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DNA sequences of nine genes (plastid: atpB, matK, and rbcL; mitochondrial: atp1, matR, mtSSU, and mtLSU; nuclear: 18S and 26S rDNAs) from 100 species of basal angiosperms and gymnosperms were analyzed using parsimony, Bayesian, and maximum likelihood methods. All of these analyses support the following consensus of relationships among basal angiosperms. First, Amborella, Nymphaeaceae, and Austrobaileyales are strongly supported as a basal grade in the angiosperm phylogeny, with either Amborella or Amborella and Nymphaeales as sister to all other angiosperms. An examination of nucleotide substitution patterns of all nine genes ruled out any possibility of analytical artifacts because of RNA editing and GC-content bias in placing these taxa at the base of the angiosperm phylogeny. Second, Magnoliales are sister to Laurales and Piperales are sister to Canellales. These four orders together constitute the magnoliid clade. Finally, the relationships among Ceratophyllum, Chloranthaceae, monocots, magnoliids, and eudicots are resolved in different ways in various analyses, mostly with low support. Our study indicates caution in total evidence approaches in that some of the genes employed (e.g., mtSSU, mtLSU, and nuclear 26S rDNA) added signal that conflicted with the other genes in resolving certain parts of the phylogenetic tree. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a study which addressed the cross-national variation of micro-level relationships between socioeconomic status and political participation. Assessment of Venezuelan and Mexican workers; Discussion on differential group mobilization theory; Conversion of socioeconomic resources into political activism; Effects of authoritarian structures on the acquisition of motivations to participate.

Two impulses dominated northern and central Italy in the late thirteenth century. One was the striving of cities for self-sufficiency and increased power. The other was the papal thrust toward political as well as religious overlordship. Often policies of the papacy and certain cities were linked by memories and fears of imperial interference. Ptolemy of Lucca's histories reflected his keen awareness of this situation. His more theoretical political works, the Determinatio compendiosa and the continuation of Aquinas's De regimine principum, did more: they furnished remarkably supple and sophisticated ideological justifications of the views of municipal patriots and ecclesiastical zealots, and included as well stinging attacks on imperial claims in Italy. On the civic level Ptolemy was a republican, both on grounds of Italian pride and an early acquaintance with Aristotle's Politics. As N. Rubinstein remarks, “Ptolemy of Lucca's re-appraisal of the Politics constitutes the most vigorous formulation Italian communal theory had yet received by the beginning of the fourteenth century.” Ptolemy, in fact, was the first Italian republican who could justify his position in a theoretically competent way. But on the wider ecclesiastical level he was a vigorous monarchist. His Determinatio was an early and influential exposition of high papalist views, and although written about 1278, it has been called “the key to the whole vast ecclesio-political polemic of the fourteenth century.” Even by the middle of that century its arguments still seemed so contemporary that a new and extended version of it was prepared in 1342. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]