Great expectations: Inheritance, equity and the family farm

This article alerts farmers and those who advise them of the need for caution when making arrangements or agreements with family members regarding the future ownership and succession of the family farm. Such arrangements are frequently oral and informal. Promises are made and revised, and often unspoken ‘understandings’ are arrived at. This lack of legal formality gives rise to a propensity for matters to go badly and bitterly ‘wrong’. Furthermore, the article draws attention to the fact that, even where formal arrangements are made, they are vulnerable to challenge and the nature of the legal and equitable doctrines applicable in such cases means the outcome of such challenges cannot be confidently predicted. It may come as a surprise to many farmers to learn that their autonomy in dealing with their land and businesses can be overridden by legally imposed obligations of morality and good conscience. The article illustrates its thesis by examining three High Court cases in which family farming agreements have been challenged. In each case, the court determined the fate of the family farm, not by reference to the farmer’s intention, but by the application of succession legislation and equitable doctrines, such as equitable estoppel and unconscionable transaction. Moreover, in two of these cases, the farmer’s actual intention was overridden in favour of an arrangement that better coincided with what the court considered that he ought to have done - resulting in an outcome that neither the parties nor their legal advisers could have expected

Mutation profiling in South African patients with Cornelia de Lange syndrome phenotype

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT : The variants described here were submitted to ClinVar and can be viewed under Organization ID 508172 or the ClinVar IDs recorded in Table 1. Data available on reasonable request from the corresponding author.BACKGROUND : Cornelia de Lange Syndrome (CdLS) presents with a variable multi-systemic phenotype and pathogenic variants have been identified in five main genes. This condition has been understudied in African populations with little phenotypic and molecular information available. METHODS AND RESULTS : We present a cohort of 14 patients with clinical features suggestive of CdLS. Clinical phenotyping was carried out and cases were classified according to the international consensus criteria. According to this criteria, nine patients had classical CdLS, one had non-classical CdLS and four presented with a phenotype that suggested molecular testing for CdLS. Each patient underwent mutation profiling using a targeted next generation sequencing panel of 18 genes comprising known and suspected CdLS causal genes. Of the 14 patients tested, pathogenic and likely pathogenic variants were identified in nine: eight variants in the NIPBL gene and one in the STAG1 gene. CONCLUSIONS : We present the first molecular data for a cohort of South African patients with CdLS. Eight of the nine variants identified were in the NIPBL gene, the most commonly involved gene in cases of CdLS. This is also the first report of a patient of African ancestry presenting with STAG1-related CdLS.The National Research Foundation and the South African Medical Research Council.http://www.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/mgg3hj2024BiochemistryGeneticsMicrobiology and Plant PathologySDG-03:Good heatlh and well-bein

Validation of the impact of health information technology (I-HIT) scale: An international collaborative

In 2005, the Healthcare Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Nursing Informatics Community developed a survey to measure the impact of health information technology (HIT), the IHIT Scale, on the role of nurses and interdisciplinary communication in hospital settings. In 2007, nursing informatics colleagues from Australia, England, Finland, Ireland, New Zealand, Scotland and the United States formed a research collaborative to validate the IHIT across countries. All teams have completed construct and face validation in their countries. Five out of six teams have initiated reliability testing by practicing nurses. This paper reports the international collaborative’s validation of the IHIT Scale completed to date

iCollections – Digitising the British and Irish Butterflies in the Natural History Museum, London

The Natural History Museum, London (NHMUK) has embarked on an ambitious programme to digitise its collections . The first phase of this programme has been to undertake a series of pilot projects that will develop the necessary workflows and infrastructure development needed to support mass digitisation of very large scientific collections. This paper presents the results of one of the pilot projects – iCollections. This project digitised all the lepidopteran specimens usually considered as butterflies, 181,545 specimens representing 89 species from the British Isles and Ireland. The data digitised includes, species name, georeferenced location, collector and collection date - the what, where, who and when of specimen data. In addition, a digital image of each specimen was taken. This paper explains the way the data were obtained and the background to the collections which made up the project. Specimen-level data associated with British and Irish butterfly specimens have not been available before and the iCollections project has released this valuable resource through the NHM data portal

iCollections methodology: workflow, results and lessons learned

The Natural History Museum, London (NHMUK) has embarked on an ambitious programme to digitise its collections. The first phase of this programme was to undertake a series of pilot projects to develop the workflows and infrastructure needed to support mass digitisation of very large scientific collections. This paper presents the results of one of the pilot projects – iCollections. This project digitised all the lepidopteran specimens usually considered as butterflies, 181,545 specimens representing 89 species from the British Isles and Ireland. The data digitised includes, species name, georeferenced location, collector and collection date - the what, where, who and when of specimen data. In addition, a digital image of each specimen was taken. A previous paper explained the way the data were obtained and the background to the collections that made up the project. The present paper describes the technical, logistical, and economic aspects of managing the project