291 research outputs found
Solidifying system of democracy in the Central and Eastern European new EU members
The paper examines the requirements of an effective and legitimized democratic political system in the process of transition. The analysis and the conclusions are based on the Hungarian experience, which can carefully be applied to all Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. Special focus is given to the relationship of legal certainty and the efficiency of the democratic system, to the tension between legalism and managerialism and to the characteristics of civil society organizations. In the conclusion special features of the transitional countries are pointed out
Proportioning whole-genome single-nucleotide-polymorphism diversity for the identification of geographic population structure and genetic ancestry
The identification of geographic population structure and genetic ancestry
on the basis of a minimal set of genetic markers is desirable for a wide
range of applications in medical and forensic sciences. However, the
absence of sharp discontinuities in the neutral genetic diversity among
human populations implies that, in practice, a large number of neutral
markers will be required to identify the genetic ancestry of one
individual. We showed that it is possible to reduce the amount of markers
required for detecting continental population structure to only 10
single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), by applying a newly developed
ascertainment algorithm to Affymetrix GeneChip Mapping 10K SNP array data
that we obtained from samples of globally dispersed human individuals (the
Y Chromosome Consortium panel). Furthermore, this set of SNPs was able to
recover the genetic ancestry of individuals from all four continents
represented in the original data set when applied to an independent, much
larger, worldwide population data set (Centre d'Etude du Polymorphisme
Humain-Human Genome Diversity Project Cell Line Panel). Finally, we
provide evidence that the unusual patterns of genetic variation we
observed at the respective genomic regions surrounding the five most
informative SNPs is in agreement with local positive selection being the
explanation for the striking SNP allele-frequency differences we found
between continental groups of human populations
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