Return to driving after head injury

Objectives: To determine whether patients who return to driving after head injury can be considered safe to do so and to compare the patient characteristics of those who return to driving with those who do not. Methods: In a multicentre qualitative study ten rehabilitation units collectively registered 563 adults with traumatic brain injury during a 2.5 year period. Recruitment to the study varied from immediately after hospital admission to several years post injury. Patients and their families were interviewed around three to six months following recruitment. 383 (67.5%) subjects were interviewed within one year of injury, of whom 270 (47.6%) were interviewed within 6 months of injury. Main outcome measures were the presence or absence of driving related problems reported by drivers and ex-drivers, and scores on driving related items of the Functional Independence/Functional Assessment Measure (FIM+FAM). Results: Of the 563 patients 381 were drivers before the injury and 139 had returned to driving at interview. Many current drivers reported problems with behaviour (anger, aggression, irritability) (67 (48.2%)), memory ( 89 (64%)), concentration and attention (39 (28.1%)), and vision (39 (28.1%)). Drivers reported most driving-related problems as frequently as ex-drivers, main exceptions were epilepsy and community mobility. Current drivers scored significantly higher on the FIM+FAM (i.e. more independent), than ex-drivers. The driving group had sustained less severe head injuries than ex-drivers, nevertheless 78 (56.2%) of current drivers had received a severe head injury. Few (61, 16%) previous drivers reported receiving formal advice about driving following injury. Conclusions: The existence of problems which could significantly affect driving do not prevent patients returning to driving after TBI. Patients should be assessed for both mental and physical status before returning to driving after a head injury, and systems put in place to enable clear and consistent advice to be given to patients regarding driving

Behaviour and school performance after brain injury

Primary Objective: To examine the relationship between behavioural problems and school performance following traumatic brain injury (TBI) Methods and Procedures: Subjects: 67 school-age children with TBI (35 mild, 13 moderate, 19 severe), and 14 uninjured matched controls. Parents and children were interviewed at a mean of two years post-TBI. Teachers reported on academic performance and educational needs. Children were assessed using the Vineland Adaptive Behaviour Scales (VABS) and the Weschler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-III). Main Outcomes and Results: Two-thirds of children with a TBI exhibited significant behavioural problems, significantly more than controls (p=0.02). Children with behavioural problems had a mean IQ approximately 15 points lower than those without (p=0.001, 95% CI:7 to 26.7). At school, 76%(19) of children with behavioural problems also had difficulties with schoolwork. Behavioural problems were associated with social deprivation and parental marital status (p ≤ 0.01). Conclusions: Children with TBI are at risk of developing behavioural problems which may affect school performance. Children with TBI should be screened to identify significant behavioural problems before they return to school

Global MHD simulations of stratified and turbulent protoplanetary discs. I. Model properties

We present the results of global 3-D MHD simulations of stratified and turbulent protoplanetary disc models. The aim of this work is to develop thin disc models capable of sustaining turbulence for long run times, which can be used for on-going studies of planet formation in turbulent discs. The results are obtained using two codes written in spherical coordinates: GLOBAL and NIRVANA. Both are time--explicit and use finite differences along with the Constrained Transport algorithm to evolve the equations of MHD. In the presence of a weak toroidal magnetic field, a thin protoplanetary disc in hydrostatic equilibrium is destabilised by the magnetorotational instability (MRI). When the resolution is large enough (25 vertical grid cells per scale height), the entire disc settles into a turbulent quasi steady-state after about 300 orbits. Angular momentum is transported outward such that the standard alpha parameter is roughly 4-6*10^{-3}. We find that the initial toroidal flux is expelled from the disc midplane and that the disc behaves essentially as a quasi-zero net flux disc for the remainder of the simulation. As in previous studies, the disc develops a dual structure composed of an MRI--driven turbulent core around its midplane, and a magnetised corona stable to the MRI near its surface. By varying disc parameters and boundary conditions, we show that these basic properties of the models are robust. The high resolution disc models we present in this paper achieve a quasi--steady state and sustain turbulence for hundreds of orbits. As such, they are ideally suited to the study of outstanding problems in planet formation such as disc--planet interactions and dust dynamics.Comment: 19 pages, 29 figures, accepted in Astronomy & Astrophysic

Method of erasing target material of a vidicon tube or the like Patent

Operation of vidicon tube for scanning spatial charge density patter

Postcolonial Theory

Colonialism and its aftermath prompt a form of cultural studies that seeks to address questions of identity politics and justice that are the ongoing legacy of empires. Postcolonial theory has its origins in resistance movements, principally at the local, and frequently at nonmetropolitan, levels. Among its early thinkers, three seem of special importance: Antonio Gramsci, Paulo Freire, and Frantz Fanon. Antonio Gram sci ( 1891- 193 7) was a founder of the Communist Party in Italy. In his Prison Notebooks (1971 ), he wrote insightfully about the proletariat, designated by him as subalterns; his thoughts regarding the responsibilities of public intellectuals inspired many, and his notion of hegemony and resistance proved influential. Paulo Freire ( 192 1- 97) was a Brazilian with a special interest in education. His Pedagogy of the Oppressed ( 1970) seeks to restore subjectivity to objectified, oppressed classes in society. Frantz Fanon ( 1925- 6 l) was a psychiatrist of Caribbean descent who participated in the Algerian independence movement. His two books, The Wretched of the Earth ( 1963) and Black Skin, White Masks ( 1967) inspired many anticolonial struggles and investigations of racism\u27s many manifestations

Gerard Manley Hopkins and the Christian Imagination

The role of poets is to get their anchors caught in many such monasteries, to shimmy down the entangling ropes, and then to record the marvelous resistance that caused them to stop in the first place to notice. But those in the monastery, putting in their time, must not too quickly conclude that such accidental tourists, dropped from some ethereal realm, are likely to drown if we do not distance them from the world we consider mundane. In both situations, that of the sailor and that of the abbot, the question of how we envision reality, of what our shaping paradigms may be, dominates our interpretation and response. Imagination shapes our engagement with reality. What remains opaque or simply insignificant to one individual nags someone else, fascinates or haunts, sometimes opens onto an experience of epiphany. Imagination also reshapes logic and offers a new approach to a problem that facts and reason cannot sufficiently describe. Thus, Albert Einstein was once asked to explain the theory of relativity in terms that might make it a bit more accessible to the average human being. Einstein replied: I cannot do what you request, but if you will call on me at Princeton, I will play it for you on my violin (Fischer 15). Einstein implicitly suggested a new paradigm for the reality he had been representing until then by the mathematical paradigm that so confused his listener. This calls to mind, in light of our principal focus during these days, the particular aspect of imagination that theologian David Tracy calls analogical. Analyzing our age as one of porous boundaries between various paradigms for reality, he argues strongly in favor of an ecumenism in our religious imagination, an opening up of our systematic approach to transcendent encounters

Freya Stark

Freya Madeline Stark lived for a century, and into that one hundred years she packed a life of extraordinary daring and ingenuity. Personally I would rather feel wrong with everybody else than right all by myself, she wrote in Baghdad Sketches ( enlarged edition, 193 7); I like people different, and agree with the man who said that the worst of the human race is the number of duplicates. Such a motto defines not only her approach to the world but also the character of the woman herself. She had no duplicate. The writings that resulted from her constant travels began as wonder-filled accounts of ancient storybook kingdoms of the Middle East and moved impressively toward a reflective consideration of the differences between a nomadic way of life and the stable urbanity that might have been her lot if she had decided to fit the mold of those around her. In these accounts of her own transformation she brought a growing body of readers not only into exotic locales but also to the brink of metaphysical questions about the meaning of life

Ben Okri’s Spirit Child: Abiku Migration and Postmodernity

The widespread notion of the abiku in Nigerian culture says volumes about the heartrending deaths of countless newborns throughout the region\u27s history. It also testifies to a belief in the permeability of the membrane separating the spirit world from our world. As the abiku puts it, in his family he is surrounded by people who are seeded in rich lands, who still believe in mysteries (F am 6), people who hold that one world contains glimpses of others (F am 1 0), and people who acknowledge a personal relationship with these spirits in the course of daily life. In western Nigeria, however, a mother who suspects that her newborn is one of these child-spirits must do whatever she can to persuade the baby to stay in this difficult world, rather than have it return to the spirit-world where it will be bathed in the ecstasy of an everlasting love (F am 18). Mothers will give such children names like Malomo-Do Not Go Again ; Banjoko-Sit Down And Stay With Us ; Duro oro ike-Wait And See How You Will Be Petted ; and Please Stay And Bury Me (Maclean 51, 57). Special jewelry and foods are prepared to tempt the baby to choose life, and circumcision for such young boys is frequently postponed (56)

Introduction: Unrecorded Lives

When anthropology student (and later, novelist) Amitav Ghosh set out from Oxford to Egypt in 1980 to find a suitable subject for his research, he may not have suspected the impact the trip would have on his life. He succeeded in completing the required tome for his degree and then went on to write In an Antique Land (1992), an unusually constructed book that deals with themes of historical and cultural displacement, with alienation and something we might these days, under the influence of postcolonial theory, call subaltern cosmopolitanism. Others might recognize the genre in which Ghosh is writing as one we have all tried our hand at, in one form or another: a record of discomfort in confronting the inconsistencies of another person\u27s-the other person\u27s-reality. The book is hardly recognizable as a novel; nor is it simply a historical investigation, since it blends an anthropological record with a travelogue, a diary, and speculations. Within the parameters of history, Ghosh told one interviewer, I have tried to capture a story, a narrative, without attempting to write a historical novel. You may say, as a writer, I have ventured on a technical innovation (Dhawan 1999: 24). In India in Africa, Africa in India we are attempting a parallel innovation : using what we know of the past to inform our understanding of the present Indian Ocean world; examining today\u27s imaginative interpretations of India by Africans and Africa by Indians to speculate on how, historically, these regions understood each other. Ghosh gathered evidence relating to a Jewish merchant operating in the twelfth century in Aden, and he was seeking to document, more remarkably, the merchant\u27s barely recoverable Indian slave. In the process, Ghosh learns as much about the interpretation his visit gets from the Africans he meets as he does about the merchant Ben Yiju\u27s reception in India and the role of the slave Bomma in the world of Indian Ocean commerce seven hundred or so years ago-for Ghosh was as much an object of fascination to the Egyptians as they were to him. There has been a coming and going for centuries, sometimes enforced, sometimes enthusiastically entered into, and one might have thought that this would have made for greater understanding among the various parties. But exactly the opposite was the case when the young doctoral student sat across from the aged imam in the Egyptian village and was told by him to stop doing the strange things that the villagers had heard were done by Hindus. Did his people bury their dead, or cremate them, he was asked. Was he circumcised? Did they worship cows? Is there military service for all in India, as there is in Egypt? Why did they not purify (i .e., infibulate or circumcise) their women? In fact, the imam and his villagers seemed to encourage him to remain apart from them, making sure that the young interloper did not enjoy the sense of community that they created during Ramadan. As Ghosh puts it, to belong to that immense community was a privilege they had to re-earn every year, and the effort made them doubly conscious of the value of its boundaries (A. Ghosh 1992: 76)