Rubicon's Top Ten of 2008

[Gene_Hobbs]

This has been an interesting year of growth from the Rubicon Foundation. We managed to collect and add over 2,000 new items to the Rubicon Research Repository (RRR), we have seen the web site traffic grow from just over 3,000 unique IP addresses a month last January to over 10,000 last month, we held our first two formal fund raisers totaling a combined $US3,900.00, and we have seen a large growth in the number of people receiving The Rubicon Review.

As a few of you know, I had a laptop hard drive crash over the weekend. In working on the RRR from the server terminal this evening, I thought it might be interesting to see what papers have been downloaded the most this year. It may come as no surprise that the most searched term was decompression but what about the papers actually downloaded?

10. Eatock, BC; Nishi, RY. Procedures for Doppler Ultrasonic Monitoring of Divers for Intravascular Bubbles. Defence and Civil Institute of Environmental Medicine (DCIEM™) Technical Report DCIEM-86-C-25 RRR ID: 7899

9. DCIEM. Defence Research and Development Canada Doppler Demonstration Tapes. 1986. RRR ID: 7900

8. Richardson, D; Menduno, M; Shreeves, K. (eds.) 1996. Proceedings of Rebreather Forum 2.0. Diving Science and Technology, Santa Ana, CA. RRR ID: 7555

7. Mitchell SJ, Doolette DJ, Wachholz CJ, Vann RD (eds.). 2005. Management of Mild or Marginal Decompression Illness in Remote Locations Workshop Proceedings. Durham NC: Divers Alert Network. 240 pages. RRR ID: 5523

6. Acott, CJ. (2001) 457 Equipment incident reports. South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society Journal 31(4) RRR ID: 7743

5. Pollock NW, Uguccioni DM, Dear GdeL, eds. Diabetes and recreational diving: guidelines for the future. Proceedings of the UHMS/ DAN 2005 June 19 Workshop. Durham, NC: Divers Alert Network; 2005. RRR ID: 5538

4. Vann RD, Pollock NW and Denoble PJ. Rebreather Fatality Investigation. In: NW Pollock and JM Godfrey (Eds.) The Diving for Science…2007, Proceedings of the American Academy of Underwater Sciences (AAUS), Twenty-sixth annual Scientific Diving Symposium, University of Miami, Miami, FL. RRR ID: 6997

3. Hamilton RW, R. Dunford, M.P. Spencer, and D. Richardson. 1994. Development and validation of no-stop decompression procedures for recreational diving : the DSAT recreational dive planner. : Hamilton Research. RRR ID: 4228

2. Acott CJ. 1999. Oxygen toxicity: A brief history of oxygen in diving. South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society Journal 29(3) RRR ID: 6014

and thanks to Cambridge University Press, number one appears 100 years after it was first published:

1. Boycott AE, Damant GCC, Haldane JS. The prevention of compressed air illness. J Hyg. 1908;8:342–443. RRR ID: 7489 NOTE: Permission was granted to The Rubicon Foundation, Inc and this paper should NOT be added to your own web site. Violation of this "trust" will make it harder for us to deal with this and other publishers going forward.

The page within our main site that has had the most attention this year is the suggested reading list on In-water Recompression.

The outside web page that referred the most traffic to our site is the Wikipedia Oxygen Toxicity article (With a close second from the Wikipedia DCS article).

With the year drawing to a close quickly, we thank you for our success in 2008 and look forward to serving you in 2009.

If you have found our work helpful and interesting, we also hope that you will please consider a tax-deductable donation to support our work. The Rubicon Foundation, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and we NEED your support.

[divingdancer]

WTF????

[Prometheus]

WTF????

It's a non profit making research centre , that generates diving compression data etc. for guys on here to quote at each other.

[nickb]

WTF????

You're right though. Top Tens are no good unless preceded by 'Fluff' Freeman saying 'Greetings, pop pickers' to the sound of the Pick of the Pops theme tune* - Not 'arf!

* 'At The Sign Of The Swinging Cymbal' by Brian Fahey and his Orchestra

[Janos]

It's a non profit making research centre , that generates diving compression data etc. for guys on here to quote at each other.

Ish. Rubicon doesn't generate new data. It indexes other research papers, and tries to get permission from academic journals and libraries to publish them on the web.

Janos

[The Duck]

As Janos says Rubicon brings existing information together making it easier for those interested in this stuff to find what they want.

As a side note, I downloaded "Boycott AE, Damant GCC, Haldane JS. The prevention of compressed air illness" a little while ago. It makes very interesting reading showing a significant development point in decompression theory.

It also makes some "interesting" observations, one of my favorite is the idea of restricting the air to the divers helmet during deco (they were using Standard Dress diving suits at the time). The idea being that it would increase the level of CO2 which would increase the rate of respiration which in turn increases rate of circulation which increases the rate of off gassing. So CO2 hits all round

[Prometheus]

Ish. Rubicon doesn't generate new data. It indexes other research papers, and tries to get permission from academic journals and libraries to publish them on the web.

Janos

I didn't say new.

[Janos]

I didn't say new.

Sorry. That's how I understood your post. Rereading it I can see how you might have meant it another way. But that's the trouble with t'interweb!

Janos

[divingdancer]

Ta for that guys. way way to teckkie for lil' ol' me. I'll stick to warm water watching the fishies pathetic girlie diving and leave the technical stuff to others.

[Gene_Hobbs]

Ta for that guys. way way to teckkie for lil' ol' me. I'll stick to warm water watching the fishies pathetic girlie diving and leave the technical stuff to others.

Just to clarify a little on the collection holdings, we have tried hard to include documents that will cover the interests of divers from basic divers up through diving researchers. This was actually our major motivation in adding the South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society Journal. The current and past editors of the journal have made this very diver friendly while still covering complex medical topics. We also created a "suggested reading list" to assist divers in finding some of the more interesting or relative literature in the collection.

We have a lot more to go in trying to add to each of our collections but we are trying to be as well rounded as possible. Thanks to everyone for your support!

A few papers that recreational divers have sent us feedback on are below:

History:

Edmonds, C; Lowry, C; Pennefather, J. (1975) History of diving. South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society Journal 5(2) RRR ID: 5894 NOTE: Reprinted from 'Diving and Subaquatic Medicine'

Acott, CJ. (1999) A brief history of diving and decompression illness. South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society Journal 29(2) RRR ID: 6004

Acott, CJ. (1999) Oxygen toxicity: A brief history of oxygen in diving. South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society Journal 29(3) RRR ID: 6014

Stillson, GD. (1915) Report in Deep Diving Tests. US Bureau of Construction and Repair, Navy Department. RRR ID: 6527

History: diving physical laws, principles, and equations thread

Equipment:

Acott, CJ. (2001) 457 Equipment incident reports. South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society Journal 31(4) RRR ID: 7743

Elliott, D. (1997) Rebreathers: An introduction. South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society Journal 27(1) RRR ID: 6037

Acott, CJ. (1995) A pre-dive check; An evaluation of a safety procedure in recreational diving: Part 1. South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society Journal 25(2) RRR ID: 6411

The recent "Computers, Gas Switching, and more..." thread

Physical Fitness:

Physical Fitness of Scientific Divers: Standards and Shortcomings. thread

Physiology:

Elliott, D. (1998) Decompression theory in thirty minutes. South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society Journal 28(4) RRR ID: 5962

Edmonds, C; Lowry, C; Pennefather, J. (1975) Decompression Sickness. South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society Journal 5(3) RRR ID: 5904 NOTE: Reprinted from 'Diving and Subaquatic Medicine'

Moon, RE. (2000) The natural progression of decompression illness and development of recompression procedures. South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society Journal 30(1) RRR ID: 5836