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The article discusses the legal issues of equity compensation in the case of real estate developer Crescent Holdings LLC in which the U.S. Tax Court ruled that a service partner in partnerships with a nonvested capital interest does not have to report undistributed income from the partnership.

AbstractWith an aging population, the number of elderly individuals residing in long-term care (LTC) facilities will continue to grow and pose unique challenges to disaster preparedness and response. With this rapidly growing vulnerable population, it becomes imperative to identify enhanced and novel preparedness strategies and measures. LTC residents not only have complicated medical needs, including the timing of dispensing multiple medications, but frequently have cognitive and mobility deficits as well. In nearly every major disaster, elderly populations have suffered disproportionate morbidity and mortality. This is often due to elderly evacuees getting overlooked in the chaos of an initial response. Instituting measures to rapidly recognize this population in a crowd during an evacuation will reduce their risk. This commentary reviews the LTC facility evacuation challenges of the 2013 explosion of the West Fertilizer Company plant in West, Texas, and offers a novel solution of mandating the wearing of pink vests by all nursing home residents in case of an evacuation. The pink vests quickly alert disaster rescue and response workers of LTC residents with special needs. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2017;11:28–30)

Objectives. Effective response to large-scale public health threats requires well-coordinated efforts among individuals and agencies. While guidance is available to help states put emergency planning programs into place, little has been done to evaluate the human infrastructure that facilitates successful implementation of these programs. This study examined the human infrastructure of the Missouri public health emergency planning system in 2006.Methods. The Center for Emergency Response and Terrorism (CERT) at the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services has responsibility for planning, guiding, and funding statewide emergency response activities. Thirty-two public health emergency planners working primarily in county health departments contract with CERT to support statewide preparedness. We surveyed the planners to determine whom they communicate with, work with, seek expertise from, and exchange guidance with regarding emergency preparedness in Missouri.Results. Most planners communicated regularly with planners in their region but seldom with planners outside their region. Planners also reported working with an average of 12 local entities (e.g., emergency management, hospitals/clinics). Planners identified the following leaders in Missouri's public health emergency preparedness system: local public health emergency planners, state epidemiologists, the state vaccine and grant coordinator, regional public health emergency planners, State Emergency Management Agency area coordinators, the state Strategic National Stockpile coordinator, and Federal Bureau of Investigation Weapons of Mass Destruction coordinators. Generally, planners listed few federal-level or private-sector individuals in their emergency preparedness networks.Conclusions. While Missouri public health emergency planners maintain large and varied emergency preparedness networks, there are opportunities for strengthening existing ties and seeking additional connections.

Communication to the general public is a critical component of effective emergency response following terrorism events. Trust is essential to effective communication. Four Schools of Public Health conducted focus groups across the country with different ethnic groups to inform development of public messages and strategies in the event of an emergency. Secondary analysis of the transcripts was conducted to explore factors related to trust in government. General lack of confidence in the government's ability to respond was associated with concerns about preparedness, lack of disclosure and dedication. Local officials and emergency responders were more trusted than federal officials, and were associated with greater levels of disclosure and empathy. Past experience contributed to perceptions of trust. Urban groups were more concerned about officials’ honesty; whereas rural groups were concerned about resource allocation. Local organizations and agencies were most trusted, as well as the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), United States Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the American Red Cross (ARC). The findings lead to recommendations related to allocation of emergency response resources for underserved areas; integration of local and federal agencies in emergency response preparedness and communication; and an emphasis on full disclosure, action steps, and leadership in emergency response communication.

Infection control practitioners (ICPs) are important partners in enhancing the US public health infrastructure, both as essential recipients of continuing education and as instructors responsible for providing this education. Focus groups were conducted at APIC 2000, the annual meeting for the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, Inc, to determine the ICPs' priorities for educational opportunities in bioterrorism preparedness and the preferred methods of education delivery. Focus group participants affirmed the need to provide education in sessions of less than 60 minutes, with use of a variety of technologies and methods of presentation such as video, Internet, and paper-based self-learning texts. The participants' comments suggested a lack of awareness by employees in health care institutions about the potential threat of bioterrorism in the United States and a deficiency in knowledge about the potential consequences of an attack. The focus group participants believed this lack of awareness also leads to unwillingness by their administrators to allocate funds for planning and education. Since it appears that ICPs will be looking for direction and expertise from the local health departments in their communities, the first subset of professionals to target for bioterrorism education and preparedness should probably be the public health professionals. (Am J Infect Control 2001;29:347-51.)

The authors studied blood lead levels of 226 randomly selected children, aged 6–92 mo, who lived in either a lead-mining area or a nonmining area, and 69 controls. The authors sought to determine to what extent mining activities contributed to blood lead levels in the children. The mean blood lead levels in the study and control groups were 6.52 μg/dl and 3.43 μg/dl, respectively. The corresponding proportions of children with elevated blood lead levels were 17% and 3%. Soil and dust lead levels were up to 10 times higher in the study than the control group. Elevated blood lead levels appeared to result from exposure to both lead-mining waste and lead-based paint. Mining waste was the cause of the higher prevalence of elevated blood lead levels in these children.

Adapting an efficient method for pumping gas-liquid metal two-phase flow can make liquid metal magnetohydrodynamics (LMMHD) power generation systems economically feasible. An experimental facility was developed using a dual injection gas-lift pump to provide the circulation needed for the liquid metal in the LMMHD system. Also, a numerical simulation was performed in order to understand the behaviour of the two-phase flow through the gas-lift pump and be able to optimize the pump design for the best operational condition of the LMMHD system. In addition, the data were compared to a 1-D drift flux model that predicted the performance of the pump within the loop. The numerical results were found to be in an agreement with the experiments within ±25% which is considered adequate for optimization and design purposes of a two-phase flow system. The dual injection design was evaluated, and the axial injection mode was found to be more efficient in providing the required pumping than radial mode. Moreover, the flow visualization of the two-phase flow patterns seen in the pump riser was captured both experimentally and numerically indicating a swirl-like motion that can potentially be used to enhance heat transfer in the actual operational setting. Also, the optimum condition for pumping was found to occur at a slug-like flow structure in the riser.

Two cases of Klebsiella ozaenaesepticemia from the National Hansen's Disease Center, Carville, La., are discussed: one fatal and one nonfatal. Although both patients had nasal complications of Hansen's disease (leprosy), the organism was grown initially from spinal fluid, blood, and wound cultures. This report confirms the potential pathogenicity of the K. ozaenaespecies and its widening disease spectrum.