Paediatric antimicrobial stewardship and safe prescribing: An assessment of medical staff knowledge and behaviour

Objective: Determine baseline knowledge of antimicrobial stewardship, and safe prescribing among junior medical officers, monitor their level of participation in interactive education during protected teaching time and assess day-to-day prescribing behaviours over the subsequent 3-month period. Methods: A voluntary and anonymous survey of all non-consultant level medical officers was conducted with the use of an audience response system during mandatory face-to-face orientation sessions at a tertiary paediatric hospital. Routine prescribing audits monitored compliance with national and locally derived quality use of medicines indicators. Results: Eighty-six percent of medical officers participated by responding to at least one question (171/200). Response rate for individual questions ranged between 31% and 78%. Questions that addressed adverse drug reactions, documentation and monitoring for empiric antibiotics and the error-prone abbreviations IU and U were correctly answered by over 90% of participants. Other nonstandard and error-prone abbreviations were less consistently identified. In practice, 68% of patients had complete adverse drug reaction documentation (113/166). Error-prone abbreviations were identified on 5% of audited medication orders (47/976), approximately half included a documented indication and intended dose. Conclusions: Participants demonstrated a good understanding of safe prescribing and antimicrobial stewardship. Audits of prescribing identified potential discrepancies between prescribing knowledge and behaviours

Identification of structural defects using a simplified algorithm of thermal tomography

Abstract This paper concerns modification of the thermal tomography reconstruction algorithm to improve the speed of calculations for faster reconstruction of thermal and geometrical parameters inside a tested structure. We propose to solve the inverse problem in the two step procedure. First, initial rough reconstruction of a tested structure based on the one dimensional (1-D) thermal model. Second, execution of the full 3-D reconstruction procedure, with the first step result as the initial condition for further calculations. To verify value of the proposed method some simulation results of the phantom structure developed for testing the method as well as real reconstruction of this phantom are presented

The Electronic and Magnetic Properties of YbxGd1-xNi5 Systems

The intermetallic compounds YbxGd1¡xNi5 crystallize in the hexagonal CaCu5-type structure. Based on wide ranging SQUID-type magnetometer, it was shown that the saturation magnetization decreases with growing concentration of ytterbium. The opposite tendency was observed for the Sommerfeld coefficient obtained in the heat capacity measurements. These results are confirmed using ab initio band structure calculations

Influence of chemical composition on the X-ray photoemission, thermopower, specific heat, and magnetic properties of CeNi2(Si1-yGey)(2)

We report our studies of the intermediate compositions between CeNi2Si2 and CeNi2Ge2, i.e., the alloys CeNi2(Si1-yGey)2 by means of the thermopower, electrical resistivity, specific heat, magnetic susceptibility, and X-ray photoemission measurements. CeNi2Si2 is a fluctuating valence system and CeNi2Ge2 is known to show the heavy fermion behaviour. The change of the temperature dependence of the resistivity towards the typical metallic behaviour occurs below y ~ 0.25. The transition between CeNi2Si2 and CeNi2Ge2 is discussed in the frames of competition between the crystal electric field and Kondo interactions. It is found that valence stabilisation occurs for Ge content y > 0.25. The hybridization energy Δ determined from the XPS Ce 3d spectrum reflects well the behaviour of the parameter Eex obtained from the analysis of the magnetic susceptibility by the interconfiguration fluctuation model. It has been also shown that thermopower data can be successfully described employing the single ion model for 0.6 < y < 1.0 and two-band model including the crystal electric field splitting for y ≤ 0.25

Microstructural and magnetic characterization of Ni0.5Zn0.5Fe2O4 ferrite nanoparticles

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Preferential Oxidation of Fe in Permalloy Films

On the basis of He-ion backscattering, x-ray fluorescence, and complementary measurements, it is unambiguously established for the first time that the oxide layer on the surface of oxidized 81% Ni-19% Fe evaporated films is predominantly Fe-oxide. Extrapolation of results for pure iron films indicates that the oxide is most likely antiferromagnetic alpha-Fe2O3. On the basis of ferromagnetic resonance measurements, it is concluded that the oxide negligibly affects the pinning of the bulk spins at the film-oxide interface

Controllable synthesis, XPS investigation and magnetic property of multiferroic BiMn2O5 system: The role of neodyme doping

In this work, a novel series of multiferroic materials BiMn2O5 doped by Neodyme has been prepared by a sol-gel method at low temperature. The crystallographic studies using X-ray diffraction and Rietveld Refinement techniques showed the formation of single-phase samples for all compositions, crystallizing in a mullite-type orthorhombic perovskite structure, space group Pbam (Z=4). The SEM techniques confirmed the formation of single-phase materials with excellent mapping distribution. Raman and infrared spectroscopic measurements were performed and combined with lattice dynamics simulations to describe the room-temperature vibrational properties of all samples. The X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) were measured in the energy range of 0–1400 eV at room temperature. The Fermi level EF was defined with the accuracy of 0.127, 0.32 and 0.48 eV for BiMn2O5, Bi0.9Nd0.1Mn2O5 and Bi0.8Nd0.2Mn2O5 respectively. The X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy shows the existence of Mn4+ state. Magnetic measurements indicate Neél temperature TN at 31, 40 and 61 K for BiMn2O5, Bi0.9Nd0.1Mn2O5 and Bi0.8Nd0.2Mn2O5 respectively