Long stroke pump

A very high pressure pump apparatus which minimizes wear on the seals thereof and on valves connected thereto, by utilizing a very long stroke piston rod whose opposite ends are received in long cylinders. An electric motor which drives the rod, includes a rotor with a threaded aperture that receives a long threaded middle portion of the rod, so that as the rotor turns it advances the rod

Facilitators of, and barriers to, personalisation in care homes in England: evidence from Care Quality Commission inspection reports

The personalisation of residential care services is based on three broad principles of valuing personal identity, empowering resident decision-making and fostering care relationships. We analysed 50 Care Quality Commission care home inspection reports to identify factors that the reports indicate facilitate or hinder the delivery of personalised residential care in England. Findings suggest that the provision of personalised services is affected by staff skills, attitudes and availability, as well as the quality of care home leadership. Future care policy should consider addressing external pressures facing the care home sector, including inadequate funding and too few staff, to mitigate barriers to delivering high-quality, personalised care

Effects of mental health training on capacity, willingness and engagement in peer-to-peer support in rural New South Wales

ISSUE ADDRESSED: Rural Australians experience significant barriers in accessing mental health services, some of which may be overcome by increasing mental health literacy in rural communities. This paper evaluates Mental Health Support Skills (MHSS), short training courses developed by the Rural Adversity Mental Health Program (RAMHP). MHSS was designed to build the capacity of community members and gatekeepers to identify people with mental health concerns and link them to appropriate resources or services. METHODS: Program data from April 2017 to March 2020 were analysed to assess the reach and outcomes of MHSS training. Training feedback was collected through a post‐training survey, completed directly after courses, and a follow‐up survey two months after training. An app used by RAMHP coordinators (the trainers) recorded the geographic and demographic reach of courses. RESULTS: MHSS was provided to 10,208 residents across rural New South Wales. Survey participation was 49% (n = 4,985) for the post‐training survey and 6% (n = 571), for the follow‐up survey, two months post‐training. The training was well‐received and increased the mental health understanding and willingness to assist others of most respondents (91%‐95%). Follow‐up survey respondents applied learnings to assist others; 53% (n = 301) asked a total of 2,252 people about their mental health in the two months following training. Those in clinical roles asked a median of 6 people about their mental health, compared to 3 for those in nonclinical roles. Most follow‐up survey respondents (59%, n = 339) reported doing more to look after their own mental health in the two months after training. CONCLUSION: These results are encouraging as they suggest that short‐form mental health training can be an effective tool to address poorer mental health outcomes for rural residents by improving the ability of participants to help themselves and the people around them. SO WHAT? Serious consideration should be given to short mental health courses, such as MHSS, to increase literacy and connection to services, especially in rural areas

Explaining low uptake of direct payments in residential care: findings from the evaluation of the Direct Payments in Residential Care Trailblazers

In 2012, the Government invited local councils in England to participate in a pilot programme to test direct payments in residential care. While the programme was set up to allow for comprehensive summative evaluation, the uptake of direct payments in residential care was substantially lower than anticipated, with only 40 people in receipt of one at the end of the programme. Drawing on qualitative data collected for the evaluation, this paper aims to understand better the barriers to implementing direct payments in residential care. Evidence from the use of direct payments in domiciliary care identified gatekeeping by council frontline staff as a major barrier for service users to access direct payments. Our findings suggest that, whilst selectivity of both service users and providers was an integral part of the programme design, gatekeeping does not fully explain the poor take-up. Other factors played a part, such as lack of clarity about the benefits of direct payments for care home residents, the limited range and scope of choice of services for residents, and concerns from care providers about the financial impact of direct payments on their financial sustainability

Closed-loop optimization of fast-charging protocols for batteries with machine learning.

Simultaneously optimizing many design parameters in time-consuming experiments causes bottlenecks in a broad range of scientific and engineering disciplines1,2. One such example is process and control optimization for lithium-ion batteries during materials selection, cell manufacturing and operation. A typical objective is to maximize battery lifetime; however, conducting even a single experiment to evaluate lifetime can take months to years3-5. Furthermore, both large parameter spaces and high sampling variability3,6,7 necessitate a large number of experiments. Hence, the key challenge is to reduce both the number and the duration of the experiments required. Here we develop and demonstrate a machine learning methodology  to efficiently optimize a parameter space specifying the current and voltage profiles of six-step, ten-minute fast-charging protocols for maximizing battery cycle life, which can alleviate range anxiety for electric-vehicle users8,9. We combine two key elements to reduce the optimization cost: an early-prediction model5, which reduces the time per experiment by predicting the final cycle life using data from the first few cycles, and a Bayesian optimization algorithm10,11, which reduces the number of experiments by balancing exploration and exploitation to efficiently probe the parameter space of charging protocols. Using this methodology, we rapidly identify high-cycle-life charging protocols among 224 candidates in 16 days (compared with over 500 days using exhaustive search without early prediction), and subsequently validate the accuracy and efficiency of our optimization approach. Our closed-loop methodology automatically incorporates feedback from past experiments to inform future decisions and can be generalized to other applications in battery design and, more broadly, other scientific domains that involve time-intensive experiments and multi-dimensional design spaces

Optimising skill-mix in the primary health care workforce for the care of older Australians: a systematic review

Australia has an ageing population resulting in demand for extensive and comprehensive care of chronic disease. This demand has required new thinking about primary health care workforce re-modelling to meet the health care needs of community dwelling older Australians. Sibbald and others have developed a model of skill-mix change to discuss workforce redesign. We conducted a systematic literature review to identify skill-mix changes needed in the primary health care workforce to successfully meet the health care needs of older Australians. Sibbald's concept that skill-mix changes could be obtained through task substitution, enhancement, delegation and innovation formed the conceptual framework for the review.The research reported in this paper is a project of the Australian Primary Health Care Research Institute, which is supported by a grant from the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing under the Primary Health Care Research, Evaluation and Development Strategy