Assessing Variability in End-of-Life Intensity of Care After Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest

Out of hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) affects over 300,000 Americans per year.1 Many factors affect the outcomes and overall OHCA survival in a community; some of these include an individual’s characteristics such as age, co-morbid conditions, availability of an AED on scene, time to CPR, and the characteristics of the hospital they are treated at.1,2 Directly following resuscitation from cardiac arrest, the individual is at risk of developing numerous problems caused by sequelae of ischemic injury sustained during the arrest. The national average rate of survival to discharge is only 10%.2,3 Many of these factors are modifiable and provide an opportunity to improve outcomes. In our project, we focus on lifesustaining procedures administered by hospitals upon receiving and admitting individuals experiencing OHCA. We used previously validated measures as defined by Barnato et al as “life sustaining end of life (EOL) measures”:4 • Intubation and mechanical ventilation • Tracheostomy • Gastrostomy tube insertion • Hemodialysis • Enteral/parenteral nutrition • CPRhttps://jdc.jefferson.edu/cwicposters/1035/thumbnail.jp

Optimizing Evaluation and Treatment of Patients with Nausea and Vomiting of Pregnancy in the Emergency Department

Problem Definition Nausea and vomiting of pregnancy (NVP). Approximately 50% prevalence rate Pregnant patients with NVP require special considerations for treatment Long ER wait times Possibly avoidable hospital admission

Towards More Practical Linear Programming-based Techniques for Algorithmic Mechanism Design

R. Lavy and C. Swamy (FOCS 2005, J. ACM 2011) introduced a general method for obtaining truthful-in-expectation mechanisms from linear programming based approximation algorithms. Due to the use of the Ellipsoid method, a direct implementation of the method is unlikely to be efficient in practice. We propose to use the much simpler and usually faster multiplicative weights update method instead. The simplification comes at the cost of slightly weaker approximation and truthfulness guarantees

Measurement of fracture toughness of hydrided Zircaloy - 4

Zircaloy-4 is a zirconium alloy that will be used for construction of many of the core components in the replacement research reactor at Lucas Heights. The fracture toughness of the alloy and its radiation-induced reduction over the 40 year planned life of the reactor is an important mechanical property for this application. This study aims to simulate the radiation-induced reduction in fracture toughness by hydriding Zircaloy-4. A range of fracture toughnesses is required to calibrate the sub-size Charpy and small punch (SP) surveillance specimens that will be irradiated over the life of the reactor against standard J1C fracture toughness specimens. Pieces of Zircaloy-4 plate were hydrided in a vessel at a temperature of 520°C, at different pressures for either 10 or 22 hours. Final hydrogen concentrations between 25 wt% ppm and 380 wt% ppm hydrogen were obtained under gaseous atmosphere. The fracture toughness of the hydrided Zircaloy-4 was assessed using sub-size 2.5 mm-thick Charpy, three-point bend J1C and SP tests. The results were correlated to determine the relationship between the J-integral fracture toughness, Charpy impact energy and equivalent fracture strain (εqf) from the SP tests. It was found that as hydrogen concentration and hydride formation increased, the fracture toughness of the alloy generally decreased. The results show there to be a useful relationship between fracture toughness and εqf measured for the SP tests. © Institute of Materials Engineering Australasia Ltd - Materials Forum Volume 27 - Published 2004

The effects of attachment style on coping with visible skin conditions and responsiveness to a compassion based self-help intervention

No abstract available

Laser cooling of a diatomic molecule

It has been roughly three decades since laser cooling techniques produced ultracold atoms, leading to rapid advances in a vast array of fields. Unfortunately laser cooling has not yet been extended to molecules because of their complex internal structure. However, this complexity makes molecules potentially useful for many applications. For example, heteronuclear molecules possess permanent electric dipole moments which lead to long-range, tunable, anisotropic dipole-dipole interactions. The combination of the dipole-dipole interaction and the precise control over molecular degrees of freedom possible at ultracold temperatures make ultracold molecules attractive candidates for use in quantum simulation of condensed matter systems and quantum computation. Also ultracold molecules may provide unique opportunities for studying chemical dynamics and for tests of fundamental symmetries. Here we experimentally demonstrate laser cooling of the molecule strontium monofluoride (SrF). Using an optical cycling scheme requiring only three lasers, we have observed both Sisyphus and Doppler cooling forces which have substantially reduced the transverse temperature of a SrF molecular beam. Currently the only technique for producing ultracold molecules is by binding together ultracold alkali atoms through Feshbach resonance or photoassociation. By contrast, different proposed applications for ultracold molecules require a variety of molecular energy-level structures. Our method provides a new route to ultracold temperatures for molecules. In particular it bridges the gap between ultracold temperatures and the ~1 K temperatures attainable with directly cooled molecules (e.g. cryogenic buffer gas cooling or decelerated supersonic beams). Ultimately our technique should enable the production of large samples of molecules at ultracold temperatures for species that are chemically distinct from bialkalis.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure