History of Leadership through Education and Innovation in the Ambulance Service in Britain

Purpose: This paper tracks the hitherto poorly documented history of the ambulance service in Britain from early military history to the present day identifying the leaders who motivated change and through education and innovation provided significant developments in pre-hospital patient care. Methodology: Desk research and interpretation of social and medical issues raised.Findings: The ambulance service developed from an early military need through a period when monks offered care to the local population. Followed by philanthropists and local doctors adapting and funding practices developed elsewhere, to independent hospitals run by doctors offering inbound transport. Subsequently, political pressure forced local authorities to offer pre-hospital care and transportation to hospitals for the sick and injured. The war years saw a military concentration on pre-hospital care followed by the integration of the ambulance service into the newly formed National Health Service (NHS). The profession of the paramedic was formed, technical innovation in communication, transportation, and on-scene patient care encouraged standardization of service. The ambulance service is an integral part of the NHS providing essential pre-hospital medical care.Originality: A description of the social history of the ambulance service in Britain defining the context, role of education in the motivation for leadership and innovation

Visual behaviour in the newborn baby

The corneal reflection technique, used, both with adults and newborn babies, was investigated. Previous researchers have assumed that the centre of the pupil represents the line of sight. It is shown, both experimentally and t theoretically, that this assumption is mistaken, and that optical divergence of the eyes does not imply an inability by newborn babies to fixate binocularly. Binocular fixation by the newborn was demonstrated, both to stimuli presented at different distances from the eyes, and to different types of stimuli. Although instances were found in which newborns were not converging, it is concluded that normal newborn babies have the ability to fixate binocularly, and that they, will demonstrate his ability when an appropriate stimulus is presented

Orientation Effects in the Development of Linear Object Tracking in Early Infancy

Infants' oculomotor tracking develops rapidly but is poorer when there are horizontal and vertical movement components. Additionally, persistence of objects moving through occlusion emerges at 4 months but initially is absent for objects moving obliquely. In two experiments we recorded eye movements of 32 4-month-old and 32 6-month-old infants (mainly Caucasian-White) tracking horizontal, vertical, and oblique trajectories. Infants tracked oblique trajectories less accurately, but six-month-olds tracked more accurately, such that they tracked oblique trajectories as accurately as 4-month-olds tracked horizontal and vertical trajectories. Similar results emerged when the object was temporarily occluded. Thus, 4-month-olds’ tracking of oblique trajectories may be insufficient to support object persistence, whereas 6-month-olds may track sufficiently accurately to perceive object persistence for all trajectory orientations

Changes to DPPC domain structure in the presence of carbon nanoparticles

DPPC (dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine) is a disaturated lipid capable of forming closely packed monolayers at the air–liquid interface of the lung and allows the surface tension within the alveoli to reduce to almost zero and thus prevent alveolar collapse. Carbon nanoparticles are formed in natural and man-made combustion events, including diesel engines, and are capable of reaching the alveolar epithelium during breathing. In this work, we have used Brewster angle microscopy and neutron reflectivity to study the effect of differing concentrations of carbon nanoparticles on the structure of DPPC monolayer as the monolayer is subject to compression and expansion. The results show that the inclusion of carbon nanoparticles within a DPPC monolayer affects the formation and structure of the lipid domains. The domains lose their circular structure and show a crenated structure as well as a reduction in overall size of the domains. This change in structure is also evident following expansion of the lipid monolayer, suggesting that some carbon nanoparticles may remain associated with the monolayer. This observation could have an important implication regarding the removal of nanosized airborne pollutants from the human lung

Limits of object persistence:young infants perceive continuity of vertical and horizontal trajectories, but not 45-degree oblique trajectories

Previous research indicated that 4-month-old infants perceive continuity of objects moving on horizontal trajectories but appear to have difficulty processing occlusion events involving oblique trajectories. However, because perception of continuity of vertical trajectories has not been tested, it is uncertain whether this indicates a specific deficit for oblique trajectories or a specific advantage for horizontal trajectories. We evaluated the contribution of trajectory orientation and the form of occlusion in three experiments with 144 4-month-olds. Infants perceived continuity of horizontal and vertical trajectories under all conditions presented. However, they did not perceive continuity of an oblique (45˚) trajectory under any condition. Thus 4-month-olds appear unable to process continuity of a 45˚ trajectory. In a fourth experiment with 48 6- and 8-month-old infants, we demonstrated that by 6 months infants' difficulty with oblique trajectories is overcome. We suggest that young infants’ difficulty with oblique trajectories likely relates to immature eye movement control

SWUIS-A: A Versatile, Low-Cost UV/VIS/IR Imaging System for Airborne Astronomy and Aeronomy Research

We have developed and successfully flight-tested on 14 different airborne missions the hardware and techniques for routinely conducting valuable astronomical and aeronomical observations from high-performance, two-seater military-type aircraft. The SWUIS-A (Southwest Universal Imaging System - Airborne) system consists of an image-intensified CCD camera with broad band response from the near-UV to the near IR, high-quality foreoptics, a miniaturized video recorder, an aircraft-to-camera power and telemetry interface with associated camera controls, and associated cables, filters, and other minor equipment. SWUIS-A's suite of high-quality foreoptics gives it selectable, variable focal length/variable field-of-view capabilities. The SWUIS-A camera frames at 60 Hz video rates, which is a key requirement for both jitter compensation and high time resolution (useful for occultation, lightning, and auroral studies). Broadband SWUIS-A image coadds can exceed a limiting magnitude of V = 10.5 in <1 sec with dark sky conditions. A valuable attribute of SWUIS-A airborne observations is the fact that the astronomer flies with the instrument, thereby providing Space Shuttle-like "payload specialist" capability to "close-the-loop" in real-time on the research done on each research mission. Key advantages of the small, high-performance aircraft on which we can fly SWUIS-A include significant cost savings over larger, more conventional airborne platforms, worldwide basing obviating the need for expensive, campaign-style movement of specialized large aircraft and their logistics support teams, and ultimately faster reaction times to transient events. Compared to ground-based instruments, airborne research platforms offer superior atmospheric transmission, the mobility to reach remote and often-times otherwise unreachable locations over the Earth, and virtually-guaranteed good weather for observing the sky. Compared to space-based instruments, airborne platforms typically offer substantial cost advantages and the freedom to fly along nearly any groundtrack route for transient event tracking such as occultations and eclipses

Tachyon Hair for Two-Dimensional Black Holes

Using a combination of analytical and numerical methods, we obtain a two-dimensional spacetime describing a black hole with tachyon hair. The physical ADM mass of the black hole is finite. The presence of tachyon hair increases the Hawking temperature.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures (not included), DAMTP-R93-16, IUHET 261 (Sept. 1993

Perception of object persistence:the origins of object permanence in infancy

A dominant account of object knowledge in infancy is based on the assumption that infants possess innate core knowledge of objects through which they reason about events and look longer at those that violate their expectations on the basis of this knowledge. In this paper we propose a perceptual model in which younger infants' perception of object persistence is subject to greater perceptual constraints compared with infants a few months older, and in which young infants require multiple cues to perceive object persistence across occlusion. Young infants perceive object persistence under limited conditions, and over the early months perception of persistence becomes more robust. We suggest that the same analysis may be applied to cases in which stationary objects are occluded, including tasks assessing infants' numerical competence. It is argued that these perceptual developments within the first 6 months likely underpin the later development of cognitive principles including object permanence

A highly diastereoselective chloride-mediated dynamic kinetic resolution at phosphorus on-route to a key intermediate in the synthesis of GSK2248761A

A highly diastereoselective chloride-mediated dynamic kinetic resolution at phosphorus has been developed to access a key intermediate in the synthesis of GSK2248761A. This procedure utilises a soluble chloride source and a cheap readily available chiral auxiliary. The practicality of this transformation is demonstrated on a multi-gram scale