Reducing the environmental impact of surgery on a global scale: systematic review and co-prioritization with healthcare workers in 132 countries

Background Healthcare cannot achieve net-zero carbon without addressing operating theatres. The aim of this study was to prioritize feasible interventions to reduce the environmental impact of operating theatres. Methods This study adopted a four-phase Delphi consensus co-prioritization methodology. In phase 1, a systematic review of published interventions and global consultation of perioperative healthcare professionals were used to longlist interventions. In phase 2, iterative thematic analysis consolidated comparable interventions into a shortlist. In phase 3, the shortlist was co-prioritized based on patient and clinician views on acceptability, feasibility, and safety. In phase 4, ranked lists of interventions were presented by their relevance to high-income countries and low–middle-income countries. Results In phase 1, 43 interventions were identified, which had low uptake in practice according to 3042 professionals globally. In phase 2, a shortlist of 15 intervention domains was generated. In phase 3, interventions were deemed acceptable for more than 90 per cent of patients except for reducing general anaesthesia (84 per cent) and re-sterilization of ‘single-use’ consumables (86 per cent). In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for high-income countries were: introducing recycling; reducing use of anaesthetic gases; and appropriate clinical waste processing. In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for low–middle-income countries were: introducing reusable surgical devices; reducing use of consumables; and reducing the use of general anaesthesia. Conclusion This is a step toward environmentally sustainable operating environments with actionable interventions applicable to both high– and low–middle–income countries

Properties of hydroxyapatite produced by annealing of bovine bone

The properties of porous hydroxyapatite (HA) bioceramic produced by heat treatment (annealing) of bovine bone were evaluated over temperatures between 400 T and 1200 T. The annealed body was characterized by thermal analysis (thermogravimetric analysis (TG)/differential thermal analysis (DTA)), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) and Fourier transformed infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. The XRD results showed that the annealing process enhanced the crystallinity of HA phase in the bone matrix particularly when annealed above 700 degrees C. There was no secondary phase formation in bones annealed between 600 degrees C and 1000 T. However, decomposition of HA to P-tricalcium phosphate (TCP) was observed for samples heat-treated at 1100 degrees C and 1200 degrees C. The FTIR spectra and the TG/DTA thermogram of as-received bovine bone indicated the presence of organic compounds, which upon annealing at temperatures above 600 T was completely removed from the matrices. Bovine bone annealed between 800 degrees C and 1000 degrees C revealed the characteristics of a natural bone with the interconnecting pore network being retained in the structure. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd and Techna Group S.r.l. All rights reserved

Managing trust in peer-to-peer systems using reputation-based techniques

Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)27622-1

An evaluation of color-spatial retrieval techniques for large image databases

10.1023/A:1011359607594Multimedia Tools and Applications14155-78MTAP

Targeting for carbon sequestration retrofit planning in the power generation sector for multi-period problems

Carbon constrained energy planning (CCEP) is useful to ensure that the CO2 emissions limit for a region is met through deployment of low-carbon technologies. The increased demand in energy consumption due to economic growth requires additional energy supply and generation which would subsequently increase the carbon emissions. Nevertheless, most countries are now committed to reduce carbon emission to achieve long term sustainability goals. However, the development of alternative energy sources or carbon capture and storage (CCS) initiatives for power plants entails major capital investments. This paper demonstrates how these issues may be handled using CCEP with insight- and optimisation-based targeting techniques for multi-period scenarios. Both approaches were developed recently for CCEP problems, but previous techniques were limited to single-period planning. The extensions to multi-period scenarios are demonstrated in this work with hypothetical illustrative examples, as well as a Malaysian case study. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd

AutoComPaste: Auto-completing text as an alternative to copy-paste

10.1145/2254556.2254626Proceedings of the Workshop on Advanced Visual Interfaces AVI365-37