20,327 research outputs found
An efficient prebreathing apparatus for humans during decompression
Portable prebreathing system was developed which recirculates and reconditions respiratorily exhaled oxygen. Apparatus reduces fire hazards, simplifies prebreathing procedures, and does not require extensive enclosure venting system usage
Landau Collision Integral Solver with Adaptive Mesh Refinement on Emerging Architectures
The Landau collision integral is an accurate model for the small-angle
dominated Coulomb collisions in fusion plasmas. We investigate a high order
accurate, fully conservative, finite element discretization of the nonlinear
multi-species Landau integral with adaptive mesh refinement using the PETSc
library (www.mcs.anl.gov/petsc). We develop algorithms and techniques to
efficiently utilize emerging architectures with an approach that minimizes
memory usage and movement and is suitable for vector processing. The Landau
collision integral is vectorized with Intel AVX-512 intrinsics and the solver
sustains as much as 22% of the theoretical peak flop rate of the Second
Generation Intel Xeon Phi, Knights Landing, processor
Do earplugs stop noise from driving critical care patients into delirium?
Quality sleep is a problem for the critically ill who are cared for in an environment where interventions night and day are common, staff members are constantly present in relatively high numbers, and treatment is accompanied by a range of changing warning tones and alarms and lights. These critical care units are generally designed without a focus on patient comfort, sleep, and rest and often lack access to appropriate natural daylight. To add to this problem, critical illness, particularly sepsis, disrupts circadian rhythms and sleep patterns, and disruption of circadian rhythms, in turn, impairs immunity and contributes to delirium. In a randomized controlled trial in the previous issue of Critical Care, Van Rompaey and colleagues have intervened to reduce noise, which is a key factor in this disruption, by having patients use earplugs at night. Delirium was assessed by using the NEECHAM (Neelon and Champagne) confusion scale, and sleep perception was assessed by patients' responses to a set of five questions. After the first night, patients reported a better sleep perception and the occurrence of delirium was reduced (hazard ratio of 0.47 for the development of delirium) or was delayed. The study did not quantify adequacy of pain control in post-surgical patients and used patient reporting to assess sleep. Whether patients were receiving respiratory or other organ support was not reported. The potential benefit of earplugs is an important practical finding that could be implemented in most intensive care units
Measuring Active-Sterile Neutrino Oscillations with a Stopped Pion Neutrino Source
The question of the existence of light sterile neutrinos is of great interest
in many areas of particle physics, astrophysics, and cosmology. Furthermore,
should the MiniBooNE experiment at Fermilab confirm the LSND oscillation
signal, then new measurements are required to identify the mechanism
responsible for these oscillations. Possibilities include sterile neutrinos, CP
or CPT violation, variable mass neutrinos, Lorentz violation, and extra
dimensions. In this paper, we consider an experiment at a stopped pion neutrino
source to determine if active-sterile neutrino oscillations with delta-m
greater than 0.1 eV2 can account for the signal. By exploiting stopped pi+
decay to produce a monoenergetic nu_mu source, and measuring the rate of the
neutral current reaction nu_x + 12C -> nu_x +12C* as a function of distance
from the source, we show that a convincing test for active-sterile neutrino
oscillations can be performed.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figure
Radio Observations of the Supernova Remnant Candidate G312.5-3.0
The radio images from the Parkes-MIT-NRAO (PMN) Southern Sky Survey at 4850
MHz have revealed a number of previously unknown radio sources. One such
source, G312.5-3.0 (PMN J1421-6415), has been observed using the
multi-frequency capabilities of the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) at
frequencies of 1380 MHz and 2378 MHz. Further observations of the source were
made using the Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescope (MOST) at a frequency
of 843 MHz. The source has an angular size of 18 arcmin and has a distinct
shell structure. We present the reduced multi-frequency observations of this
source and provide a brief argument for its possible identification as a
supernova remnant.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, Accepted for publication in MNRA
The Association Between Health Care Staff Engagement and Patient Safety Outcomes: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Objectives: Despite decades of research, improving health care safety remains a global priority. Individual studies have demonstrated links between staff engagement and care quality, but until now, any relationship between engagement and patient safety outcomes has been more speculative. This systematic review and meta-analysis therefore assessed this relationship and explored if the way these variables were defined and measured had any differential effect.
Methods: After systematic searches of Medline, CINAHL, PsycInfo, Embase, Cochrane Library, and National Institute for Health Research Journals databases, narrative and random-effects meta-analyses were completed, with pooled effect sizes expressed as Pearson r.
Results: Fourteen studies met the inclusion criteria, 11 of which were suitable for meta-analysis. Meta-analyses indicated a small but consistent, statistically significant relationship between staff engagement and patient safety (all outcomes; 11 studies; r = 0.22; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.07 to 0.36; n = 30,490) and 2 patient safety outcome categories: patient safety culture (7 studies;r = 0.22; 95% CI, 0.01 to 0.41; n = 27,857) and errors/adverse events (4 studies;r = −0.20; 95% CI, −0.26 to −0.13; n = 2633). The specific approach to conceptualizing engagement did not affect the strength of the findings.
Conclusions: This is the first review to demonstrate a significant relationship between engagement and both safety culture scores and errors/adverse events. Despite a limited and evolving evidence base, we cautiously conclude that increasing staff engagement could be an effective means of enhancing patient safety. Further research is needed to determine causality and clarify the nature of the staff engagement/patient safety relationship at individual and unit/workgroup levels
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