Correlation of surnames and Y-chromosome in Central-Brazil

In patrilineal societies, surnames and Y-specific haplotypes and haplogroups are expected to be correlated. This characteristic could help defining an initial pool of suspects in forensic genetics analysis. Here we evaluated this correlation in a sample of Central-Brazilian men. Surnames and Y-SNP haplogroup and Y-STR haplotype were analyzed in 55 pairs of Central-Brazilian men sharing surnames (n = 110). Seven haplogroups and thirty-two haplotypes have been observed, none correlated solely to any of the twenty-eight surnames represented here. In this sample, two men with the same surname showed a chance of 0.41 of sharing a Y-specific haplogroup. This chance is higher for surnames of intermediate frequencies, whereas rare surnames show distinct chances as zero and one. Observed results may be over-estimated due to a predominance of a specific haplogroup (P92R7 = 49%) in the sample, what makes it possible for two men with no coancestry to share this haplogroup. Considering STR, only three pairs of men shared haplotypes. The average difference between the haplotypes in each pair was 2.45 mutational steps. This relatively low correlation is due to some historical and cultural peculiarities of the country, what makes it improper for forensic purposes in Brazil.     

Teaching legal techniques

Starting from the position that it is necessary to have some model of the learning process, if legal education is going to respond to pressures for change in a useful way, the article introduces John Dewey and his model of learning. It identifies shared concerns and techniques that informed Dewey's understanding of the learning process and that inform legal processes. Traditional and clinical approaches to legal education are mapped against the model of learning supplied by Dewey, with the hope of providing an intermediate level linkage between his learning theory and the task of curriculum design in legal education at institutions of Higher Education in the UK.