Magistrates and Mothers, Paternity and Property in Nineteenth-Century French Courts

In 1804, French Civil Code forbad paternity searches (recherche de paternité). Despite this prohibition of paternity suits, enterprising, or desperate mothers with the help of magistrates found ways around the law, and used tort law to sue seducers and putative fathers for damages in the civil courts. Mothers and magistrates redefined the laws governing paternity suits in ways beneficial to the women and consequentially to the children. They made paternity juridically divisible, separating men’s filiation rights to allocate property to their progeny from their contractual financial obligations to the women and their extranuptial children. These suits are part of a broader legal context that demonstrates the interaction of individuals and communities with the state. In 1912, legislators finally agreed to change the law to permit paternity suits based on specified circumstantial evidence.Le Code civil français de 1804 interdisait les recherches de paternité. En dépit de cette prohibition, des mères entreprenantes, ou désespérées, trouvèrent des voies légales détournées, avec l’aide des juges, et utilisèrent le droit de la responsabilité pour poursuivre les séducteurs et pères putatifs en dommages et intérêts. Mères et juges redéfinirent le droit de la filiation d’une manière favorable aux femmes et, en définitive, aux enfants. Ils opérèrent une distinction au sein de la paternité, en séparant les implications successorales de la paternité de la responsabilité financière envers les femmes et leurs enfants nés hors mariage. Ces procès s’inscrivent dans un contexte juridique plus large qui démontre l’existence d’une interaction entre les individus et les communautés d’une part, et l’État, d’autre part. En 1912, le législateur accepta de modifier le droit pour autoriser des recherches en paternité fondées sur des présomptions définies

High Resolution Optical Velocity Fields of 11 Low Surface Brightness Galaxies

We present high resolution two-dimensional velocity fields from integral field spectroscopy along with derived rotation curves for eleven low surface brightness galaxies. We fit NFW and pseudo-isothermal halo models to the new data combined with previous long-slit and HI data. In most cases we find the pseudo-isothermal halo to better represent the data than the NFW halo, as the NFW concentrations are often lower than expected for a LambdaCDM cosmology. We also compare our results to previous studies and find that including the new two-dimensional optical data does not significantly alter the halo parameters, but does decrease the uncertainties by roughly a factor of 2.Comment: 19 pages, 13 color figures; High resolution images at http://www.astro.umd.edu/~kuzio/PAPERS/dpakdata.html; Accepted for publication in ApJ

Reconstruction of primary vertices at the ATLAS experiment in Run 1 proton–proton collisions at the LHC

This paper presents the method and performance of primary vertex reconstruction in proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment during Run 1 of the LHC. The studies presented focus on data taken during 2012 at a centre-of-mass energy of √s=8 TeV. The performance has been measured as a function of the number of interactions per bunch crossing over a wide range, from one to seventy. The measurement of the position and size of the luminous region and its use as a constraint to improve the primary vertex resolution are discussed. A longitudinal vertex position resolution of about 30μm is achieved for events with high multiplicity of reconstructed tracks. The transverse position resolution is better than 20μm and is dominated by the precision on the size of the luminous region. An analytical model is proposed to describe the primary vertex reconstruction efficiency as a function of the number of interactions per bunch crossing and of the longitudinal size of the luminous region. Agreement between the data and the predictions of this model is better than 3% up to seventy interactions per bunch crossing

A case of mistaken identity: HSPs are no DAMPs but DAMPERs

Until recently, the immune system was seen solely as a defense system with its primary task being the elimination of unwanted microbial invaders. Currently, however, the functional significance of the immune system has obtained a much wider perspective, to include among others the maintenance and restoration of homeostasis following tissue damage. In this latter aspect, there is a growing interest in the identification of molecules involved, such as the so-called danger or damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs), also called alarmins. Since heat shock proteins are archetypical molecules produced under stressful conditions, such as tissue damage or inflammation, they are frequently mentioned as prime examples of DAMPs (Bianchi, J Leukoc Biol 81:1–5, 2007; Kono and Rock, Nat Rev Immunol 8:279–289, 2008; Martin-Murphy et al., Toxicol Lett 192:387–394, 2010). See for instance also a recent review (Chen and Nunez, Science 298:1395–1401, 2010). Contrary to this description, we recently presented some of the arguments against a role of heat shock protein as DAMPs (Broere et al., Nat Rev Immunol 11:565-c1, 2011). With this perspective and reflection article, we hope to elaborate on this debate and provide additional thoughts to further ignite this discussion on this critical and evolving issue

Agnostic Pathway/Gene Set Analysis of Genome-Wide Association Data Identifies Associations for Pancreatic Cancer

Background Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) identify associations of individual single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) with cancer risk but usually only explain a fraction of the inherited variability. Pathway analysis of genetic variants is a powerful tool to identify networks of susceptibility genes. Methods We conducted a large agnostic pathway-based meta-analysis of GWAS data using the summary-based adaptive rank truncated product method to identify gene sets and pathways associated with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) in 9040 cases and 12 496 controls. We performed expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) analysis and functional annotation of the top SNPs in genes contributing to the top associated pathways and gene sets. All statistical tests were two-sided. Results We identified 14 pathways and gene sets associated with PDAC at a false discovery rate of less than 0.05. After Bonferroni correction (P Conclusion Our agnostic pathway and gene set analysis integrated with functional annotation and eQTL analysis provides insight into genes and pathways that may be biologically relevant for risk of PDAC, including those not previously identified.Peer reviewe