Hunger strikes: preventing harm to students.

When the health center encountered a student hunger strike, an initial search for medical information regarding fasting provided very little on which to build management decisions. The result of a more thorough evaluation of starvation literature is presented, along with survey responses from students who fasted. Starvation may produce many adverse events, including death. Yet, according to reports, acaloric fasts that include full water intake seem to be readily tolerated for 2 weeks in young, healthy adults. Our students included juice, sports drinks, and vitamins in their diets and completed their strike without major problems. Supplementation with carbohydrates and vitamins may improve the safety or comfort of a hunger striker, but clear proof of this effect does not exist.     

Set aside programmes: Using U.S. experience to evaluate U.K. proposals

The lengthy U.S. experience with cropland diversion is helpful in evaluating U.K. set aside proposals. Acreage reduction for supply control in the U.S. has never reached its promised potential. Now, a new programme is using set aside for erosion control. Despite 50 years of practice, the past and current U.S. cropland diversions suffer serious problems. Three major U.K. set aside proposals have surfaced, two aimed at supply control and one at the provision of conservation and environmental services from farmland. Each has strengths and disadvantages, but none suffer all of the problems of American programmes, at least in their proposed forms. Too much can easily be expected of set aside which in barest form is just a land use constraint. Its best role may be as an interim supply adjustment mechanism with price restraint, which also provides compensation to disadvan- taged farmers but, most importantly, secures non-market conservation and environmental services.     

Hearts Too Good to Die: Claude S. Beck's Contributions to Life-Saving

This paper explores the role of Western Reserve University cardiac surgeon Claude S. Beck in convincing the world of the merits of electric defibrillation to treat the life-threatening heart arrhythmia ventricular fibrillation. Before Beck, the method of electric defibrillation had been experimentally explored at least four times but it never caught on as a medical or first-aid life-saving technique. Beck succeeded because he synchronized three activities: he refined the technique and provided clinical applications, he built a communication infrastructure, and he formulated a vision of who should use the technique under what kind of circumstances.     

A peer supervision group: put countertransference to work.

1. As the nurse-patient relationship evolves through a series of ongoing interactions, both participants become "known" and stir in each other a range of positive and negative emotional reactions. 2. When working with severely psychologically disturbed patients, the nurse's affective and behavioral response can be valuable clues to understanding the patient's early experiences that contribute to the pattern of relatedness and to the formulation of change, enhancing therapeutic interactions. 3. The goals of the countertransference peer supervision group were to recognize unconscious countertransference reactions; unravel the origin and meaning of those countertransference reactions; and collaboratively develop therapeutic nursing interventions.     

Creating a model to measure relationships: U.S. Army strategic communication

Strategic Communication is receiving much credence for public relations planning in the U.S. Army, (Quadrennial Defense Review Report, 2010. The Office of the Chief of Public Affairs for the U.S. Army, has a Strategic Communication Division and it is home to the last vestiges of former Secretary of, Defense Donald Rumsfeld's ill-fated attempt to create such an office at the Department of Defense, (DoD) level. In 2009, Major General Mari K. Eder, deputy director of the U.S. Army Reserve, wrote of, the tragic lack of a comprehensive strategic communication focus across DoD levels, let alone at the, Army level. A “Deep Dive” Conference sponsored by the Army during the summer of 2006 focused on, measuring outcomes of its public affairs programs. In spite of the conference objectives, the Army was, not able to define strategic communication completely nor was it able to come up with adequate, operational measurement tools for measuring relationships with key publics or stakeholders within, strategic communication. It was able to produce some measurable and motivational objectives as well, as measurable process tools for media relations, but it still lacked the ability to measure quantitative or, qualitative relationships with key stakeholders.