Kitchener\u27s Volunteers

The fourth of August 1914 was a day of jubilation throughout Britain. German armies, numbering in the millions, had overrun Belgian border stations the previous day and were advancing unchecked across the frontier. As the morning progressed, a buzz of enthusiasm began to grow. News placards throughout Britain broadcast the news of the German invasion to the eager public from every street corner. Those British in the big cities were first to hear. From London to Birmingham, Manchester to Cardiff, and Edinburgh to Belfast, people gathered to hear the news. By noon, Trafalgar Square was packed end to end with Londoners. The war that Europe had been waiting for had finally arrived. Within hours thousands were gathering outside local recruiting stations. The queues consisted of men young and old, rich and poor, covering the spectrum of Britain’s class society. These men were here for many reasons but all wanted in before their chance had passed

Ergebnisse der 8jährigen Untersuchungen an der Höhlenbrüterpopulation eines Eichen-Hainbuchen-Linden-Waldes in der "Alten Göhle"" bei Freyburg/Unstrut

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Cost-utility analyses in orthopaedic surgery

BACKGROUND: The rising cost of health care has increased the need for the orthopaedic community to understand and apply economic evaluations. We critically reviewed the literature on orthopaedic cost-utility analysis to determine which subspecialty areas are represented, the cost-utility ratios that have been utilized, and the quality of the present literature. METHODS: We searched the English-language medical literature published between 1976 and 2001 for orthopaedic-related cost-utility analyses in which outcomes were reported as cost per quality-adjusted life year. Two trained reviewers independently audited each article to abstract data on the methods and reporting practices used in the study as well as the cost-utility ratios derived by the analysis. RESULTS: Our search yielded thirty-seven studies, in which 116 cost-utility ratios were presented. Eleven of the studies were investigations of treatment strategies in total joint arthroplasty. Study methods varied substantially, with only five studies (14%) including four key criteria recommended by the United States Panel on Cost-Effectiveness in Health and Medicine. According to a reader-assigned measure of study quality, cost-utility analyses in orthopaedics were of lower quality than those in other areas of medicine (p = 0.04). While the number of orthopaedic studies has increased in the last decade, the quality did not improve over time and did not differ according to subspecialty area or journal type. For the majority of the interventions that were studied, the cost-utility ratio was below the commonly used threshold of $50,000 per quality-adjusted life year for acceptable cost-effectiveness. CONCLUSIONS: Because of limitations in methodology, the current body of literature on orthopaedic cost-utility analyses has a limited ability to guide policy, but it can be useful for setting priorities and guiding research. Future research with clear and transparent reporting is needed in all subspecialty areas of orthopaedic practice

Annual proxy data from Lago Grande di Monticchio (southern Italy) between 76 and 112 ka: new chronological constraints and insights on abrupt climatic oscillations

We present new annual sedimentological proxies and sub-annual element scanner data from the Lago Grande di Monticchio (MON) sediment record for the sequence 76–112 thousand years before present (ka). They are combined with the previously published decadal to centennial resolved pollen assemblage in order to provide a comprehensive reconstruction of six major abrupt stadial spells (MON 1–6) in the central Mediterranean during the early phase of the last glaciation. These climatic oscillations are defined by intervals of thicker varves and high Ti-counts and coincide with episodes of forest depletion interpreted as Mediterranean stadial conditions (cold winter/dry summer). Our chronology, labelled as MON-2014, has been updated for the study interval by tephrochronology and repeated and more precise varve counts and is independent from ice-core and speleothem chronologies. The high-resolution Monticchio data then have been compared in detail with the Greenland ice-core δ¹⁸O record (NorthGRIP) and the northern Alps speleothem δ¹⁸O_calcite data (NALPS). Based on visual inspection of major changes in the proxy data, MON 2–6 are suggested to correlate with Greenland stadials (GS) 25–20. MON 1 (Woillard event), the first and shortest cooling spell in the Mediterranean after a long phase of stable interglacial conditions, has no counterpart in the Greenland ice core, but coincides with the lowest isotope values at the end of the gradual decrease in δ¹⁸O_ice in NorthGRIP during the second half of the Greenland interstadial (GI) 25. MON 3 is the least pronounced cold spell and shows gradual transitions, whereas its NorthGRIP counterpart GS 24 is characterized by sharp changes in the isotope records. MON 2 and MON 4 are the longest and most pronounced oscillations in the MON sediments in good agreement with their counterparts identified in the ice and spelethem records. The length of MON 4 (correlating with GS 22) supports the duration of stadial proposed by the NALPS timescales and suggests ca. 500 year longer duration than calculated by the ice-core chronologies GICC05_modelext and AICC2012. Absolute dating of the cold spells provided by the MON-2014 chronology shows good agreement among the MON-2014, the GICC05_modelext and the NALPS timescales for the period between 112 and 100 ka. In contrast, the MON-2014 varve chronology dates the oscillations MON 4 to MON 6 (92–76 ka) as ca. 3500 years older than the most likely corresponding stadials GS 22 to GS 20 by the other chronologies

Sediment imprint of the severe 2002 summer flood in the Lehnmühle reservoir, eastern Erzgebirge (Germany)

Anhand von 18 Kurzkernen aus der Talsperre Lehnmühle (Inbetriebnahme 1932) im Osterzgebirge (Deutschland) wurden mittels mikrofaziellen und hochauflösenden μ-XRF Scanning Verfahren Auswirkungen des extremen Augusthochwassers 2002 auf den Sedimenteintrag untersucht. Fast über den gesamten Talsperrenboden hinweg wurde eine für die gesamte Sedimentsequenz einmalig markante detritische Lage detektiert, welche eine Mächtigkeit von 5 mm an der Staumauer bis 33 mm nahe dem Zufluss misst. Die eingetragene Sedimentmenge dieser Lage wird auf ca. 2.400 Tonnen geschätzt, wovon etwa zwei Drittel im südlich-zentralen Teil des Beckens (ca. 32 % der Gesamtfläche) abgelagert wurden, begründet durch die Beckenmorphologie und die Lage zum Zufluss. Feine Silt- und Tonpartikel wurden dagegen vornehmlich weiter in Richtung Staumauer transportiert, forciert durch eine ständige Wasserströmung durch das Staubecken. Eine erhöhte Akkumulation von detritischem Material in einer seitlichen Bucht zeigt, dass Sedimente nicht nur durch den Hauptzufluss eingetragen wurden, sondern ebenfalls durch Oberflächenabfluss in nicht ständig wasserführenden Rinnen um die Talsperre herum. Neben der markanten Lage des Jahres 2002, wurden 22 weitere, mikroskopisch dünne detritische Lagen in den Sedimentkernen nachgewiesen, die meisten im Profundalbereich nahe der Staumauer. Eine Chronologie der detritischen Lagen wurde an drei 137Cs datierten Kernsequenzen erstellt und durch detaillierte Korrelation mittels vier lithologischer Marker auf die übrigen Kerne übertragen. Der Vergleich mit instrumentellen Abflussdaten des Hauptzuflusses zeigt, dass während der letzten drei Jahrzehnte 64 % von insgesamt 22 Hochwasserereignissen mit einem Tagesabfluss > 8 m3s-1 in die Ablagerung von detritischem Material resultierten.researc