The clinical effectiveness of an integrated multidisciplinary evidence-based program to prevent intraoperative pressure injuries in high-risk children undergoing long-duration surgical procedures: a quality improvement study

The prevention of hospital-acquired pressure injuries (HAPIs) in children undergoing long-duration surgical procedures is of critical importance due to the potential for catastrophic sequelae of these generally preventable injuries for the child and their family. Long-duration surgical procedures in children have the potential to result in high rates of HAPI due to physiological factors and the difficulty or impossibility of repositioning these patients intraoperatively. We developed and implemented a multi-modal, multi-disciplinary translational HAPI prevention quality improvement program at a large European Paediatric University Teaching Hospital. The intervention comprised the establishment of wound prevention teams, modified HAPI risk assessment tools, specific education, and the use of prophylactic dressings and fluidized positioners during long-duration surgical procedures. As part of the evaluation of the effectiveness of the program in reducing intraoperative HAPI, we conducted a prospective cohort study of 200 children undergoing long-duration surgical procedures and compared their outcomes with a matched historical cohort of 200 children who had undergone similar surgery the previous year. The findings demonstrated a reduction in HAPI in the intervention cohort of 80% (p < 0.01) compared to the comparator group when controlling for age, pathology, comorbidity, and surgical duration. We believe that the findings demonstrate that it is possible to significantly decrease HAPI incidence in these highly vulnerable children by using an evidence-based, multi-modal, multidisciplinary HAPI prevention strategy

Water-repellent cellulose fiber networks with multifunctional properties.

We demonstrate a simple but highly efficient technique to introduce multifunctional properties to cellulose fiber networks by wetting them with ethyl-cyanoacrylate monomer solutions containing various suspended organic submicrometer particles or inorganic nanoparticles. Solutions can be applied on cellulosic surfaces by simple solution casting techniques or by dip coating, both being suitable for large area applications. Immediately after solvent evaporation, ethyl-cyanoacrylate starts cross-linking around cellulose fibers under ambient conditions because of naturally occurring surface hydroxyl groups and adsorbed moisture, encapsulating them with a hydrophobic polymer shell. Furthermore, by dispersing various functional particles in the monomer solutions, hydrophobic ethyl-cyanoacrylate nanocomposites with desired functionalities can be formed around the cellulose fibers. To exhibit the versatility of the method, cellulose sheets were functionalized with different ethyl-cyanoacrylate nanocomposite shells..

The museum in historical buildings: Energy and Systems. The project of the Fondazione Musei Senesi

In Italy many museums are located in historical buildings, built originally to host other functions and converted later to museums; with also different typologies, such as historical palaces, castles, farm buildings or monumental sites and with an important cultural value in itself. It highlights that if on one hand the installation of systems answers to fruition needs of the users and conservation needs of the collections displayed, on the other hand such insertion happened fairly recently with solutions in which the sensitivity to the issue of environmental sustainability and energy efficiency wasn't particularly strong. "Energy and Buildings" is nowadays one of the essential binomials in the definition of EU Community Policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, at limiting fuel consumption and at encouraging the use of renewable energy sources. In this scenario,the museum buildings can play an important role in reducing the environmental impacts, and also play an active role in the spread of best practices for the citizens and the territory of reference in which they are located. However there are still only few cases where energy retrofit, aimed at enhance sustainability, have been carried out; and especially there are few data, even in the scientific literature, related to energy consumption and the effects in cases of retrofitting. Museum buildings should be refunctionalized on the basis of the needs for the collection care, seeking to optimize the integration of passive and active technological solutions, possibly powered by renewable energy sources, in order to pursue a low environmental impact; indeed for the assets on display, the obtaining of the desired values for indoor environmental quality depends on the balance between the passive energy performance of the building envelope and the one active of the systems. With these premises, the Fondazione Musei Senesi has translated these aspects in the research project "The Museum building: Energy, Systems, Safety&Security", developed involving 43 Museums on the territory of Siena, related to the Fondazione, which lent themselves to play an experimental activity, aimed at exploring the performance of the whole building system and envelope. In particular, the attention has been given to the energy aspects and systems for the indoor climate control to raise the awareness on the operation and maintenance of the museum building. The study was carried out using a self-evaluation form developed ad hoc and an handbook has been developed, written as support to institution managers and owners of museums. The project can be a point of reference for the various and different museums widespread throughout the Italian territory

Single electron tunneling in large scale nanojunction arrays with bisferrocene–nanoparticle hybrids

We report on the fabrication and single electron tunneling behaviour of large scale arrays of nanogap electrodes bridged by bisferrocene-gold nanoparticle hybrids (BFc-AuNP). Coulomb staircase was observed in the low temperature current-voltage curves measured on the junctions with asymmetric tunnel barriers. On the other hand, junctions with symmetric tunneling barrier exhibited mere nonlinear current voltage characteristics without discrete staircase. The experimental results agreed well with simulations based on the orthodox theory. The junction resistance showed thermally activated conduction behaviour at higher temperature. The overall voltage and temperature dependent results show that the transport behaviour of the large arrays of single particle devices obtained by a facile optical lithography and chemical etching process corresponds with the behaviour of single particle devices fabricated by other techniques like e-beam lithography and mechanical breaking methods

Experimental test and modelling of lead desorption/adsorption processes in a soil flushing treatment application

The soil flushing technique has been investigating for its potential ability in restoring heavy metal contaminated soils. The technique is further efficient when using chelating agents, such as EDTA and EDDS, in the flushing solution so that to promote the desorption of the metal. However, different problems are involved in the application of this technique such as the extraction of the EDTA- metal complex, which can migrate towards the deeper no contaminated soil layers and release the adsorbed metal during its transport; in this case the metal is re-adsorbed to the no contaminated soil and the free-EDTA can reach the water table leading to an environmental damage and to a no-efficient remediation treatment. It leads to the need to be able to predict the effects of flushing EDTA through a contaminated soil on metal extraction and desorption in advance. The aim of this paper is to provide a tool able to simulate the chelating process and the lead (Pb) desorption and re-adsorption to the soil by means of the implementation of a self-made 1D numerical model. The model takes into account first- order reaction both for the adsorption and desorption process and it was calibrated and validated using two set of experimental data. The experiments used columns of different dimensions filled with both lead-contaminated and no contaminated soil in variable amounts. The experimental results confirm the lead transport and re-adsorption in the deeper no contaminated soil layer. The model is assessed able to simulate the soil flushing process in both the cases of metal desorption or re-adsorption to the soil, as confirmed by the good fit between the column outlet values and the experimental Pb concentration in the leachate in the two tests.19-23 June 201

Compatibility of Nucleobases Containing Pt(II) Complexes with Red Blood Cells for Possible Drug Delivery Applications

The therapeutic advantages of some platinum complexes as major anticancer chemotherapeutic agents and of nucleoside analogue-based compounds as essential antiviral/antitumor drugs are widely recognized. Red blood cells (RBCs) offer a potential new strategy for the targeted release of therapeutic agents due to their biocompatibility, which can protect loaded drugs from inactivation in the blood, thus improving biodistribution. In this study, we evaluated the feasibility of loading model nucleobase-containing Pt(II) complexes into human RBCs that were highly stabilized by four N-donors and susceptible to further modification for possible antitumor/antiviral applications. Specifically, platinum-based nucleoside derivatives [PtII(dien)(N7-Guo)]2+, [PtII(dien)(N7-dGuo)]2+, and [PtII(dien)(N7-dGTP)] (dien = diethylenetriamine; Guo = guanosine; dGuo = 20-deoxy-guanosine; dGTP = 50-(20-deoxy)-guanosine-triphosphate) were investigated. These Pt(II) complexes were demonstrated to be stable species suitable for incorporation into RBCs. This result opens avenues for the possible incorporation of other metalated nucleobases analogues, with potential antitumor and/or antiviral activity, into RBCs