Farmers, Ranchers, and the Railroad: The Evolution of Fence Law in the Great Plains, 1865–190

In North America, building fences was an essential part of life for the English settlers from the beginning. Departing from the English common law rule that required owners to fence in their cattle, nearly all the colonial legislatures and courts imposed upon landowners a duty to fence their property against trespassing cattle.l The reasons were partly to increase the meager supply of livestock by permitting cattle to wander about in order to breed faster and partly to make full use of the vast virgin forest and grassland. Gradually, however, in New England and in much of New York and New Jersey, where township settlement and mixed husbandry prevailed, this practice was replaced by the system of common pasturage. During the crop growing season, common pasture was set off and fenced, and herdsmen were employed by the towns to supervise grazing, but after harvest animals were allowed to roam at large until spring planting.2 In the southern colonies, where settlements were made by individuals without group cooperation, the landowners\u27 liability was more strictly observed. Quite different from the New England practice, all the southern colonies prohibited the fencing of any land except the fields under actual cultivation. Thus nonlandholders commonly grazed their cattle and hogs on others\u27 land. As late as the 1830s, Virginia planters were still trying to obtain legislation to permit the fencing of their whole estates or at least their pastures. The prohibition on fencing continued to prevail on each moving frontier, while in the older regions the open range gave way to the common law rule as they were more settled. The Great Plains underwent a similar experience. One after another, the Plains states confirmed the rule of fencing that came to characterize all earlier American frontiers, requiring farmers to fence out domestic animals, which were allowed to run at large without liability. Yet the unique natural influence and social environment in the Great Plains did modify the traditional pattern of the open range in the East. The fencing conflicts between farmers and cattlemen in the Great Plains, as Walter Prescott Webb points out, greatly intensified and changed what had been a predominantly individual quarrel into an antagonistic confrontation.4 Gradually, however, as farmers came to predominate, they compelled the adoption of herd laws, freeing them of the obligation to fence and imposing liability on the owners of animals. Although the pace of the process differed from place to place, the animal liability laws in the Plains reverted to the principles established in English common law. This article is divided into three parts. The first examines specific fencing policies in Kansas, Nebraska, and other Plains states, highlighting the transformation from the fence-out to fence-in (herd laws) policies. The second part discusses the coming of the railroads to the Great Plains and the farmers and the ranchers as beneficiaries who soon became victims. And finally, the third section analyzes railroad fence laws passed in Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma, the litigation over loss of livestock, and the unfavorable position the state courts generally took toward the railroads, based upon the dual nature of the railroad fence law

Farmers, Ranchers, and the Railroad: The Evolution of Fence Law in the Great Plains, 1865–190

In North America, building fences was an essential part of life for the English settlers from the beginning. Departing from the English common law rule that required owners to fence in their cattle, nearly all the colonial legislatures and courts imposed upon landowners a duty to fence their property against trespassing cattle.l The reasons were partly to increase the meager supply of livestock by permitting cattle to wander about in order to breed faster and partly to make full use of the vast virgin forest and grassland. Gradually, however, in New England and in much of New York and New Jersey, where township settlement and mixed husbandry prevailed, this practice was replaced by the system of common pasturage. During the crop growing season, common pasture was set off and fenced, and herdsmen were employed by the towns to supervise grazing, but after harvest animals were allowed to roam at large until spring planting.2 In the southern colonies, where settlements were made by individuals without group cooperation, the landowners\u27 liability was more strictly observed. Quite different from the New England practice, all the southern colonies prohibited the fencing of any land except the fields under actual cultivation. Thus nonlandholders commonly grazed their cattle and hogs on others\u27 land. As late as the 1830s, Virginia planters were still trying to obtain legislation to permit the fencing of their whole estates or at least their pastures. The prohibition on fencing continued to prevail on each moving frontier, while in the older regions the open range gave way to the common law rule as they were more settled. The Great Plains underwent a similar experience. One after another, the Plains states confirmed the rule of fencing that came to characterize all earlier American frontiers, requiring farmers to fence out domestic animals, which were allowed to run at large without liability. Yet the unique natural influence and social environment in the Great Plains did modify the traditional pattern of the open range in the East. The fencing conflicts between farmers and cattlemen in the Great Plains, as Walter Prescott Webb points out, greatly intensified and changed what had been a predominantly individual quarrel into an antagonistic confrontation.4 Gradually, however, as farmers came to predominate, they compelled the adoption of herd laws, freeing them of the obligation to fence and imposing liability on the owners of animals. Although the pace of the process differed from place to place, the animal liability laws in the Plains reverted to the principles established in English common law. This article is divided into three parts. The first examines specific fencing policies in Kansas, Nebraska, and other Plains states, highlighting the transformation from the fence-out to fence-in (herd laws) policies. The second part discusses the coming of the railroads to the Great Plains and the farmers and the ranchers as beneficiaries who soon became victims. And finally, the third section analyzes railroad fence laws passed in Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma, the litigation over loss of livestock, and the unfavorable position the state courts generally took toward the railroads, based upon the dual nature of the railroad fence law

Genetic and clinical landscape of breast cancers with germline BRCA1/2 variants

遺伝性乳癌の遺伝学的・臨床学的特徴を解明 --BRCA1/2 変異乳癌は両アレルの不活化の有無により異なった特徴を持つ--. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2020-10-26.The genetic and clinical characteristics of breast tumors with germline variants, including their association with biallelic inactivation through loss-of-heterozygosity (LOH) and second somatic mutations, remain elusive. We analyzed germline variants of 11 breast cancer susceptibility genes for 1, 995 Japanese breast cancer patients, and identified 101 (5.1%) pathogenic variants, including 62 BRCA2 and 15 BRCA1 mutations. Genetic analysis of 64 BRCA1/2-mutated tumors including TCGA dataset tumors, revealed an association of biallelic inactivation with more extensive deletions, copy neutral LOH, gain with LOH and younger onset. Strikingly, TP53 and RB1 mutations were frequently observed in BRCA1- (94%) and BRCA2- (9.7%) mutated tumors with biallelic inactivation. Inactivation of TP53 and RB1 together with BRCA1 and BRCA2, respectively, involved LOH of chromosomes 17 and 13. Notably, BRCA1/2 tumors without biallelic inactivation were indistinguishable from those without germline variants. Our study highlights the heterogeneity and unique clonal selection pattern in breast cancers with germline variants

Evolutionary histories of breast cancer and related clones

乳がん発生の進化の歴史を解明 --ゲノム解析による発がんメカニズムの探索--. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2023-07-28.Tracking the ol' mutation trail: Unraveling the long history of breast cancer formation. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2023-08-31.Recent studies have documented frequent evolution of clones carrying common cancer mutations in apparently normal tissues, which are implicated in cancer development1, 2, 3. However, our knowledge is still missing with regard to what additional driver events take place in what order, before one or more of these clones in normal tissues ultimately evolve to cancer. Here, using phylogenetic analyses of multiple microdissected samples from both cancer and non-cancer lesions, we show unique evolutionary histories of breast cancers harbouring der(1;16), a common driver alteration found in roughly 20% of breast cancers. The approximate timing of early evolutionary events was estimated from the mutation rate measured in normal epithelial cells. In der(1;16)(+) cancers, the derivative chromosome was acquired from early puberty to late adolescence, followed by the emergence of a common ancestor by the patient’s early 30s, from which both cancer and non-cancer clones evolved. Replacing the pre-existing mammary epithelium in the following years, these clones occupied a large area within the premenopausal breast tissues by the time of cancer diagnosis. Evolution of multiple independent cancer founders from the non-cancer ancestors was common, contributing to intratumour heterogeneity. The number of driver events did not correlate with histology, suggesting the role of local microenvironments and/or epigenetic driver events. A similar evolutionary pattern was also observed in another case evolving from an AKT1-mutated founder. Taken together, our findings provide new insight into how breast cancer evolves

Review of \u3ci\u3e The Jumanos: Hunters and Traders of the South Plains\u3c/i\u3e by Nancy Parrott Hickerson

In the Atlantic region in the seventeenth century, there were several Indian groups, including the Massawomeck, that made a brief appearance in the contemporary documentary records but completely disappeared from the scene thereafter. The Jumanos were a Southwest tribe that faced the same fate. The mysteries surrounding the Jumanos have attracted the attention of such scholars as Adolph Bandelies, Frederick H. Hodge, Herbert Bolton, Carl Sauer, France V. Scholes, and J.Charles Kelley, but by the 1940s the consensus view was established that Jumanos, as used in the Spanish colonial documents, was a general term and did not refer to any specific ethnic group or tribe. Hickerson\u27s The Jumanos, which is based upon a thorough and systematic analysis of the Spanish colonial records, challenges this interpretation by presenting a coherent picture of the Jumanos as a distinct people. The author maintains that the Jumanos were part of the Tanoan-speaking group that covered a vast area extending east of the Rio Grande into the Southern Plains, and south of New Mexico as far as La Junte de los Rios