Multi-Society Guideline for Reprocessing Flexible Gastrointestinal Endoscopes

Flexible gastrointestinal endoscopy is a valuable diagnostic and therapeutic tool for the care of patients with gastrointestinal and pancreaticobiliary disorders. Compliance with accepted guidelines for the reprocessing of gastrointestinal endoscopes between patients is critical to the safety and success of their use. When these guidelines are followed, pathogen transmission can be effectively prevented. Increased efforts and resources should be directed to improve compliance with these guidelines. Further research in the area of gastrointestinal endoscope reprocessing should be encouraged. The organizations that endorsed this guideline are committed to assisting the FDA and manufacturers in addressing critical infection control issues in gastrointestinal device reprocessing

SiPMs coated with TPB : coating protocol and characterization for NEXT

Silicon photomultipliers (SiPM) are the photon detectors chosen for the tracking readout in NEXT, a neutrinoless {\beta}{\beta} decay experiment which uses a high pressure gaseous xenon time projection chamber (TPC). The reconstruction of event track and topology in this gaseous detector is a key handle for background rejection. Among the commercially available sensors that can be used for tracking, SiPMs offer important advantages, mainly high gain, ruggedness, cost-effectiveness and radio-purity. Their main drawback, however, is their non sensitivity in the emission spectrum of the xenon scintillation (peak at 175 nm). This is overcome by coating these sensors with the organic wavelength shifter tetraphenyl butadienne (TPB). In this paper we describe the protocol developed for coating the SiPMs with TPB and the measurements performed for characterizing the coatings as well as the performance of the coated sensors in the UV-VUV range.Comment: Submitted to the Journal of Instrumentation on december 26th 201

Ubiquitous technologies, cultural logics and paternalism in industrial workplaces

Ubiquitous computing is a new kind of computing where devices enhance everyday artefacts and open up previously inaccessible situations for data capture. ‘Technology paternalism’ has been suggested by Spiekermann and Pallas (Poiesis & Praxis: Int J Technol Assess Ethics Sci 4(1):6–18, 2006) as a concept to gauge the social and ethical impact of these new technologies. In this article we explore this concept in the specific setting of UK road maintenance and construction. Drawing on examples from our qualitative fieldwork we suggest that cultural logics such as those reflected in paternalistic health and safety discourse are central in legitimising the introduction of ubiquitous computing technologies. As such, there is little doubt that paternalism plays an essential role in people’s reasoning about ubiquitous computing in this setting. We argue, however, that since discourses such as health and safety are used by everyone (including both managers and workers) in the organisation to further their own aims, technologies transcend purely paternalistic conceptualisations and instead become a focal point for ongoing struggles for control between those deploying and using them. This means that the benefits and costs of such new technologies become harder to define from an ethical and social perspective

N A Prospective Look at a Synthetic Teammate for UAV Applications

This paper describes current progress and future plans for research and development in synthetic teammates for applications in training, analysis, and system design for UAV operations. The development of these teammates involves the eventual integration of several distinct, yet related, basic and applied research lines, including navigation and orientation in virtual environments, computational cognitive process modeling of aircraft maneuvering and reconnaissance missions, verbal interaction between human operators and synthetic entities, and the formal analysis of team skill. The use of the ACT-R cognitive modeling architecture to create computational cognitive process models serves as a common thread that will be helpful in integrating the products of these research lines into a functional system. The paper provides a summary of the current status of our research, as well as a description of externally developed technologies we plan to leverage in order to achieve our goal of a high-fidelity cognitive model that is able to operate as a member of a team performing UAV reconnaissance missions. I

N A Prospective Look at a Synthetic Teammate for UAV Applications

This paper describes current progress and future plans for research and development in synthetic teammates for applications in training, analysis, and system design for UAV operations. The development of these teammates involves the eventual integration of several distinct, yet related, basic and applied research lines, including navigation and orientation in virtual environments, computational cognitive process modeling of aircraft maneuvering and reconnaissance missions, verbal interaction between human operators and synthetic entities, and the formal analysis of team skill. The use of the ACT-R cognitive modeling architecture to create computational cognitive process models serves as a common thread that will be helpful in integrating the products of these research lines into a functional system. The paper provides a summary of the current status of our research, as well as a description of externally developed technologies we plan to leverage in order to achieve our goal of a high-fidelity cognitive model that is able to operate as a member of a team performing UAV reconnaissance missions. I