Comparative Criminal Law within the Soviet Union: A Review

The application of the comparative method to the study of two or more legal systems has led a jaded existence in the Soviet Union, for a variety of reasons. As a technique of inquiry, it has been acceptable only insofar as its utilization conforms to the general methodology of dialectical and historical materialism: It is wrong to think, a Soviet jurist has argued, that research procedures make up a series of instruments that, from an ideological and political point of view, are neutral. \u27 Marxist jurists consequently have no sympathy for the view that \u27\u27comparison is some type of objective or truly scientific method, nor, in common with the overwhelming majority of western comparatists, do they look upon comparative law as an autonomous branch of jurisprudence

Apropos the 1968 Soviet Maritime Code

This introduction provides essential background information about the Code and the reasons for its adoption, in addition to salient features of the Code of special interest to foreigners. The Code consists of 309 articles classified into nineteen chapters. This discussion follows the ordering of the code itself

Informatic system for a global tissue–fluid biorepository with a graph theory–oriented graphical user interface

The Richard Floor Biorepository supports collaborative studies of extracellular vesicles (EVs) found in human fluids and tissue specimens. The current emphasis is on biomarkers for central nervous system neoplasms but its structure may serve as a template for collaborative EV translational studies in other fields. The informatic system provides specimen inventory tracking with bar codes assigned to specimens and containers and projects, is hosted on globalized cloud computing resources, and embeds a suite of shared documents, calendars, and video-conferencing features. Clinical data are recorded in relation to molecular EV attributes and may be tagged with terms drawn from a network of externally maintained ontologies thus offering expansion of the system as the field matures. We fashioned the graphical user interface (GUI) around a web-based data visualization package. This system is now in an early stage of deployment, mainly focused on specimen tracking and clinical, laboratory, and imaging data capture in support of studies to optimize detection and analysis of brain tumour–specific mutations. It currently includes 4,392 specimens drawn from 611 subjects, the majority with brain tumours. As EV science evolves, we plan biorepository changes which may reflect multi-institutional collaborations, proteomic interfaces, additional biofluids, changes in operating procedures and kits for specimen handling, novel procedures for detection of tumour-specific EVs, and for RNA extraction and changes in the taxonomy of EVs. We have used an ontology-driven data model and web-based architecture with a graph theory–driven GUI to accommodate and stimulate the semantic web of EV science

Paleomagnetism of Coastal California and Baja California: Alternatives to Large-scale Northward Transport

Paleomagnetic data from the Santa Lucia-Orocopia (SLOA) and Baja-Borderland (BBA) allochthons of coastal California and Baja California have been interpreted to indicate up to 2500 km of post-mid-Cretaceous northward transport of these regions with respect to interior North America. However, with Neogene strike-slip offsets taken into account, geological interpretations correlate basement rocks of the coastal allochthons with continental basement rocks directly across the San Andreas and related fault systems. We have examined paleomagnetic data from SLOA and BBA and conclude that apparent discordances can be explained without large-scale pre-Neogene tectonic transport. Three major observations are fundamental to this analysis: (1) Paleolatitudes derived from volcanic rocks of the Jurassic Eugenia Formation of BBA and Coast Range ophiolite of SLOA are concordant when compared to revised Jurassic reference paleomagnetic poles from interior North America. (2) Isotopic and paleobarometric data from the Peninsula Ranges batholith in southern California indicate that the batholith has been tilted northeast-side-up by an amount that can account for discordant paleomagnetic directions observed in plutonic rocks of the batholith without large-scale northward transport. (3) Literal interpretation of the paleolatitudes determined from paleomagnetic directions in Upper Cretaceous and Paleogene marine sedimentary rocks of SLOA and BBA requires north-then-south-then-north transport and a complex motion history between the two allochthons. However, concordant paleolatitudes are indicated by some sedimentary rocks while coeval or younger sedimentary rocks of the same allochthon have discordant paleolatitudes. Coupled with recent documentations of compaction shallowing of paleomagnetic inclination in other marine sedimentary rocks, these inconsistencies suggest that paleolatitudes derived from most of the marine sedimentary rocks of SLOA and BBA are biased towards low paleolatitudes by compaction shallowing

Book Reviews

Reviews of the following books: Canals and Inland Waterways of Maine by Hayden L.V. Anderson; Tate House: Crown of the Maine Mast Trade by William D. Barry with Francis Peabody; Goodwives: Images and Reality in the Lives of Women of Northern New England, 1650-1750 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich; New England Reflections, 1889-1907: Photographs by the Howes Brothers edited by Alan B. Newman; From Memory to History: Using Oral Sources in Local Historical Research by Barbara Allen and W Linwood Montell

Observation of pollution plume capping by a tropopause fold

Airborne lidar measurements reveal a case in which a layer of high-ozone air extruding from a tropopause fold appears to cap a pollution plume and force it to spread out in the lower troposphere. The morphology of the high-ozone layer resembles a three-dimensional model of tropopause fold evolution that produces a low-altitude potential vorticity tube. This is a mechanism that can complete the irreversible transfer of air from the stratosphere, and can also affect pollution levels at the surface if the capping layer reaches the top of the boundary layer.United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Grant NAG1-2306