Prehospital Staffing and Road Traffic Accidents: Physician Versus Trained Nonphysician Responders

Road traffic deaths, which affect people in their productive years, are projected to be the third leading cause of death by the year 2030. While most studies have focused on road infrastructure and vehicle safety, this study examined something new: the impact of prehospital response to road traffic accidents on the rate of death. Some countries send physicians to the scene of an accident; some send paramedics or registered nurses. The question this research sought to answer was whether the use of physician responders resulted in a lower rate of death compared to the use of nonphysician responders. The literature makes it clear that rate of road traffic death is related to country income and governance indicators, so first those variables needed to be equalized. My conceptual framework for this cross-sectional correlation study was the Haddon matrix, which organizes injuries by temporal (pre-event, event, and postevent) and epidemiological (host, agent, and environment) factors. Using World Health Organization data on road traffic injury and country income, World Bank data on governance indicators, and a literature search of 67 countries\u27 prehospital response profiles, significant negative correlations (p \u3e 0.001) were found for road traffic deaths and income, r (65) = -0.68, and governance indicators, r (65) = -0.646. No significant difference in the rate of road traffic death was found between physician and nonphysician prehospital staffing. Because increasing countries\u27 income and improving governance are long-term, ambitious goals for developing countries, training nonphysician prehospital responders appears to be the most effective social change to decrease the burden of road traffic deaths

An Examination of Fertilizer Use Efficiency and Irrigation Management in Tennessee Agricultural Production

Understanding the effect of supplemental irrigation and timing of nitrogen availability on yield of cotton is pertinent to the success of Tennessee cotton producers. Response to irrigation and nitrogen source is likely to vary across greatly differing soil types. This research indicated the need for higher amounts of water and earlier irrigation initiation to optimize yields in coarse-textured, low water holding capacity soils. Deep silt loam soils did not respond to irrigation in two wet years. Delaying nitrogen availability via use of a polymer coated urea fertilizer generally either lowered or did not affect yield. Delaying nitrogen availability was less detrimental to yield in coarse-textured soils, but was not a superior method to supply crop nitrogen demand. Soil sampling is the foundation for addressing a field’s nutrient status and possible need for fertilization. Proper fertilization is economically and agronomically attractive, as well as environmentally responsible. To facilitate precision nutrient management, sampling methods are needed to more precisely define nutrient variability than a field average. We looked at techniques for grid sampling, delineation of management zones, and optimal intensity of cores necessary. Grid sampling is a popular method for diagnosing in-field nutrient variability, but is time consuming. We found grid-point sampling to capture more variability across a field than grid-cell sampling, agreeing with the majority of previous research. Delineation of management zones was successful in grouping nutrient variability using soil maps of varying scale and yield maps. A sampling intensity of 2-8 cores/acre was optimal

Resources and constraints in linguistic identity performance:a theory of authorship

The majority of practicing forensic linguists working on questions of authorship subscribe in some form to a theory of linguistic identity that relies on a view of language as essentially a product of sociolinguistic experiences and membership of particular identity categories. On the other hand, discourse analysts tend to adopt a social interactionist view, seeing language as a resource to be drawn on for the performance of particular identities. In order to bridge this gap we set out our theory of identity which acknowledges the importance of pioneering works such as Johnstone (1996) and Bucholtz and Hall (2004) who theorise identity as being interactionally emergent, while simultaneously allowing space for certain aspects of identity to persist across dierent interactional moments. Within the context of deceptive identity performances by undercover police ocers in online investigations against child sex abusers, we propose a model for understanding the relationship between language and identity that is neither essentialist nor radically interactionist. Such a model can support the work of the forensic linguist in their endeavours to train ocers in identity assumption tasks, and explicates a particular phenomenon we have observed in their attempts, namely identity ‘leakage’

Deceptive identity performance:Offender moves and multiple identities in online child abuse conversations

This article provides a case study of deceptive online identity performance by a convicted child sex offender. Most prior linguistic and psychological research into online sexual abuse analyses transcripts involving adult decoys posing as children. In contrast, our data comprise genuine online conversations between the offender and 20 victims. Using move analysis (Swales 1981, 1990), we explore the offender’s numerous presented personas. The offender’s use of rhetorical moves is investigated, as is the extent to which the frequency and structure of these moves contribute to and discriminate between the various online personas he adopts. We find from eight frequently adopted personas that two divergent identity positions emerge: the sexual pursuer/aggressor, performed by the majority of his online personas, and the friend/boyfriend, performed by a single persona. Analysis of the offender’s self-describing assertives suggests this distinctive persona shares most attributes with the offender’s ‘home identity’. This article importantly raises the question of whether move analysis might be useful in identifying the ‘offline persona’ in cases where offenders are known to operate multiple online personas in the pursuit of child victims

“go on cam but dnt be dirty”: linguistic levels of identity assumption in undercover online operations against child sex abusers

One way in which linguists have been able to offer their expertise to undercover online policing in England and Wales is assisting police officers in the assumption of alternative identities in order to apprehend offenders in the context of the online sexual abuse and grooming of children. With reference to the historical Instant Messaging (IM) logs of a teenage female victim in a closed case of online sexual abuse, and the IM logs of trainee undercover officers (UCOs) as they attempt to impersonate her during a training task, we report here on work that draws on analyses of online interactions to develop a linguistic model that can be used to improve performance in identity disguise. We compare trainees’ performance before and after input from linguists in order to show how analysis at a number of linguistic levels can contribute to the training and support of specialist investigators of online child sex abuse

Online grooming:moves and strategies

Using transcripts of chatroom grooming interactions, this paper explores and evaluates the usefulness of Swales’ (1981) move analysis framework in contributing to the current understanding of online grooming processes. The framework is applied to seven transcripts of grooming interactions taken from perverted-justice.com. The paper presents 14 identified rhetorical moves used in chatroom grooming and explores the broad structures that grooming conversations take by presenting these structures as colour-coded visualisations which we have termed “move maps”. It also examines how some individual linguistic features are used to realise a single move termed “Assessing and Managing Risk”. The findings suggest that move analysis can usefully contribute in two key ways: determining communicative functions associated with 'grooming language' and the visualisation of variation between grooming interactions

Non-Destructive Testing of Carbon Fiber Crank Arms

Carbon fiber components present unique challenges for detecting defects, damage, and fatigue. Nondestructive methods exist for testing and locating defects. However, most of these methods are expensive, not versatile enough for practical use on non-idealized parts, or both. Vibrothermography can be an affordable option and has shown promising results with thin rectangular panels. The goal of this senior project was to assess the feasibility of using vibrothermography to find defects in SRAM carbon fiber crank arms. Our team found vibrothermography to be a feasible method of non-destructive testing for carbon fiber crank arms, and this report discusses the development and implementation of the necessary theory, fixturing, and testing procedures

Labeless and reversible immunosensor assay based upon an electrochemical current-transient protocol

A novel labeless and reversible immunoassay based upon an electrochemical current-transient protocol is reported which offers many advantages in comparison to classical immuno-biochemical analyses in terms of simplicity, speed of response, reusability and possibility of multiple determinations. Conducting polypyrrole films containing antibodies against 1) Bovine Serum Albumin (BSA) and 2) Digoxin were deposited on the surface of platinum electrodes to produce conductive affinity matrices having clearly defined binding characteristics. The deposition process has been investigated using 125I labelled anti-digoxin to determine optimal fabrication protocols. Antibody integrity and activity, together with non-specific binding of antigen on the conducting matrix have also been investigated using tritiated digoxin to probe polypyrrole/anti-digoxin films. Amperometric responses to digoxin were recorded in flow conditions using these films, but the technique was limited in use mainly due to baseline instability. Anti-BSA - polypyrrole matrices were investigated in more detail in both flow and quiescent conditions. No observable response was found in flow conditions, however under quiescent conditions (in non-stirred batch cell), anti-BSA – polypyrrole films have been demonstrated to function as novel quantitative chronoamperometric immuno-biosensors when interrogated using a pulsed potential waveform. The behaviour of the electrodes showed that the antibody/antigen binding and/or interaction process underlying the response observed was reversible in nature, indicating that the electrodes could be used for multiple sensing protocols. Calibration profiles for BSA demonstrated linearity for a concentration range of 0-50 ppm but tended towards a plateau at higher concentrations. Factors relating to replicate sensor production, sample measurement and reproducibility are discuss