Women as voluntary and professional military nurses in Great Britain, 1854-1914

After the Crimean War, civilian initiatives were largely responsible for introducing female nurses into military hospitals to supplement and supervise male orderlies. The early difficulties of the new nursing service were similar to those experienced by middle and upper-class women reformers of civilian hospitals. The first female corps was almost independent of military commandants and medical officers; 'lady superintendents' made unwelcome attempts to impose the social norms and work patterns of upper-class households. The medical officers achieved full authority over the female nurses only in 1885. Although reluctant to mobilise female nurses for colonial warfare, under pressure from civilian relief agencies army medical authorities did so after 1879. Army nurses were not prominent public figures; nevertheless, British and foreign war nursing attracted considerable civilian interest, and for some women became a symbol of their right to political participation and equal citizenship. The institution in 1883 of the first national decoration for women, the Royal Red Cross, further legitimated heroism in war as a female ambition. The Royal British Nurses' Association's attempt to form a military nursing reserve indicates that many trained nurses saw war service as conferring the public status necessary to their campaign for state registration. The manpower crisis of the Boer War 1899 - 1902 convinced officials that army hospitals required more female personnel; the success of subsequent drives to recruit trained nurses and voluntary first-alders as military reserve nurses and auxiliaries on the eve of World War I owed much to interests, enthusiasms and ambitions generated among women in the nineteenth century. The early history of British female army nursing demonstrates the influence of civilian expectations upon military institutions; developments at the turn of the century suggest that it was through military nursing that civilian women were militarised

Evaluating Ecological Restoration in Tennessee Hardwood Bottomland Forests

Hardwood bottomland ecosystems provide critical habitat for various wildlife among numerous ecosystem services. Since the 1800s, these forested wetlands have been logged and drained for agriculture. The federal government passed a series of legislative acts that protected wetlands and provided monetary support for restoration. The Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP) was established in 1990 with the goal of restoring ecological function in wetlands. Although several studies have measured plant and wildlife responses to WRP restorations, no standard protocol has been developed to monitor the state of ecological restoration at sites. Index of biotic integrity (IBI) models are commonly used to evaluate ecological function by assigning scores derived from biological characteristics measured at disturbed sites and comparing them with reference sites. Therefore, the objectives of my study were to: (1) characterize vegetation, amphibian and bird communities among 17 WRP restoration and 4 reference bottomland sites, and (2) develop IBI models for these communities to use in monitoring ecological restoration. My study was conducted across 10 counties in western Tennessee from March – August 2008, and communities were measured using standard sampling techniques. I detected 15 amphibian and 95 bird species at bottomland WRP sites, which ranged 2 – 21 years old. Anurans were common among sites, but salamanders were only detected at reference sites containing mature forests. The bird community changed predictably in response to succession, with grassland birds dominating young restoration sites and scrub-shrub and forest birds dominating older restoration and reference sites. Vegetation structure was related to site age, and a good predictor of bird community composition. Variables retained in the vegetation IBI model included density of snags, logs and overstory trees, basal area, and percent vertical cover measured using a profile board. The bird IBI model contained relative abundance of bark feeding, branch nesting, and twig nesting guilds. Presence of salamanders was the only variable in the amphibian IBI model. My results indicate that the WRP is contributing to the regional biodiversity of western Tennessee. The IBI models that I developed can be used for monitoring ecological restoration in Tennessee hardwood bottomlands; however, their applicability outside this region should be validated

How Gender Affects Perception of Safety Following Information of Sexual Assault

Abstract: The topic of sexual assault is a prevailing social issue and this study focuses on gender differences in how USD students perceive their safety when they are informed about the crime rates of sexual assault. In particular, we compared how safe men and women feel in general, as well as after reading information about sexual assault or general crime rates in a 3 (crime information: sexual assault, general, control) x 2 (participant gender: male, female) between-subjects design. Participants who were randomly assigned to read about sexual assault, for example, learned about the definitions and rates of crimes such as rape and domestic violence at USD and in San Diego in the past few years. We hypothesized that women will feel more wary of going out at night and will feel the need to be safer after reading about sexual assault information compared to men. They may also feel less safe after general crime information because of the shadow of sexual assault in which other crimes create fear because of a potential link to sexual assault. Men, on the other hand, were expected to feel less safe after reading about general crime than sexual assault. Although women may naturally be more hyper-aware of their surroundings in certain situations than men, it is important for men to understand how unsafe women feel in such situations. The results of this study will have implications for finding ways to promote safety and awareness among our community

Data compression for the microgravity experiments

Researchers present the environment and conditions under which data compression is to be performed for the microgravity experiment. Also presented are some coding techniques that would be useful for coding in this environment. It should be emphasized that researchers are currently at the beginning of this program and the toolkit mentioned is far from complete

Microbial Oxidation and Demethylation Processes in the Environmental Mercury Cycle

This project demonstrated that bacterial catalase enzymes can convert unreactive Hg(0) to highly reactive Hg(II) ion. It also demonstrated the mechanism of the organomercural lyase, a bacterial enzyme which degrades methylmercury and other organomercurials. Lastly, it demonstrated the 3-dimensional structure of this enzyme by both solution NMR and by x-ray crystallography. These structures provide insights into the catalytic mechanism of the lyase that will allow engineering of variants with improved ability to degrade methylmercury

Volume 37 Issue 2 (2006)

International audienceInitial usability testing was used to identify and fix usability concerns within a recently developed absorptive capacity assessment tool. The tool was designed to aid innovation management decision making by helping firms understand their processing of external knowledge within the context of a collaborative innovation network. Part of the recent development of the tool involved the implementation of Simos-Roy-Figueira's revised method for eliciting subjective importance weights. However, the method, as it was applied within the tool, suffered from poor usability that could not be fully addressed. This paper presents a study on the usability of the tool further by conducting additional think-aloud studies to better understand its nature. Five common attributes of usability (efficiency, effectiveness, satisfaction, learnability, and usefulness) were characterized based on the findings from the think-aloud studies in order to develop a list of recommendations for improving usability. The goal of these recommendations is to help future academic developers of decision aid tools to better consider usability in their own work to maximize the impact and dissemination of their research