STR analysis of artificially degraded DNA-results of a collaborative European exercise

Degradation of human DNA extracted from forensic stains is, in most cases, the result of a natural process due to the exposure of the stain samples to the environment. Experiences with degraded DNA from casework samples show that every sample may exhibit different properties in this respect, and that it is difficult to systematically assess the performance of routinely used typing systems for the analysis of degraded DNA samples. Using a batch of artificially degraded DNA with an average fragment size of approx. 200 bp a collaborative exercise was carried out among 38 forensic laboratories from 17 European countries. The results were assessed according to correct allele detection, peak height and balance as well as the occurrence of artefacts. A number of common problems were identified based on these results such as strong peak imbalance in heterozygous genotypes for the larger short tandem repeat (STR) fragments after increased PCR cycle numbers, artefact signals and allelic drop-out. Based on the observations, strategies are discussed to overcome these problems. The strategies include careful balancing of the amount of template DNA and the PCR cycle numbers, the reaction volume and the amount of Taq polymerase. Furthermore, a careful evaluation of the results of the fragment analysis and of automated allele calling is necessary to identify the correct alleles and avoid artefacts.     

Psychiatrists,criminals, and the law: Forensic psychiatry in Switzerland 1850–1950

Between 1880 and 1950, Swiss psychiatrists established themselves as experts in criminal courts. In this period, the judicial authorities required psychiatric testimonies in a rising number of cases. As a result, more offenders than ever before were declared mentally deficient and, eventually, sent to psychiatric asylums. Psychiatrists also enhanced their authority as experts at the political level. From the very beginning, they got involved in the preparatory works for a nationwide criminal code. In this article, I argue that these trends toward medicalization of crime were due to incremental processes, rather than spectacular institutional changes. In fact, Swiss psychiatrists gained recognition as experts due to their daily interactions with judges, public prosecutors, and legal counsels. At the same time, the spread of medical expertise had serious repercussions on psychiatric institutions. From 1942 onwards, asylums had to deal with a growing number of “criminal psychopaths,” which affected ward discipline and put psychiatry's therapeutic efficiency into question. The defensive way in which Swiss psychiatrists reacted to this predicament was crucial to the further development of forensic psychiatry. For the most part, it accounts for the subdiscipline's remarkable lack of specialization until the 1990s.     

Making Votes Count with Internet Voting

This paper reassesses the claim that electronic voting systems help voters to avoid common mistakes that lead to their votes remaining uncounted. While prior studies have come to mixed conclusions, I provide new, more robust evidence based on a case study of extended Internet voting trials in Geneva canton, Switzerland. The trials almost exclusively involved referendum votes. For causal identification I exploit the unique circumstance that federal safety legislation created a near-natural experiment, with some of the canton’s municipalities participating in the trials and others not. Using difference-in-differences estimation, I find that the residual vote rate decreased by an average of 0.3 percentage points if municipalities offered the possibility to vote online in addition to (mostly optically scanned) paper ballots. For cantonal measures, which are located towards the bottom of ballot papers in Geneva, the reduction increases to 0.5 percentage points. These remain relatively modest effects, and I find no evidence for a knock-on effect on electoral outcomes. However, on average only around 20% of votes were cast online where the opportunity existed, and online voting was most popular among voters with high levels of education. Despite the small effect sizes, the results of this study therefore point to the potential of Internet and, more generally, electronic voting technology to reduce avoidable voter mistakes.

     

Getting Out the Vote With Voting Advice Applications

This article investigates the mobilization potential of online voter information tools known as “Voting Advice Applications” (VAAs). We argue that an observational approach utilizing survey data constitutes the best available method for causal inference where VAAs are popular—and we are thus most interested in VAA turnout effects—because randomized experiments are likely to run into double cross-over problems. We suggest that matching offers key improvements over existing methods to tackle self-selection into VAA use in observational studies. To improve confidence in selection on observables, we complement matching estimates with an extensive sensitivity analysis, including a placebo test. Empirically, we study the effect of smartvote, a popular VAA from Switzerland, on turnout in the 2007 Swiss federal election. We find that smartvote usage significantly increased the individual-level probability to vote. Our results suggest that smartvote was, on the aggregate, responsible for about 1.2 % points of the total tally with an estimated cost of nine Swiss Francs (7.5 U.S. dollars or 1.4 “Big Macs”) per additional vote. Promising as well, we find that the mobilization effect was more pronounced among younger voters. Our findings point to the value of VAAs compared to traditional get out the vote tactics.     

Homicide by asphyxia--yes or no? On the use of muscle histology

In two cases of death autopsy revealed large hemorrhages in the muscles of the neck, which lead to the conclusion of a murder by strangulation, e.g. with a soft tool. Histologic examination of the injured muscles didn't show any sign of vital reaction, which means, that they had developed post mortem. There was no reason for further suspicion of a violent crime. Later it became obvious, that neck lesions resulted from inadequate recovery and transport of the corpses. "Vital" type of muscular alteration is characterized by segmental or disk-like fragmentation of muscle fibres, loss of sarcoplasmatic cross-striation and appearance of pathologic longitudinal fibrillar structures. These signs are missing in case of a postmortal injury, whereas the cross striation is intact. The slides should be stained with PTAH. With these two cases we would like to demonstrate the importance of histologic examination of injured muscles, when question for intravital or postmortal injury rises.     

Getting a “Flexible Eye”: Round-the-World Travel and Scales of Cosmopolitan Citizenship

The “flexible eye” describes a particularly cosmopolitan perspective derived through mobility, detachment and multiplicity as opposed to rooted-ness or national affiliation. In this article, I explore the extent to which the “flexible eye” serves as an apt metaphor for the spatial and civic affiliations enacted by round-the-world travellers. The discussion here is based on research that examines the narratives travellers publish online while travelling around the world. Drawing on recent academic work on cosmopolitanism and global citizenship, I investigate the way a discourse of cosmopolitan citizenship circulates in these narratives. In particular, I examine the way travellers frame these related activities—moving around the world and sharing their experiences via the Internet—in terms of civic responsibility. Travellers respond to a sense of obligation to produce tolerance, interconnectedness and cultural understanding out of encounters with difference. This formulation of a round-the-world trip as a civic obligation entails movement not only around the world, but also between national and global scales of belonging. How is cosmopolitan belonging filtered through practices of national citizenship? How are travellers both detaching from and re-attaching to notions of national identity in their quest for the “flexible eye” of the cosmopolitan citizen?     

Morphologic variations in 180 cases of sudden infant death and 180 controls.

The incidence of morphologic variations (MVs) was investigated in 180 infants who died unexpectedly and suddenly and in 180 age-matched nonsuddenly deceased infants. The same person (G.M.) performed a full postmortem and histologic examination on all of the infants, none of whom had significant malformations. The test group (TG) consisted of 146 infants whose death was unexplained, whereas group 3 (G3) consisted of 34 infants with adequately determined causes of death. The principal findings in the control group were prematurity, inflammatory and metabolic diseases, tumors, and traumatic lesions. MVs were present in 62% of the TG infants, in 47% of the G3 children, and in 22% of the controls. The differences between the TG and G3 on the one hand and the controls on the other are statistically significant (p < 0.001 and 0.05, respectively). In the TG, anomalies were twice, dysplasias three times, and dysmorphisms four times as common as in controls; in G3, four times as many dysplasias and dystropics were found as in controls. In the TG, 23% of the MVs were multiple as compared with 9% in G3 and 5% in controls. The pattern of distribution was not confined to certain organs. Among the relative high percentage of dysplasias, the large number of neuroblastomas is striking.