Antimicrobial-related medication safety incidents : a regional retrospective study in West of Scotland hospitals

Medication-related incidents are an important consideration in enhancing patient safety in hospital care. The wide utilisation of antimicrobial therapy in this population renders these medications particularly vulnerable to errors and adverse events. To analyse the characteristics of antimicrobial therapy-related incident reports across a group of secondary care hospitals. Reports for antimicrobial-related incidents from April 2010 to December 2013 were obtained from a regional area of hospitals in National Health Service (NHS) Scotland. Reports were analysed at-large, with subset analyses of incidents resulting in patient harm/injury and those included in a multivariable regression adjusted by occupied bed days (OBD) and defined daily doses (DDD) to better ascertain areas to target for antimicrobial safety. A total of 1345 incidents were reported at a crude rate of 0.98 reports/day (95% CI: 0.93-1.03 reports/day). Penicillins (371 reports; 27.6%), aminoglycosides (358; 26.6%) and glycopeptides (210; 15.6%) were the most commonly involved classes of medications. Most incidents involved no injury/harm (514; 38.2%), but 72 reports (5.4%) did result in patient harm. Rehabilitation/Assessment (RR: 2.61, 95% CI: 1.70-4.03) and Women/Childrens (RR: 2.61, 95% CI: 1.70-4.03) had higher incident reporting rates compared to other hospital services, likely as a function of at-risk patient populations. Among the types of incidents reported, those involving issues with administration/supply were most common (RR: 2.07, 95% CI: 1.51-2.84). Incident reporting for antimicrobials identified several key areas for quality improvement in the hospital setting which can guide safety efforts

Solidification behavior of intensively sheared hypoeutectic Al-Si alloy liquid

The official published version of this article can be found at the link below.The effect of the processing temperature on the microstructural and mechanical properties of Al-Si (hypoeutectic) alloy solidified from intensively sheared liquid metal has been investigated systematically. Intensive shearing gives a significant refinement in grain size and intermetallic particle size. It also is observed that the morphology of intermetallics, defect bands, and microscopic defects in high-pressure die cast components are affected by intensive shearing the liquid metal. We attempt to discuss the possible mechanism for these effects.Funded by the EPSRC

Adjustable Passive RFID Skin Mounted Sticker

Passive Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) can be limited by such aspects as size that make overcoming the capacitive loading introduced by human tissue difficult when intending to produce an efficient antenna with a high read range. It is still possible to design a small and thin RFID tag with a read range above half a meter. Here we present such a design with a diameter of less than 3 cm, By utilizing a breathable polyurethane polymer with two thicknesses, it is possible to use a single tag design for human tissue (dielectric constants ranging from a 22 to 40) with only a slight loss in antenna read range. It is more cost effective to just adjust the polyurethane thickness for a single design than to tune the antenna design itself. Volunteers one and two had read ranges above one meter while volunteer three (with permittivity of 40) caused the largest shift in antenna resonance from 865 MHz (EU band) and required an increase in polyurethane thickness from 1.1 mm to 1.5 mm. However, both designs still produced read ranges above 0.5 meters which could be further tuned with future adjustments to increase read range. This led to a passive RFID design that can be worn by most people with a simple thickness adjustment if needed

Search for CP violation in D0 and D+ decays

A high statistics sample of photoproduced charm particles from the FOCUS (E831) experiment at Fermilab has been used to search for CP violation in the Cabibbo suppressed decay modes D+ to K-K+pi+, D0 to K-K+ and D0 to pi-pi+. We have measured the following CP asymmetry parameters: A_CP(K-K+pi+) = +0.006 +/- 0.011 +/- 0.005, A_CP(K-K+) = -0.001 +/- 0.022 +/- 0.015 and A_CP(pi-pi+) = +0.048 +/- 0.039 +/- 0.025 where the first error is statistical and the second error is systematic. These asymmetries are consistent with zero with smaller errors than previous measurements.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure

A measurement of lifetime differences in the neutral D-meson system

Using a high statistics sample of photoproduced charm particles from the FOCUS experiment at Fermilab, we compare the lifetimes of neutral D mesons decaying via D0 to K- pi+ and K- K+ to measure the lifetime differences between CP even and CP odd final states. These measurements bear on the phenomenology of D0 - D0bar mixing. If the D0 to K-pi+ is an equal mixture of CP even and CP odd eigenstates, we measure yCP = 0.0342 \pm 0.0139 \pm 0.0074.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figure

Evidence for a narrow dip structure at 1.9 GeV/c2^2 in 3π+3π−3\pi^+ 3\pi^- diffractive photoproduction

A narrow dip structure has been observed at 1.9 GeV/c$^2$ in a study of diffractive photoproduction of the $~3\pi^+3\pi^-$ final state performed by the Fermilab experiment E687.Comment: The data of Figure 6 can be obtained by downloading the raw data file e687_6pi.txt. v5 (2nov2018): added Fig. 7, the 6 pion energy distribution as requested by a reade

Measurements of the Sigma_c^0 and Sigma_c^{++} Mass Splittings

Using a high statistics sample of photoproduced charmed particles from the FOCUS experiment at Fermilab (FNAL-E831), we measure the mass splittings of the charmed baryons Sigma_c^0 and Sigma_c^{++}. We find M(Sigma_c^0 - Lambda_c^+) = 167.38 +/- 0.21 +/- 0.13 MeV/c^2 and M(Sigma_c^++ - Lambda_c^+) = 167.35 +/- 0.19 +/- 0.12 MeV/c^2 with samples of 362 +/- 36 and 461 +/- 39 events, respectively. We measure the isospin mass splitting M(Sigma_c^++ - Sigma_c^0) to be -0.03 +/- 0.28 +/- 0.11 Mev/c^2. The first errors are statistical and the second are systematic.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure

On the Deformation of Dendrites During Directional Solidification of a Nickel-Based Superalloy

Abstract: Synchrotron X-ray imaging has been used to examine in situ the deformation of dendrites that takes place during the solidification of a nickel-based superalloy. By combining absorption and diffraction contrast imaging, deformation events could be classified by their localization and permanence. In particular, a deformation mechanism arising from thermal contraction in a temperature gradient was elucidated through digital image correlation. It was concluded that this mechanism may explain the small misorientations typically observed in single crystal castings

Pion contamination in the MICE muon beam

The international Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment (MICE) will perform a systematic investigation of ionization cooling with muon beams of momentum between 140 and 240\,MeV/c at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory ISIS facility. The measurement of ionization cooling in MICE relies on the selection of a pure sample of muons that traverse the experiment. To make this selection, the MICE Muon Beam is designed to deliver a beam of muons with less than $\sim$1\% contamination. To make the final muon selection, MICE employs a particle-identification (PID) system upstream and downstream of the cooling cell. The PID system includes time-of-flight hodoscopes, threshold-Cherenkov counters and calorimetry. The upper limit for the pion contamination measured in this paper is $f_\pi < 1.4\%$ at 90\% C.L., including systematic uncertainties. Therefore, the MICE Muon Beam is able to meet the stringent pion-contamination requirements of the study of ionization cooling.Department of Energy and National Science Foundation (U.S.A.), the Instituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (Italy), the Science and Technology Facilities Council (U.K.), the European Community under the European Commission Framework Programme 7 (AIDA project, grant agreement no. 262025, TIARA project, grant agreement no. 261905, and EuCARD), the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and the Swiss National Science Foundation, in the framework of the SCOPES programme