world. In order to alleviate their hold systematically, we need normative schemes with a global reach and with definite responsibilities. Martha Nussbaum’s human capabilities theory (Martha Nussbaum 2006) provides us with an insightful example. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (The United Nations 1948), however, already includes most of the human capabilities central to Nussbaum’s theory, and violence, poverty, and illness usually appear as objectionable enough without any additional reference to capabilities. In the current article, the author argues that the primary global responsibilities can mainly be established without Nussbaum’s account of capabilities. The human rights-based approach is more promising for this purpose (Jack Donnelly 2007; Abigail Gosselin, Human Rights Review 8:35–52, 2006; Ivar Kolstad, Human Rights Review, doi:, 2008). However, the author also contends that Nussbaum’s theory may be very instructive as a relatively comprehensive moral approach that supplements the human rights view and inspires its adherents to assume secondary responsibilities in addition to the primary ones. Once we learn to see Nussbaum’s agenda in this way, not as the global program, but as one of the many reasonable and relatively comprehensive views in the global background culture, we can also learn to cultivate the responsibilities it implies in a duly dialogical way.     

A New Fundamental Freedom beyond Market Integration: Union Citizenship and its Dynamics for Shifting the Economic Paradigm of European Integration

The development of European integration from an economic to a political community has become manifest not just in the continuous addition of non‐economic policy areas to the treaties. The introduction of Union citizenship (and its controversial subsequent development in the European Court of Justice's jurisprudence) has also triggered a paradigm shift in one of the community's core areas, the concept of negative integration hitherto intrinsically linked to the internal market. Thus, neither the individual's quality as a market actor nor his/her involvement in a transnational economic activity is a condition for enjoyment of the market freedoms' core guarantees, these being a right of residence and a far‐reaching claim to national treatment in other Member States, as well as a prohibition on restrictions to the free movement of persons. A new fundamental freedom beyond market integration (‘Grundfreiheit ohne Markt’) has emerged. This process, whose consequences for the welfare systems of the wealthier Member States have been fiercely discussed for some time, however, also threatens to curtail severely the regulatory autonomy at the national level.     

Explaining global governance—a complexity perspective

As patterns of global governance have undergone significant changes over time, there is a need for new theoretical concepts that are less oriented towards formal hierarchies and give more emphasis to social processes. A framework, however, that takes account of complex interactions and tangling relations bears the danger of losing analytical power. The article addresses the question of the extent to which complexity theory can overcome this problem by combining scientific rigour with contextual sensitivity. A dynamic mechanistic approach is explored that addresses the underlying processes that generate new collective patterns based on changed actor constellations and relational orders. An activator–inhibitor interaction model is introduced as a framework for analysing the multi-level processes that drive international change, using the example of climate protection. Global governance is theorized as it grows within the system fleshing out a new logic of collective action based on decentralization and clustering.     

Doping control analysis of selected peptide hormones using LC-MS(/MS)

With the constantly increasing sensitivity and robustness of liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry-based instruments combined with enhanced reproducibility as well as mass accuracy and resolution, LC-MS(/MS) has become an integral part of sports drug testing programs particularly concerning the detection of peptide hormones. Although several of the relevant peptidic drugs such as insulins (Humalog LisPro, Novolog Aspart, etc.), growth hormone releasing peptides (GHRPs, e.g., GHRP-2, GHRP-6, Hexarelin, etc.), and insulin-like growth factors (e.g., IGF-1, IGF-2, long-R(3)-IGF-1) are currently analyzed using dedicated top-down analytical procedures, i.e. employing specifically tailored sample preparation procedures followed by targeted LC-MS(/MS) measurements focusing on intact analytes, first approaches towards multi-analyte methods have been established. These allow the determination of the prohibited substances in blood and urine doping control specimens following therapeutic applications. In addition, the use of new complementary devices such as ion mobility analyzers, e.g., in hybrid mass spectrometers yielded promising data for the differentiation of isobaric insulins, which outlines the potential to further accelerate and multiplex doping control analytical assays to meet the continuously increasing demands of rapid and unambiguous test methods. Moreover, the potential of LC-MS/MS to target recombinant peptide hormones such as human growth hormone using bottom-up approaches has been demonstrated by targeting proteotypic peptides that unambiguously differentiate the recombinant molecule from the naturally occurring and endogenously produced analog.     

The value of skull-photo superimpositions in identifying corpses found in domestic settings

The identification of decomposed corpses found in domestic settings is frequently problematic because comparative material for methods such as forensic odontostomatology, comparative X-ray analysis, or DNA analysis, is not available. In the case presented here, a photograph from an old, expired passport could be used to successfully identify a "domestic setting" corpse in a skull-photo superimposition. In an additional DNA analysis, 13 STR-loci could be amplified from tissue samples taken from the corpse. DNA comparison with the presumed brother of the deceased yielded a probability of 97.09% for siblingship. Y-STR-analysis was, therefore, performed. The results showed that all of the systems for the presumed brother and the corpse conformed, with the exception of the DYS390 locus, in which allele 21 was found for the corpse and allele 22 for the brother. Despite the rapid development of other identification procedures, skull-photo superimpositions remain an important means of identification. Last not least this is due to the increasing ubiquity of personal photo documents in the age of digital photography. The validity of the results from a DNA analysis in an identification process depends largely on the authenticity of the samples available for comparison and the degree to which the DNA from the corpse is preserved. In the case presented by the authors, positive identification of the corpse solely on the basis of the DNA analysis would not have been possible. Numerous constellations can be imagined for decomposed corpses found in domestic settings for which skull-photo superimpositions may be the only possible option for identifying the corpse.     

Criteria for the classification as a "domestic-setting corpse"--a literature search and review to define the term

In German medical and media circles (daily routine, specialist literature, press, novels), the term "domestic-setting corpse" is frequently used, but the term is only vaguely defined. The authors thus decided to perform an in-depth study of the literature, including historic textbooks and all German- and English-language medicolegal journals, going as far back as their first issues, in an attempt to more clearly define the term. Inclusion criteria used in the search were a post-mortem interval of at least 24 hours prior to discovery and discovery of the corpse in a domestic setting. In the literature, 37 cases that complied with the above-mentioned inclusion criteria were found. These cases frequently described "advanced decomposition", often "unclear cause of death" and "problems in identification". These characteristics can thus be considered as being additional pointers in the definition. However, we suggest that the two general defining characteristics of a "domestic-setting corpse" are a post-mortem interval of more than 24 hours before discovery and the discovery of the corpse in a domestic setting.