Effects of salt water on the ballistic protective performance of bullet-resistant body armour

Bullet-resistant body armour is used by law enforcement agencies and military personnel worldwide, often in inclement weather. Some fibre types used in body armour perform poorly when wet, resulting in a reduced level of protection; this is why most body armour protective elements are water-repellent treated and/or protected by a water-resistant cover. Some of the users operate in the maritime environment. The effect of salt water on body armour performance has not been previously reported. In this work the effect of soaking body armour in salt water and exposing body armour for up to 10 soaking and drying cycles in salt water was investigated. The effectiveness of the water-resistant cover was investigated by considering three cover conditions: (i) intact, (ii) cut and (iii) removed. Wet armour was heavier and provided significantly less protection from 9 mm Luger FMJ ammunition when compared to not-exposed armour irrespective of cover condition. A degradation in performance of armours exposed to soaking and drying cycles was noted, but this was similar across all regimes considered (one, three, five and ten cycles) and not as great as for wet armours

Elevated arousal at time of decision-making is not the arbiter of risk avoidance in chickens

The somatic marker hypothesis proposes that humans recall previously experienced physiological responses to aid decision-making under uncertainty. However, little is known about the mechanisms used by non-human animals to integrate risk perception with predicted gains and losses. We monitored the behaviour and physiology of chickens when the choice between a high-gain (large food quantity), high-risk (1 in 4 probability of receiving an air-puff) option (HGRAP) or a low-gain (small food quantity), no-risk (of an air-puff) (LGNAP) option. We assessed when arousal increased by considering different stages of the decision-making process (baseline, viewing, anticipation, reward periods) and investigated whether autonomic responses influenced choice outcome both immediately and in the subsequent trial. Chickens were faster to choose and their heart-rate significantly increased between the viewing and anticipation (post-decision, pre-outcome) periods when selecting the HGRAP option. This suggests that they responded physiologically to the impending risk. Additionally, arousal was greater following a HGRAP choice that resulted in an air-puff, but this did not deter chickens from subsequently choosing HGRAP. In contrast to human studies, we did not find evidence that somatic markers were activated during the viewing period, suggesting that arousal is not a good measure of avoidance in non-human animals

Ballistic protective properties of material representative of English civil war buff-coats and clothing

One type of clothing system used in the English Civil War, more common amongst cavalrymen than infantrymen, was the linen shirt, wool waistcoat and buff-coat. Ballistic testing was conducted to estimate the velocity at which 50% of 12-bore lead spherical projectiles (V50) would be expected to perforate this clothing system when mounted on gelatine (a tissue simulant used in wound ballistic studies). An estimated six-shot V50 for the clothing system was calculated as 102 m/s. The distance at which the projectile would have decelerated from the muzzle of the weapon to this velocity in free flight was triple the recognised effective range of weapons of the era suggesting that the clothing system would provide limited protection for the wearer. The estimated V50 was also compared with recorded bounce-and-roll data; this suggested that the clothing system could provide some protection to the wearer from ricochets. Finally, potential wounding behind the clothing system was investigated; the results compared favourably with seventeenth century medical writings

Alcohol affects neuronal substrates of response inhibition but not of perceptual processing of stimuli signalling a stop response

Alcohol impairs inhibitory control, including the ability to terminate an initiated action. While there is increasing knowledge about neural mechanisms involved in response inhibition, the level at which alcohol impairs such mechanisms remains poorly understood. Thirty-nine healthy social drinkers received either 0.4g/kg or 0.8g/kg of alcohol, or placebo, and performed two variants of a Visual Stop-signal task during acquisition of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data. The two task variants differed only in their instructions: in the classic variant (VSST), participants inhibited their response to a “Go-stimulus” when it was followed by a “Stop-stimulus”. In the control variant (VSST_C), participants responded to the “Go-stimulus” even if it was followed by a “Stop-stimulus”. Comparison of successful Stop-trials (Sstop)>Go, and unsuccessful Stop-trials (Ustop)>Sstop between the three beverage groups enabled the identification of alcohol effects on functional neural circuits supporting inhibitory behaviour and error processing. Alcohol impaired inhibitory control as measured by the Stop-signal reaction time, but did not affect other aspects of VSST performance, nor performance on the VSST_C. The low alcohol dose evoked changes in neural activity within prefrontal, temporal, occipital and motor cortices. The high alcohol dose evoked changes in activity in areas affected by the low dose but importantly induced changes in activity within subcortical centres including the globus pallidus and thalamus. Alcohol did not affect neural correlates of perceptual processing of infrequent cues, as revealed by conjunction analyses of VSST and VSST_C tasks. Alcohol ingestion compromises the inhibitory control of action by modulating cortical regions supporting attentional, sensorimotor and action-planning processes. At higher doses the impact of alcohol also extends to affect subcortical nodes of fronto-basal ganglia- thalamo-cortical motor circuits. In contrast, alcohol appears to have little impact on the early visual processing of infrequent perceptual cues. These observations clarify clinically-important effects of alcohol on behaviour

Особливості формування самостійної пізнавальної діяльності майбутніх учителів математики

(uk) У статті зроблено спробу розкрити особливості самостійної пізнавальної діяльності майбутніх вчителів; досліджуються різні підходи до цього поняття; розкриваються такі його складові, як самостійність, пізнавальна самостійність, пізнавальна діяльність.(ru) В статье сделана попытка раскрыть особенности самостоятельной познавательной деятельности будущих учителей; исследуются различные подходы к этому понятию; раскрываются такие его составляющие, как самостоятельность, познавательная самостоятельность, познавательная деятельность

Autism as a disorder of neural information processing: directions for research and targets for therapy

The broad variation in phenotypes and severities within autism spectrum disorders suggests the involvement of multiple predisposing factors, interacting in complex ways with normal developmental courses and gradients. Identification of these factors, and the common developmental path into which theyfeed, is hampered bythe large degrees of convergence from causal factors to altered brain development, and divergence from abnormal brain development into altered cognition and behaviour. Genetic, neurochemical, neuroimaging and behavioural findings on autism, as well as studies of normal development and of genetic syndromes that share symptoms with autism, offer hypotheses as to the nature of causal factors and their possible effects on the structure and dynamics of neural systems. Such alterations in neural properties may in turn perturb activity-dependent development, giving rise to a complex behavioural syndrome many steps removed from the root causes. Animal models based on genetic, neurochemical, neurophysiological, and behavioural manipulations offer the possibility of exploring these developmental processes in detail, as do human studies addressing endophenotypes beyond the diagnosis itself

Chronic non-specific low back pain - sub-groups or a single mechanism?

Copyright 2008 Wand and O'Connell; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Background: Low back pain is a substantial health problem and has subsequently attracted a considerable amount of research. Clinical trials evaluating the efficacy of a variety of interventions for chronic non-specific low back pain indicate limited effectiveness for most commonly applied interventions and approaches. Discussion: Many clinicians challenge the results of clinical trials as they feel that this lack of effectiveness is at odds with their clinical experience of managing patients with back pain. A common explanation for this discrepancy is the perceived heterogeneity of patients with chronic non-specific low back pain. It is felt that the effects of treatment may be diluted by the application of a single intervention to a complex, heterogeneous group with diverse treatment needs. This argument presupposes that current treatment is effective when applied to the correct patient. An alternative perspective is that the clinical trials are correct and current treatments have limited efficacy. Preoccupation with sub-grouping may stifle engagement with this view and it is important that the sub-grouping paradigm is closely examined. This paper argues that there are numerous problems with the sub-grouping approach and that it may not be an important reason for the disappointing results of clinical trials. We propose instead that current treatment may be ineffective because it has been misdirected. Recent evidence that demonstrates changes within the brain in chronic low back pain sufferers raises the possibility that persistent back pain may be a problem of cortical reorganisation and degeneration. This perspective offers interesting insights into the chronic low back pain experience and suggests alternative models of intervention. Summary: The disappointing results of clinical research are commonly explained by the failure of researchers to adequately attend to sub-grouping of the chronic non-specific low back pain population. Alternatively, current approaches may be ineffective and clinicians and researchers may need to radically rethink the nature of the problem and how it should best be managed

Future perspectives in melanoma research. Meeting report from the "Melanoma Research: a bridge Naples-USA. Naples, December 6th-7 th2010"

Progress in understanding the molecular basis of melanoma has made possible the identification of molecular targets with important implications in clinical practice. In fact, new therapeutic approaches are emerging from basic science and it will be important to implement their rapid translation into clinical practice by active clinical investigation

A Common Anterior Insula Representation of Disgust Observation, Experience and Imagination Shows Divergent Functional Connectivity Pathways

Similar brain regions are involved when we imagine, observe and execute an action. Is the same true for emotions? Here, the same subjects were scanned while they (a) experience, (b) view someone else experiencing and (c) imagine experiencing gustatory emotions (through script-driven imagery). Capitalizing on the fact that disgust is repeatedly inducible within the scanner environment, we scanned the same participants while they (a) view actors taste the content of a cup and look disgusted (b) tasted unpleasant bitter liquids to induce disgust, and (c) read and imagine scenarios involving disgust and their neutral counterparts. To reduce habituation, we inter-mixed trials of positive emotions in all three scanning experiments. We found voxels in the anterior Insula and adjacent frontal operculum to be involved in all three modalities of disgust, suggesting that simulation in the context of social perception and mental imagery of disgust share a common neural substrates. Using effective connectivity, this shared region however was found to be embedded in distinct functional circuits during the three modalities, suggesting why observing, imagining and experiencing an emotion feels so different