Abandonment of land and the Scottish Coal case : was it Unprecedented?

The support of the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland in the provision of a research incentive grant that contributed to this note is gratefully acknowledged.Peer reviewedPostprin

Abandonment of land and the Scottish coal case : was it unprecedented?

Owners of land do not usually wish to abandon it. Land is scarce and is normally a valuable commodity. It seems strange that there might be circumstances where someone would seek to relinquish a slice of Scotland in exchange for no benefit. Notwithstanding, the liquidators of a landowner recently tried to do this in relation to certain sites that had been used for coal mining. In the Scottish Coal case,1 those liquidators petitioned the Court of Session for guidance as to whether it was possible to abandon land and, if so, the proper procedure for doing so. It was ultimately held that it was not competent to abandon land in Scots law

F-manifolds and geometry of information

The theory of $F$-manifolds, and more generally, manifolds endowed with commutative and associative multiplication of their tangent fields, was discovered and formalised in various models of quantum field theory involving algebraic and analytic geometry, at least since 1990's. The focus of this paper consists in the demonstration that various spaces of probability distributions defined and studied at least since 1960's also carry natural structures of $F$-manifolds. This fact remained somewhat hidden in various domains of the vast territory of models of information storing and transmission that are briefly surveyed here

Scale separation in granular packings: stress plateaus and fluctuations

It is demonstrated, by numerical simulations of a 2D assembly of polydisperse disks, that there exists a range (plateau) of coarse graining scales for which the stress tensor field in a granular solid is nearly resolution independent, thereby enabling an `objective' definition of this field. Expectedly, it is not the mere size of the the system but the (related) magnitudes of the gradients that determine the widths of the plateaus. Ensemble averaging (even over `small' ensembles) extends the widths of the plateaus to sub-particle scales. The fluctuations within the ensemble are studied as well. Both the response to homogeneous forcing and to an external compressive localized load (and gravity) are studied. Implications to small solid systems and constitutive relations are briefly discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, RevTeX 4, Minor corrections to match the published versio

High levels of memory B cells are associated with response to a first tumor necrosis factor inhibitor in patients with rheumatoid arthritis in a longitudinal prospective study

Tumor necrosis factor inhibitor (TNFi) therapy is effective for rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Some reports suggested that the therapy affects B-cell homeostasis. We studied the effect of TNFi therapy on the distribution of peripheral B-cell subsets and elucidated B-cell-related biomarkers to predict the TNFi response. Peripheral B cells were analyzed for expression of CD19, CD27, CD38, and IgD in 31 healthy donors and 96 RA patients, including 21 who were followed 3 months after TNFi introduction. Treatment with steroids significantly altered the distribution of B-cell subsets. After adjustment for age, gender and steroid dose, patients with RA had similar B-cell subset proportions as controls. B-cell subset distribution did not differ by use of TNFi at baseline or before and after TNFi introduction. TNFi responders (according to European League Against Rheumatism criteria) at 3 months had significantly higher proportion of CD27+ memory B cells at baseline, and >= 26% CD27+ cells at inclusion was associated with a relative risk of 4.9 (1.3 to 18.6) of responding to TNFi treatment. CD27+ cells produced 3 times more TNFalpha than did naive B cells, and were correlated with interferon-gamma produced from CD4+ cells in patients without TNFi treatment. In patients with RA, high levels of baseline memory B cells were associated with response to TNFi, which may be related to TNFalpha-dependent activation of the T helper cell type 1 pathwa

Dependent patients discharged home from PRM departments: relevant indicators

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate simple, measurable indicators of optimal organizational procedures for the hospital-to-home discharge of dependent patients.MATERIAL AND METHOD: All the general practitioners (GPs) in the Maine-et-Loire county of France were sent a questionnaire asking them to rank the three main criteria (from the most important to the least significant) from a list of 14. We analyzed the median ranking for each item and identified the most important items in terms of their relative frequency. RESULTS: The response rate was 10.77% (104 out of 966). Four criteria had a median score over 9: contact with the GP prior to discharge, informing the GP of the discharge date, training for the patient and his/her family in activities of daily living and providing a list of people to be contacted in the event of a problem at home. Respite hospitalization (in the event of difficulties at home) was cited as one of the three most relevant criteria. DISCUSSION-CONCLUSION: The criteria highlighted by the GPs were not highly specific for the discharge of a dependent patient. However, it would be interesting to extend this study by interviewing other stakeholders and determining whether these criteria indeed improve the organization of hospital-to-home discharge