Successful kinetic impact into an asteroid for planetary defence.

Although no known asteroid poses a threat to Earth for at least the next century, the catalogue of near-Earth asteroids is incomplete for objects whose impacts would produce regional devastation. Several approaches have been proposed to potentially prevent an asteroid impact with Earth by deflecting or disrupting an asteroid. A test of kinetic impact technology was identified as the highest-priority space mission related to asteroid mitigation.

Narrow microtunnel technology for the isolation and precise identification of axonal communication among distinct hippocampal subregion networks.

Communication between different sub regions of the hippocampus is fundamental to learning and memory. However accurate knowledge about information transfer between sub regions from access to the activity in individual axons is lacking. MEMS devices with microtunnels connecting two sub networks have begun to approach this problem but the commonly used 10 μm wide tunnels frequently measure signals from multiple axons.

The internal markets of the British National Health Service: prospects and problems.

Since the creation of the British National Health Service in 1948, it has provided a full range of medical services free at the point of demand. By the mid 1980s, the National Health Service was perceived as suffering from a chronic crisis of an increasingly limited supply of medical resources but unlimited demand. The response of the Conservative government was to attempt to increase efficiency by introducing competitive dynamics with the creation of an internal market within the National Health Service.