Catalog of far-ultraviolet objective-prism spectrophotometry: Skylab experiment S-019, ultraviolet steller astronomy

Ultraviolet stellar spectra in the wavelength region from 1300 to 5000 A (130 to 500) were photographed during the three manned Skylab missions using a 15 cm aperture objective-prism telescope. The prismatic dispersion varied from 58 A mm/1 at 1400 A to 1600 A mm/1 at 3000 A. Approximately 1000 spectra representing 500 stars were measured and reduced to observed fluxes. About 100 stars show absorption lines of Si IV, C IV, or C II. Numerous line features are also recorded in supergiant stars, shell stars, A and F stars, and Wolf-Rayet stars. Most of the stars in the catalog are of spectral class B, with a number of O and A type stars and a sampling of WC, WN, F and C type stars. Spectrophotometric results are tabulated for these 500 stars

Leveraging base-pair mammalian constraint to understand genetic variation and human disease

[INTRODUCTION] Thousands of genetic variants have been associated with human diseases and traits through genome-wide association studies (GWASs). Translating these discoveries into improved therapeutics requires discerning which variants among hundreds of candidates are causally related to disease risk. To date, only a handful of causal variants have been confirmed. Here, we leverage 100 million years of mammalian evolution to address this major challenge.[RATIONALE] We compared genomes from hundreds of mammals and identified bases with unusually few variants (evolutionarily constrained). Constraint is a measure of functional importance that is agnostic to cell type or developmental stage. It can be applied to investigate any heritable disease or trait and is complementary to resources using cell type– and time point–specific functional assays like Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) and Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx).[RESULTS] Using constraint calculated across placental mammals, 3.3% of bases in the human genome are significantly constrained, including 57.6% of coding bases. Most constrained bases (80.7%) are noncoding. Common variants (allele frequency ≥ 5%) and low-frequency variants (0.5% ≤ allele frequency < 5%) are depleted for constrained bases (1.85 versus 3.26% expected by chance, P < 2.2 × 10−308). Pathogenic ClinVar variants are more constrained than benign variants (P < 2.2 × 10−16). The most constrained common variants are more enriched for disease single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP)–heritability in 63 independent GWASs. The enrichment of SNP-heritability in constrained regions is greater (7.8-fold) than previously reported in mammals and is even higher in primates (11.1-fold). It exceeds the enrichment of SNP-heritability in nonsynonymous coding variants (7.2-fold) and fine-mapped expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL)–SNPs (4.8-fold). The enrichment peaks near constrained bases, with a log-linear decrease of SNP-heritability enrichment as a function of the distance to a constrained base. Zoonomia constraint scores improve functionally informed fine-mapping. Variants at sites constrained in mammals and primates have greater posterior inclusion probabilities and higher per-SNP contributions. In addition, using both constraint and functional annotations improves polygenic risk score accuracy across a range of traits. Finally, incorporating constraint information into the analysis of noncoding somatic variants in medulloblastomas identifies new candidate driver genes.[CONCLUSION] Genome-wide measures of evolutionary constraint can help discern which variants are functionally important. This information may accelerate the translation of genomic discoveries into the biological, clinical, and therapeutic knowledge that is required to understand and treat human disease.This work was funded by the Swedish Research Council and Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, Swedish Cancer Society, Swedish Childhood Cancer Fund, National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) U01MH116438, Gladstone Institutes, National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) DP1DA04658501, NIDA F30DA053020, University College Dublin (UCD) Ad Astra Fellowship, and National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) R01HG008742 and U41HG002371. S.G. was supported by National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants R00 HG010160 and R35 GM147789. Y.L. was supported by NIH U01 HG011720. Additional support was provided by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (1113400, 1173790, and 1177268). L.M.H. was supported by NIH grants MH118278, MH124839, and ES033630. P.F.S. was supported by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet, award D0886501). This study makes use of data from the UK Biobank (project ID 12505).Peer reviewe

Translating torts : a justice framework for transnational corporate harm

Defence date: 26 September 2015Examining Board: Professor Martin Scheinin, EUI (EUI Supervisor); Professor Stefan Grundmann, EUI; Professor Nicola M. C. P. Jägers, Tilburg University; Professor Olivier De Schutter, Université catholique de Louvain.The struggle of defining transnational business actors and articulating their interaction with regulatory structures is a familiar one in many fields of study. Although the company is a creature of law, its legal personality is rarely congruent with the economic reality, and the extent to which it is bound by legal rules varies enormously. This thesis re-examines that struggle from a legal perspective. It surveys legal regulation of business actors at the domestic, international and transnational levels, and highlights the challenges globalization presents to the existing models, traditional and emerging alike. The picture which emerges is unsettling: by its very nature, transnational business destabilizes the equilibrium of the traditional legal structures. Legal rules developed based on the axiom of each legal person as a distinct legal unit, bound to the legal system in which it resides, struggle to meet their compensatory and regulatory aims when confronted with the diversification of modern business structures and the loss of single State control. Likewise, continuing development of international and transnational regulation risks perpetuating such problems by artificially restricting which areas of law apply in particular transnational spaces. Based on those observations, it is argued that a restatement of the law as it applies to transnational business is required. First, without denying the utility of specific legal definitions of the company or corporation in specific circumstances, it is proposed that transnational business be reconceptualized as a field, or vector, for normative conflict rather than as a monolithic entity. This recognizes the need and utility of specialized systems of regulation in particular spaces, while allowing for interaction with other rules which have a bearing on a given situation in concreto. Second, through an analysis of the interaction of law and global justice, it provides for a cosmopolitan re-centring of legal obligations between business actors and victims of corporate harm beyond a single nation-state. Third, this allows for the tentative sketching of a redefined, transnational conflict-of-norms framework to co-ordinate the competing justice aims in question while maintaining legal equilibrium on the transnational plane

False Extraterritoriality? Municipal and multinational jurisdiction over transnational corporations

This article analyses the tricky question of territoriality in respect of transnational corporations, arguing that there is a need to move away from the confines of traditional legal categories in cases where corporate actors are concerned. Nowhere are the problems arising from the separation between domestic and international regulation, and between private and public, thrown into such stark relief as in the case of conflict zones. With that in mind, we examine jurisdiction in public and private international law and criminal law against the backdrop of two well-known case studies: the involvement of corporations in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the actions of Royal Dutch Shell in Nigeria. We ask whether domestic regulation or universal jurisdiction offer satisfactory solutions in cases such as these, and put forth an alternative solution based on functional economic, not territorial, criteria that better mirror the joint interest and involvement of states, companies and other actors in the operations of transnational corporations (‘TNCs’) across the globe. Thus, we argue, why not regulate based upon principle of ‘benefit-and-burden’ which would allow any interested state to assert jurisdiction in appropriate circumstances and avoid the impasse between oft en non-existent host-state regulation and home-state apathy. This is something we can already observe beginning in the criminal field, and given the intermingling of different legal norms where TNCs are concerned, is something that not only could, but should be clarified and extended

Towards social environmental justice ?

The original handle to Cadmus, the EUI research repository : http://hdl.handle.net/1814/20018This Working Paper is the result of a workshop held at the European University Institute in November 2010. At the heart of it lies a reflection on the potentialities of a new legal concept : social environmental justice. Building on the longstanding tradition of social justice and the more recent trend of environmental (or ecological) justice, our aim was to discuss how these two different dimensions of 'justice' overlap and could be reconciled in an all-encompassing notion. Moreover, we discussed the need for such a new concept in the light of the contemporary challenges of climate change and economic globalisation and focused especially on the concept's added value compared to the already existing notion of sustainable development. In addition to that, we explored the practical value of social environmental justice especially in the context of legal practice. This publication is a mirror of the different normative approaches (more social, more environmental, more holistic) one can adopt in dealing with problems such as climate change and globalization. Finally, it suggests different legal paths (Human rights, Private International Law, European Law) that could be taken in order to address these issues. Table of Contents : Social environmental justice : from the concept to reality / Antoine Duval and Marie-Ange Moreau -- Social environmental justice : the need for a new concept / Marie-Ange Moreau -- Sustainable development without social justice? / Dominic Roux and Marie-Claude Desjardins -- Sustainable development... without 'ecological' justice? / Sophie Lavallée -- Realising social environmental justice : human rights, sustainable development and possible ways forwards / Emmanuela Orlando -- Corporations and social environmental justice : the role of private international law / Claire Staath and Benedict Wray -- International human rights in an environmental horizon / Francesco Francion

Towards social environmental justice ?

The original handle to Cadmus, the EUI research repository : http://hdl.handle.net/1814/20018This Working Paper is the result of a workshop held at the European University Institute in November 2010. At the heart of it lies a reflection on the potentialities of a new legal concept : social environmental justice. Building on the longstanding tradition of social justice and the more recent trend of environmental (or ecological) justice, our aim was to discuss how these two different dimensions of 'justice' overlap and could be reconciled in an all-encompassing notion. Moreover, we discussed the need for such a new concept in the light of the contemporary challenges of climate change and economic globalisation and focused especially on the concept's added value compared to the already existing notion of sustainable development. In addition to that, we explored the practical value of social environmental justice especially in the context of legal practice. This publication is a mirror of the different normative approaches (more social, more environmental, more holistic) one can adopt in dealing with problems such as climate change and globalization. Finally, it suggests different legal paths (Human rights, Private International Law, European Law) that could be taken in order to address these issues. Table of Contents : Social environmental justice : from the concept to reality / Antoine Duval and Marie-Ange Moreau -- Social environmental justice : the need for a new concept / Marie-Ange Moreau -- Sustainable development without social justice? / Dominic Roux and Marie-Claude Desjardins -- Sustainable development... without 'ecological' justice? / Sophie Lavallée -- Realising social environmental justice : human rights, sustainable development and possible ways forwards / Emmanuela Orlando -- Corporations and social environmental justice : the role of private international law / Claire Staath and Benedict Wray -- International human rights in an environmental horizon / Francesco Francion