Successive Torts Resulting in a Single, Indivisible Injury: Plaintiffs, Prepare to Prove the Impossible

In most lawsuits, plaintiffs\u27 medical experts can accurately allocate plaintiffs\u27 injuries to a specific, causal factor. In some instances, however, two events may combine to cause an injury that is incapable of rational apportionment, even by the most learned medical expert. In such a case, the indivisible injury doctrine may relieve a plaintiff of the difficult burden of proving which tortfeasor caused her injuries. The indivisible injury doctrine, however, does not benefit all plaintiffs who have suffered an injury that cannot be apportioned. As illustrated by the instant case, certain plaintiffs must prove the impossible, namely, which tortfeasor caused their injuries, even though doing so may be a medical impossibility

Spatiotemporal dynamics of covert versus overt processing of happy, fearful and sad facial expressions

Behavioral and electrophysiological correlates of the influence of task demands on the processing of happy, sad, and fearful expressions were investigated in a within-subjects study that compared a perceptual distraction condition with task-irrelevant faces (e.g., covert emotion task) to an emotion task-relevant categorization condition (e.g., overt emotion task). A state-of-the-art non-parametric mass univariate analysis method was used to address the limitations of previous studies. Behaviorally, participants responded faster to overtly categorized happy faces and were slower and less accurate to categorize sad and fearful faces; there were no behavioral differences in the covert task. Event-related potential (ERP) responses to the emotional expressions included the N170 (140-180 ms), which was enhanced by emotion irrespective of task, with happy and sad expressions eliciting greater amplitudes than neutral expressions. EPN (200-400 ms) amplitude was modulated by task, with greater voltages in the overt condition, and by emotion, however, there was no interaction of emotion and task. ERP activity was modulated by emotion as a function of task only at a late processing stage, which included the LPP (500-800 ms), with fearful and sad faces showing greater amplitude enhancements than happy faces. This study reveals that affective content does not necessarily require attention in the early stages of face processing, supporting recent evidence that the core and extended parts of the face processing system act in parallel, rather than serially. The role of voluntary attention starts at an intermediate stage, and fully modulates the response to emotional content in the final stage of processing

Standardization of electroencephalography for multi-site, multi-platform and multi-investigator studies: Insights from the canadian biomarker integration network in depression

Subsequent to global initiatives in mapping the human brain and investigations of neurobiological markers for brain disorders, the number of multi-site studies involving the collection and sharing of large volumes of brain data, including electroencephalography (EEG), has been increasing. Among the complexities of conducting multi-site studies and increasing the shelf life of biological data beyond the original study are timely standardization and documentation of relevant study parameters. We presentthe insights gained and guidelines established within the EEG working group of the Canadian Biomarker Integration Network in Depression (CAN-BIND). CAN-BIND is a multi-site, multi-investigator, and multiproject network supported by the Ontario Brain Institute with access to Brain-CODE, an informatics platform that hosts a multitude of biological data across a growing list of brain pathologies. We describe our approaches and insights on documenting and standardizing parameters across the study design, data collection, monitoring, analysis, integration, knowledge-translation, and data archiving phases of CAN-BIND projects. We introduce a custom-built EEG toolbox to track data preprocessing with open-access for the scientific community. We also evaluate the impact of variation in equipment setup on the accuracy of acquired data. Collectively, this work is intended to inspire establishing comprehensive and standardized guidelines for multi-site studies

Patterns of Retinal Damage Facilitate Differential Diagnosis between Susac Syndrome and MS

Susac syndrome, a rare but probably underdiagnosed combination of encephalopathy, hearing loss, and visual deficits due to branch retinal artery occlusion of unknown aetiology has to be considered as differential diagnosis in various conditions. Particularly, differentiation from multiple sclerosis is often challenging since both clinical presentation and diagnostic findings may overlap. Optical coherence tomography is a powerful and easy to perform diagnostic tool to analyse the morphological integrity of retinal structures and is increasingly established to depict characteristic patterns of retinal pathology in multiple sclerosis. Against this background we hypothesised that differential patterns of retinal pathology facilitate a reliable differentiation between Susac syndrome and multiple sclerosis. In this multicenter cross-sectional observational study optical coherence tomography was performed in nine patients with a definite diagnosis of Susac syndrome. Data were compared with age-, sex-, and disease duration-matched relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis patients with and without a history of optic neuritis, and with healthy controls. Using generalised estimating equation models, Susac patients showed a significant reduction in either or both retinal nerve fibre layer thickness and total macular volume in comparison to both healthy controls and relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis patients. However, in contrast to the multiple sclerosis patients this reduction was not distributed over the entire scanning area but showed a distinct sectorial loss especially in the macular measurements. We therefore conclude that patients with Susac syndrome show distinct abnormalities in optical coherence tomography in comparison to multiple sclerosis patients. These findings recommend optical coherence tomography as a promising tool for differentiating Susac syndrome from MS

TILLING to detect induced mutations in soybean

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Soybean (<it>Glycine max </it>L. Merr.) is an important nitrogen-fixing crop that provides much of the world's protein and oil. However, the available tools for investigation of soybean gene function are limited. Nevertheless, chemical mutagenesis can be applied to soybean followed by screening for mutations in a target of interest using a strategy known as Targeting Induced Local Lesions IN Genomes (TILLING). We have applied TILLING to four mutagenized soybean populations, three of which were treated with ethyl methanesulfonate (EMS) and one with N-nitroso-N-methylurea (NMU).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We screened seven targets in each population and discovered a total of 116 induced mutations. The NMU-treated population and one EMS mutagenized population had similar mutation density (~1/140 kb), while another EMS population had a mutation density of ~1/250 kb. The remaining population had a mutation density of ~1/550 kb. Because of soybean's polyploid history, PCR amplification of multiple targets could impede mutation discovery. Indeed, one set of primers tested in this study amplified more than a single target and produced low quality data. To address this problem, we removed an extraneous target by pretreating genomic DNA with a restriction enzyme. Digestion of the template eliminated amplification of the extraneous target and allowed the identification of four additional mutant alleles compared to untreated template.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The development of four independent populations with considerable mutation density, together with an additional method for screening closely related targets, indicates that soybean is a suitable organism for high-throughput mutation discovery even with its extensively duplicated genome.</p

Fatigue, reduced sleep quality and restless legs syndrome in Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease: a web-based survey

To investigate the prevalence of fatigue, daytime sleepiness, reduced sleep quality, and restless legs syndrome (RLS) in a large cohort of patients with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (CMT) and their impact on health-related quality of life (HRQoL). Participants of a web-based survey answered the Epworth Sleepiness Scale, the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, the Multidimensional Fatigue Inventory, and, if the diagnostic criteria of RLS were met, the International RLS Severity Scale. Diagnosis of RLS was affirmed in screen-positive patients by means of a standardized telephone interview. HRQoL was assessed by using the SF-36 questionnaire. Age- and sex-matched control subjects were recruited from waiting relatives of surgical outpatients. 227 adult self-reported CMT patients answered the above questionnaires, 42.9% were male, and 57.1% were female. Age ranged from 18 to 78 years. Compared to controls (n = 234), CMT patients reported significantly higher fatigue, a higher extent and prevalence of daytime sleepiness and worse sleep quality. Prevalence of RLS was 18.1% in CMT patients and 5.6% in controls (p = 0.001). RLS severity was correlated with worse sleep quality and reduced HRQoL. Women with CMT were affected more often and more severely by RLS than male patients. With regard to fatigue, sleep quality, daytime sleepiness, RLS prevalence, RLS severity, and HRQoL, we did not find significant differences between genetically distinct subtypes of CMT. HRQoL is reduced in CMT patients which may be due to fatigue, sleep-related symptoms, and RLS in particular. Since causative treatment for CMT is not available, sleep-related symptoms should be recognized and treated in order to improve quality of life

Signature Movements Lead to Efficient Search for Threatening Actions

The ability to find and evade fighting persons in a crowd is potentially life-saving. To investigate how the visual system processes threatening actions, we employed a visual search paradigm with threatening boxer targets among emotionally-neutral walker distractors, and vice versa. We found that a boxer popped out for both intact and scrambled actions, whereas walkers did not. A reverse correlation analysis revealed that observers' responses clustered around the time of the “punch", a signature movement of boxing actions, but not around specific movements of the walker. These findings support the existence of a detector for signature movements in action perception. This detector helps in rapidly detecting aggressive behavior in a crowd, potentially through an expedited (sub)cortical threat-detection mechanism