Suicide as a Compensable Claim under Workers\u27 Compensation Statutes: A Guide for the Lawyer and the Psychiatrist

We live in a highly complex, industrialized environment. Specific work-related events occurring within this context frequently impact negatively on those who are essential to the operation of our industrial system. Often the impact of events produces human misery, suffering and death. Men and women are injured, maimed and killed. Workers\u27 compensation statutes exist to ameliorate the plight of workers and their families through the utilization of compensation in the form of cash-wage benefits and medical care. The economic burden of compensation is ultimately borne by consumers, because the cost of insurance taken out by employers is passed on in the price of the goods and services produced. Both workers\u27 compensation statutes and the systems produced by those statutes are appropriate responses to the perceived needs of all who have an interest in a productive economy and a just social order. As in any decision-making system designed to deal with complex cases, however, there exist opportunities for disagreement concerning the legal disposition of certain cases. This article deals with one of those matters which is subject to such serious debate: When should suicide, following a trauma experienced within the job context, give rise to a compensable claim under workers\u27 compensation statutes? Although there has been prior general commentary on the problem, this article will offer some additional and perhaps useful information to both the attorney representing the claimant and the psychiatrist called to testify as an expert witness. A working comprehension of the psychiatric aspects of suicide is necessary in order to prepare and prosecute a successful claim or to organize a defense in this area of the law. Additionally, the expert, even if carefully selected, must understand the legal framework in which his or her testimony will be interpreted. Unquestionably, a working relationship between the attorney and the psychiatrist is a necessity in terms of preparation. Many practitioners, however, may initially fail to realize that the early decisions recognizing suicide as a compensable workers\u27 compensation claim erroneously focus upon knowledge, cognition and uncontrollable impulses. Since the articulated models utilized by these courts in the earlier cases have become entrenched in some jurisdictions and in the minds of many judicial decision-makers, the psychiatric expert will often be forced to apply modern theories of psychiatry to illegitimately unscientific modes of legal analysis. These factors become increasingly important since many courts, when confronted with the generally liberal application of workers\u27 compensation statutes and the advent of modern scientific insights into the causes of suicide, have been forced to consider the issue of whether an employee\u27s suicide which follows a compensable on-the-job injury should constitute a separate ground for workers\u27 compensation benefits. The theory behind successful claims of this nature has been that an employee who has suffered a compensable injury, which in turn triggers a psychiatric disorder resulting in suicide, is entitled to both an inter vivos compensation award and a death benefit. It is clear, however, that since suicide is generally defined as an intentional act (without regard to whether or not suicide is psychiatrically considered volitional or nonvolitional), many jurisdictions would deny workers\u27 compensation death benefits to employees who take their own lives. Classic concepts indicate that recovery should be granted, if at all, only when there has been a work related harmful change in the human organism, arising out of and in the course of employment ... Nevertheless, when a direct causal relationship can be established among a work-related injury, a psychiatric disorder, and subsequent suicide, traditional notions should be updated and expanded to permit death benefit awards. Courts, when confronted with this dilemma, have utilized four different types of analyses. These modes of analysis can properly be identified as the Sponatski test, the New York rule, the English rule and the chain of causation test. This article examines the evolution of judicial understanding of suicide as related to the workers\u27 compensation system, endorses the liberal chain of causation test, and demonstrates that the chain of causation approach most closely corresponds with modern psychiatric theory

Towards a conversational agent for threat detection in the internet of things.

A conversational agent to detect anomalous traffic in consumer IoT networks is presented. The agent accepts two inputs in the form of user speech received by Amazon Alexa enabled devices, and classified IDS logs stored in a DynamoDB Table. Aural analysis is used to query the database of network traffic, and respond accordingly. In doing so, this paper presents a solution to the problem of making consumers situationally aware when their IoT devices are infected, and anomalous traffic has been detected. The proposed conversational agent addresses the issue of how to present network information to non-technical users, for better comprehension, and improves awareness of threats derived from the mirai botnet malware

A chemical survey of exoplanets with ARIEL

Thousands of exoplanets have now been discovered with a huge range of masses, sizes and orbits: from rocky Earth-like planets to large gas giants grazing the surface of their host star. However, the essential nature of these exoplanets remains largely mysterious: there is no known, discernible pattern linking the presence, size, or orbital parameters of a planet to the nature of its parent star. We have little idea whether the chemistry of a planet is linked to its formation environment, or whether the type of host star drives the physics and chemistry of the planet’s birth, and evolution. ARIEL was conceived to observe a large number (~1000) of transiting planets for statistical understanding, including gas giants, Neptunes, super-Earths and Earth-size planets around a range of host star types using transit spectroscopy in the 1.25–7.8 μm spectral range and multiple narrow-band photometry in the optical. ARIEL will focus on warm and hot planets to take advantage of their well-mixed atmospheres which should show minimal condensation and sequestration of high-Z materials compared to their colder Solar System siblings. Said warm and hot atmospheres are expected to be more representative of the planetary bulk composition. Observations of these warm/hot exoplanets, and in particular of their elemental composition (especially C, O, N, S, Si), will allow the understanding of the early stages of planetary and atmospheric formation during the nebular phase and the following few million years. ARIEL will thus provide a representative picture of the chemical nature of the exoplanets and relate this directly to the type and chemical environment of the host star. ARIEL is designed as a dedicated survey mission for combined-light spectroscopy, capable of observing a large and well-defined planet sample within its 4-year mission lifetime. Transit, eclipse and phase-curve spectroscopy methods, whereby the signal from the star and planet are differentiated using knowledge of the planetary ephemerides, allow us to measure atmospheric signals from the planet at levels of 10–100 part per million (ppm) relative to the star and, given the bright nature of targets, also allows more sophisticated techniques, such as eclipse mapping, to give a deeper insight into the nature of the atmosphere. These types of observations require a stable payload and satellite platform with broad, instantaneous wavelength coverage to detect many molecular species, probe the thermal structure, identify clouds and monitor the stellar activity. The wavelength range proposed covers all the expected major atmospheric gases from e.g. H2O, CO2, CH4 NH3, HCN, H2S through to the more exotic metallic compounds, such as TiO, VO, and condensed species. Simulations of ARIEL performance in conducting exoplanet surveys have been performed – using conservative estimates of mission performance and a full model of all significant noise sources in the measurement – using a list of potential ARIEL targets that incorporates the latest available exoplanet statistics. The conclusion at the end of the Phase A study, is that ARIEL – in line with the stated mission objectives – will be able to observe about 1000 exoplanets depending on the details of the adopted survey strategy, thus confirming the feasibility of the main science objectives.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

The Fourteenth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Spectroscopic Data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey and from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment

The fourth generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-IV) has been in operation since July 2014. This paper describes the second data release from this phase, and the fourteenth from SDSS overall (making this, Data Release Fourteen or DR14). This release makes public data taken by SDSS-IV in its first two years of operation (July 2014-2016). Like all previous SDSS releases, DR14 is cumulative, including the most recent reductions and calibrations of all data taken by SDSS since the first phase began operations in 2000. New in DR14 is the first public release of data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS); the first data from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory (APO) Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE-2), including stellar parameter estimates from an innovative data driven machine learning algorithm known as "The Cannon"; and almost twice as many data cubes from the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at APO (MaNGA) survey as were in the previous release (N = 2812 in total). This paper describes the location and format of the publicly available data from SDSS-IV surveys. We provide references to the important technical papers describing how these data have been taken (both targeting and observation details) and processed for scientific use. The SDSS website (www.sdss.org) has been updated for this release, and provides links to data downloads, as well as tutorials and examples of data use. SDSS-IV is planning to continue to collect astronomical data until 2020, and will be followed by SDSS-V.Comment: SDSS-IV collaboration alphabetical author data release paper. DR14 happened on 31st July 2017. 19 pages, 5 figures. Accepted by ApJS on 28th Nov 2017 (this is the "post-print" and "post-proofs" version; minor corrections only from v1, and most of errors found in proofs corrected

Mineralogy and petrology of comet 81P/wild 2 nucleus samples

The bulk of the comet 81P/Wild 2 (hereafter Wild 2) samples returned to Earth by the Stardust spacecraft appear to be weakly constructed mixtures of nanometer-scale grains, with occasional much larger (over 1 micrometer) ferromagnesian silicates, Fe-Ni sulfides, Fe-Ni metal, and accessory phases. The very wide range of olivine and low-Ca pyroxene compositions in comet Wild 2 requires a wide range of formation conditions, probably reflecting very different formation locations in the protoplanetary disk. The restricted compositional ranges of Fe-Ni sulfides, the wide range for silicates, and the absence of hydrous phases indicate that comet Wild 2 experienced little or no aqueous alteration. Less abundant Wild 2 materials include a refractory particle, whose presence appears to require radial transport in the early protoplanetary disk

Commentaries on viewpoint : physiology and fast marathons

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How genomics can help biodiversity conservation

The availability of public genomic resources can greatly assist biodiversity assessment, conservation, and restoration efforts by providing evidence for scientifically informed management decisions. Here we survey the main approaches and applications in biodiversity and conservation genomics, considering practical factors, such as cost, time, prerequisite skills, and current shortcomings of applications. Most approaches perform best in combination with reference genomes from the target species or closely related species. We review case studies to illustrate how reference genomes can facilitate biodiversity research and conservation across the tree of life. We conclude that the time is ripe to view reference genomes as fundamental resources and to integrate their use as a best practice in conservation genomics.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The era of reference genomes in conservation genomics

Progress in genome sequencing now enables the large-scale generation of reference genomes. Various international initiatives aim to generate reference genomes representing global biodiversity. These genomes provide unique insights into genomic diversity and architecture, thereby enabling comprehensive analyses of population and functional genomics, and are expected to revolutionize conservation genomics