D. C. Hoffman’s research while affiliated with Honolulu University and other places

Previous decompression tables for humans were based upon unsupported assumptions because the underlying processes by which dissolved gas is liberated from blood and tissue were poorly understood. Some of those assumptions are now known to be wrong, and the recent formulation of a detailed mathematical model describing bubble nucleation has made it possible to calculate diving tables from established physical principles. To evaluate this approach, a comprehensive set of air diving tables has been developed and compared with those of the U.S. and British Navies. Conventional decompressions, altitude bends, no-stop thresholds, and saturation dives are all successfully described by one setting of four global nucleation parameters, which replace the U.S. Navy's matrices of M-values. Present air diving tables show great irregularity, even within sets created by the same authors. In contrast, this new approach is remarkably self-consistent, permitting accurate interpolation and extrapolation.

A detailed investigation using light and electron microscopes is reported. The objects identified as nuclei are found in both distilled water and gelatin, and they resemble ordinary gas bubbles. Radii are on the order of 1 mu m or less and can be three orders of magnitude smaller. The number density decreases exponentially with increasing radius. A gas filling is implied by the observation that nuclei expand when the pressure decreases and contract when it rises. The occurrence of nuclear clusters and of binary or osculating nuclei suggests that stabilization is achieved via surfactant films. The monolayer thickness of these films, estimated from the thicknesses of bilayer septa, is (20 plus or minus 7) A. Many nuclei are embedded in reservoirs of surface-active material made visible by osmium-tetroxide straining. Electron microscope sections are hardened by infiltrating gelatin with epoxy. Reservoirs, encased in epoxy, form microbubble chambers in which the coalescence and bursting of nuclei can be studied during extended exposures to the electron beam.