Reducing the Overburden: The \u3cem\u3eDoris Coal\u3c/em\u3e Presumption and Administrative Efficiency Under the Black Lung Benefits Act

Coal dust build-up prevents many coal miners\u27 lungs from functioning properly. This condition, commonly referred to as black lung or pneumoconiosis, can make common activities nearly impossible. The Black Lung Benefits Act covers the cost of medical treatment for many affected miners, though procedural impediments often prevent miners from receiving care. The miner\u27s current or former employer, when identifiable, must pay for medical care relating to the miner\u27s black lung. Most disputes over miners\u27 claims for medical care arise when the miner has a history of cigarette smoking and the need for medical care could arise from either coal dust or tobacco smoke because both substances affect the same body systems. Coal companies prefer not to pay for medical care arising from cigarettes, while miners do not want their smoking history to prevent coverage of treatment for their occupational disease, especially when causation has not been clearly established. To receive payment for care, miners must prove to the Department of Labor through an often lengthy administrative process that the medical treatment met the eligibility requirements. Specifically, miners must assemble both medical documentation describing the treatment and the justification for the treatment in order to prevail in the administrative hearing

Inhibition of histone deacetylase as a treatment for cardiac hypertrophy

The present invention provides for methods of treating and preventing cardiac hypertrophy. Class II HDACs, which are known to participate in regulation of chromatin structure and gene expression, have been shown to have beneficial effects on cardiac hypertrophy. Surprisingly, the present invention demonstrates that HDAC inhibitors inhibit cardiac hypertrophy by inhibiting fetal cardiac gene expression and interfering with sarcomeric organization.Board of Regents, University of Texas Syste

Continuous data assimilation with blurred-in-time measurements of the surface quasi-geostrophic equation

An intrinsic property of almost any physical measuring device is that it makes observations which are slightly blurred in time. We consider a nudging-based approach for data assimilation that constructs an approximate solution based on a feedback control mechanism that is designed to account for observations that have been blurred by a moving time average. Analysis of this nudging model in the context of the subcritical surface quasi-geostrophic equation shows, provided the time-averaging window is sufficiently small and the resolution of the observations sufficiently fine, that the approximating solution converges exponentially fast to the observed solution over time. In particular, we demonstrate that observational data with a small blur in time possess no significant obstructions to data assimilation provided that the nudging properly takes the time averaging into account. Two key ingredients in our analysis are additional boundedness properties for the relevant interpolant observation operators and a non-local Gronwall inequality.Comment: 44 page

A neonatal blueprint for cardiac regeneration

Adult mammals undergo minimal regeneration following cardiac injury, which severely compromises cardiac function and contributes to the ongoing burden of heart failure. In contrast, the mammalian heart retains a transient capacity for cardiac regeneration during fetal and early neonatal life. Recent studies have established the importance of several evolutionarily conserved mechanisms for heart regeneration in lower vertebrates and neonatal mammals including induction of cardiomyocyte proliferation, epicardial cell activation, angiogenesis, extracellular matrix deposition and immune cell infiltration. In this review, we provide an up-to-date account of the molecular and cellular basis for cardiac regeneration in lower vertebrates and neonatal mammals. The historical context for these recent findings and their ramifications for the future development of cardiac regenerative therapies are also discussed

Effects of Sequence Context on the Binding of Tryptophan-Containing Peptides by the Cucurbit[8]uril-Methyl Viologen Complex

This paper describes a novel assay for measuring the relative extent of peptide binding in a large parallel format and the use of this assay to explore the effects of sequence context on the binding of tryptophan (Trp)-containing peptides by the synthetic receptor comprising the noncovalent complex between cucurbit[8]uril and methyl viologen (i.e. Q8√MV). The extent of quenching of Trp fluorescence upon binding to Q8√MV was used to measure the relative extent of binding and thus the relative affinities of 104 Trp-containing peptides, in parallel, using a fluorescence plate reader. This study resulted in the remarkable observation that the identity of the amino acid residues at positions adjacent to the Trp-binding site has little if any influence on the binding affinity. This finding suggests that Q8√MV should be effective for the recognition of Trp residues within a broad range of peptide sequences

Imperfect identity

Questions of identity over time are often hard to answer. A long tradition has it that such questions are somehow soft: they have no unique, determinate answer, and disagreements about them are merely verbal. I argue that this claim is not the truism it is taken to be. Depending on how it is understood, it turns out either to be false or to presuppose a highly contentious metaphysical claim

Metaphase and Interphase Cytogenetics with Alu-PCR-amplified Yeast Artificial Chromosome Clones Containing the BCR Gene and the Protooncogenes c-raf-1, c-fms, and c-erbB-21

A human yeast artificial chromosome (YAC) library was screened by polymerase chain reaction with oligonucleotide primers defined for DNA sequences of the BCR gene and the protooncogenes c-raf-1, c-fms, and c-erB-2. Alu-PCR-generated human DNA sequences were obtained from the respective YAC clones and used for fluorescence in situ hybridization experiments under suppression conditions. After chromosomal in situ suppression hybridization to GTG-banded human prometaphase chromosomes, seven of nine initially isolated YAC clones yielded strong signals exclusively in the chromosome bands containing the respective genes. Two clones yielded additional signals on other chromosomes and were excluded from further tests. The band-specific YACs were successfully applied to visualize specific structural chromosome aberrations in peripheral blood cells from patients with myelodysplasia exhibiting del(5)(q13q34), chronic myeloid leukemia and acute lymphocytic leukemia with t(9;22)(q34;q11), acute promyelocytic leukemia (M3) with t(15;17)(q22;q21), and in a cell line established from a proband with the constitutional translocation t(3;8)(p14.2;q24). In addition to the analysis of metaphase spreads, we demonstrate the particular usefulness of these YAC clones in combination with whole chromosome painting to analyze specific chromosome aberrations directly in the interphase nucleus

Patterns, predictors, variations, and temporal trends in emergency medical service hospital prenotification for acute ischemic stroke.

BACKGROUND#ENTITYSTARTX02014;: Emergency medical services (EMS) hospital prenotification of an incoming stroke patient is guideline recommended as a means of increasing the timeliness with which stroke patients are evaluated and treated. Still, data are limited with regard to national use of, variations in, and temporal trends in EMS prenotification and associated predictors of its use. METHODS AND RESULTS#ENTITYSTARTX02014;: We examined 371 988 patients with acute ischemic stroke who were transported by EMS and enrolled in 1585 hospitals participating in Get With The Guidelines-Stroke from April 1, 2003, through March 31, 2011. Prenotification occurred in 249 197 EMS-transported patients (67.0%) and varied widely by hospital (range, 0% to 100%). Substantial variations by geographic regions and by state, ranging from 19.7% in Washington, DC, to 93.4% in Montana, also were noted. Patient factors associated with lower use of prenotification included older age, diabetes mellitus, and peripheral vascular disease. Prenotification was less likely for black patients than for white patients (adjusted odds ratio 0.94, 95% confidence interval 0.92-0.97, P<0.0001). Hospital factors associated with greater EMS prenotification use were absence of academic affiliation, higher annual volume of tissue plasminogen activator administration, and geographic location outside the Northeast. Temporal improvements in prenotification rates showed a modest general increase, from 58.0% in 2003 to 67.3% in 2011 (P temporal trend <0.0001). CONCLUSIONS#ENTITYSTARTX02014;: EMS hospital prenotification is guideline recommended, yet among patients transported to Get With The Guidelines-Stroke hospitals it is not provided for 1 in 3 EMS-arriving patients with acute ischemic stroke and varies substantially by hospital, state, and region. These results support the need for enhanced implementation of stroke systems of care. (J Am Heart Assoc. 2012;1:e002345 doi: 10.1161/JAHA.112.002345.)