The link between effective basic life support (BLS) and survival following cardiac arrest is well known. Nurses are often first responders at in-hospital cardiac arrests and receive annual BLS training to ensure they have the adequate skills, and student nurses are taught this in preparation for their clinical practice. However, it is clear that some nurses still lack confidence and skills to perform BLS in an emergency situation. This innovative study included 209 participants, used a mixed methods approach and examined three environments to compare confidence and skills in BLS training. The environments were non-immersive (basic skills room), immersive, (the immersive room with video technology), and the Octave (mixed reality facility).The skills were measured using a Laerdal training manikin (QCPR manikin), with data recorded on a wireless Laerdal Simpad, and the pre and post confidence levels were measured using a questionnaire.The non-immersive and the immersive room rooms were familiar environments and the students felt more comfortable and relaxed and thus more confident. The Octave offered the higher level of simulation utilizing Virtual Reality (VR) technology. Students felt less comfortable and less confident in the Octave; we assert that this was because the environment was unfamiliar. The study identified that placing students in an unfamiliar environment influences the confidence and skills associated with BLS; this could be used as a way of preparing students / nurses with the necessary emotional resilience to cope in stressful situations.

With a general decline in people's choosing to pursue science and engineering degrees there has never been a greater need to raise the awareness of lesser known fields such as acoustics. Given this context, a largescale public engagement project, the 'Aeolus project', was created to raise awareness of acoustics science through a major collaboration between an acclaimed artist and acoustics researchers. It centred on touring the large singing sculpture Aeolus during 2011/12, though the project also included an extensive outreach programme of talks, exhibitions, community workshops and resources for schools. Described here are the motivations behind the project and the artwork itself, the ways in which scientists and an artist collaborated, and the public engagement activities designed as part of the project. Evaluation results suggest that the project achieved its goal of inspiring interest in the discipline of acoustics through the exploration of an otherworldly work of art.

The most popular models to predict sound propagation in architectural spaces involve the tracing of rays, images, or beams. Most current beam-tracing methods use conical or triangular beams that may produce overlaps and holes in the predicted sound field. Hence a new method has been developed whereby the shape of reflected beams is governed by the shape of reflecting surfaces so as to produce a geometrically perfect description of the sound propagation for halls with occluding surfaces. The method also facilitates the calculation of diffuse sound propagation by managing the energy transfer from a specular model to a diffuse model. This adaptive beam-tracing method compares well with other methods in terms of speed and accuracy.

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New advances in technology have brought challenges and opportunities for education and instructional methods. Compared with traditional education, the increased use of technology-enhanced blended learning in healthcare and nursing education requires students to take more responsibility for their learning. The use of advanced technology has resulted in independent learning skills becoming increasingly important. Many studies have reported a positive correlation between independent learning and success rates in an e-learning environment. This paper focuses on the potential contribution of augmented reality, which superimposes layers of virtual content on real physical objects. The paper initially presents a narrative literature review to identify augmented reality's strengths and challenges in facilitating independent learning and highlights several potential approaches for utilizing augmented reality in nursing education. However, it also reveals a lack of studies integrating augmented reality and independent learning theories such as self-regulated learning. The paper then addresses this gap by proposing a new learning approach to support independent learning.