An exposure fixation technique for skin graft in burns

The primary treatment of burns by exposure, as against that by occlusive dressings, is well established, soundly conceived in its principles and satisfactory in its results. Encouraged by reports of its successful application in the Middle East, the method was introduced into our wards at St. Luke's Hospital, Malta as early as 1952-53, and it has continued to be the standard form of treatment with us for burns of most sites and in the great majority of patients of all ages. Reference is made to a case study of a thirteen year-old male, who has been treated successfully by this technique, whereby the relative benefits are described. This technique has been used on a number of cases requiring skin grafting of both large and small extent, and have been well satisfied with the results. Skin grafts thus treated are more viable, healthier and more supple; they very quickly become indistinguishable from normal skin. No claim to priority is made for the technique described, particularly as the search of the literature has been incomplete. However, it is presented as a well tried and tested method which seeks to follow principles that have proved their worth in the treatment of burns.peer-reviewe

Surgery in Malta : yesterday, in our day and tomorrow?

The creation in 1676 by Grand Master Nicholas Cotoner of the School of Anatomy and Surgery attached to the Sacra Infermeria rates as more than a landmark ... it is a great beacon which illuminates us to this day by virtue of its survival as our University’s Medical School so that our Faculty of Medicine can proudly claim to be surpassed in seniority only by that of Theology. In this article the author treats in some detail surgical practice in Malta over the last century, after dealing briefly with a few items from the time of the Knights.peer-reviewe

The C-metric as a colliding plane wave space-time

It is explicitly shown that part of the C-metric space-time inside the black hole horizon may be interpreted as the interaction region of two colliding plane waves with aligned linear polarization, provided the rotational coordinate is replaced by a linear one. This is a one-parameter generalization of the degenerate Ferrari-Ibanez solution in which the focussing singularity is a Cauchy horizon rather than a curvature singularity.Comment: 6 pages. To appear in Classical and Quantum Gravit

An electrolytic process for ultra fine beryllium

Studies were made on the electrolysis of a molten BeCl2-NaCl bath using a mercury cathode and beryllium anode. A quasi-amalgam was obtained. The beryllium was consolidated by direct hot pressing of the amalgam at temperatures in the range of 800 C and using pressures of 5,000, 10,000 and 20,000 psi. The work confirms the ability to produce ultrafine beryllium particles by electrolysis

Solving the characteristic initial value problem for colliding plane gravitational and electromagnetic waves

A method is presented for solving the characteristic initial value problem for the collision and subsequent nonlinear interaction of plane gravitational or gravitational and electromagnetic waves in a Minkowski background. This method generalizes the monodromy transform approach to fields with nonanalytic behaviour on the characteristics inherent to waves with distinct wave fronts. The crux of the method is in a reformulation of the main nonlinear symmetry reduced field equations as linear integral equations whose solutions are determined by generalized (``dynamical'') monodromy data which evolve from data specified on the initial characteristics (the wavefronts).Comment: 4 pages, RevTe

Insurance for autonomous underwater vehicles

The background and practice of insurance for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are examined. Key topics include: relationships between clients, brokers and underwriters; contract wording to provide appropriate coverage; and actions to take when an incident occurs. Factors that affect cost of insurance are discussed, including level of autonomy, team experience and operating environment. Four case studies from industry and academia illustrate how AUV insurance has worked in practice. The paper concludes by stressing the importance of effective dialogue between client, broker and underwriter to review, assess and reduce risk to the benefit of all parties

The Nature and Location of Quantum Information

Quantum information is defined by applying the concepts of ordinary (Shannon) information theory to a quantum sample space consisting of a single framework or consistent family. A classical analogy for a spin-half particle and other arguments show that the infinite amount of information needed to specify a precise vector in its Hilbert space is not a measure of the information carried by a quantum entity with a $d$-dimensional Hilbert space; the latter is, instead, bounded by log d bits (1 bit per qubit). The two bits of information transmitted in dense coding are located not in one but in the correlation between two qubits, consistent with this bound. A quantum channel can be thought of as a "structure" or collection of frameworks, and the physical location of the information in the individual frameworks can be used to identify the location of the channel. Analysis of a quantum circuit used as a model of teleportation shows that the location of the channel depends upon which structure is employed; for ordinary teleportation it is not (contrary to Deutsch and Hayden) present in the two bits resulting from the Bell-basis measurement, but in correlations of these with a distant qubit. In neither teleportation nor dense coding does information travel backwards in time, nor is it transmitted by nonlocal (superluminal) influences. It is (tentatively) proposed that all aspects of quantum information can in principle be understood in terms of the (basically classical) behavior of information in a particular framework, along with the framework dependence of this information.Comment: Latex 29 pages, uses PSTricks for figure