Should insurance risk avoidance be reformed and would reform be of a right of equitable rescission or a right sui generis?

This article explores the distinction between the alternative explanations for the remedy of insurance risk avoidance in the event of breach of the duty of utmost good faith. It asks whether the remedy is an avoidance of a void contract, or a rescission of a voidable contract. The article then considers the general significance of that distinction to the capacity of a party to exercise its primary right of avoidance, and to the secondary rights of the contracting parties - arising in consequence of the avoidance - to prevent unjust enrichment or achieve restitution. Before considering the potential for - and the desirability of - further reform in the area, the article evaluates the importance of the legal characterisation of insurance risk avoidance in the particular context of insurance contracts affording indemnity to multiple insured parties

Erythrocytes as Carriers of Therapeutic Enzymes.

Therapeutic enzymes are administered for the treatment of a wide variety of diseases. They exert their effects through binding with a high affinity and specificity to disease-causing substrates to catalyze their conversion to a non-noxious product, to induce an advantageous physiological change. However, the metabolic and clinical efficacies of parenterally or intramuscularly administered therapeutic enzymes are very often limited by short circulatory half-lives and hypersensitive and immunogenic reactions. Over the past five decades, the erythrocyte carrier has been extensively studied as a strategy for overcoming these limitations and increasing therapeutic efficacy. This review examines the rationale for the different therapeutic strategies that have been applied to erythrocyte-mediated enzyme therapy. These strategies include their application as circulating bioreactors, targeting the monocyte-macrophage system, the coupling of enzymes to the surface of the erythrocyte and the engineering of CD34+ hematopoietic precursor cells for the expression of therapeutic enzymes. An overview of the diverse biomedical applications for which they have been investigated is also provided, including the detoxification of exogenous chemicals, thrombolytic therapy, enzyme replacement therapy for metabolic diseases and antitumor therapy

The EC REACH Regulation and contractual supply obligations

REACH, as an EC legislative instrument in the form of a community regulation, is directly applicable in the national domestic laws of each of the 30 states in the European Economic Area (EEA). REACH now takes effect within the context of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) and the Treaty on European Union (TEU), both of which entered into force under the Treaty of Lisbon on December 1, 2009 and replace, as from that date, the prior governing Treaties of the European Union (EU). REACH prohibits the placing of registrable substances, on their own, or in preparations or articles, on the market in the EEA unless they have been registered and, when required, their use authorised in accordance with REACH. It also places obligations on sellers and buyers of such substances (or of preparations--and in certain circumstances even articles containing them) to pass product, risk and use information both up and down the supply chain and also to the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), which is effectively responsible for managing the registration, authorisation and restriction process across the EEA and for co-ordinating the implementation of REACH by the EEA states. REACH has the capacity to have direct effects on the rights and duties of parties buying and selling within, and into, the EEA

Mitochondrial neurogastrointestinal encephalomyopathy: approaches to diagnosis and treatment

Mitochondrial neurogastrointestinal encephalomyopathy (MNGIE) is an ultra-rare disease caused by mutations in TYMP, the gene encoding for the enzyme thymidine phosphorylase. The resulting enzyme deficiency leads to a systemic accumulation of thymidine and 2’-deoxyuridine and ultimately mitochondrial failure due to a progressive acquisition of secondary mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) mutations and mtDNA depletion. MNGIE is characterised by gastrointestinal dysmotility, cachexia, peripheral neuropathy, ophthalmoplegia, ptosis and leukoencephalopathy. The disease is progressively degenerative and leads to death at an average age of 37.6 years. Patients invariably encounter misdiagnoses, diagnostic delays, and non-specific clinical management. Despite its rarity, MNGIE has invoked much interest in the development of therapeutic strategies, mainly because it is one of the few mitochondrial disorders where the molecular abnormality is metabolically and physically accessible to manipulation. This review provides a résumé of the current diagnosis and treatment approaches and aims to increase the clinical awareness of MNGIE and thereby facilitate early diagnosis and timely access to treatments, before the development of untreatable and irreversible organ damage

How international are we? A study of the barriers to internationalisation of UK Higher Education

The internationalisation of higher education may appear to be a fairly recent phenomenon however it has been highlighted as a trend within developed country universities since the late 1980's. How universities inetrnationalise varies and this can be attributed to the differing definitions and perceptions of internationalisation itself. It is apparent that a wider ranging and more diverse internationalisation strategy will be critical to institutions to successfully manage the complex process of internationalisation. University internationalisation strategies have been analysed using content analysis to identify a number of themes why they internationalise, together with those identified a priori through the literature review. This forumlated a questionnaire, distributed to staff at UK HEIs to assess where they currently are in their internationalisation process and what they perceive as being important to this process and they have been analysed. A further stage of interviews with a range of interviewees of differing job functions at differing HEIs is still to be completed and some early initial analysis will hopefully be available for the conference. The contenet analysis produced an extensive range of coded words/phrases that were grouped into a series of rationales and there were significant similarities to findings from previous studies and also new themes identified. The questionnaire distributed via Surveymonkey generated 76 responses from across 55 different UK HEIs, a representative sample for analysis. It is clear that there is some commonality of issues associated with internationalisation but also that some opinions vary depending upon the role undertaken by the respondent and also whether a pre or post 1992 institution. Internationalisation is likely to increase in importance as traditional UK Government funding stops and HEIs seek other sources of income. To identify barriers will hopefully aid HEIs to successfully operationalise internationalisation and enhance the student experience

Complexities associated with expression of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) lytic origins of DNA replication.

EBV has two lytic origins (oriLyt) of DNA replication lying at divergent sites on the viral genome within a duplicated sequence (DS). The latter contains potential hairpin loops, ‘hinge’ elements and the promoters for transcripts from viral genes BHLF1 and LF3. These genes themselves consist largely of 125 and 102 bp repetitive sequences, respectively, and encode basic proteins. We have examined these genomic regions in detail in attempts to understand why lytic replication—necessary for virus survival—is so inefficient, and to identify controlling elements. Our studies uncovered a diverse family of promoters (P) for BHLF1 and LF3, only one pair of which (P1) proved sensitive to chemical inducing agents. The others (P2–P3/4), abutting the replication ‘core’ origin elements in DS and extending into 50-unique sequences, may play roles in the maintenance of viral latency. We further identified a family of overlapping small complementary-strand RNAs that transverse the replication ‘core’ origin elements in a manner suggesting a role for them as ‘antisense’ species and/or DNA replication primers. Our data are discussed in terms of alternative lytic replication models. We suggest our findings might prove useful in seeking better control over viral lytic replication and devising strategies for therapy

Work

Job postings that explicitly encourage “people with migration backgrounds” or those who “experience discrimination” to apply, were a good start once. But they do not solve the problem. Sure, an injustice is being identified here that is imperative to counteract. Unless rules like quotas are established, however, such postings ultimately peter out as a merely symbolic gesture. In the end, it is not the well-intended statement that counts, but who is being hired. And who isn’t

Bifurcations of global reinjection orbits near a saddle-node Hopf bifurcation

The saddle-node Hopf bifurcation (SNH) is a generic codimension-two bifurcation of equilibria of vector fields in dimension at least three. It has been identified as an organizing centre in numerous vector field models arising in applications. We consider here the case that there is a global reinjection mechanism, because the centre manifold of the zero eigenvalue returns to a neighbourhood of the equilibrium. Such a SNH bifurcation with global reinjection occurs naturally in applications, most notably in models of semiconductor lasers