Teddy Bear Triage and Treatment: Novel Technique of Mass Casualty Incident Education

Providing education on medical care and triage during mass casualty incidents (MCI) can be challenging. Table top exercises lack the impact of a hands-on experience necessary to emphasize the scale of a real event, while full scale events are often time and resource intensive. We present a novel method using low-cost stuffed bears to expose learners to MCI triage methodology and medical care

Trial by Google: Judicial Notice in the Information Age

This Article presents a theory of judicial notice for the information age. It argues that the ease of accessing factual data on the Internet allows judges and litigants to expand the use of judicial notice in ways that raise significant concerns about admissibility, reliability, and fair process. State and federal courts are already applying the surprisingly pliant judicial notice rules to bring websites ranging from Google Maps to Wikipedia into the courtroom, and these decisions will only increase in frequency in coming years. This rapidly emerging judicial phenomenon is notable for its ad hoc and conclusory nature—attributes that have the potential to undermine the integrity of the factfinding process. The theory proposed here, which is the first attempt to conceptualize judicial notice in the information age, remedies these potential failings by setting forth both an analytical framework for decision, as well as a process for how courts should memorialize rulings on the propriety of taking judicial notice of Internet sources to allow meaningful review

Trial by Google: Judicial Notice in the Information Age

This Article presents a theory of judicial notice for the information age. It argues that the ease of accessing factual data on the Internet allows judges and litigants to expand the use of judicial notice in ways that raise significant concerns about admissibility, reliability, and fair process. State and federal courts are already applying the surprisingly pliant judicial notice rules to bring websites ranging from Google Maps to Wikipedia into the courtroom, and these decisions will only increase in frequency in coming years. This rapidly emerging judicial phenomenon is notable for its ad hoc and conclusory nature—attributes that have the potential to undermine the integrity of the factfinding process. The theory proposed here, which is the first attempt to conceptualize judicial notice in the information age, remedies these potential failings by setting forth both an analytical framework for decision, as well as a process for how courts should memorialize rulings on the propriety of taking judicial notice of Internet sources to allow meaningful review

Cost and Perceived Value in Obtaining a Bachelor’s Degree in Aviation Professional Flight: Will Collegiate Aviation Price Themselves Out of the Market with Technologically Advanced Aircraft?

Traditional academic baccalaureate degree programs have become increasingly expensive throughout the US. For collegiate aviation students, this news is even more daunting. Students obtaining a bachelor\u27s degree in aviation with a professional flight emphasis face unique challenges in today\u27s colleges and universities not typified by a majority of 4-year degree programs. Perhaps the most distinctive challenge lays in the financial arena of cost and return on investment for a bachelor\u27s degree in professional flight. This article will examine the various barriers associated with a typical bachelor\u27s degree aviation student majoring in professional flight

Permaculture as farming practice and international grassroots network: a multidisciplinary study

Agroecology is a promising alternative to industrial agriculture, with the potential to avoid the negative social and ecological consequences of input-intensive production. Transitioning to agroecological production is, however, a complex project that requires action from all sectors of society – from producers and consumers, and from scientists and grassroots networks. Grassroots networks and movements are increasingly regarded as agents of change, with a critical role to play in agroecological transition as well as broader socio-environmental transformation. Permaculture is one such movement, with a provocative perspective on agriculture and human-environment relationships more broadly. Despite its relatively broad international distribution and high public profile, permaculture has remained relatively isolated from scientific research. This investigation helps to remedy that gap by assessing permaculture through three distinct projects. A systematic review offers a quantitative and qualitative assessment of the permaculture literature, through the lens of agroecology. This review is organized around a layered conception of permaculture as design, practice, movement, and worldview. The major points of our analysis are as follows: (1) principles and topics largely complement and even extend the agroecological literature; (2) distinctive approaches to perennial polyculture, water management, and agroecosystem configuration suggest promising avenues of inquiry; (3) discussions of practice consistently underplay the complexity, challenges, and risks that producers face in developing diversified and integrated production systems. The second project, an international web survey, with over 700 responses from over 40 countries, provides a first look at permaculture as an international grassroots network. The survey examined self-identified roles of permaculture participants and explored the relationships between those roles and socio-demographic factors race, gender, and socioeconomic status. The influence of structural factors on participant roles was examined by including multidimensional national indices of development, inequality, and ecosystem vitality, for the 45 countries in the sample. Results showed the participation of women at or above parity (53%), while participation by race showed a white supermajority (96%). Multivariate regression demonstrated that race, gender, and socioeconomic status are shaping participation in distinct ways and that each of these variables interacts with structural factors. The third project provides the first systematic investigation of the agricultural sector in permaculture, using innovative methods to gather enterprise-level data at 48 self-identified permaculture farms in the US. This project develops a preliminary typology of permaculture farms based on livelihoods, and assesses the relationship between farm diversification and labor efficiency. Multilevel modeling shows that both diversification and involvement with permaculture increase returns to labor, but may interfere with each other, and that tree crops have significantly higher returns to labor when integrated with animal production systems

Year in review 2006: Critical Care – respirology

The present article summarises and places in context original research articles from the respirology section published in Critical Care in 2006. Twenty papers were identified and were grouped by topic into those addressing acute lung injury and ventilator-induced lung injury, those examining high-frequency oscillation, those studying pulmonary physiology and mechanics, those assessing tracheostomy, and those exploring other topics

NOAA Contractor Partnership: How NOAA Uses Private Industry to Support Nautical Charting

NOAA is responsible for providing accurate nautical charts for the U.S.Exclusive Economic Zone. NOAA has designated 43,000 square nautical miles of this area as 'in critical need of modern surveys.’ Using only NOAA hydrographic survey vessels, it would take 40 years to survey just these critical areas. In an effort to more quickly reduce the backlog, NOAA turned to contracting. This article describes the NOAA process of awarding a contract. The process begins with an announcement in the Commerce Business Daily. A Source Evaluation Board then reviews the submissions and scores the firms based on qualifications- based selection procedures. At least three of the highest ranking firms are interviewed by telephone, then the Board makes the final ranking of the firms and presents recommendations to the Source Selection Official. The successful partnership between NOAA and private industry has helped increase hydrographic survey production in support of nautical charting

A Microsequenced Prolog Inference Engine

Prolog is a symbolic logic language presently emerging among numerous expert system designs. The architecture for a microsequenced Prolog machine (UPM) capable of providing the basic language features to a host computer is proposed. The Prolog machine functions are portioned into three processor components – Input/Output, Memory, and Central (CPU), where the design of the Central Processor is emphasized. Detailed discussion outlines the CPU facilities used to implement the forward-chaining and backtracking functions for the UPM. The UPM features are compared to the PLM-1, a microsequenced Prolog inference engine under development at University of California, Berkley. An emulation of the entire algorithm is provided, as well as a proposed microengine and associated microstore