Improving Technologies in Anesthesia

General anesthesia is well known to offer physicians access to a broad variety of invasive procedures otherwise deemed too risky. Anesthesia machines provides the means for anesthetizing patients safely in the hospital operating room. However, these devices are increasingly unable to meet the demands and needs outside of the hospital. Developing countries struggle to purchase and maintain these costly devices, leading to a 40-fold increase in anesthesia-related deaths compared to developed countries. Small-office practices in the United States experience significantly poorer anesthesia outcomes and increased legal claims versus their larger hospital counterparts, resulting in 60% more anesthesia-related deaths. Environmental impacts and global health concerns from the emitted anesthetic gases have brought into serious question the prevailing notion that unchecked emissions were sustainable. These factors can all be attributed to anesthesia machine design and technology having the primary intended use in the traditional operating room. The long-term goal of this work is to develop technologies in anesthesia that expand its safe use, decrease underlying costs, and reduce the total emissions. The immediate objective of this work is to create a feedback-controlled anesthetic gas vaporizer-scavenger system and evaluate its performance. The central hypothesis is that the combined use of mesoporous materials and feedback control provide the opportunity for repeatable capture and release of expired anesthetic gases during anesthesia delivery. Our rationale is that such a device will help reduce the amount of anesthetic needed while simultaneously offering improved control over the delivery of anesthetic gases

Improving Technologies in Anesthesia

General anesthesia is well known to offer physicians access to a broad variety of invasive procedures otherwise deemed too risky. Anesthesia machines provides the means for anesthetizing patients safely in the hospital operating room. However, these devices are increasingly unable to meet the demands and needs outside of the hospital. Developing countries struggle to purchase and maintain these costly devices, leading to a 40-fold increase in anesthesia-related deaths compared to developed countries. Small-office practices in the United States experience significantly poorer anesthesia outcomes and increased legal claims versus their larger hospital counterparts, resulting in 60% more anesthesia-related deaths. Environmental impacts and global health concerns from the emitted anesthetic gases have brought into serious question the prevailing notion that unchecked emissions were sustainable. These factors can all be attributed to anesthesia machine design and technology having the primary intended use in the traditional operating room. The long-term goal of this work is to develop technologies in anesthesia that expand its safe use, decrease underlying costs, and reduce the total emissions. The immediate objective of this work is to create a feedback-controlled anesthetic gas vaporizer-scavenger system and evaluate its performance. The central hypothesis is that the combined use of mesoporous materials and feedback control provide the opportunity for repeatable capture and release of expired anesthetic gases during anesthesia delivery. Our rationale is that such a device will help reduce the amount of anesthetic needed while simultaneously offering improved control over the delivery of anesthetic gases

Demystifying the resource nationalism : how South Africa can increase FDIs into mining industry

The outcome of this comparative international research provides the basic recommendations for South African policymakers on how to approach the debates around nationalisation of the mines. The dependent variable FDI was tested through the seven hypotheses. 20 resource rich countries were chosen and data was obtained from the World Bank, the Frazer Institute Annual Survey of Mining Companies and the Raw Materials Group. Regression models were run to compare the results for the total sample and two sub-sets.The outcomes of the statistical analyses revealed that geological data and political stability have the highest correlation with the independent variable FDI. Political stability was the only independent variable to have high correlations with all independent variables, implying that politics drives economics. No static regression model was obtained suggesting that each country will require a unique approach by MNCs to invest. In the light of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), forced joint ventures in fact boost the FDIs in the mining sector.Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012.Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS)unrestricte

Using Activated Charcoal to Reuse Anesthetic Gas

General anesthesia enables surgery, with anesthesia machines being the predominant tool to do so. However, these machines are hard to maintain, costly, and require significant supporting infrastructure. The current design of anesthesia machines demands the disposal of anesthetic gases at a rate equal to fresh oxygen entering the system. This causes several orders of magnitude more anesthetic vaporized than needed, yielding negative economic and environmental impact. To address this, we propose utilizing the porous surface of activated charcoal to absorb and desorb the anesthetic gases to be reused

Analyzing Last Mile Delivery Operations in Barcelona’s Urban Freight Transport Network

Sol·licitant de l’informe: Barcelona de Serveis Municipals, S.A. (BSM

Afet Sonrası Deprem Güvenli Yöresel Mimari Oluşum İlkelerinin Tanımlanmasında Etkin Bir Araç Olarak Köy Tasarım Rehberleri

Deprem gibi yıkıcı etkileri fazla olan afetler, neden olduğu tahribatlarla az zamanda çok sayıda yapı üretim gereksinimi ortaya çıkarmaktadır. Yapılı çevrenin yeniden kuruluşunda öncelikli beklenti yapıların deprem etkilerine karşı dayanımını artırarak risk yönetiminin sağlanmasıdır. Ancak, salt bu amaçla geliştirilen üst ölçekli planlama kararları kırsal yerleşmelerde özgün yöresel mimari karakterin kaybolmasına sebep olabilmektedir. Bir çözüm yolu olarak, çalışma kapsamında, yerin potansiyellerini okuma odağında gelişecek deprem güvenli yapılaşma modeli köy tasarım rehberleri üzerinden ele alınmıştır. İçerik yaklaşımı, ilk olarak afet öncesi süreçte yöresel mimari kimlik verilerinin ve deprem dayanımında etkili yerel tasarım değerlerinin envanter düzeninde belgelenmesinin yolunu içerir. Bir sonraki aşama, afet sonrası dönemde ortaya çıkan hasar göstergelerinin toplanmasıyla, yerleşme ve yapıların deprem davranışının ve iyileştirme gerektiren konuların tespit edilmesine dayalıdır. Tüm bu içeriğin mevzuat ile paralel gelişiminin deprem güvenli kırsal yapı üretim sürecinde rehberlerin tasarım politikasına dönüşmesini sağlayacağı öngörülmektedir. Böylece, yöresel mimari kimlik değerlerini referans alarak ekonomik, ekolojik ve kültürel açıdan deprem dirençli kırsal planlama mümkün olabilir

A General Purpose Geospatial Encounter Prediction Model for Border Security A General Purpose Geospatial Encounter Prediction Model for Border Security

ABSTRACT The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is interested in understanding capabilities to encounter people crossing the borders between official ports of entry, and in determining the likelihood and probable areas where law enforcement officials can intercept a suspect, either on or off road. Engility Corporation, under contract with DHS, has developed a general purpose geospatial encounter model as a plugin for QGIS. This model takes into account law enforcement and adversary vehicle types, road networks, natural boundaries, elevation, and land type to quickly and efficiently generate triangular meshes to compute isochrones accurately over entire regions. These isochrones support a physics constrained, quantitative assessment of potential encounter capabilities. Novel modeling approaches were introduced to improve computational efficiency of modeling multiple law enforcement and adversary entities in a single scenario. The software can also aid in planning future force structure laydowns to detect illegal border crossings and off road searches

Improving Technologies in Anesthesia

General anesthesia is well known to offer physicians access to a broad variety of invasive procedures otherwise deemed too risky. Anesthesia machines provides the means for anesthetizing patients safely in the hospital operating room. However, these devices are increasingly unable to meet the demands and needs outside of the hospital. Developing countries struggle to purchase and maintain these costly devices, leading to a 40-fold increase in anesthesia-related deaths compared to developed countries. Small-office practices in the United States experience significantly poorer anesthesia outcomes and increased legal claims versus their larger hospital counterparts, resulting in 60% more anesthesia-related deaths. Environmental impacts and global health concerns from the emitted anesthetic gases have brought into serious question the prevailing notion that unchecked emissions were sustainable. These factors can all be attributed to anesthesia machine design and technology having the primary intended use in the traditional operating room. The long-term goal of this work is to develop technologies in anesthesia that expand its safe use, decrease underlying costs, and reduce the total emissions. The immediate objective of this work is to create a feedback-controlled anesthetic gas vaporizer-scavenger system and evaluate its performance. The central hypothesis is that the combined use of mesoporous materials and feedback control provide the opportunity for repeatable capture and release of expired anesthetic gases during anesthesia delivery. Our rationale is that such a device will help reduce the amount of anesthetic needed while simultaneously offering improved control over the delivery of anesthetic gases

A New Era of Anesthetic Equipment

Long duration space missions are becoming highly probable, and with them arise new challenges. Maintaining the long term health of astronauts and developing the appropriate equipment for advanced medical interventions suitable for space becomes incredibly important. Surgical interventions especially are a problematic scene given the complexity and size of the required equipment for general anesthesia. As a result, creating advanced inhalational anesthetic devices that are small and light weight is needed for these long duration space missions. The past decade has brought a host of advances that would allow the development of smarter, smaller, lighter, and more efficient machines. These include pharmacokinetic and pharmaco-dynamic models to create feedback delivery systems, better sensing technologies to meter precise gas delivery, and closed breathing circuits that conserve anesthetic agents. However, despite these advances, anesthetic machines and devices still remain incredibly heavy and bulky, and ill-suited for space travel. A brief summary of technological advances will be discussed as well as preliminary results in measuring the concentration of volatile anesthetics using convective heat transfer principles