35,639 research outputs found
Microbial Air Contamination in an Intensive Care Unit
Unit layout affects every aspect of intensive care services, including patient safety. A previous study has shown that patients admitted to beds adjacent to the sink and to the door of a large bayroom had the highest number of positive blood cultures and the highest blood culture incidence density, respectively. The present study measures microbial air contamination in a medical intensive care unit of a medical center in central Taiwan. Of the 17 rooms, 8 rooms with distinct physical environmental characteristics were selected. Sampling tests were conducted between December 2013 and February 2014 with a microbial air sampler (MAS-100NT). TSA was used for bacteria collection and DG18 for fungi collection. The overall average bacterial and fungal concentrations were 83CFU/m3 and 69CFU/m3, respectively. The ranges were between 8-354 CFU/m3 and 0-1468 CFU/m3, respectively. A significant difference was found in the bacterial concentration (p=.005) between different room locations. The highest concentration was found in the rooms located at the front end of the circulation (99 CFU/m3), while the lowest was found in the rooms located at the rear end of the circulation (55CFU/m3). Differences in fungal concentrations for different room locations did not reach statistical significance. In addition, differences in bacterial and fungal concentrations for rooms with different sink locations did not reach statistical significance. Even though the microbial concentrations generally complied with standards, the results may help designers and hospital administrators develop a healthier environment for patients
Spin relaxation in diluted magnetic semiconductor quantum dots
Electron spin relaxation induced by phonon-mediated s-d exchange interaction
in a II-VI diluted magnetic semiconductor quantum dot is investigated
theoretically. The electron-acoustic phonon interaction due to piezoelectric
coupling and deformation potential is included. The resulting spin lifetime is
typically on the order of microseconds. The effectiveness of the
phonon-mediated spin-flip mechanism increases with increasing Mn concentration,
electron spin splitting, vertical confining strength and lateral diameter,
while it shows non-monotonic dependence on the magnetic field and temperature.
An interesting finding is that the spin relaxation in a small quantum dot is
suppressed for strong magnetic field and low Mn concentration at low
temperature.Comment: 11 pages, 11 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev.
Anomalous physical properties of underdoped weak-ferromagnetic superconductor RuSrEuCuO
Similar to the optimal-doped, weak-ferromagnetic (WFM induced by canted
antiferromagnetism, T = 131 K) and superconducting (T = 56 K)
RuSrGdCuO, the underdoped RuSrEuCuO
(T = 133 K, T = 36 K) also exhibited a spontaneous vortex state
(SVS) between 16 K and 36 K. The low field (20 G) superconducting
hysteresis loop indicates a weak and narrow Meissner state region of average
lower critical field B(T) = B(0)[1 -
(T/T)], with B(0) = 7 G and T = 16 K. The
vortex melting transition (T = 21 K) below T obtained from
the broad resistivity drop and the onset of diamagnetic signal indicates a
vortex liquid region due to the coexistence and interplay between
superconductivity and WFM order. No visible jump in specific heat was observed
near T for Eu- and Gd-compound. This is not surprising, since the
electronic specific heat is easily overshadowed by the large phonon and
weak-ferromagnetic contributions. Furthermore, a broad resistivity transition
due to low vortex melting temperature would also lead to a correspondingly
reduced height of any specific heat jump. Finally, with the baseline from the
nonmagnetic Eu-compound, specific heat data analysis confirms the magnetic
entropy associated with antiferromagnetic ordering of Gd (J = S = 7/2)
at 2.5 K to be close to ln8 as expected.Comment: 7 figure
The NLO QCD Corrections to Meson Production in Decays
The decay width of to meson is evaluated at the next-to-leading
order(NLO) accuracy in strong interaction. Numerical calculation shows that the
NLO correction to this process is remarkable. The quantum
chromodynamics(QCD)renormalization scale dependence of the results is obviously
depressed, and hence the uncertainties lying in the leading order calculation
are reduced.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures; references added; expressions and typos ammende
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