Protocol of a scoping review assessing injury rates and their determinants among healthcare workers in western countries

Introduction Healthcare workers (HCWs) are exposed to various risk factors and risky behaviours that may seriously affect their health and ability to work. The aim of this protocol is to detail the steps to follow in order to carry out a scoping review to assess the prevalence/incidence of injuries among HCWs. Methods and analysis The study will be carried out in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses-Protocols guidelines. Studies will be selected according to the following criteria: P (HCWs), E (exposure to injuries), C (different types of exposure and different categories of HCWs) and O (prevalence/incidence and determinants of injuries). A time filter has been set (literature between 2000 and 2018) to enable updated, direct comparison between the findings and the epidemiological data available at national and local \u20acIstituto Nazionale per l'Assicurazione contro gli Infortuni sul Lavoro' (National Institute for Insurance Against Accidents at Work) centres in Italy. No language restriction will be applied. Ethics and dissemination Formal ethical approval is not required; primary data will not be collected, as they have already been published. The results will be disseminated through peer-reviewed publication(s), conference presentation(s) and the press

Predicting needlestick and sharps injuries in nursing students: Development of the SNNIP scale

Aim: To develop an instrument to investigate knowledge and predictive factors of needlestick and sharps injuries (NSIs) in nursing students during clinical placements. Design: Instrument development and cross-sectional study for psychometric testing. Methods: A self-administered instrument including demographic data, injury epidemiology and predictive factors of NSIs was developed between October 2018–January 2019. Content validity was assessed by a panel of experts. The instrument's factor structure and discriminant validity were explored using principal components analysis. The STROBE guidelines were followed. Results: Evidence of content validity was found (S-CVI 0.75; I-CVI 0.50–1.00). A three-factor structure was shown by exploratory factor analysis. Of the 238 participants, 39% had been injured at least once, of which 67.3% in the second year. Higher perceptions of “personal exposure” (4.06, SD 3.78) were reported by third-year students. Higher scores for “perceived benefits” of preventive behaviours (13.6, SD 1.46) were reported by second-year students

A theoretical model of inflammation- and mechanotransduction- driven asthmatic airway remodelling

Inflammation, airway hyper-responsiveness and airway remodelling are well-established hallmarks of asthma, but their inter-relationships remain elusive. In order to obtain a better understanding of their inter-dependence, we develop a mechanochemical morphoelastic model of the airway wall accounting for local volume changes in airway smooth muscle (ASM) and extracellular matrix in response to transient inflammatory or contractile agonist challenges. We use constrained mixture theory, together with a multiplicative decomposition of growth from the elastic deformation, to model the airway wall as a nonlinear fibre-reinforced elastic cylinder. Local contractile agonist drives ASM cell contraction, generating mechanical stresses in the tissue that drive further release of mitogenic mediators and contractile agonists via underlying mechanotransductive signalling pathways. Our model predictions are consistent with previously described inflammation-induced remodelling within an axisymmetric airway geometry. Additionally, our simulations reveal novel mechanotransductive feedback by which hyper-responsive airways exhibit increased remodelling, for example, via stress-induced release of pro-mitogenic and procontractile cytokines. Simulation results also reveal emergence of a persistent contractile tone observed in asthmatics, via either a pathological mechanotransductive feedback loop, a failure to clear agonists from the tissue, or a combination of both. Furthermore, we identify various parameter combinations that may contribute to the existence of different asthma phenotypes, and we illustrate a combination of factors which may predispose severe asthmatics to fatal bronchospasms

Starting-up an anaerobic hybrid filter for the fermentation of wastewater from food industry

The wastewater from a food processing factory, characterised by fluctuations of flow rate, organic strength, and pH, were originally treated by a traditional suspended-biomass digester working at about 25 \ub0C. In order to improve the digester efficiency, either in terms of degradation ability or biogas production yield, a set of tests has been carried out on laboratory scale, whose results indicated the way to correctly transform it into an anaerobic hybrid filter

Possible occurrence of CAMP primitive rocks in the Tindouf basin (southwestern Algeria)

International audiencePrimitive mafic rocks are of primary importance to constraint mantle source compositions and to modeling magma evolution processes. These rocks are thought to be generated by partial melting of a mantle source without modification by crystal fractionation, contamination or accumulation. Primitive mafic rocks are characterized by high MgO (or Mg#), Ni, Cr and Co contents. However, these values should be considered with caution as they can also represent cumulates of mafic minerals such as olivine and pyroxene. Range expected for magmas in equilibrium with their mantle source are: MgO : 10-15 wt%, Ni : 200-500 ppm and Co : 50-70 ppm (Merle et al., 2014).In some Large Igneous Province, primitive rocks are very scarce such as in the case of the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP), where they represent 2–3% of the several hundreds of CAMP analyzed rocks (Marzoli et al., 2018). In south- western Algeria, intrusive CAMP magmatism extends into the main sedimentary basins of the area, occurring as sills, dykes and scarce pipes within Neoproterozoic to Paleozoic strata of the Tindouf, Reggane and Hank basins (Chabou et al., 2010; Hachemaoui et al., 2022). In the northern flank of the Tindouf basin, these rocks were recently studied in detail using remote sensing techniques, geochemistry and geochronology (Chabou et al., 2010; Bersi et al., 2021; Hachemaoui et al., 2022). These studies in particular emphasized the possible existence of CAMP sill located within the Hassi Mahmoud anticline, displaying near-primary magma characteristics. The near-primitive geochemical composition of this sill has never been observed before among CAMP tholeiites of Northwest Africa. However, this conclusion was done on the basis of geochemical analysis of two samples. In this study, we have undertaken systematic sampling of the Hassi Mahmoud sill which extends some 25 km long and 3 km wide, intruding the Famennian shales of the Hassi Mahmoud anticline. In addition, we have sampled a few-meter-wide doleritic dyke that crosscuts the area. The first part of this study presents the results of remote sensing techniques [band ratios, color composites and principal component analysis (PCA)] applied to Landsat 8 OLI images of the Hassi Mahmoud area. These results show that the spectral response of Hassi Mahmoud sill is quite different from that of other CAMP sills of the northern flank of the Tindouf basin. Furthermore, natural color image of the sill highlights their dark green to black color, which is characteristics of highly mafic rocks. In the second part of this study, we investigated the mafic rocks of Hassi Mahmoud sill by petrography observation. These rocks consist of coarse-grained dolerites, displaying ophitic texture with poikilitic clinopyroxene including laths of plagioclase. In addition, these dolerites are rich in olivine, in contrast to other CAMP dolerites of the northern flank of the Tindouf basin, which are rather poor in this mineral. Furthermore, the abundance of olivine phenocrysts in Hassi Mahmoud dolerites is in accordance with their primitive nature. Geochemical and mineralogical studies of about fifteen doleritic samples, representative of the whole Hassi Mahmoud sill and dyke outcrops, are in progress