Exploring the importance of reflection in the control room

While currently difficult to measure or explicitly design for, evidence suggests that providing people with opportunities to reflect on experience must be recognized and valued during safety-critical work. We provide an insight into reflection as a mechanism that can help to maintain both individual and team goals. In the control room, reflection can be task-based, critical for the 'smooth' day-to-day operational performance of a socio-technical system, or can foster learning and organisational change by enabling new understandings gained from experience. In this position paper we argue that technology should be designed to support the reflective capacity of people. There are many interaction designs and artefacts that aim to support problem-solving, but very few that support self-reflection and group reflection. Traditional paradigms for safety-critical systems have focussed on ensuring the functional correctness of designs, minimising the time to complete tasks, etc. Work in the area of user experience design may be of increasing relevance when generating artefacts that aim to encourage reflection

Regional Associations

Broadly speaking, a regional arrangement in the sphere of international politics may be described as an association of states, based upon location in a given geographic area, for the safeguarding or promotion of the participants

A comparison of two methods of assessing the potential clinical importance of medication errors

BACKGROUND: A wide range of methods have been used to assess the potential clinical importance of medication errors, but it is neither clear which should be used, nor how they compare. In this paper, we compare two methods of assessment, using a dataset of errors identified in the administration of intravenous infusions in English hospitals, to inform future comparisons between studies. METHODS: We assessed each of 155 errors identified in a study of intravenous infusion administration using two commonly used methods: an adapted form of the National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention (NCC MERP) method (an ordinal scale scored by local clinicians) and the Dean and Barber method (an interval scale ranging from 0 to 10 scored by a group of experts). We compared the two sets of scores using a scatter plot and calculated Spearman’s correlation coefficient. RESULTS: Using the NCC MERP method, 137 (88%) errors were rated C (‘an error occurred but was unlikely to cause harm despite reaching the patient’), 17 (11%) rated D (‘an error occurred that would be likely to have required increased monitoring’) and 1 (1%) rated E (‘an error occurred that would be likely to have caused temporary harm’). Errors ranged from 0 to 4.75 on the Dean and Barber scale with a mean of 1.7; 138 (89%) of errors were considered minor (scores of less than 3) and 17 (11%) as moderate (scores 3–7). Scores from the two methods were significantly but weakly correlated (correlation coefficient = 0.36, p = < 0.01). CONCLUSION: Scores from the adapted NCC MERP and Dean and Barber methods are only weakly correlated in the assessment of medication administration errors. In the absence of a uniformly agreed standard method for assessing errors’ clinical importance, researchers should be aware that comparisons between studies are likely to have limitations

T2-weighted MRI defines critical compression in the distal carpal tunnel that is relieved after decompressive surgery

Introduction: Despite carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) being the most common entrapment neuropathy, its pathophysiology remains debated. Sub-synovial connective tissues (SSCT) within the carpal tunnel are thought to play a role but are poorly characterised. MRI analysis offers potentially novel insights into SSCT characteristics. Methods: A pilot study of T2-weighted MRI was performed in healthy controls (n = 7), and in CTS patients (n = 16) pre- and 6 months post-surgical decompression. Image analysis was performed to quantify SSCT cross-sectional area, SSCT signal intensity ratio, and wrist index (depth/width) at distal, middle, and proximal wrist landmarks. Results: Median SSCT signal intensity was lower in the distal carpal tunnel of CTS patients pre-operatively (0.96) compared to controls (1.13; P = 0.008) and normalised post-operatively (1.13, P = 0.001). Median wrist index was also lower in CTS patients pre-operatively (0.60) than in controls (0.67, P = 0.022), and again normalised post-operatively (0.74, P = 0.001). This was attributed to changes in carpal depth in the anteroposterior axis with decompression surgery. Conclusion: This pilot study successfully demonstrated MRI assessment of SSCT in patients with CTS. The decreased SSCT signal intensities suggest predominant changes at the distal tunnel, potentially indicating reduced SSCT perfusion pre-surgery which normalised post-surgery. Our preliminary findings merit further investigation in a larger cohort

ISO-LWS observations of IRAS16293-2422

We obtained LWS grating spectra toward IRAS 16293-2422 and the surrounding region, which covers the entire extent of the molecular outflow. The LWS spectra show that the region is relatively uncontaminated by PhotoDissociationRegion (PDR)-like emission, showing only a weak diffuse CII emission. The on-source spectrum revealed the presence of the OI(63μm) line and several lines from CO, H2O and OH molecules. In this work we derive the macroscopic quantities associated with the UV-illuminated emitting gas which surrounds IRAS16293-2422 and compare it with previous studies. We show that the molecular lines originate in a hot (~1600 K), dense (~ 3·104cm-3) and extended (~ 8·1016cm) region, that we interprete as the shock of the wind impacting obliquely with the walls of the cavity created by the wind itself. The OI(63μm) line observed by the Kuiper Airborne Observatory (KAO: Ceccarelli et al. 1997a) at ~ 1.2·1017cm west from the central source is hence interpreted as the head of the shock where the wind strikes the ambient gas. Finally we speculate that the OI(63μm) line emission seen on-source originates in the collapsing envelope that surrounds the central object(s

Spin dynamics of heterometallic Cr7M wheels (M = Mn, Zn, Ni) probed by inelastic neutron scattering

Inelastic neutron scattering has been applied to the study of the spin dynamics of Cr-based antiferromagnetic octanuclear rings where a finite total spin of the ground state is obtained by substituting one Cr(III) ion (s = 3/2) with Zn (s = 0), Mn (s = 5/2) or Ni (s = 1) di-cations. Energy and intensity measurements for several intra-multiplet and inter-multiplet magnetic excitations allow us to determine the spin wavefunctions of the investigated clusters. Effects due to the mixing of different spin multiplets have been considered. Such effects proved to be important to correctly reproduce the energy and intensity of magnetic excitations in the neutron spectra. On the contrary to what is observed for the parent homonuclear Cr8 ring, the symmetry of the first excited spin states is such that anticrossing conditions with the ground state can be realized in the presence of an external magnetic field. Heterometallic Cr7M wheels are therefore good candidates for macroscopic observations of quantum effects.Comment: 9 pages, 11 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. B, corrected typos and added references, one sentence change

Pressure-induced Miscibility Increase of CH4 in H2O: A Computational Study Using Classical Potentials

Methane and water demix under normal (ambient) pressure and temperature conditions, due to the polar nature of water and the apolar nature of methane. Recent experimental work has shown, though, that increasing the pressure to values between 1 and 2 GPa (10 to 20 kbar) leads to a marked increase of methane solubility in water, for temperatures which are well below the critical temperature for water. Here we perform molecular dynamics simulations based on classical force fields – which are well-used and have been validated at ambient conditions – for different values of pressure and temperature. We find the expected increase in miscibility for mixtures of methane and supercritical water; however our model fails to reproduce the experimentally observed increase in methane solubility at large pressures and below the critical temperature of water. This points to the need to develop more accurate force fields for methane and methane-water mixtures under pressure

James Hutton’s geological tours of Scotland : romanticism, literary strategies, and the scientific quest

This article explores a somewhat neglected part of the story of the emergence of geology as a science and discourse in the late eighteenth century – James Hutton’s posthumously published accounts of the geological tours of Scotland that he undertook in the years 1785 to 1788 in search of empirical evidence in support of his theory of the Earth and that he intended to include in the projected third volume of his Theory of the Earth of 1795. The article brings some of the assumptions and techniques of literary criticism to bear on Hutton’s scientific travel writing in order to open up new connections between geology, Romantic aesthetics and eighteenth-century travel writing about Scotland. Close analysis of Hutton’s accounts of his field trips to Glen Tilt, Galloway and Arran, supplemented by later accounts of the discoveries at Jedburgh and Siccar Point, reveals the interplay between desire, travel and the scientific quest and foregrounds the textual strategies that Hutton uses to persuade his readers that they share in the experience of geological discovery and interpretation as ‘virtual witnesses’. As well as allowing us to revisit the interrelation between scientific theory and discovery, this article concludes that Hutton was a much better writer than he has been given credit for and suggests that if these geological tours had been published in 1795 they would have made it impossible for critics to dismiss him as an armchair geologist

True mid-infrared Pr3+ absorption cross-section in a selenide-chalcogenide host-glass

The mid-infrared (MIR) spans the 3-25 m wavelength range. Rare-earth-ion doped selenide-chalcogenide glasses are being developed for direct-emission MIR fibre lasers. The true Pr3+ absorption cross-section in the 3.5-6 µm wavelength region of a Pr3+-doped (500 ppmw of Pr3+ i.e. 9.47 x 1019 Pr3+ ions cm-3) GeAsGaSe host-glass is presented, after numerically removing the underlying, extrinsic vibrational absorption due to [H-Se-] contamination of the host-glass