Predicting needlestick and sharps injuries in nursing students: Development of the SNNIP scale

Aim: To develop an instrument to investigate knowledge and predictive factors of needlestick and sharps injuries (NSIs) in nursing students during clinical placements. Design: Instrument development and cross-sectional study for psychometric testing. Methods: A self-administered instrument including demographic data, injury epidemiology and predictive factors of NSIs was developed between October 2018–January 2019. Content validity was assessed by a panel of experts. The instrument's factor structure and discriminant validity were explored using principal components analysis. The STROBE guidelines were followed. Results: Evidence of content validity was found (S-CVI 0.75; I-CVI 0.50–1.00). A three-factor structure was shown by exploratory factor analysis. Of the 238 participants, 39% had been injured at least once, of which 67.3% in the second year. Higher perceptions of “personal exposure” (4.06, SD 3.78) were reported by third-year students. Higher scores for “perceived benefits” of preventive behaviours (13.6, SD 1.46) were reported by second-year students

A portable sensor system for bacterial concentration monitoring in metalworking fluids

The detection of bacterial concentrations in metalworking fluids (MWFs), oil-in-water emulsions used in the cutting industries for cooling and lubrication, is important in order to extend the product life-cycle and plan its disposal according to regulations and legislations. The standard method of measuring culturable bacterial concentration is the plate count technique (PCT) that, however, has long response times and is not suitable for automatic implementation outside a laboratory. In this paper a portable sensor system that measures the bacterial concentration in liquid and semi-liquid media exploiting impedance microbiology is presented and tested for the application of MWF microbial monitoring. A set of MWF samples, taken from metalworking plants, have been tested and good agreement has been found between the system response and that of the PCT. The proposed system allows automated bacterial concentration measurements with shorter response times than the PCT (4 to 24 h vs. 24 to 72 h) and is suitable for in-the-field MWF monitoring

MOBIE: A movie brain interactive editor

Interactive cinema will soon be a reality, following the current evolution of computer games. So far, however, interactivity is still limited, in particular because it is based on conscious operations of the viewer (e.g. through buttons, joystick, keyboards, voice, gestures). Instead, it would be desirable to adapt the movie plot to the viewers state of mind, without the need of deliberate actions, just by means of thoughts, unconscious preferences, and feelings. Such an interaction would represent an interesting alternative to traditional ways of movie watching, and an advance with respect to more mechanical types of interactivity

Numerical analysis of the gate voltage dependence of the series resistances and effective channel length in submicrometer GaAs MESFET’s

A detailed numerical analysis of the source and drain parasitic resistances and effective channel length of state-of-the-art GaAs MESFETs is presented. Two-dimensional simulations are used to evaluate different criteria (physical and electrical) for defining the device parameters of interest, as well as to study their gate voltage dependence. To this purpose a novel criterion which provides a simple procedure to determine the series resistances as a function of gate bias is proposed