Innovation strategies for defence: the successful case of Defence Medical Services

Over the past 20 years, the Defence Medical Services (DMS, the umbrella organisation for medical provision within the British armed forces) has been innovating consistently and at pace within the Ministry of Defence. The result of this sustained effort has led to progressive improvement in the outcomes of the critically injured. Separately, it has also led to global transformational innovation in support of the response to the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone. Through planned and orchestrated interventions across the entire organisation, from leadership to technology, medical practices to training and organisational design, the DMS can legitimately claim to have achieved a ‘Revolution in Military Medical Affairs’. Matthew Ford, Timothy Hodgetts and David Williams examine the innovation lifecycle within the DMS as it defines its response to the challenges of the changing character of conflict and consider the way defence medicine is an example to the wider military

Hyper-Rayleigh scattering in centrosymmetric systems

Hyper-Rayleigh scattering (HRS) is an incoherent mechanism for optical second harmonic generation. The frequency-doubled light that emerges from this mechanism is not emitted in a laser-like manner, in the forward direction; it is scattered in all directions. The underlying theory for this effect involves terms that are quadratic in the incident field and involves an even-order optical susceptibility (for a molecule, its associated hyperpolarizability). In consequence, HRS is often regarded as formally forbidden in centrosymmetric media. However, for the fundamental three-photon interaction, theory based on the standard electric dipole approximation, representable as E13, does not account for all experimental observations. The relevant results emerge upon extending the theory to include E12M1 and E12E2 contributions, incorporating one magnetic dipolar or electric quadrupolar interaction, respectively, to a consistent level of multipolar expansion. Both additional interactions require the deployment of higher orders in the multipole expansion, with the E12E2 interaction analogous in rank and parity to a four-wave susceptibility. To elicit the correct form of response from fluid or disordered media invites a tensor representation which does not oversimplify the molecular components, yet which can produce results to facilitate the interpretation of experimental observations. The detailed derivation in this work leads to results which are summarized for the following: perpendicular detection of polarization components both parallel and perpendicular to the pump radiation, leading to distinct polarization ratio results, as well as a reversal ratio for forward scattered circular polarizations. The results provide a route to handling data with direct physical interpretation, to enable the more sophisticated design of molecules with sought nonlinear optical properties

Activation of myocardial cAMP-dependent protein kinase by lysoplasmenylcholine

AbstractPlasmalogen-specific, calcium-independent phospholipase A2 (iPLA2) is activated during myocardial ischemia. Accordingly, we have assessed the activation of myocardial protein kinases by the iPLA2 product, lysoplasmenylcholine. Lysoplasmenylcholine-activated protein kinase activity from heart cytosol fractionated on a DE-52 column was identified as cAMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA) based on the following: (1) protein kinase activity stimulated by cAMP and lysoplasmenylcholine co-eluted on sequential chromatographic steps; (2) lysoplasmenylcholine-activated protein kinase activity was inhibited by the PKA inhibitor, PKI; and (3) the unprimed PKA form generated from the primed form of PKA was activated by cAMP and lysoplasmenylcholine. These results demonstrate a novel mechanism for PKA activation by lysoplasmenylcholine

Analysis of gas chromatography/mass spectrometry data for catalytic lignin depolymerization using positive matrix factorization

Various catalytic technologies are being developed to efficiently convert lignin into renewable chemicals. However, due to its complexity, catalytic lignin depolymerization often generates a wide and complex distribution of product compounds. Gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC-MS) is a common analytical technique to profile the compounds that comprise lignin depolymerization products. GC-MS is applied not only to determine the product composition, but also to develop an understanding of the catalytic reaction pathways and of the relationships among catalyst structure, reaction conditions, and the resulting compounds generated. Although a very useful tool, the analysis of lignin depolymerization products with GC-MS is limited by the quality and scope of the available mass spectral libraries and the ability to correlate changes in GC-MS chromatograms to changes in lignin structure, catalyst structure, and other reaction conditions. In this study, the GC-MS data of the depolymerization products generated from organosolv hybrid poplar lignin using a copper-doped porous metal oxide catalyst and a methanol/dimethyl carbonate co-solvent was analyzed by applying a factor analysis technique, positive matrix factorization (PMF). Several different solutions for the PMF model were explored. A 13-factor solution sufficiently explains the chemical changes occurring to lignin depolymerization products as a function of lignin, reaction time, catalyst, and solvent. Overall, seven factors were found to represent aromatic compounds, while one factor was defined by aliphatic compounds

Comparing and Explaining Public Acceptance Of Ecological Forestry in Tasmania and the U.S. Pacific Northwest

Major controversies have erupted in recent years about extensive and intensive timber harvesting programs in Tasmania and the U.S. Pacific Northwest. These conflicts have centered on ecological impacts and both regions have responded by adopting similar programs of “ecological forestry.” Both programs emphasize the retention of varying amounts of trees in aggregated or dispersed patterns within harvests, and seek to “life boat” mature-forest habitat functions across some harvest prescriptions. Are these programs garnering similar public acceptance? Do people with similar ideologies judge the acceptability of forests similarly in both regions? Do perceptions differ between regions due to differences in ecological, cultural or economic conditions? Similar public perception surveys within each region investigated the acceptance of harvest prescriptions that matched closely between regions. In both surveys, images of the appearance of harvests were presented to respondents with expert-derived information about the magnitude of similar ecological, safety and economic impacts. Respondents rated the acceptability of each prescription. Respondents’ environmental attitudes were classified as forest protectionist, productionist or non-aligned within each region. Statistical and graphical analyses compared the patterns and sources of comparable acceptability judgments between the regions.

Results/Conclusions
Ideologically similar samples of respondents in both regions exhibited comparable patterns of increasing mean acceptability ratings with increasing tree retention levels for all harvest prescriptions, except 30-40% dispersed retention harvests. These comparable respondent samples also exhibited similar correlations between acceptability ratings and levels of harvest impacts by category, exhibiting the same associations between ideologies and preferred impacts across regions. Three exceptions showed that Tasmanians exhibited a greater range of sensitivity for certain impact categories: (1) ground habitat impacts, likely attributable to greater retention of down wood in all Pacific Northwest prescriptions, versus burning most down wood in some Tasmanian prescriptions for regeneration of commercial species; (2) logger safety, likely attributable to greater differences in actual safety levels across the Tasmanian prescriptions; and (3) wildfire risk, likely because the affected Pacific Northwest region has few historical wildfires. Utility functions were estimated for each region’s respondents and applied to the opposite region’s forests. This confirmed that both regions’ respondents would agree about the lower acceptability of Tasmanian 30-40% dispersed retention harvests, likely because Tasmanians retain only a percent of commercial species while felling all other trees, versus Americans’ retention of a percent of all tree types, retaining more trees and more ecosystem components

The role of error processing in the contextual interference effect during the training of perceptual-cognitive skills

The contextual interference (CI) effect refers to the learning benefits that occur from a random compared to blocked practice order. In this paper, the cognitive effort explanation for the CI effect was examined by investigating the role of error processing. In two experiments, a perceptual-cognitive task was used in which participants anticipated three different tennis skills across a pre-test, three practice sessions, and retention test. During practice, the skills were presented in either a random or blocked practice order. In Experiment 1, cognitive effort was examined using a probe reaction time task. In Experiment 2, cognitive effort was manipulated for two groups by inserting a cognitively demanding secondary task into the inter-trial interval. The CI effect was found in both experiments as the random groups displayed superior learning in the retention test compared to the blocked groups. Cognitive effort during practice was greater in random compared to blocked practice groups in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, greater decrements in secondary task performance following an error were reported for the random group when compared to the blocked group. The suggestion is that not only the frequent switching of tasks in randomized orders causes increased cognitive effort and the CI effect, but it is also error processing in combination with task switching. Findings extend the cognitive effort explanation for the CI effect and propose an alternative hypothesis highlighting the role of error processing

The Effects of High- and Low-Anxiety Training on the Anticipation Judgments of Elite Performers

We examined the effects of high- versus low-anxiety conditions during video-based training of anticipation judgments using international-level badminton players facing serves and the transfer to high-anxiety and field-based conditions. Players were assigned to a high-anxiety training (HA), low-anxiety training (LA) or control group (CON) in a pretraining–posttest design. In the pre- and posttest, players anticipated serves from video and on court under high- and low-anxiety conditions. In the video-based high-anxiety pretest, anticipation response accuracy was lower and final fixations shorter when compared with the low-anxiety pretest. In the low-anxiety posttest, HA and LA demonstrated greater accuracy of judgments and longer final fixations compared with pretest and CON. In the high-anxiety posttest, HA maintained accuracy when compared with the low-anxiety posttest, whereas LA had lower accuracy. In the on-court posttest, the training groups demonstrated greater accuracy of judgments compared with the pretest and CON

The coupling between gaze behavior and opponent kinematics during anticipation of badminton shots

Purpose: We examined links between the kinematics of an opponent’s actions and the visual search behaviors of badminton players responding to those actions. Method: A kinematic analysis of international standard badminton players (n = 4) was undertaken as they completed a range of serves. Video of these players serving was used to create a life-size temporal occlusion test to measure anticipation responses. Expert (n = 8) and novice (n = 8) badminton players anticipated serve location while wearing an eye movement registration system. Results: During the execution phase of the opponent’s movement, the kinematic analysis showed between-shot differences in distance traveled and peak acceleration at the shoulder, elbow, wrist and racket. Experts were more accurate at responding to the serves compared to novice players. Expert players fixated on the kinematic locations that were most discriminating between serve types more frequently and for a longer duration compared to novice players. Moreover, players were generally more accurate at responding to serves when they fixated vision upon the discriminating arm and racket kinematics. Conclusions: Findings extend previous literature by providing empirical evidence that expert athletes’ visual search behaviors