PARTIES - REPRESENTATIVE SUITS AS RES JUDICATA- REJECTION OF DOCTRINE OF CLASS SUITS IN SUCCESSIVE ACTIONS TO ENFORCE MUTUAL COVENANTS IN LAND

Some 500 frontage owners in a certain described residential district entered into mutual covenants which stipulated against the sale to, or occupation of, such land by negroes. In an action to enjoin a breach of one of these covenants the defense was asserted that a condition precedent requiring ninety-five per cent of the frontage owners to sign the agreement had not been performed. On a trial of the merits it was found that only about fifty-four per cent of the frontage owners had actually signed. However, in a prior action, an owner, on behalf of herself and other like property owners, had sought successfully to enjoin a similar breach regarding other land within the described area. The parties there had stipulated that the conditions of the agreement were fully performed, the controversy having been whether the agreement should be unenforceable due to changed conditions. The Supreme Court of Illinois affirmed the ruling of the circuit court that the issue of performance of the condition precedent was res judicata due to this previous class suit. Held, because the defendants in the prior action were not designated as representing a class and because the interests of the plaintiff there were so conflicting with the interests of the defendant in this action, the former ad judication could not bind defendant. Hansberry v. Lee, (U.S. 1940) 61 S. Ct. 115

Evolution of virulence: coinfection and propagule production in spore-producing parasites

BACKGROUND: The evolution of within-host growth rates by parasites is expected to depend on a trade-off between propagule production and virulence. The presence of coinfections, however, is thought to alter this trade-off, and hence alter the evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) for the parasite. Here I consider a model wherein the number of coinfections that are identical by descent can depend on the parasite's reproductive strategy. Transmission success was treated as being either a negative-linear or a negative-exponential function of the total number of propagules produced by all coinfections. RESULTS: Increasing the number of unrelated coinfections either selected for a decrease in reproductive output by the parasite (linear case), or had no effect on the ESS (exponential case). Nonetheless, the total number of propagules produced within each host increased in both cases. Increasing the relatedness among coinfections, however, selected for reductions in parasite reproduction in both cases. CONCLUSION: Unrelated coinfection may increase overall parasite virulence, but the result stems from adding more infections rather than to more aggressive growth by the individual infections. However, all else being equal, if the coinfections are more related than expected by chance alone, then the total reproductive output by all coinfections would be expected to be reduced, resulting in reduced virulence

FEDERAL COURTS - THE SCOPE OF THE REVIEW OF INTERLOCUTORY ORDERS AND DECREES UNDER SECTION 129, AS AMENDED, OF THE FEDERAL JUDICIAL CODE

In early English appellate practice, the appealability of orders and decrees from a court of equity turned upon a single arbitrary test-whether or not they were enrolled. If an order or decree of the chancellor was enrolled, an appeal could be taken. But in the United States the case was different. In considering whether or not an order or decree could be appealed from, the appellate court looked to see whether it was interlocutory or final, and it was only the latter which could be appealed. Thus in the United States if it is found desirable to have an appeal of interlocutory orders or decrees, it is necessary to provide specifically for such appeal by statute. Section 129, as amended, of the Federal Judicial Code is such a statute. It provides for the appeal of certain interlocutory orders and decrees from the federal district courts to the circuit courts of appeals

TRADE RESTRAINTS - ANTITRUST LAWS - CONSENT DECREES - RIGHT OF INTERVENTION WHERE DECREE REOPENED

In 1935, the Attorney General brought a suit in equity to enforce the antitrust laws, charging Columbia Gas & Electric Corporation and its controlled instrumentality, Columbia Oil & Gasoline Corporation, and individual defendants, with having conspired for the benefit of Columbia Gas to shut out operation in the Indiana-Ohio-Michigan area by the Panhandle Eastern Pipe Line Company, which had built a natural-gas pipe line from the Texas fields to the border of Indiana. Panhandle was an offspring of Missouri-Kansas Pipe Line Company, or Mokan, which at the time of the suit owned half its stock and half its junior debt. Columbia Gas, to maintain a practical monopoly of natural gas in this market which Panhandle desired to enter, had acquired through Columbia Oil half of Panhandle\u27s stock, half its junior debt, and its whole senior debt, thus stifling its potential competition, rendering it insolvent, and forcing Mokan into receivership. The suit resulted in a consent decree providing inter alia that Panhandle might become a party to the suit on application, so that it could protect its interests secured under the decree. In 1939, the government deemed the terms of the decree inadequate for its purposes and reopened the proceedings; modifications were proposed in a plan, the terms of which were alleged to defeat the free enterprise of Panhandle, namely in the extension of its operations to sales in Detroit, an extension explicitly provided for in the decree. Mokan, on behalf of Panhandle, moved to intervene but was denied leave. Held, that since Panhandle had a formal status in the decree, its power to intervene was not left to the court\u27s discretion, the general doctrines of intervention not touching the problem, and Mokan through Panhandle must be given the absolute right to intervene. Justice Roberts dissented. Missouri-Kansas Pipe Line Co. v. United States, 312 U.S. 502, 665, 61 S. Ct. 666 (1941)

DAMAGES - EXPENSES OF LITIGATION - COUNSEL FEES IN A PREVIOUS SUIT

Plaintiffs brought this appeal from a judgment dismissing an action to recover the attorney\u27s fees and other expenses of the prosecution of a prior suit with defendant. In the former action plaintiffs had secured a decree requiring defendant to convey to them certain property which the defendant had withheld fraudulently and maliciously. In the present action defendant successfully had moved to dismiss on the grounds that attorney\u27s fees as between original litigants were not recoverable and further that this claim was res judicata due to the prior suit. Held, one justice dissenting as defendant\u27s intentional and wilful misconduct necessitated the previous litigation, and as the present claim for damages was not there asserted, the judgment must be reversed. Ritter v. Ritter, 308 Ill. App. 337, 32 N. E. (2d) 185 (1941)

System Engineering Approach to Development of an End-to-End Space Cargo Handling System

This paper, prepared for the Eighth Space Congress, was developed to illustrate how system engineering techniques were applied in the early conceptual development of an end-to-end (total system, source to user) Space Shuttle Cargo Handling System. The techniques described were applied to a study under contract to NASA, Kennedy Space Center. The paper further shows that continuation of the system engineering practices on subsequent phases of the cargo handling system development will greatly enhance the orderly and timely progression of the system through the conceptual phase into the definition, production, and operational phases. The techniques involved an orderly top-down iterative methodology following the basic guidelines of a uniquely simple system engineering diagram successfully used in the past on complete weapon systems. Methods are shown where streamlined techniques were developed to keep within the confines of calendar time limitations of the initial study and to reduce the magnitude of documentation. While system engineering is more often used for development of a system containing a major prime vehicle end item such as a weapon or an aerospace vehicle, the techniques are readily applied to a system (cargo handling system) where no single end item is dominant, but the system interfaces heavily with several major aerospace vehicles in the forthcoming space program. The conceptual definition of such interfacing aerospace vehicles as the Earth Orbiting Shuttle and the Space Station in fact become part of the baseline inputs to the system engineering progress involving the cargo handling system conceptual development. The cargo handling system is visualized as a total distribution system when treated in an end-to-end fashion

Good vs complementary genes for parasite resistance and the evolution of mate choice

BACKGROUND: Female mate choice may be adaptive when males exhibit heritable genetic variation at loci encoding resistance to infectious disease. The Hamilton-Zuk hypothesis predicts that females should assess the genetic quality of males by monitoring traits that indicate health and vigor (condition-dependent choice, or CD). Alternatively, some females may employ a more direct method of screening and select mates based on the dissimilarity of alleles at the major histocompatibility loci (we refer to this as opposites-attract, or OA). Empirical studies suggest that both forms of mate choice exist, but little is known about the potential for natural selection to shape the two strategies in nature. RESULTS: We used computer simulation models to examine the evolutionary fates of the two forms of mate choice in populations at risk for infection by debilitating parasites. We found that populations exhibiting random mating (no mate choice) can be invaded and replaced completely by individuals practicing CD type mate choice. We also found that an allele encoding OA choice can increase when rare in randomly mating populations, but that it does not go to fixation under selection. A similar result was obtained when the OA strategy was introduced into populations practicing CD mate choice. As before, we found that the OA choice allele will increase when rare, and that it will not go to fixation under selection. The converse however was not true, as CD individuals gain no rare advantage when introduced into an OA population. CONCLUSIONS: Taken together, the results suggest that, when rare, OA is the best strategy for parasite evasion (of those considered here). The consequence of OA increasing in the population, however, is to reduce the parasite driven genotype oscillations and facilitate the breakdown of linkage disequilibrium at the disease-resistance loci. This leads to a neutrally stable situation in which different strategies have equal fitness, and suggests that multiple forms of mate choice may be expected to occur in populations at risk from infectious disease

Immune response to sympatric and allopatric parasites in a snail-trematode interaction

BACKGROUND: The outcome of parasite exposure depends on the (1) genetic specificity of the interaction, (2) induction of host defenses, and (3) parasite counter defenses. We studied both the genetic specificity for infection and the specificity for the host-defense response in a snail-trematode interaction (Potamopyrgus antipodarum-Microphallus sp.) by conducting a reciprocal cross-infection experiment between two populations of host and parasite. RESULTS: We found that infection was greater in sympatric host-parasite combinations. We also found that the host-defense response (hemocyte concentration) was induced by parasite exposure, but the response did not increase with increased parasite dose nor did it depend on parasite source, host source, or host-parasite combination. CONCLUSION: The results are consistent with a genetically specific host-parasite interaction, but inconsistent with a general arms-race type interaction where allocation to defense is the main determinant of host resistance

Copper complexation during spring phytoplankton blooms in coastal waters

Cupric ion bioassays were conducted throughout the spring phytoplankton bloom season at two stations-one estuarine, dominated by dinoflagellates, the other coastal, dominated by diatoms. Copper-complexing ligands were detected at both locations throughout this period. Ligand concentrations varied between 0.1 and 0.75 μM, with the estuarine concentrations typically 2–4 times higher than coastal values. Ligands from both locations were destroyed by UV-oxidation and had similar conditional stability constants (range 108.3 to 109.2) that were significantly correlated with pH, suggesting that the complexing materials are organic chelators with weak acid functional groups. All measured or calculated parameters (DOC, ligand concentration, total copper concentration, salinity, and pH) remained relatively constant at the coastal station through time. The estuarine station was more dynamic, with DOC, total copper, and ligand concentrations varying 2–4 fold during the study. Although ligand concentrations were significantly different between the two locations, concomitant fluctuations in total dissolved copper and conditional stability constants resulted in a relatively constant estimate of the maximum free cupric ion activity at both stations (near 10–11 M). This suggests that copper toxicity alone was not responsible for the distinctly different estuarine and nearshore phytoplankton assemblages, although sensitive species might have been inhibited at both locations. Major phytoplankton blooms at both sites were not accompanied by changes in DOC or complexation capacity. A significant inverse correlation between ligand concentration and salinity suggests a terrestrial or sedimentary origin for the copper-complexing compounds

Pulmonary contusion in a collegiate diver: a case report

Abstract Introduction Pulmonary contusions typically occur after high-energy trauma and have rarely been reported as occurring during participation in sports. This is the first reported case of a pulmonary contusion occurring in a sport other than football. Case Presentation A 19-year-old Caucasian man impacted the water awkwardly after diving off a one-meter springboard. He complained of chest discomfort and produced immediate hemoptysis. Computed tomography confirmed the diagnosis of pulmonary contusion. The athlete recovered without complications and returned to activity one week after injury. Conclusion Immediate hemoptysis following blunt chest trauma during sports activity may indicate an underlying pulmonary contusion. No specific guidelines exist for return to athletic competition following pulmonary contusion, but a progressive return to activities once symptoms resolve appears to be a reasonable approach.</p