Adaptation to coriolis accelerations - Its transfer to the opposite direction of rotation as a function of intervening activity at zero velocity

Adaptation to coriolis acceleration by controlled head movements, and transfer as direction and stimulus mode chang

Progressive adaptation to coriolis accelerations associated with 1-rpm increments in the velocity of the slow rotation room

Human reactions to coriolis effect in rotating environment

An attempt to measure the degree of adaptation produced by differing amounts of coriolis vestibular stimulation in the slow rotation room

Degrees of adaptation acquired from coriolis stimulation and head movements in rotating room

The Swiss cheese model of safety incidents: are there holes in the metaphor?

BACKGROUND: Reason's Swiss cheese model has become the dominant paradigm for analysing medical errors and patient safety incidents. The aim of this study was to determine if the components of the model are understood in the same way by quality and safety professionals. METHODS: Survey of a volunteer sample of persons who claimed familiarity with the model, recruited at a conference on quality in health care, and on the internet through quality-related websites. The questionnaire proposed several interpretations of components of the Swiss cheese model: a) slice of cheese, b) hole, c) arrow, d) active error, e) how to make the system safer. Eleven interpretations were compatible with this author's interpretation of the model, 12 were not. RESULTS: Eighty five respondents stated that they were very or quite familiar with the model. They gave on average 15.3 (SD 2.3, range 10 to 21) "correct" answers out of 23 (66.5%) – significantly more than 11.5 "correct" answers that would expected by chance (p < 0.001). Respondents gave on average 2.4 "correct" answers regarding the slice of cheese (out of 4), 2.7 "correct" answers about holes (out of 5), 2.8 "correct" answers about the arrow (out of 4), 3.3 "correct" answers about the active error (out of 5), and 4.1 "correct" answers about improving safety (out of 5). CONCLUSION: The interpretations of specific features of the Swiss cheese model varied considerably among quality and safety professionals. Reaching consensus about concepts of patient safety requires further work

Tropical Cyclone Eline and Its Unusual Penetration and Impacts over the Southern African Mainland

February-March 2000 saw devastating floods in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. Due to the huge damage and loss of life, global media attention was extensive. Less well known is that one of the weather systems that contributed to these floods (ex-Tropical Cyclone Eline) tracked almost 2000 km across southern Africa toward the cool southeast Atlantic and led to substantial rainfall over arid to semiarid southern Namibia (over two standard deviations above average for these two months and the wettest summer since 1976). Less than 5% of southwest Indian Ocean tropical cyclones actually make landfall on the east coast of southern Africa and even fewer significantly penetrate into the interior, because of the relatively dry 1-1.5-km-high interior plateau that covers most of the region. It is argued that the precursor synoptic conditions together with large-scale circulation and SST anomalies over the Indian Ocean associated with a strengthening La Niña were highly favorable for this unusual evolution and track of Eline. A summary of the accuracy of La Réunion and Met Office forecasts of Tropical Cyclone Eline over the Indian Ocean is given. Over the mainland, almost all countries do not have any NWP capacity, and the challenges and potential solutions for improved forecasting for the region are discussed. It is argued that by keeping informed of current rainfall, vegetation, and soil moisture conditions over southern Africa, as well as evolving climate signals in the tropical oceans, local forecasters could at least be in a state of heightened alert in advance, since these factors significantly influence extreme weather event characteristics in the region

Sailing New Seas

This Newport paper presents the ideas of one of the Navy\u27s most senior leaders. Admiral Reason\u27s topic is the course the United States Navy should steer in the typhoon of change characterizing today\u27s and tomorrow\u27s world. Admiral Reason proposes a new way to think about the fleet as a whole, one that discards the industrial age model in favor of the flight deck paradigm of a high-performance organization operating at the edge of chaos.https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/usnwc-newport-papers/1013/thumbnail.jp

Evidence-Based Dialogue Maps as a research tool to evaluate the quality of school pupils’ scientific argumentation

This pilot study focuses on the potential of Evidence-based Dialogue Mapping as a participatory action research tool to investigate young teenagers’ scientific argumentation. Evidence-based Dialogue Mapping is a technique for representing graphically an argumentative dialogue through Questions, Ideas, Pros, Cons and Data. Our research objective is to better understand the usage of Compendium, a Dialogue Mapping software tool, as both (1) a learning strategy to scaffold school pupils’ argumentation and (2) as a method to investigate the quality of their argumentative essays. The participants were a science teacher-researcher, a knowledge mapping researcher and 20 pupils, 12-13 years old, in a summer science course for “gifted and talented” children in the UK. This study draws on multiple data sources: discussion forum, science teacher-researcher’s and pupils’ Dialogue Maps, pupil essays, and reflective comments about the uses of mapping for writing. Through qualitative analysis of two case studies, we examine the role of Evidence-based Dialogue Maps as a mediating tool in scientific reasoning: as conceptual bridges for linking and making knowledge intelligible; as support for the linearisation task of generating a coherent document outline; as a reflective aid to rethinking reasoning in response to teacher feedback; and as a visual language for making arguments tangible via cartographic conventions