Given that nursing is a potentially high‐stress occupation, the present study examines the effect of specific occupational stressors, coping strategies and type A behaviour on job satisfaction and mental well‐being of 475 UK senior nurses. Several stressors were identified which had a negative impact on job satisfaction. However, only stress associated with the nurse manager's workload was consistently found to be a predictor of mental health outcome measures. In addition, cognitive and behavioural coping techniques were noted.

No abstract

The first practical device for sequential photography, invented to record the transit of Venus in 1874, was later recognized as the precursor of the movie camera. At least technically much more successful than is usually thought, Janssen's 'revolver photographique' was only grudgingly tolerated by the French authorities in 1874, but it was widely adopted in modified form by the British; the story is told in the light of the holdings of the Royal Observatory Greenwich manuscripts, now in Cambridge University Library (CUL), and of the Institut de France Library (ldFL) manuscripts, Paris.After the failure of the telescopic observations of the transits of Venus of 1761 and 1769, due to the notorious 'black drop effect',I the technical advances of the late nineteenth century made it seem that photography and clockwork could solve the difficult problem of timing the contacts precisely. This belief, and the pressing need to refine the determination of the mean Sun-Earth distance, now referred to as 'the astronomical unit', explain why the numerous expeditions mounted to observe the 1874 and 1882 transits comprised what was probably the biggest international effort ever made to observe a single astronomical phenomenon.' In all the great seafaring countries, dedicated committees wrote endless reports to define the best strategies and to devise the most appropriate techniques to obtain objective and permanent records of the event. In 1874, there were at least 62 parties from ten or so countries sent to some 80 locations.' Instruments had been carefully chosen and standardized in order to make all the parties' observations comparable, at least among observers from the same country. There have been various studies published recently on the transits of Venus" and on the astronomical unit problem.' The leader of one of the French expeditions was the ruggedly individualistic and stubborn French physicist, photographer" and inventor, Jules Janssen , who planned to take to Japan, in addition to the 'official' instrumentation, extra telescopes of his own design, together with a repeating photographic device, the 'revolver photographique'. Jimena Canales has published a detailed analysis of the scientific and political context of the use of the 'revolver' by the French;' the object of this article is to describe how the principle of Janssen's instrument was applied to versions made in England and widely used by the British expeditions. It is clear that the British astronomers placed more reliance on the principle of the so-called 'Janssen-slide' or 'Janssen' than did their French counterparts.

Peter D Hingley describes the first concerted effort to observe an eclipse by photography, by the British Himalaya Expedition in Spain in 1860. Warren De La Rue and the British expedition to Spain to observe the total solar eclipse of 18 July 1860 broke new ground in many senses. Illustrations from albums held in the RAS Archives include what may be the earliest photographs of participants in an eclipse expedition, as well as outstanding images of partial and total phases of the eclipse. In addition, it is suggested that the expedition led to the first definite scientific result to be found from astrophotography and to the invention by De La Rue of what later became known as the plate measuring machine.

The problems and rewards of shipping astronomical books to libraries in developing countries are discussed, with particular reference to the author’s own experience from his base at the Royal Astronomical Society.