A surprising steric effect on a tandem cycloaddition/ring-opening reaction : rapid syntheses of difluorinated analogues of (hydroxymethyl)conduritols

Difluorinated analogues of (hydroxymethyl)conduritols can be synthesised from selected furans and a difluorinated dienophile in two reaction steps

Highly-functionalised difluorinated cyclohexane polyols via the Diels–Alder reaction : regiochemical control via the phenylsulfonyl group

A difluorinated dienophile underwent cycloaddition reactions with a range of furans to afford cycloadducts whichcould be processed regio- and stereoselectively via episulfonium ions, generated by the reaction between their alkenyl groups and phenylsulfenyl chloride. The oxabicyclic products were oxidised to the phenylsulfonyl level and ring opened via E1CB or reductive desulfonative pathways to afford, ultimately, difluorinated cyclohexene or cyclohexane polyols

Relegitimizing the medical profession: The role of opinion leaders in maintaining institutions through engaging with change

This paper seeks to address how actors from an elite social position (known herein as ‘opinion leaders’) have engaged with change, which maintains the institution and relegitimizes its role. Situated in the case of the medical profession within the English National Health Service (NHS), this paper aims to explore and explain how individuals have taken the opportunity and advantage of a particular context, time and space in the NHS ‘story’, to practise, act and work to bring about change to medical education. Its key focus considers change affecting the medical profession and medical education, within the case study of the Enhancing Engagement in Medical Leadership (EEML) project (Academy of Medical Royal Colleges and NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement, 2010). Medical education plays a key role in forming the medical profession and both can be conceived of as institutions, within a wider institutional field of the NHS. In linking to this sub theme it aims to offer some explanations as to why certain actors have the capacity and freedom to exercise agency within a particular institution or culture and explores the links between actors and institutional outcomes

Individual engagement with change in medical education: an institutional work perspective.

This paper outlines some initial findings from a study into changes in medical education aimed at providing formal management and leadership training for doctors at all career stages. It sets out some of the evolution of medical education and training in the context of a publicly-funded health service. This is framed within the context of institutional work and how institutional actors engaged with and responded to a change that impacted on the medical profession. It draws on empirical data in the form of interviews with key individual actors engaged in the change. It offers insight into how actors both engage with and resist change at the same time, which could have potentially significant implications for medical training and working with the medical profession

Involving doctors in management:Key concepts and challenges for today’s NHS

The aim of this study was to investigate the key factors that influenced the involvement of doctors in management and to see where doctors’ involvement in management could be extended. A review of the previous literature endeavoured to find out what evidence already existed to support doctors’ involvement in management, as well as to ascertain the factors that meant they did not engage in the non-clinical agenda. This drew out a number of themes, which were to form the basis of the key national and local indicators of the so-called “management agenda” that were put across to a number of senior clinicians in interview and via a survey.Adopting a Repertory Grid methodology (as devised by George Kelly) to draw out these views allowed interviewer bias to be eliminated from the study and the results indicated that doctors were supportive of further training and self development with regards to management issues. In addition, consultants revealed a desire for non-clinical managers to get a better understanding of the clinical viewpoint. The results demonstrated that there should be further national benchmarking in terms of audit in order to make it more meaningful, that respondents enjoyed multi-disciplinary team working and that they were willing to offer the organisation their views with regards to their interests and skills and the structure of the organisation

It’s in the Water: Byzantine Borderlands and the Village War

This essay examines Byzantine military manuals created between the sixth to the tenth centuries for what they can reveal about Byzantine imperial attitudes toward the landscapes of war and those who inhabit them. Of foremost concern in these sources is the maintenance of ‘security’ (Greek: asphaleia) by commanders with the necessary quality of ‘experience’ (Greek: peira). Experience meant knowing how to best exploit the land, including the villages under Byzantine authority, in the prosecution of war. Exploitation in the name of security involved destroying villages, using villages and their inhabitants in ambushes, poisoning and seizing crops, evacuating villages, and using villages for the billeting of, at times undisciplined, soldiers. Villages were thus central to a Byzantine military strategy that is identified here as the ‘village war,’ a strategy that is analogous to security strategies evident in more recent conflicts. Through the juxtaposition of premodern and modern modalities of war, this essay intends to be a pointed reminder that the village war has deep roots in imperialist thought, and that the consequences of the village war profoundly reshape the lives of those caught up in its midst, particularly the peasantry