Corrections on the Thermometer Reading in an Air Stream

A method is described for checking a correction formula, based partly on theoretical considerations, for adiabatic compression and friction in flight tests and determining the value of the constant. It is necessary to apply a threefold correction to each thermometer reading. They are a correction for adiabatic compression, friction and for time lag

Systems innovations in agriculture in the Netherlands

In recent years scientists of Wageningen UR (University & Research centre) dedicated much effort to systems innovations in agriculture and horticulture. Complex and persistent environmental problems require new approaches, new so-called proof of principles that should offer farmers and growers of the future new perspectives in a development course towards more sustainable farm management systems. And this course was – and still is - characterised by intensive cooperation with a large number of stakeholders: farmers and growers and their representatives, businesses in various links of the chain, regional organisations, service industries and knowledge institutions, societal organisations and authorities. This is because development and implementation of sustainable farming requires the development of new techniques as well as – at the same time - acquiring support for the implementation of such changes among all stakeholders. This is why communication and knowledge transfer were playing such an important role in the systems innovation programmes. This report presents the four innovation projects and their results, together with a short description of the embedding of these projects in the future explorations that have been conducted together with stakeholders

Improving the quality of palliative and terminal care in the hospital by a network of palliative care nurse champions: The study protocol of the PalTeC-H project

Background: The quality of care of patients dying in the hospital is often judged as insufficient. This article describes the protocol of a study to assess the quality of care of the dying patient and the contribution of an intervention targeted on staff nurses of inpatient wards of a large university hospital in the Netherlands. Methods/Design. We designed a controlled before and after study. The intervention is the establishment of a network for palliative care nurse champions, aiming to improve the quality of hospital end-of-life care. Assessments are performed among bereaved relatives, nurses and physicians on seven wards before and after introduction of the intervention and on 11 control wards where the intervention is not applied. We focus on care provided during the last three days of life, covered in global ratings of the quality of life in the last three days of life and the quality of dying, and various secondary endpoints of treatment and care affecting quality of life and dying. Discussion. With this study we aim to improve the understanding of and attention for patients' needs, and the quality of care in the dying phase in the hospital and measure the impact of a quality improvement intervention targeted at nurses

Dying to be born again: Mortality, immortality and the fashion model

The primary focus of this thesis is limited to the relationship between sartorial fashion and the fashion model within the world of representation. This includes the forms of fashion display and dissemination that existed prior to the establishment of the modern fashion system—fashion dolls, fashion plates and illustration and the mannequin de monde—as well as the fields where the fashion model as a modern phenomenon came into being—fashion photography and the fashion parade. While the portrait of feminine beauty and ideals in the fashion image betrays the imprint of the representation of the female body in art, pornography and the entertainment industries, this thesis argues for a reading of the fashion image and the fashion model specifically through the prism of fashion which, as a quasi-autonomous system, operates according to its own rules and has its own mode of being. Since its inception, fashion has frustrated its critics and delighted its proponents with a nonchalant rejection of the creations it had hitherto enthroned as essential. This dedication to perpetual change and the ephemeral—the ‘death-wish’ that ensures the continuation of fashion as a structure even as individual fashions are discarded—has fascinated both those who have seriously contemplated fashion and those who document the vicissitudes of fashion’s creations. For its critics, the sin fashion commits in refusing to manifest itself in a permanent form of beauty is compounded by its perceived attacks upon the body, cloaking it in a layer of artifice that distorts it into ‘unnatural’ forms. This imposition by fashion on the body made from flesh and blood is never fully realised. Rather it is only on the body in representation that fashion can begin to escape the limitations imposed upon it by the human form and give full reign to its creative impulse. In the fashion image the fundamental principles of fashion—change and artifice—are metaphorically expressed by the interplay of mortality and immortality on the body of the model which, ultimately, serves as the blank canvas where fashion is free to invent its imaginary self