«Desvoyé de la droitte voye ...» : Gadifer de La Salle, Jean de Béthencourt et "Le Canarien"

Résumé Le livre nommé Le Canarien est la chronique de la conquête, en 1402, des Îles Canaries par deux aventuriers normands, Jean de Béthencourt et Gadifer de La Salle : expédition qui sombra très tôt dans la mauvaise foi et dans la discorde. Deux clercs au service de chacun des chevaliers ont, paraît-il, rédigé ensemble l?histoire de l?expédition. Leur ?uvre a disparu, mais deux manuscrits remaniés ultérieurement conservent actuellement l?histoire, avec des points de vue différents : Rouen, BM, MS MM 129 celui de Jean ; Londres, British Library, MS Egerton 2709 celui de Gadifer. Ces récits permettent de peindre les deux protagonistes : Gadifer, révolté, estimant que son compatriote l?a trahi en assumant la souveraineté des îles et en abrogeant les recettes fiscales ; Jean, se montrant inflexible, dédaigneux et rigide. Chaque texte veut faire prévaloir sa version des événements : leurs réécritures respectives, leurs lexiques, et jusqu?à la mise en page de leurs manuscrits nous laissent percevoir la triste dynamique de l?expédition, et nous révèlent des man?uvres qu?on pourrait à bon droit appeler propagandistes. Abstract The book known as Le Canarien is the chronicle of the 1402 conquest of the Canary Islands by two Norman adventurers, Jean de Béthencourt and Gadifer de La Salle: an expedition which soon foundered into discord and betrayal. Our two heroes? chaplains, it seems, put together an account of the expedition; their work is lost, but two manuscripts, each considerably emended, each from the point of view of one of the protagonists, have survived: Rouen, BM MS MM129 preserves Jean?s angle, London, British Library MS Egerton 2709 that of Gadifer. This remarkable circumstance enables us to glimpse the point of view of each of the knights: Gadifer angry and resentful, convinced that his compatriot has betrayed him by assuming the sovereignty of the islands, and seizing their tax revenues; Jean always dismissive, unrelenting. Each text insists on its own version of events: their writers? rewritings, emendations, their choice of words, the very lay-out of the manuscript page, allow us to glimpse the bleak dynamics of the expedition, and each version shows evidence of manoeuvres which one might legitimately call propagandist

Analytical methods for virus detection in water and food

Potential ways to address the issues that relate to the techniques for analyzing food and environmental samples for the presence of enteric viruses are discussed. It is not the authors’ remit to produce or recommend standard or reference methods but to address specific issues in the analytical procedures. Foods of primary importance are bivalve molluscs, particularly, oysters, clams, and mussels; salad crops such as lettuce, green onions and other greens; and soft fruits such as raspberries and strawberries. All types of water, not only drinking water but also recreational water (fresh, marine, and swimming pool), river water (irrigation water), raw and treated sewage are potential vehicles for virus transmission. Well over 100 different enteric viruses could be food or water contaminants; however, with few exceptions, most well-characterized foodborne or waterborne viral outbreaks are restricted to hepatitis A virus (HAV) and calicivirus, essentially norovirus (NoV). Target viruses for analytical methods include, in addition to NoV and HAV, hepatitis E virus (HEV), enteroviruses (e.g., poliovirus), adenovirus, rotavirus, astrovirus, and any other relevant virus likely to be transmitted by food or water. A survey of the currently available methods for detection of viruses in food and environmental matrices was conducted, gathering information on protocols for extraction of viruses from various matrices and on the various specific detection techniques for each virus type.G. Sánchez is the recipient of a JAE doctor grant from the “Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas” (CSIC). Rembuluwani Netshikweta acknowledges a post-graduate bursary from the Poliomyelitis Research Foundation, South Africa

Shared heritability and functional enrichment across six solid cancers

Quantifying the genetic correlation between cancers can provide important insights into the mechanisms driving cancer etiology. Using genome-wide association study summary statistics across six cancer types based on a total of 296,215 cases and 301,319 controls of European ancestry, here we estimate the pair-wise genetic correlations between breast, colorectal, head/neck, lung, ovary and prostate cancer, and between cancers and 38 other diseases. We observed statistically significant genetic correlations between lung and head/neck cancer (rg = 0.57, p = 4.6 × 10−8), breast and ovarian cancer (rg = 0.24, p = 7 × 10−5), breast and lung cancer (rg = 0.18, p =1.5 × 10−6) and breast and colorectal cancer (rg = 0.15, p = 1.1 × 10−4). We also found that multiple cancers are genetically correlated with non-cancer traits including smoking, psychiatric diseases and metabolic characteristics. Functional enrichment analysis revealed a significant excess contribution of conserved and regulatory regions to cancer heritability. Our comprehensive analysis of cross-cancer heritability suggests that solid tumors arising across tissues share in part a common germline genetic basis

Measurement of the CP violating asymmetry amplitude sin 2beta

We present results on time-dependent CP-violating asymmetries in neutral B decays to several CP eigenstates. The measurements use a data sample of about 88 million Y(4S) --> B Bbar decays collected between 1999 and 2002 with the BABAR detector at the PEP-II asymmetric-energy B Factory at SLAC. We study events in which one neutral B meson is fully reconstructed in a final state containing a charmonium meson and the other B meson is determined to be either a B0 or B0bar from its decay products. The amplitude of the CP-violating asymmetry, which in the Standard Model is proportional to sin2beta, is derived from the decay-time distributions in such events. We measure sin2beta = 0.741 +/- 0.067 (stat) +/- 0.034 (syst) and |lambda| = 0.948 +/- 0.051 (stat) +/- 0.030 (syst). The magnitude of lambda is consistent with unity, in agreement with the Standard Model expectation of no direct CP violation in these modes.Comment: 7 pages, 2 postscript figures, submitted to PR