Root cause analysis and solution to the degradation of wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) couplers in high power fiber amplifier system.

In the evaluation a fused biconical taper 1480/1580 nm WDM's ability to handle high power cascaded Raman laser throughput (>100 W) a significant degradation in performance was observed. A systematic root cause investigation was conducted and it is experimentally confirmed that the WDM degradation was caused by an interaction between the high power 1480 nm line, an out-of-band Stokes line, and the -OH content of the glass optical fiber. Slanted fiber Bragg grating (SFBG) was introduced to filter out the 1390 nm out-of-band Stokes line in an attempt to avoid this interaction.

Epidemiology and severity of paediatric burn injuries occurring during camping and caravanning holidays.

Background: Due to its unique location, the South West England Paediatric Burns Service based in Bristol admits an interesting cohort of holiday-makers, who have sustained their burns whilst on camping and caravanning holidays.

Aim: We aimed to establish whether burns sustained during camping and caravanning holidays are more severe and require more extensive intervention compared to burns sustained in other situations.

Methods: We undertook a retrospective, observational study of admissions to the South West Paediatric Burns Service between June, and August from 2003 to 2005.