Statutory Limitation of Innkeepers\u27 Liability

Many of the earliest cases of which reports are extant deal with the liability of the innkeeper to his guest, and the earliest known Roman law gave an action against the innkeeper if the baggage of the guest was in any way damaged, lost or stolen. At common law the innkeeper was the insurer of the baggage of his guest. He was under an absolute liability unless he could prove that the loss was caused by an Act of God, the public enemy, by the act of the guest or of the guest\u27s servants. This absolute liability was extended to include all movable goods, and even those goods upon which a felony could not be committed. The Washington Court has fully approved of this common law rule and has applied it strictly. This stringent rule of the common law developed through necessity. There being many ruffians and robbers abroad at night throughout the land, the wayfarer had to put up at an inn or else likely suffer the loss of all his goods and possibly his life. Often the innkeeper was sorely tempted to cast his lot with that of the highwayman, with the natural result that the traveler could never feel secure. This led to the common law placing an absolute liability upon the innkeeper, thus taking all the profits out of such conspiracy with the highwayman

Accelerated epigenetic aging in Werner syndrome.

Individuals suffering from Werner syndrome (WS) exhibit many clinical signs of accelerated aging. While the underlying constitutional mutation leads to accelerated rates of DNA damage, it is not yet known whether WS is also associated with an increased epigenetic age according to a DNA methylation based biomarker of aging (the "Epigenetic Clock"). Using whole blood methylation data from 18 WS cases and 18 age matched controls, we find that WS is associated with increased extrinsic epigenetic age acceleration (p=0.0072) and intrinsic epigenetic age acceleration (p=0.04), the latter of which is independent of age-related changes in the composition of peripheral blood cells. A multivariate model analysis reveals that WS is associated with an increase in DNA methylation age (on average 6.4 years, p=0.011) even after adjusting for chronological age, gender, and blood cell counts. Further, WS might be associated with a reduction in naïve CD8+ T cells (p=0.025) according to imputed measures of blood cell counts. Overall, this study shows that WS is associated with an increased epigenetic age of blood cells which is independent of changes in blood cell composition. The extent to which this alteration is a cause or effect of WS disease phenotypes remains unknown

Cup products in the etale cohomology of number fields

This paper concerns cup product pairings in \'etale cohomology related to work of M. Kim and of W. McCallum and R. Sharifi. We will show that by considering Ext groups rather than cohomology groups, one arrives at a pairing which combines invariants defined by Kim with a pairing defined by McCallum and Sharifi. We also prove a formula for Kim's invariant in terms of Artin maps in the case of cyclic unramified Kummer extensions. One consequence is that for all $n > 1$, there are infinitely many number fields $F$ over which there are both trivial and non-trivial Kim invariants associated to cyclic groups of order $n$.Comment: 21 pages; in version 3 we changed the title of the paper and we restructured the pape

Reducing the Probability of False Positive Research Findings by Pre-Publication Validation - Experience with a Large Multiple Sclerosis Database

*Objective*
We have assessed the utility of a pre-publication validation policy in reducing the probability of publishing false positive research findings. 
*Study design and setting*
The large database of the Sylvia Lawry Centre for Multiple Sclerosis Research was split in two parts: one for hypothesis generation and a validation part for confirmation of selected results. We present case studies from 5 finalized projects that have used the validation policy and results from a simulation study.
*Results*
In one project, the "relapse and disability" project as described in section II (example 3), findings could not be confirmed in the validation part of the database. The simulation study showed that the percentage of false positive findings can exceed 20% depending on variable selection. 
*Conclusion*
We conclude that the validation policy has prevented the publication of at least one research finding that could not be validated in an independent data set (and probably would have been a "true" false-positive finding) over the past three years, and has led to improved data analysis, statistical programming, and selection of hypotheses. The advantages outweigh the lost statistical power inherent in the process

Quantum theory of electric polarization nonlinearity in metal nanofilms

We develop a quantum theory of electron confinement in metal nanofilms. The theory is used to compute the nonlinear response of the film to a static or low-frequency external electric field and to investigate the role of boundary conditions imposed on the metal surface. We find that the sign and magnitude of the nonlinear polarizability depends dramatically on the type of boundary condition used.Comment: Accepted to PRB in this for