The applicability of equitable defenses in private party Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA) actions is discussed. The "caveat emptor" defense is ...available for courts to use at their discretion, and holding a purchaser responsible for the property he or she purchases is economically and equitably beneficial.
The increasing number of genetic association studies conducted in multiple populations provides an unprecedented opportunity to study how the genetic architecture of complex phenotypes varies between ...populations, a problem important for both medical and population genetics. Here, we have developed a method for estimating the transethnic genetic correlation: the correlation of causal-variant effect sizes at SNPs common in populations. This methods takes advantage of the entire spectrum of SNP associations and uses only summary-level data from genome-wide association studies. This avoids the computational costs and privacy concerns associated with genotype-level information while remaining scalable to hundreds of thousands of individuals and millions of SNPs. We applied our method to data on gene expression, rheumatoid arthritis, and type 2 diabetes and overwhelmingly found that the genetic correlation was significantly less than 1. Our method is implemented in a Python package called Popcorn.
Given its role in treating musculoskeletal conditions, rehabilitation medicine may be an important factor in decreasing the use of opioids among injured workers. The primary objective was to ...determine if increased utilization of rehabilitation services was associated with decreased persistent opioid use among workers' compensation claimants. The secondary objective was to determine the combined association of rehabilitation service utilization and persistent opioid use with days of work lost due to injury.
Using Chesapeake Employers' Insurance Company claims data from 2008 to 2016, claimants with at least one filled opioid prescription within 90 days of injury were eligible for inclusion. The primary outcome was persistent opioid use, defined as at least one filled opioid prescription more than 90 days from injury. The secondary outcome was days lost due to injury. The primary variable of interest, rehabilitation service utilization, was quantified based on the number of rehabilitation service claims and grouped into five levels (no utilization, and four quartiles - low, medium, high, very high).
Of the 9596 claimants included, 29% were persistent opioid users. Compared to claimants that did not utilize rehabilitation services, patients with very high rehabilitation utilization were nearly three times more likely (OR: 2.71, 95% CI: 2.28-3.23, p < 0.001) to be persistent opioid users and claimants with low and medium levels of rehabilitation utilization were less likely to be persistent opioid users (low OR: 0.20, 95%: 0.14-0.27, p < 0.001) (medium OR: 0.26, 95% CI: 0.21-0.32, p < 0.001). Compared to claimants that did not utilize rehabilitation services, very high rehabilitation utilization was associated with a 27% increase in days lost due to the injury (95% CI: 21.9-32.3, p < 0.001), while low (- 16.4, 95% CI: -21.3 - -11.5, p < 0.001) and medium (- 11.5, 95% CI: -21.6 - -13.8, p < 0.001) levels of rehabilitation utilization were associated with a decrease in days lost due to injury, adjusting for persistent opioid use.
Our analysis of insurance claims data revealed that low to moderate levels of rehabilitation was associated with reduced persistent opioid use and days lost to injury. Very high rehabilitation utilization was associated with increased persistent opioid use and increased time from work.
The mechanisms for the association between birth by cesarean section and atopy and asthma are largely unknown.
To examine whether cesarean section results in neonatal secretion of cytokines that are ...associated with increased risk of atopy and/or asthma in childhood. To examine whether the association between mode of delivery and neonatal immune responses is explained by exposure to the maternal gut flora (a marker of the vaginal flora).
CBMCs were isolated from 37 neonates at delivery, and secretion of IL-13, IFN-gamma, and IL-10 (at baseline and after stimulation with antigens dust mite and cat dander allergens, phytohemagglutinin, and lipopolysaccharide) was quantified by ELISA. Total and specific microbes were quantified in maternal stool. The relation between mode of delivery and cord blood cytokines was examined by linear regression. The relation between maternal stool microbes and cord blood cytokines was examined by Spearman's correlation coefficients.
Cesarean section was associated with increased levels of IL-13 and IFN-gamma. In multivariate analyses, cesarean section was associated with an increment of 79.4 pg/ml in secretion of IL-13 by CBMCs after stimulation with dust mite allergen (P < 0.001). Among children born by vaginal delivery, gram-positive anaerobes and total anaerobes in maternal stool were positively correlated with levels of IL-10, and gram-negative aerobic bacteria in maternal stool were negatively correlated with levels of IL-13 and IFN-gamma.
Cesarean section is associated with increased levels of IL-13 and IFN-gamma, perhaps because of lack of labor and/or reduced exposure to specific microbes (e.g., gram-positive anaerobes) at birth.
The Iceland Deep Drilling Project research well RN-15/IDDP-2 at Reykjanes, Iceland, reached its target of supercritical conditions at a depth of 4.5 km in January 2017. After only 6 days of heating, ...the measured bottom hole temperature was 426 °C, and the fluid pressure was 34 MPa. The southern tip of the Reykjanes peninsula is the landward extension of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge in Iceland. Reykjanes is unique among Icelandic geothermal systems in that it is recharged by seawater, which has a critical point of 406 °C at 29.8 MPa. The geologic setting and fluid characteristics at Reykjanes provide a geochemical analog that allows us to investigate the roots of a mid-ocean ridge submarine black smoker hydrothermal system. Drilling began with deepening an existing 2.5 km deep vertical production well (RN-15) to 3 km depth, followed by inclined drilling directed towards the main upflow zone of the system, for a total slant depth of 4659 m ( ∼ 4.5 km vertical depth). Total circulation losses of drilling fluid were encountered below 2.5 km, which could not be cured using lost circulation blocking materials or multiple cement jobs. Accordingly, drilling continued to the total depth without return of drill cuttings. Thirteen spot coring attempts were made below 3 km depth. Rocks in the cores are basalts and dolerites with alteration ranging from upper greenschist facies to amphibolite facies, suggesting that formation temperatures at depth exceed 450 °C. High-permeability circulation-fluid loss zones (feed points or feed zones) were detected at multiple depth levels below 3 km depth to bottom. The largest circulation losses (most permeable zones) occurred between the bottom of the casing and 3.4 km depth. Permeable zones encountered below 3.4 km accepted less than 5 % of the injected water. Currently, the project is attempting soft stimulation to increase deep permeability. While it is too early to speculate on the energy potential of this well and its economics, the IDDP-2 is a milestone in the development of geothermal resources and the study of hydrothermal systems. It is the first well that successfully encountered supercritical hydrothermal conditions, with potential high-power output, and in which on-going hydrothermal metamorphism at amphibolite facies conditions can be observed. The next step will be to carry out flow testing and fluid sampling to determine the chemical and thermodynamic properties of the formation fluids.
We examined whether oral administration of alloantigen could induce the prolonged survival of cardiac allografts.
Hearts from CBK (H2k+Kb) transgenic or (C57BL/10xCBA)F1 (H2bxH2k) mice were ...transplanted into CBA (H2k) recipients pretreated orally with 1 x 10(7) donor splenocytes in the presence or absence of a nondepleting anti-CD4 (YTS 177, 200 microg/dose).
Modest prolongation of CBK cardiac grafts was induced in CBA mice fed with multiple doses of CBK splenocytes (MST 42 days compared with controls fed with syngeneic CBA splenocytes, 12 days). When the CD4 monoclonal antibody, YTS177, was administered for 2 days before the first oral delivery of CBK splenocytes, all mice accepted their grafts indefinitely (MST > 100 days versus mice treated with anti-CD4 alone, 11.5 days). To determine if feeding multiple doses of alloantigen was essential, CBA mice were given CBK splenocytes orally on a single occasion in combination with the anti-CD4. The majority of the grafts survived indefinitely (MST >100 days). This oral treatment regimen also induced indefinite prolongation of (C57BL/10xCBA)F1 cardiac grafts.
The induction of unresponsiveness by oral administration of alloantigen can be augmented by a nondepleting anti-CD4, YTS177, when given before the first oral delivery of allogeneic cells.
Populations of carrot (
Daucus carota) were raised over a wide range of densities (79–5763 plants m
-2) to examine the dynamics of competition in terms of yield–density relationships and size ...variability, and to investigate the effects of nutrient supply on competition. While the relationship between shoot yield and density was asymptotic, the relationship between root and total yield and density tended to be parabolic. For a given time and density series the relationship between yield per unit area and density could best be described by the model:
y=w
mD
(1+aD)
b
where
yis the yield per unit area,
Dis density,
w
m, a
and
bare fitted parameters. The parameters
w
m
and
aincreased over time but nutrient availability affected only
w
m.
An extension of the basic yield-density model is proposed to describe the dynamics of the yield–density relationship over time:
y=kD
1+cexp(-rt){1+αk/
(1+cexp(-rt))
b
D}
b
in which
tis time,
k, c, r, α and β are fitted parameters, and the other parameters are as previously defined.
Size variability of individuals, measured by the coefficient of variation (CV), was influenced by both density and time after sowing. The general relationship between CV and the logarithm of mean weight per plant, after first harvest, could be described by a linear regression model, with a slope of approximately -0.2. A theoretical justification for a monotonically declining relationship between CV and mean plant weight is proposed. The magnitude of size variability was ranked in the order: root weight>total weight>shoot weight. The differences in the magnitude of size variability in yield components were due in part to allometric growth of plant parts. Nutrient availability, however, had no influence on size variability.
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