Map and Territory in Comparative Law and Economics

This paper argues that developing more reliable methodological foundations for Comparative Law requires us to acknowledge the virtues and limitations of well-designed simplification in successfully accounting for the complexity of legal reality. If the researcher is aware of its limitations, Law & Economics is well suited to providing analytical frameworks that increase our ability to compare real-life legal institutions by reducing the complexity of the law in action. Relying on some underexplored elements of New Institutional Economics and recent developments in Comparative Law and in Law & Economics, it presents a pathway to overcome the main methodological pitfall of a joint approach. For this purpose, it analyses the problems of the functional method, traces how Law & Economics was brought into Comparative Law, discusses the main methodological advantages and pitfalls of combining both disciplines and proposes concrete forms to make use of such advantages, while avoiding the pitfalls

Bacteria associated with the coral Echinopora lamellosa (Esper 1795) in the Indian Ocean - Zanzibar Region

Infectious diseases are now known to have major effects on the structure and function of coral reef ecosystems throughout the world. The number of recognized coral diseases has increased dramatically. The problem was first recognized in the Caribbean in the early 1970’s but has now been reported to affect coral communities worldwide. There is little information regarding bacteria associated with diseased corals in the Indian Ocean. However, one of the most common disease signs observed is a rapid loss of tissue leaving exposed white skeleton in contact with compromised tissue, followed by necrosis. These signs have been referred to as white plague in the Caribbean. Similar signs have been observed in the Indo-Pacific and are referred to as white syndrome. The pathogens associated with these disease signs depend on the species and geographic location of the corals. In the Caribbean, the disease was associated with Aurantimonas coralicida and in the Red Sea with Thalassomonas loyaeana, both newly described species. During exploratory surveys in the reefs near Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean, mucus samples were collected from healthy and apparently diseased Echinopora lamellosa (with signs of white syndrome) colonies. Samples were plated on two solid media: GASW (a nonspecific medium) and TCBS (Vibrio selective medium). Growth on TCBS was only found with diseased samples. Culturable isolates were characterized using metabolic profiling. A relatively high prevalence of Class Gamma Proteobacteria was found with diseased samples compared with healthy samples and Vibrio species were well represented in diseased samples.Keywords: Disease, coral reef, echinopora, Indian Ocean, white syndrom

La configuración legal de la libertad de enseñanza: ¿Un caso de captura regulatoria?

La Constitución garantiza a todas las personas la Libertad de Enseñanza y el Derecho a la Educación. De acuerdo a la interpretación tradicional, la Libertad de Enseñanza incluye el derecho de los establecimientos educacionales para seleccionar los alumnos que postulan a él y el Derecho a la Educación impone al Estado el deber de mantener establecimientos no selectivos. En consecuencia, la regulación legal en la materia establece un sistema altamente diferenciado que autoriza a cada tipo de escuela para implementar formas de selección de diversa intensidad. El resultado de lo anterior es un sistema de selección escolar que genera una segregación quefavorece marcadamente a alumnos de ciertas características,con un potencial desmedro del resultado agregado del sistema educativo (posible captura). El actual entendimiento de la Libertad de Enseñanza autoriza solamente modificaciones de alcance limitado al sistema vigente. Reformas más agresivas probablemente requieren un cambio en la forma en que se consagra o interpreta esta garantía, lo que implicaría un nuevo “pacto político” en la materia

Holonomy for Gerbes over Orbifolds

In this paper we compute explicit formulas for the holonomy map for a gerbe with connection over an orbifold. We show that the holonomy descends to a transgression map in Deligne cohomology. We prove that this recovers both the inner local systems in Ruan's theory of twisted orbifold cohomology and the local system of Freed-Hopkins-Teleman in their work in twisted K-theory. In the case in which the orbifold is simply a manifold we recover previous results of Gawedzki and Brylinski.Comment: 36 page

Macroalgae Has No Effect on the Severity and Dynamics of Caribbean Yellow Band Disease

By removing herbivores and promoting increases in macroalgae, overfishing is thought to indirectly cause coral disease and mortality. We performed three field manipulations to test the general hypothesis that overfishing and the subsequent alteration of coral reef trophic dynamics are a cause of coral epizootics. Specifically, we asked whether the presence of macroalgae can influence within- and among-colony spread rates of Caribbean Yellow Band Disease in Montastraea faveolata. Macroalgae were placed next to infected and healthy, adult and small coral colonies to measure effects on disease spread rate, coral growth and coral survival. Surprisingly, the addition of macroalgae did not affect disease severity or coral fitness. Our results indicate that macroalgae have no effect on the severity and dynamics of Caribbean Yellow Band Disease and that fisheries management alone will not mitigate the effects of this important epizootic

Metatranscriptome analysis of the reef-building coral Orbicella faveolata indicates holobiont response to coral disease

White Plague Disease (WPD) is implicated in coral reef decline in the Caribbean and is characterized by microbial community shifts in coral mucus and tissue. Studies thus far have focused on assessing microbial communities or the identification of specific pathogens, yet few have addressed holobiont response across metaorganism compartments in coral disease. Here, we report on the first metatranscriptomic assessment of the coral host, algal symbiont, and microbial compartment in order to survey holobiont structure and function in healthy and diseased samples from Orbicella faveolata collected at reef sites off Puerto Rico. Our data indicate holobiont-wide as well as compartment-specific responses to WPD. Gene expression changes in the diseased coral host involved proteins playing a role in innate immunity, cytoskeletal integrity, cell adhesion, oxidative stress, chemical defense, and retroelements. In contrast, the algal symbiont showed comparatively few expression changes, but of large magnitude, of genes related to stress, photosynthesis, and metal transport. Concordant with the coral host response, the bacterial compartment showed increased abundance of heat shock proteins, genes related to oxidative stress, DNA repair, and potential retroelement activity. Importantly, analysis of the expressed bacterial gene functions establishes the participation of multiple bacterial families in WPD pathogenesis and also suggests a possible involvement of viruses and/or phages in structuring the bacterial assemblage. In this study, we implement an experimental approach to partition the coral holobiont and resolve compartment- and taxa-specific responses in order to understand metaorganism function in coral disease

RNA-Seq of the Caribbean reef-building coral Orbicella faveolata (Scleractinia-Merulinidae) under bleaching and disease stress expands models of coral innate immunity

Climate change-driven coral disease outbreaks have led to widespread declines in coral populations. Early work on coral genomics established that corals have a complex innate immune system, and whole-transcriptome gene expression studies have revealed mechanisms by which the coral immune system responds to stress and disease. The present investigation expands bioinformatic data available to study coral molecular physiology through the assembly and annotation of a reference transcriptome of the Caribbean reef-building coral, Orbicella faveolata. Samples were collected during a warm water thermal anomaly, coral bleaching event and Caribbean yellow band disease outbreak in 2010 in Puerto Rico. Multiplex sequencing of RNA on the Illumina GAIIx platform and de novo transcriptome assembly by Trinity produced 70,745,177 raw short-sequence reads and 32,463 O. faveolata transcripts, respectively. The reference transcriptome was annotated with gene ontologies, mapped to KEGG pathways, and a predicted proteome of 20,488 sequences was generated. Protein families and signaling pathways that are essential in the regulation of innate immunity across Phyla were investigated in-depth. Results were used to develop models of evolutionarily conserved Wnt, Notch, Rig-like receptor, Nod-like receptor, and Dicer signaling. O. faveolata is a coral species that has been studied widely under climate-driven stress and disease, and the present investigation provides new data on the genes that putatively regulate its immune system

The complex structure of Fomes fomentarius represents an architectural design for high-performance ultralightweight materials

We thank C. Li from the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam, Germany, for help during synchrotron measurements at the μSpot beamline at BESSY at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie in Berlin, Germany. We acknowledge the provision of facilities and technical support by Aalto University at the OtaNano Nanomicroscopy Center (Aalto-NMC). This work was supported by the Academy of Finland project 348628, the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation (Centre for Young Synbio Scientists), and the Academy of Finland Center of Excellence Program (2022–2029) in Life-Inspired Hybrid Materials (LIBER) project number 346106, and by internal funding from the VTT Technical Research Center of Finland Ltd. We also acknowledge the Dutch Research Council (NWO, domain Applied and Engineering Sciences: MYCOAT project number 18425) and the Horizon 2020 programs of the European Union (FUNGAR; project 58132 and iNEXT-Discovery, project 871037) for NMR studies. Furthermore, the high-field NMR experiments were supported by uNMR-NL, the National Roadmap Large-Scale NMR Facility of the Netherlands (NWO grant 184.032.207), and the uNMR-NL grid (NWO grant 184.035.002).High strength, hardness, and fracture toughness are mechanical properties that are not commonly associated with the fleshy body of a fungus. Here, we show with detailed structural, chemical, and mechanical characterization that Fomes fomentarius is an exception, and its architectural design is a source of inspiration for an emerging class of ultralightweight high-performance materials. Our findings reveal that F. fomentarius is a functionally graded material with three distinct layers that undergo multiscale hierarchical self-assembly. Mycelium is the primary component in all layers. However, in each layer, mycelium exhibits a very distinct microstructure with unique preferential orientation, aspect ratio, density, and branch length. We also show that an extracellular matrix acts as a reinforcing adhesive that differs in each layer in terms of quantity, polymeric content, and interconnectivity. These findings demonstrate how the synergistic interplay of the aforementioned features results in distinct mechanical properties for each layer.Peer reviewe