Urbanisation and the Shifting of Boundaries: Contemporary Transformations in Kinship and Child Circulation amongst the Sakha

In this article, we outline some of the most salient features of kinship transformations amongst the Sakha of northeastern Siberia, including the creation of new social and symbolic boundaries between individual subgroups and members of extended family groups leading to de-traditionalisation of Sakha kinship practices. We specifically focus on the shifts in people’s views on personhood and children. One of the key mechanisms of maintaining kinship-based economies and relations, ‘child circulation’ is losing its previous value in an urban environment. We suggest that these transformations have become more visible as a result of the mass migration of a traditionally rural population to towns.     

The experience of using the FTA-carriers for blood sample storage while conducting the molecular-genetic identification of unidentified killed persons--victims of military actions in the territory of the Chechen Republic

The activity of adapting and introducing the FTA-carriers for the storage of blood samples of relatives of missing service men for the purpose of using them in the consequent identification measures in respect to non-identified killed persons has been conducted in the Russian Federation within the framework of identification of service men killed in the Chechen territory during the 1994-1996 armed conflict. The article generalizes the experience of practical usage of FTA-cards as an element in the technological sequence of the molecular-genetic identification expertise. Methods related with application of FTA-technologies were tested; the efficiency of polymerized chain reaction was evaluated by using the matrix of immobilized DNA for hypo variable segments HVS-1 and HVS-2 as well as for the D-loop of mitochondrial DNA and for chromosomal STR-locuses D3S1358, vWA, FGA, D8S1179, D21S11, D18S51, D5S818, D13S317 and D7S820.