Provision of trauma teams in Scotland: a national survey

<b>Background and Aims:</b> Trauma is still the leading cause of mortality in the first four decades of life. Despite multiple reports on how trauma care could be improved in the UK, treatment has been shown to be inconsistent and of poor quality. Trauma teams have been shown to have a positive effect on outcome. We aimed to determine the prevalence of trauma teams in Scotland. <b>Methods:</b> We performed a telephone survey of 24 hospitals with Emergency Departments and spoke to the senior clinician regarding provision of trauma teams. <b>Results:</b> 5 (21%) of the hospitals questioned had trauma teams. The most common reasons for not having one were: no problem with current system 8 (44%) and inability to include senior enough staff on the team 6 (24%). <b>Conclusions:</b> There are few trauma teams in Scottish acute hospitals. There was little enthusiasm for introducing them for a variety of reasons. Local evidence of benefit is likely needed before their adoption becomes widespread

Do actions occur inside the body?

The paper offers a critical examination of Jennifer Hornsby's view that actions are internal to the body. It focuses on three of Hornsby's central claims: (P) many actions are bodily movements (in a special sense of the word “movement”) (Q) all actions are tryings; and (R) all actions occur inside the body. It is argued, contra Hornsby, that we may accept (P) and (Q) without accepting also the implausible (R). Two arguments are first offered in favour of the thesis (Contrary-R): that no actions occur inside the body. Three of Hornsby's arguments in favour of R are then examined. It is argued that we need to make a distinction between the causes and the causings of bodily movements (in the ordinary sense of the word “movement”) and that actions ought to be identified with the latter rather than the former. This distinction is then used to show how Hornsby's arguments for (R) may be resisted

Conceptual Organization is Revealed by Consumer Activity Patterns

Computational models using text corpora have proved useful in understanding the nature of language and human concepts. One appeal of this work is that text, such as from newspaper articles, should reflect human behaviour and conceptual organization outside the laboratory. However, texts do not directly reflect human activity, but instead serve a communicative function and are highly curated or edited to suit an audience. Here, we apply methods devised for text to a data source that directly reflects thousands of individuals’ activity patterns. Using product co-occurrence data from nearly 1.3-m supermarket shopping baskets, we trained a topic model to learn 25 high-level concepts (or topics). These topics were found to be comprehensible and coherent by both retail experts and consumers. The topics indicated that human concepts are primarily organized around goals and interactions (e.g. tomatoes go well with vegetables in a salad), rather than their intrinsic features (e.g. defining a tomato by the fact that it has seeds and is fleshy). These results are consistent with the notion that human conceptual knowledge is tailored to support action. Individual differences in the topics sampled predicted basic demographic characteristics. Our findings suggest that human activity patterns can reveal conceptual organization and may give rise to it

Investigating current efficacies of several nematocides for use in cattle according to the fecal egg count reduction test

Utilizing small groups of naturally infected replacement heifers, fecal egg count reduction tests (FECRT) were conducted in the later months of 2007 at the University of Arkansas Savoy Research Station. Each test was 28 d in length, consisting of individual fecal nematode egg counts (EPG) and coprocultures. For the first test, the calves were ranked by beginning EPG, blocked, and randomly assigned treatment within each block. Nine to ten animals were in each treatment group. In this test, neither IVOMEC (® Merial) or IVERMECTIN (® Durvet), both delivered as an injectable at the rate of 0.2 mg of ivermectin kg-1 BW, resulted in egg count reductions of ≥ 90%. Post-treatment coprocultures relative to both products contained a mixture of Cooperia and Haemonchus spp larvae. Also in this first test, Safe-Guard (® Intervet), delivered as a suspension at the rate of 5.0 mg of fenbendazole kg-1 BW, resulted in egg count reductions of 100% (d 7 and 14) and 88-87% (d 21 and 28). Posttreatment coprocultures specific to Safe-Guard yielded only Cooperia spp larvae. In the second test, which was of follow-up treatments given immediately after the first test (animals re-sorted to treatment group), Safe-Guard at the above rate resulted in egg count reductions of 99-100% (d 7 and 14) and 54-18% (d 21 and 28). Also in the second test, Cydectin (® Fort Dodge) treatment at the rate of 0.2 mg of moxidectin kg-1 BW resulted in egg count reductions of 96-92% (d 7 to 28) and SafeGuard treatment at the rate of 10 mg of fenbendazole kg-1 BW resulted in egg count reductions of 100-88% (d 7 to 28). As was the case in the first test, post-treatment coprocultures from animals treated with Safe-Guard yielded only Cooperia spp larvae. Treatment of cattle with Cydectin resulted in coprocultures that primarily yielded Cooperia, but with a trace of Haemonchus spp larvae

Fire retardant action of mineral fillers

Endothermically decomposing mineral fillers, such as aluminium or magnesium hydroxide, magnesium carbonate, or mixed magnesium/calcium carbonates and hydroxides, such as naturally occurring mixtures of huntite and hydromagnesite are in heavy demand as sustainable, environmentally benign fire retardants. They are more difficult to deploy than the halogenated flame retardants they are replacing, as their modes of action are more complex, and are not equally effective in different polymers. In addition to their presence (at levels up to 70%), reducing the flammable content of the material, they have three quantifiable fire retardant effects: heat absorption through endothermic decomposition; increased heat capacity of the polymer residue; increased heat capacity of the gas phase through the presence of water or carbon dioxide. These three contributions have been quantified for eight of the most common fire retardant mineral fillers, and the effects on standard fire tests such as the LOI, UL 94 and cone calorimeter discussed. By quantifying these estimable contributions, more subtle effects, which they might otherwise mask, may be identified

A biomechanical model for fibril recruitment: Evaluation in tendons and arteries

Simulations of soft tissue mechanobiological behaviour are increasingly important for clinical prediction of aneurysm, tendinopathy and other disorders. Mechanical behaviour at low stretches is governed by fibril straightening, transitioning into load-bearing at recruitment stretch, resulting in a tissue stiffening effect. Previous investigations have suggested theoretical relationships between stress-stretch measurements and recruitment probability density function (PDF) but not derived these rigorously nor evaluated these experimentally. Other work has proposed image-based methods for measurement of recruitment but made use of arbitrary fibril critical straightness parameters. The aim of this work was to provide a sound theoretical basis for estimating recruitment PDF from stress-stretch measurements and to evaluate this relationship using image-based methods, clearly motivating the choice of fibril critical straightness parameter in rat tail tendon and porcine artery. Rigorous derivation showed that the recruitment PDF may be estimated from the second stretch derivative of the first Piola-Kirchoff tissue stress. Image-based fibril recruitment identified the fibril straightness parameter that maximised Pearson correlation coefficients (PCC) with estimated PDFs. Using these critical straightness parameters the new method for estimating recruitment PDF showed a PCC with image-based measures of 0.915 and 0.933 for tendons and arteries respectively. This method may be used for accurate estimation of fibril recruitment PDF in mechanobiological simulation where fibril-level mechanical parameters are important for predicting cell behaviour

Wild hummingbirds can use the geometry of a flower array

This research was supported in part by ASAB to SDH, and a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Discovery Grant to TAH.Animals use cues from their environment to orient in space and to navigate their surroundings. Geometry is a cue whose informational content may originate from the metric properties of a given environment, and its use has been demonstrated in the laboratory in nearly every species of animal tested. However, it is not clear whether geometric information, used by animals typically tested in small, rectangular boxes, is directly relevant to animals in their natural environment. Here we present the first data that confirm the use of geometric cues by a free-living animal in the wild. We trained rufous hummingbirds to visit a rectangular array of four artificial flowers, one of which was rewarded. In some trials a conspicuous landmark cued the reward. Following array translocation and rotation, we presented hummingbirds with three tests. When trained and tested with the landmark, or when trained and tested without it, hummingbirds failed to show geometric learning. However, when trained with a landmark but tested without it, hummingbirds produced the classic geometric response, showing that they had learned the geometric relationships (distance and direction) of several non-reward visual elements of the environment. While it remains that the use of geometry to relocate a reward may be an experimental artefact, it is one cue that is not confined to the laboratory.PostprintPeer reviewe

Wide Field X-Ray Telescope Mission Concept Study Results

The Wide Field X-Ray Telescope (WFXT) is an astrophysics mission concept for detecting and studying extra-galactic x-ray sources, including active galactic nuclei and clusters of galaxies, in an effort to further understand cosmic evolution and structure. This Technical Memorandum details the results of a mission concept study completed by the Advanced Concepts Office at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in 2012. The design team analyzed the mission and instrument requirements, and designed a spacecraft that enables the WFXT mission while using high heritage components. Design work included selecting components and sizing subsystems for power, avionics, guidance, navigation and control, propulsion, structures, command and data handling, communications, and thermal control