David Thompson (1770-1857)

David Thompson's cartographic achievement is still one of Canada's best-kept secrets, even though the maps of this patient and determined surveyor were the first accurate and complete representations of the country. That Thompson's work should have been ignored so long and so completely would appear to be due to the circumstances of its first reception - circumstances intimately bound up withepolitics and the fortunes of the fur trade in the early nineteenthecentury. ... Thompson was greatly impressed by Mackenzie's daring voyages beyond the Athabaska region to the Beaufort Sea and the west coast, .... Thompson also admired Vancouver's scrupulous surveys, and he resolved to chart the vast areas from Lake Winnipeg to the Pacific. ... More than ten years were to pass before Thompson arrived at the moutheof the Columbia River, in July 1811. During this time he solved the puzzle of theColumbia, which had left botheMackenzie and Fraser mystified, and charted the tortuous routes of the Pacific watershed from the source of the Columbia River to the Snake and Willamette rivers near its mouth. ... Negotiations to run the border through the Oregon Territory, explored as much by Thompson as by Lewis and Clark, prompted him to offer the information he had to the British side. As soon as he had time, he recalculated all his courses, reworked his observations, and drew new maps showing this area. A first set of maps sent to the Foreign Office in 1826 was followed by a second, covering a larger area, in 1843. They met withethe same complete indifference. Thompson then petitioned the Earl of Aberdeen, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. On the advice of Arrowsmith, Lord Aberdeen refused him all but a token remuneration. ... Historians subsequent neglect of Thompson's achievement as a surveyor and mapmaker may well originate in the combined indifference of Simpson, Arrowsmith, and Aberdeen. Official channels were closed to Thompson, bothein the fur trade and in the government, and as everyone knows, institutions and organizations write history, even that of individuals. Certainly there is irony in the fact that Thompson the narrator is more esteemed than Thompson the cartographer. ... He himself feared neglect of his life work and wrote of "the mass of scientific materials in my hands, of surveys, of astronomical observations, drawings of the countries, sketches and measurements of the Mountains &c &c &c, all soon to perish in oblivion." Fortunately, however, this "mass of scientific materials" has not perished: it is merely in eclipse, waiting in various archives for interest in Thompson to bring it to light

Nurse staffing and medication errors: Cross-sectional or longitudinal relationships?

We used autoregressive latent trajectory (ALT) modeling to examine the relationship between change in nurse staffing and change in medication errors over 6 months in 284 general medical-surgical nursing units. We also investigated the impact of select hospital and nursing unit characteristics on the baseline level and rate of change in medication errors. We found essentially no support for a nurse staffing – medication error relationship either cross-sectionally or longitudinally. Few hospital or nursing unit characteristics had significant relationships to either the baseline level or rate of change in medication errors. However, ALT modeling is a promising technique that can promote a deeper understanding of the theoretically complex relationships that may underlie the nurse staffing – medication error relationship

Epidermal growth factor potentiates renal cell death in hydronephrotic neonatal mice, but cell survival in rats

BACKGROUND: Epidermal growth factor (EGF) markedly attenuates tubular apoptosis induced by unilateral ureteral obstruction (UUO) in the neonatal rat, and reduces apoptosis induced by mechanical stretch of cultured rat tubular cells. METHODS: To investigate the role of EGF in modulating apoptosis resulting from UUO, neonatal wild type and mutant mice lacking EGF (knockout), or with diminished EGF receptor activity (waved-2 mutant) were compared to control mice for tubular apoptosis and atrophy. Rat and mouse kidneys were compared for localization of the EGF receptor. Apoptosis was also measured in cultured mouse tubular cells subjected to stretch and exposed to EGF. RESULTS: UUO reduced endogenous renal EGF expression in wild-type mice. Unlike the rat, exogenous EGF did not decrease tubular apoptosis or atrophy in the obstructed kidney, and significantly increased stretch-induced apoptosis of cultured mouse tubular cells. Tubular apoptosis was 50% lower in the obstructed kidney of EGF knockout and waved-2 mice relative to wild type and heterozygous animals. Exogenous EGF increased tubular apoptosis and doubled atrophy in the obstructed kidney of waved-2 mice. Species differences in EGF receptor localization were detected in 3-day-old kidneys. CONCLUSION: EGF acts as a survival factor in the neonatal rat, but potentiates tubular cell death in the neonatal mouse. Species differences are maintained in cultured cells, suggesting that differences in EGF receptor signaling underlie these opposing effects

Does safety climate moderate the influence of staffing adequacy and work conditions on nurse injuries?

Hospital nurses have one of the highest work-related injury rates in the United States. Yet, approaches to improving employee safety have generally focused on attempts to modify individual behavior through enforced compliance with safety rules and mandatory participation in safety training. We examined a theoretical model that investigated the impact on nurse injuries (back injuries and needlesticks) of critical structural variables (staffing adequacy, work engagement, and work conditions) and further tested whether safety climate moderated these effects. A longitudinal, non-experimental, organizational study, conducted in 281 medical-surgical units in 143 general acute care hospitals in the United States. Work engagement and work conditions were positively related to safety climate, but not directly to nurse back injuries or needlesticks. Safety climate moderated the relationship between work engagement and needlesticks, while safety climate moderated the effect of work conditions on both needlesticks and back injuries, although in unexpected ways. DISCUSSION AND IMPACT ON INDUSTRY: Our findings suggest that positive work engagement and work conditions contribute to enhanced safety climate and can reduce nurse injuries

Mapping The Marias The Interface Of Native And Scientific Cartographies

In early June 1805, as they traveled up the Missouri toward the continental divide, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark came to a fork where two rivers of apparently comparable width and force flowed together. The captains paused at this junction, unable to decide which river was the main stream of the Missouri and which was the tributary. They were determined to fulfill Thomas Jefferson\u27s instructions as exactly as possible: to explore the Missouri river, & such principal stream of it, as, by it\u27s course and communication with the waters of the Pacific ocean ... may offer the most direct & practicable water communication across this continent. 1 Punctilious to a fault, the captains interpreted this mandate narrowly: for them this order meant following the Missouri itself to its source, where a portage across the continental divide would lead to the Columbia watershed, a pattern that would mirror the upper Missouri and flow west to the sea. After nine days of reconnaissance, they decided that the river approaching them from the southwest should be declared the Missouri. Lewis named the other river Marias, and called it one of the Missouri\u27s most interesting branc[h]es. 2 The days of observation and definition at the Missouri/Marias confluence exemplify the survey work to which Lewis, Clark, and contemporary European explorers were committed. All were field agents in a larger process of scientific classification by which unknown regions of the earth were mapped and described. But as Lewis and Clark moved west across the North American continent, their contact with Native informants revealed spatial and topographical concepts at variance with their own. Native geographical knowledge was not simply sketchy, provisional information that scientific survey could confirm, correct, or supersede. HISTORIES OF THE LEWIS AND CLARK EXPEDITION Historians of the Lewis and Clark expedition have been accepting and uncritical of the captains\u27 mandate and what they achieved. In 1952 Bernard DeYoto praised expedition members as heroes because they had filled out the map and had pursued scientific objectives during two years of hardships, dangers, and adventures. Specifically, De Yo to called the Missouri/Marias decision a remarkable act of the mind [that] must be conceded a distinguished place in the history of thought. It is the basic method of science. 3 More than twenty years later, John Logan Allen contrasted Clark\u27s field surveys with earlier geographical lore gleaned from speculative cartography and sketchy native data. In Passage Through the Garden, published in 1975, Allen considers the expedition leaders to have been a pair of trained and intelligent observers [who] gathered and analyzed geographical information in what can only be described as a scientific method. Allen echoes De Yo to in calling the decision at the Marias a brilliant piece of deduction from a fuzzy set of facts [that] illustrates ... the competence and intelligence of its commanders. 4 In a complementary work published within a few years of Passage Through the Garden, Paul Russell Cutright established Lewis and Clark as pioneering naturalists who charted flora and fauna according to Linnaean categories.5 Although James P. Ronda\u27s studies of the expedition\u27s contact with Native groups have tempered earlier interpretations of the captains\u27 success, Ronda continues to see the expedition as a scientific breakthrough and Clark as mastering not only European cartographic skills but those of Native mapping.6 Gary E. Moulton\u27s recent re-edition of the expedition\u27s journals and maps praises the captains\u27 science and specifically endorses Allen\u27s account of the decision at the Marias.7 Without exception, the captains\u27 reasoning at the Missouri/Marias junction has been admired as characteristic of the expedition\u27s scientific achievement. The expedition\u27s mapping procedures are of particular interest in understanding the problem facing Lewis and Clark at the Missouri/ Marias junction. These procedures are described and judged within a geographical context clearly outlined in Passage Through the Garden. Allen suggests a progressive shift from the hearsay of Natives and traders, to speculative mapping, and finally to scientific geography: There are really three ways of knowing about areas geographically: a system of coherent knowledge based on accurate data and long acquaintance, a system of more or less coherent knowledge based on simple logical and theoretical constructions, or a system which is largely incoherent and based on desires, ambitions, long-standing myths and traditions, or pure rumor and fantasy .... The captains [Lewis and Clark] would replace conjecture and speculation, wild reasonings of theoretical and logical frameworks, with scientific observation. They would fill in many blank spaces on the maps of the Northwest with facts recorded and verified rather than guessed at or hoped for.8 Allen\u27s progression, rather confusingly presented in reverse order, is to be understood as three levels of geographical knowledge ranging from the least reliable ( desires, ambitions ... myths and traditions, ... rumor and fantasy ) to logical deduction ( more or less coherent ... theoretical constructions ) to field survey ( accurate data and long acquaintance ... scientific observation ). The captains\u27 job was to replace the first two levels, inherited from Native lore and earlier maps, with the third. This process of discovery separated Lewis and Clark from lesser men and less capable explorers. As the captains ventured beyond the lower Missouri, from an area ... actually well known into one ... less known (in a real or empirical sense), they found themselves in the frontier region of speculative cartography, faced with inadequate data and obliged to replace this reported knowledge with their own observations.

Reliability of Using a Handheld Tablet and Application to Measure Lower-Extremity Alignment Angles

CONTEXT: Landing kinematics have been identified as a risk factor for knee injury. Detecting atypical kinematics in clinical settings is important for identifying individuals at risk for these injuries

Validity and Intra-rater Reliability of 2-Dimensional Motion Analysis Using a Hand-held Tablet Compared to Traditional 3-Dimensional Motion Analysis

CONTENT: Lower extremity landing mechanics have been implicated as a contributing factor in knee pain and injury, yet cost effective and clinically accessible methods for evaluating movement mechanics are limited. The identification of valid, reliable, and readily accessible technology to assess lower extremity alignment could be an important tool for clinicians, coaches, and strength and conditioning specialists