The Victorian soldier in Africa

'The Victorian soldier in Africa' re-examines the campaign experience of British soldiers in Africa during the period, 1874-1902 - the zenith of the Victorian imperial expansion - and does so from the perspective of the regimental soldier. Focusing on eight different encounters, the book utilises an unprecedented number of letters and diaries, written by regimental officers and other ranks, to allow soldiers to speak for themselves about their experience of colonial campaigning of the late nineteenth century. The sources demonstrate the adaptability of the British army in fighting in different climates, over demanding terrain and against a diverse array of enemies, including the Asante, Xhosa, Zulus, Egyptians, Mahdists and Boers. They also reveal soldiers' responses to army reforms of the era and the effectiveness of shifts from long-service to short-service terms of enlistment, the abolition of purchase and flogging as well as monitoring responses to the introduction of new technologies of warfare in the form of the machine gun, the smokeless rifle and the dum dum bullet. The book provides commentary on soldiers' views of commanding officers and politicians alongside assessment of war correspondents, colonial auxiliaries and African natives in their roles as bearers, allies and enemies. Overall, the book examines the relationship between how soldiers thought about and recorded their own private experiences of warfare and how this was conveyed to the wider world - to friends and family at home and to the wider newspaper-reading public. Essential reading for specialists in military history and British colonialism this book reveals new insights on imperial and racial attitudes within the army, on relations between soldiers and the media and on the production of information and knowledge and its transmission from frontline to homefront

Complexity Science Models of Financing Health and Social Security Fiscal Gaps

Many think health and Social Security markets and social insurance programs are broken because they are increasingly unaffordable for too many Americans. Bending the cost curve down has become a standard reference term for the main objective of reform proposals to slow cost increases or even reduce them. This paper presents an alternative model with preliminary results of statistical analyses of complexity science simulation models with historical data that quickly bend the GDP curve up to increase affordability. This paper looks beyond popular reform models to self-organizing complexity science models based on chemistry, physics, and biology theories to suggest sustainable, long-term financial reform proposals. The foundation of these proposals is not based on orthodox market failure economic models but rather on thermodynamics in general and the time evolution of Shannon information entropy in particular:complexity science,financing fiscal gaps, health and Social Security, & macroeconomics

The Hilltop 2-20-1970

This document created through a generous donation of Mr. Paul Cottonhttps://dh.howard.edu/hilltop_196070/1217/thumbnail.jp

A civilian perspective on ballistic trauma and gunshot injuries

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Gun violence is on the rise in some European countries, however most of the literature on gunshot injuries pertains to military weaponry and is difficult to apply to civilians, due to dissimilarities in wound contamination and wounding potential of firearms and ammunition. Gunshot injuries in civilians have more focal injury patterns and should be considered distinct entities.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A search of the National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health MEDLINE database was performed using PubMed.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Craniocerebral gunshot injuries are often lethal, especially after suicide attempts. The treatment of non space consuming haematomas and the indications for invasive pressure measurement are controversial. Civilian gunshot injuries to the torso mostly intend to kill; however for those patients who do not die at the scene and are hemodynamically stable, insertion of a chest tube is usually the only required procedure for the majority of penetrating chest injuries. In penetrating abdominal injuries there is a trend towards non-operative care, provided that the patient is hemodynamically stable. Spinal gunshots can also often be treated without operation. Gunshot injuries of the extremities are rarely life-threatening but can be associated with severe morbidity.</p> <p>With the exception of craniocerebral, bowel, articular, or severe soft tissue injury, the use of antibiotics is controversial and may depend on the surgeon's preference.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The treatment strategy for patients with gunshot injuries to the torso mostly depends on the hemodynamic status of the patient. Whereas hemodynamically unstable patients require immediate operative measures like thoracotomy or laparotomy, hemodynamically stable patients might be treated with minor surgical procedures (e.g. chest tube) or even conservatively.</p

Linear and Nonlinear Bullets of the Bogoliubov-de Gennes Excitations

We report on the focalization of Bogoliubov–de Gennes excitations of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation in the defocusing regime (Gross-Pitaevskii equation for repulsive Bose-Einstein condensates) with a spatially modulated periodic potential. Exploiting the modification of the dispersion relation induced by the modulation, we demonstrate the existence of localized structures of the Bogoliubov–de Gennes excitations, in both the linear and nonlinear regimes (linear and nonlinear “bullets”). These traveling Bogoliubov–de Gennes bullets, localized both spatially and temporally in the comoving reference frame, are robust and propagate remaining stable, without spreading or filamentation. The phenomena reported in this Letter could be observed in atomic Bose-Einstein condensates in the presence of a spatially periodic potential induced by an optical lattice.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version