The Expanding Role of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals in the Review of Workmen\u27s Compensation Appeals

The November elections of 1976 brought about a major change in the composition of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. Three new justices, a majority of the court, were elected. The consequences of the election have been widely felt throughout the State. In no area has its impact been greater, however, than in the area of workmen\u27s compensation law. The court has shown a great willingness to hear workmen\u27s compensation appeals. In reviewing such appeals, the court has chosen to play an active role in the review of evidence, something generally avoided by prior courts. There has been little reluctance to substitute the majority\u27s assessment of the evidence for the factual findings of the Workmen\u27s Compensation Appeal Board. In substantive law the court has likewise had great impact, and in certain areas has taken action which would normally be considered within the purview of the legislature. Most significantly, the statutory immunity to suit granted to employers by the West Virginia Workmen\u27s Compensation Act, except in cases of intentional injury, has been altered to an extent which will only be finally determined by later cases. Other decisions have: liberalized the continuous exposure requirements of the occupational pneumoconiosis provisions of the Act; removed the requirement of demonstrating aggravation of an existing occupational pneumoconiosis condition with a particular employer in order to be entitled to benefits; extended the protection of a legislatively lengthened statute of limitations to claimants whose occupational pneumoconiosis claims were not yet barred when the new limitation period became effective; permitted concurrent recovery of benefits in separate claims even though the total amount of benefits paid exceeded statutory limits; liberalized requirements for reopening claims; and provided protection for innocent victims of horseplay. This article will assess the new court\u27s role in reviewing both substantive and procedural aspects of workmen\u27s compensation law. The discussion is divided into two broad areas: substantive changes in West Virginia workmen\u27s compensation law; and scope of the court\u27s review

Immune Selection and Within-Host Competition Can Structure the Repertoire of Variant Surface Antigens in Plasmodium falciparum - A Mathematical Model

, the best-studied VSA family is erythrocyte membrane protein 1 (PfEMP1). Each parasite genome encodes about 60 PfEMP1 variants, which are important virulence factors and major targets of host antibody responses. Transcriptional switching is the basis of clonal PfEMP1 variation and immune evasion. A relatively conserved subset of PfEMP1 variants tends to dominate in non-immune patients and in patients with severe malaria, while more diverse subsets relate to uncomplicated infection and higher levels of pre-existing protective immunity.Here, we use the available molecular and serological evidence regarding VSAs, in particular PfEMP1, to formulate a mathematical model of the evolutionary mechanisms shaping VSA organization and expression patterns. The model integrates the transmission dynamics between hosts and the competitive interactions within hosts, based on the hypothesis that the VSAs can be organized into so-called dominance blocks, which characterize their competitive potential. The model reproduces immunological trends observed in field data, and predicts an evolutionary stable balance between inter-clonally conserved dominance blocks that are highly competitive within-host and diverse blocks that are favoured by immune selection at the population level.The application of a monotonic dominance profile to VSAs encoded by a gene family generates two opposing selective forces and, consequently, two distinct clusters of genes emerge in adaptation to naïve and partially immune hosts, respectively

Antibodies to a Full-Length VAR2CSA Immunogen Are Broadly Strain-Transcendent but Do Not Cross-Inhibit Different Placental-Type Parasite Isolates

The high molecular weight, multidomain VAR2CSA protein mediating adhesion of Plasmodium falciparum-infected erythrocytes in the placenta is the leading candidate for a pregnancy malaria vaccine. However, it has been difficult so far to generate strong and consistent adhesion blocking antibody responses against most single-domain VAR2CSA immunogens. Recent advances in expression of the full-length recombinant protein showed it binds with much greater specificity and affinity to chondroitin sulphate A (CSA) than individual VAR2CSA domains. This raises the possibility that a specific CSA binding pocket(s) is formed in the full length antigen and could be an important target for vaccine development. In this study, we compared the immunogenicity of a full-length VAR2CSA recombinant protein containing all six Duffy binding-like (DBL) domains to that of a three-domain construct (DBL4-6) in mice and rabbits. Animals immunized with either immunogen acquired antibodies reacting with several VAR2CSA individual domains by ELISA, but antibody responses against the highly conserved DBL4 domain were weaker in animals immunized with full-length DBL1-6 recombinant protein compared to DBL4-6 recombinant protein. Both immunogens induced cross-reactive antibodies to several heterologous CSA-binding parasite lines expressing different VAR2CSA orthologues. However, antibodies that inhibited adhesion of parasites to CSA were only elicited in rabbits immunized with full-length immunogen and inhibition was restricted to the homologous CSA-binding parasite. These findings demonstrate that partial and full-length VAR2CSA immunogens induce cross-reactive antibodies, but inhibitory antibody responses to full-length immunogen were highly allele-specific and variable between animal species

Accuracy monitoring and task demand evaluation in aphasia

This study investigated possible underlying sources of resource allocation deficits in aphasia. The ability to rate one's own accuracy, as well as to evaluate task difficulty, were examined in aphasic individuals and normal, control subjects as they performed a lexical decision Listening task alone and in competition with two distracter tasks. The aphasic subjects were as precise as control subjects in monitoring the accuracy of their lexical decisions. Despite greater error rates and slower reaction times, aphasic individuals' perceptions of task difficulty did not differ significantly from those of the control subjects. Therefore, resource allocation deficits in aphasia may reflect inadequate evaluation of task demands rather than poor self-monitoring of accuracy

Neoliberalism as a Political Rationality: Australian Public Policy Since the 1980s

Since the 1980s, a remarkable transformation has occurred in the rationale that informs public policy in Australia. This transformation reflects a fundamental change in the way national economies and populations are conceived by policy makers and has led to the emergence of new strategies of governance as a consequence. We argue that this change of direction in Australian public policy may be best thought of as a specific neoliberal political rationality. The first section of the paper outlines changes to conceptions of the economy and subjectivity which are associated with neoliberalism as a political rationality. The second part of the paper examines the articulation and implementation of neoliberalism in Australia over the last couple of decades

Plasmodium vivax Adherence to Placental Glycosaminoglycans

BACKGROUND: Plasmodium vivax infections seldom kill directly but do cause indirect mortality by reducing birth weight and causing abortion. Cytoadherence and sequestration in the microvasculature are central to the pathogenesis of severe Plasmodium falciparum malaria, but the contribution of cytoadherence to pathology in other human malarias is less clear. METHODOLOGY: The adherence properties of P. vivax infected red blood cells (PvIRBC) were evaluated under static and flow conditions. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: P. vivax isolates from 33 patients were studied. None adhered to immobilized CD36, ICAM-1, or thrombospondin, putative ligands for P. falciparum vascular cytoadherence, or umbilical vein endothelial cells, but all adhered to immobilized chondroitin sulphate A (CSA) and hyaluronic acid (HA), the receptors for adhesion of P. falciparum in the placenta. PvIRBC also adhered to fresh placental cells (N = 5). Pre-incubation with chondroitinase prevented PvIRBC adherence to CSA, and reduced binding to HA, whereas preincubation with hyaluronidase prevented adherence to HA, but did not reduce binding to CSA significantly. Pre-incubation of PvIRBC with soluble CSA and HA reduced binding to the immobilized receptors and prevented placental binding. PvIRBC adhesion was prevented by pre-incubation with trypsin, inhibited by heparin, and reduced by EGTA. Under laminar flow conditions the mean (SD) shear stress reducing maximum attachment by 50% was 0.06 (0.02) Pa but, having adhered, the PvIRBC could then resist detachment by stresses up to 5 Pa. At 37 °C adherence began approximately 16 hours after red cell invasion with maximal adherence at 30 hours. At 39 °C adherence began earlier and peaked at 24 hours. SIGNIFICANCE: Adherence of P. vivax-infected erythrocytes to glycosaminoglycans may contribute to the pathogenesis of vivax malaria and lead to intrauterine growth retardation

Naming famous people: An examination of tip-of-the-tongue phenomena in aphasia and Alzheimer's disease

Confrontation naming of famous faces was studied in 33 individuals with aphasia (anemic, Broca's, and conduction) and 27 individuals with mild or moderate Alzheimer's disease (AD). Naming failures were examined for evidence of tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) state by probing semantic and word-form knowledge (initial letter and word shape). Basic semantic information was provided for many of the recognized faces by all subject groups. Conduction and Broca's groups showed strongest evidence of TOT, performing above chance on initial letter identification. There was little evidence of word-form knowledge in anemic and AD groups

Termination Casts: A Flexible Approach to Termination with General Recursion

This paper proposes a type-and-effect system called Teqt, which distinguishes terminating terms and total functions from possibly diverging terms and partial functions, for a lambda calculus with general recursion and equality types. The central idea is to include a primitive type-form "Terminates t", expressing that term t is terminating; and then allow terms t to be coerced from possibly diverging to total, using a proof of Terminates t. We call such coercions termination casts, and show how to implement terminating recursion using them. For the meta-theory of the system, we describe a translation from Teqt to a logical theory of termination for general recursive, simply typed functions. Every typing judgment of Teqt is translated to a theorem expressing the appropriate termination property of the computational part of the Teqt term.Comment: In Proceedings PAR 2010, arXiv:1012.455