Enteral feeding pumps: efficacy, safety, and patient acceptability.

Enteral feeding is a long established practice across pediatric and adult populations, to enhance nutritional intake and prevent malnutrition. Despite recognition of the importance of nutrition within the modern health agenda, evaluation of the efficacy of how such feeds are delivered is more limited. The accuracy, safety, and consistency with which enteral feed pump systems dispense nutritional formulae are important determinants of their use and acceptability. Enteral feed pump safety has received increased interest in recent years as enteral pumps are used across hospital and home settings. Four areas of enteral feed pump safety have emerged: the consistent and accurate delivery of formula; the minimization of errors associated with tube misconnection; the impact of continuous feed delivery itself (via an enteral feed pump); and the chemical composition of the casing used in enteral feed pump manufacture. The daily use of pumps in delivery of enteral feeds in a home setting predominantly falls to the hands of parents and caregivers. Their understanding of the use and function of their pump is necessary to ensure appropriate, safe, and accurate delivery of enteral nutrition; their experience with this is important in informing clinicians and manufacturers of the emerging needs and requirements of this diverse patient population. The review highlights current practice and areas of concern and establishes our current knowledge in this field

A simplified PERT system

Modified PERT technique processes the input data and arranges it in familiar graphic form in a booklet which is issued at periodic intervals. The tabulated data provides readily available information to management personnel concerned with monitoring the progress of a program

Effects of the roller feed ratio on wrinkling failure in conventional spinning of a cylindrical cup

In this study, wrinkling failure in conventional spinning of a cylindrical cup has been investigated by using both finite element (FE) analysis and experimental methods. FE simulation models of a spinning experiment have been developed using the explicit finite element solution method provided by the software Abaqus. The severity of wrinkles is quantified by calculating the standard deviation of the radial coordinates of element nodes on the edge of the workpiece obtained from the FE models. The results show that the severity of wrinkles tends to increase when increasing the roller feed ratio. A forming limit study for wrinkling has been carried out and shows that there is a feed ratio limit beyond which the wrinkling failure will take place. Provided that the feed ratio is kept below this limit, the wrinkling failure can be prevented. It is believed that high compressive tangential stresses in the local forming zone are the causes of the wrinkling failure. Furthermore, the computational performance of the solid and shell elements in simulating the spinning process are examined and the tool forces obtained from wrinkling and wrinkle-free models are compared. Finally, the effects of the feed ratio on variations of the wall thickness of the spun cylindrical cup are investigated. </jats:p

Hubble Advanced Camera for Surveys Observations of the z=6.42 Quasar SDSS 1148+5251: A Leak in the Gunn-Peterson Trough

The Hubble Advanced Camera for Surveys has been used to obtain a narrow-band image of the weak emission peak seen at lambda=7205 A in the Gunn-Peterson Ly beta absorption trough of the highest redshift quasar, SDSS J1148+5251. The emission looks perfectly point-like; there is no evidence for the intervening galaxy that we previously suggested might be contaminating the quasar spectrum. We derive a more accurate astrometric position for the quasar in the two filters and see no indication of gravitational lensing. We conclude that the light in the Ly beta trough is leaking through two unusually transparent, overlapping windows in the IGM absorption, one in the Ly beta forest at z ~ 6 and one in the Ly alpha forest at z ~ 5. If there are significant optical depth variations on velocity scales small compared with our spectral resolution (~150 km/s), the Ly alpha trough becomes more transparent for a given Ly beta optical depth. Such variations can only strengthen our conclusion that the fraction of neutral hydrogen in the IGM increases dramatically at z>6. We argue that the transmission in the Ly beta trough is not only a more sensitive measure of the neutral fraction than is Ly alpha, it also provides a less biased estimator of the neutral hydrogen fraction than does the Ly alpha transmission.Comment: Submitted to the Astronomical Journa