The Norms of Roman Law and the Concept of Jurisdiction in the French Coutumiers of the 13th Century

The article is devoted to the analysis of the earliest North French collections of customary law of the 13th century: the “Coutume de Touraine-Anjou”, the “Usage d’Orlenois”, the “Conseil à un ami” of Pierre de Fontaines and the “Livre de jostice et de plet”. These codes practically did not attract the attention of modern researchers, but they differ in one curious feature: they have an impressive number of borrowings from the Roman law, or rather from the legislation of Justinian (483—565). The main task of the article was an attempt to understand what purpose these inserts served, how the authors and the compilers of the coutumiers worked with this material and, finally, what relation the Roman legal norms had to the territory to which the customary law of a particular area of the French Kingdom applied. According to the author of the article, the references to Roman law appeared in the texts of the Northern French coutumiers precisely because these latter were compiled during the grandiose judicial transformations of Louis IX the Saint and served primarily to settle the relations of the crown with local lords in the sphere of jurisdiction. The norms of the Roman law not only filled in the gaps in the knowledge of the lawyers of the 13th century regarding local legal customs, they also turned out to be extremely useful in order to build a clear “vertical of power” in the French Kingdom, which was entering the era of genuine centralization.

Earth Tides and H2 Venting in the Sao Francisco Basin, Brazil

Hydrogen gas seeping from Proterozoic basins worldwide is a potential non-carbon energy resource, and the vents are consequently receiving research attention. A curious feature of H2 venting in the Sao Francisco Basin in Brazil is that the venting displays a very regular daily cycle. It has been shown that atmospheric pressure tides could explain this cycle, but solid earth tides might be an alternative explanation. We show here that it is unlikely that solid earth tides are a dominant control because they have two equally strong peaks per day whereas the H2 venting has only one.

Origin and Evolution of the Sherman Family to 1840

This chapter traces the origin and evolution of the Sherman family. Unlike many of his fellow countrymen, William T. Sherman did not display an enduring fascination with his family tree. He never bothered to inspect his ancestral home, even during his European tour of 1872. Consequently, his biographers have been perplexed by his ancestry or thought better of treating it in detail. The Sherman family hailed from south-eastern England, and they played a minor part in the upheavals that culminated in a great civil war that engulfed the British Isles from 1642 to 1651. The full context of Sherman’s life is not complete without some consideration of this background and legacy bequeathed to him by his forebears. The chapter also details Sherman’s experience at West Point. During his time at the military academy, Sherman’s rebelliousness became obvious—and he paid the price. It is a curious feature of his life that he spent so many of his later years proclaiming West Point’s virtues, the very standards that he had ignored in his youth. But by graduating, Sherman entered a self-conscious elite, and its values had a powerful influence on his opinions and military attitudes.

Surveillance Methods

This chapter examines the surveillance methods used by the MI5. It is a curious feature of MI5’s mandate that it included nothing about the methods to be used for the purposes of the defence of the realm, which was its core task. The Security Service would obtain information about individuals and organizations in a number of ways, which might be described as volunteers who spontaneously reported fellow citizens; monitoring by Special Branch, infiltration, and the use of informers; watching and following; interrogation and questioning; and the interception of communications (mail, telegrams, and telephones); as well as the use of secret microphones hidden in various locations; and foreign security and intelligence agencies. The chapter also looks at the different circumstances in which these different forms of surveillance were used: a contrast between routine and intense surveillance; between passive and active surveillance; and between constant and periodic surveillance.

Autoimmune eye disease

The eye has a number of interesting immunological properties that alter the propensity for immune-mediated disease, including the curious feature that antigen injected into the anterior chamber induces tolerance rather than immunity. In addition, the eye has no true lymphatics, relatively poor vascularity, and, as the retina is an extension of the CNS, there is a blood–retinal barrier that limits passage of molecules in either direction. Ocular involvement is a common feature of many connective tissue and vasculitic diseases.

Swapping Birth and Death: Symmetries and Transformations in Phylodynamic Models

Stochastic birth–death models provide the foundation for studying and simulating evolutionary trees in phylodynamics. A curious feature of such models is that they exhibit fundamental symmetries when the birth and death rates are interchanged. In this article, we first provide intuitive reasons for these known transformational symmetries. We then show that these transformational symmetries (encoded in algebraic identities) are preserved even when individuals at the present are sampled with some probability. However, these extended symmetries require the death rate parameter to sometimes take a negative value. In the last part of this article, we describe the relevance of these transformations and their application to computational phylodynamics, particularly to maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference methods, as well as to model selection.

Swapping Birth and Death: Symmetries and Transformations in Phylodynamic Models

Stochastic birth–death models provide the foundation for studying and simulating evolutionary trees in phylodynamics. A curious feature of such models is that they exhibit fundamental symmetries when the birth and death rates are interchanged. In this paper, we explain and formally derive these transformational symmetries. We also show that these transformational symmetries (encoded in algebraic identities) are preserved even when taxa at the present are sampled with some probability. However, these extended symmetries require the death rate parameter to sometimes take a negative value. In the last part of this paper, we describe the relevance of these transformations and their application to computational phylodynamics, particularly to maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference methods, as well as to model selection. Phylodynamics, phylogenetics, speciation-extinction models, birth-death models, algebraic symmetries, maximum likelihood, Bayesian inference

Observed Features of Langmuir Turbulence Forced by Misaligned Wind and Waves under Destabilizing Buoyancy Flux

Several features of Langmuir turbulence remain unquantified despite its potentially large impacts on ocean surface mixing. For example, its vertical velocity variance, expected to be proportional to based on numerical simulations, was proportional to in recent field observations, where is the friction velocity and is surface Stokes velocity. To investigate unquantified features of Langmuir turbulence, we conducted a field experiment around a marine observation tower in a shallow sea off the southern coast of Japan in early winter when winds and waves (often swells) were often misaligned. Coherent structures similar to Langmuir cells were successfully identified in the horizontal and vertical structures of turbulent flows measured with upward- and horizontally looking acoustic Doppler current profilers (ADCPs). ADCPs and several anemometers attached at the tower showed that turbulent vertical velocity variance was large when the Langmuir number and Hoenikker number (; where B is surface buoyancy flux and H is the water depth) were both small and that the orientation of the cells was generally aligned in the direction of Lagrangian current shear. These results agree well with the previous numerical results. As in the previous observations, however, the vertical velocity variance appeared to be proportional to . In our experiment, this curious feature was explained by compensatory effects between waves and convection. Misaligned wind with waves also seems to characterize the observed Langmuir turbulence, though further quantitative analysis is required to confirm this result.

Cauchy’s theorem and generalization

It has already been established that the mean length travelled by a neutral particle in a body containing a diffusing but not absorbing material is independant of its cross section, and consequently equal to the mean chord of the body. An elegant demonstration of this curious feature is presented and analysed thanks to Monte-Carlo simulations.