Introduction: Tribute to Henry Manne's contributions to law-and-economics

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Two Economists, Three Opinions? Economic Models for Private International Law - Cross Border Torts as Example

Many agree that private international law does a poor job of leading to good and predictable results. Can law and economics bring more scientific, objective foundations to the discipline? Economics, one may hope, can bring the conclusiveness to the field that doctrine could not. But even a fleeting review of existing studies reveals a discrepancy of views or economic approaches that mirrors the discrepancy in the traditional private international law doctrine. This article sets out to test whether different models lead to different outcomes. It makes arguments in three economic models - a private law model, an international law model, and a model combining the two. The subject area for this analysis is private international law of torts, more specifically the question of the law applicable to cross-border torts. The result is that the debate whether private international law is private law or (public) international law is replicated in the economic analysis of private international law. Rather than resolve problems of private international law, economic analysis reformulates them. This does not make economic analysis useless at all, but it puts into question its promise of objective neutral solutions

The pURI family of expression vectors: A versatile set of ligation independent cloning plasmids for producing recombinant His-fusion proteins

A family of restriction enzyme- and ligation-independent cloning vectors has been developed for producing recombinant His-tagged fusion proteins in Escherichia coli. These are based on pURI2 and pURI3 expression vectors which have been previously used for the successful production of recombinant proteins at the milligram scale. The newly designed vectors combines two different promoters (lppp-5 and T7 RNA polymerase Ø10), two different endoprotease recognition sites for the His6-tag removal (enterokinase and tobacco etch virus), different antibiotic selectable markers (ampicillin and erythromycin resistance), and different placements of the His 6-tag (N- and C-terminus). A single gene can be cloned and further expressed in the eight pURI vectors by using six nucleotide primers, avoiding the restriction enzyme and ligation steps. A unique NotI site was introduced to facilitate the selection of the recombinant plasmid. As a case study, the new vectors have been used to clone the gene coding for the phenolic acid decarboxylase from Lactobacillus plantarum. Interestingly, the obtained results revealed markedly different production levels of the target protein, emphasizing the relevance of the cloning strategy on soluble protein production yield. Efficient purification and tag removal steps showed that the affinity tag and the protease cleavage sites functioned properly. The novel family of pURI vectors designed for parallel cloning is a useful and versatile tool for the production and purification of a protein of interest. © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.This work was supported by grants RM2008-00002 (Instituto Nacional de Investigación Agraria y Alimentaría), AGL2008-01052, Consolider INGENIO 2010 CSD2007-00063 FUN-C-FOOD (Comisión Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnología), and S-0505/AGR/000153 and S2009/AGR-1469 (ALIBIRD) (Comunidad de Madrid). J.M.M. thanks the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación for a research grant (BFU2007-67404/BMC) and “Factoría de Cristalización” Consolider-Ingenio 2010 in support of his research. The technical assistance of M.V. Santamaría is greatly appreciated. J.A. Curiel is a recipient of a predoctoral fellowship from the MEC.Peer Reviewe

Connecting Women's Histories: the local and the global

The articles in this Special Issue are drawn from some of the contributions to a conference held at Sheffield Hallam University, UK, from 29 August to 1 September 2013 titled ‘Women’s Histories: the local and the global’. The articles reflect on diverse aspects of the entangled histories of women across the world, mainly, but not exclusively, during the twentieth century. They explore the range of ways in which women’s history, international history, transnational history and imperial and global histories are interwoven

‘Orientalism is a partisan book’: applying Edward Said's insights to early modern travel writing

Since its publication in 1978, Edward Said's Orientalism has had a significant impact on postcolonial studies in a range of fields. This paper assesses his impact on the historiography of Anglophone travel writing concerning Ottoman Empire during the early modern period. Said's analysis of the relationship between representational power and colonial authority remains relevant to our understanding of early modern travel texts. Said's epistemology raises significant issues for historians of early modern intercultural encounters. This article summarises recent debates surrounding early modern travel narratives. It contrasts doctrinaire applications of Said's theory with more recent, particularistic studies. It provides a much-needed survey of travel writing historiography that considers the continuing impact of Said's postcolonial thought on the study of early modern travel narratives relating to the Ottoman Middle East. In so doing, it explores the lack of fit between early modern travel narratives and Said's methodology. I explore the methodological problems thrown up by conventional applications of Said's epistemology to precolonial travellers' texts. Based on a wide-ranging survey of Said's oeuvre, the article demonstrates that, more than 30 years on, Said's work remains relevant to the historiographical challenges presented by early modern English travel writing about Islam