Respiratory rate monitoring devices for the acute care setting: device development and evaluation

Respiratory rate is an important vital sign because it changes early in acute illness. In acute care settings such as emergency departments, respiratory rate is measured manually but this method has shortcomings. Accordingly, technological solutions to this problem are sought.A novel system of classification of respiratory rate measuring devices was developed and a review of the literature was undertaken. Microelectronic mechanical sensor (MEMS) accelerometer and gyroscope devices were identified as having potential for further development. Literature gaps regarding the performance of MEMS gyroscopes in measuring respiratory rate were identified. MEMS devices detect chest wall movement from which respiratory rate can be measured.Device trials were conducted with healthy volunteers and MEMS accelerometers (N = 34) and gyroscopes (N=36) had their respiratory rate measurement performance compared with that of a reference device, a chest mounted strain gauge. Sensors were mounted at different sites on the body wall to determine optimum site of placement. Measurements were made in the supine and seated positions to investigate effects of posture on measurements.No statistically significant difference was found between respiratory rates measured at any site in either posture. MEMS accelerometers were found to have a mean absolute error (MAE) of between 0.73 and 2.23 bpm in the seated posture and 0.43 and 1.32 bpm in the supine posture. MEMS gyroscopes were found to have an MAE of 0.34 – 1.20 bpm seated and 0.45 – 0.82 bpm in the supine posture.Attempts were made to improve accuracy of these measurements by means of developing statistical signal quality indices but these were found to be ineffective, whereas some of these are noted in the literature to be effective for electrocardiogram and photoplethysmogram signals.It is concluded that MEMS accelerometers and gyroscopes can be used in devices to measure respiratory rate but further technical improvements must be sought.</p

Crustal structure of northeastern North America: Results from the Ontario-New York-New England seismic refraction/wide-angle reflection experiment.

The Ontario-New York-New England seismic refraction/wide-angle reflection profile was acquired to investigate the deep structural interrelationships between the southeastern Grenville province and the western New England Appalachians. The Grenville province is characterized by 45 km thick crust, with an average crustal seismic velocity of 6.6 km/s and a Poisson's ratio of 0.28+0.01. In the mid-crust a laminated dome-like body is inferred to be composed of mafic cumulate sills on the basis of its high velocity (7.1 km/s) and Poisson's ratio (0.27). The lower crust is characterized by a velocity of 7.0 km/s which suggests a strongly mafic composition such as garnet pyroxene granulite. The Moho is a variable feature, characterized by en-echelon reflections suggestive of compositional interlayering. An anomalous mantle layer with a velocity of 8.6 km/s is proposed to represent an eclogized basaltic layer added to the lithosphere during Grenvillian orogenesis. The boundary between the Grenvillian craton and the western New England Appalachians is marked by an eastward dipping ramp structure which penetrates to a depth of 25 km where it soles out above a transitional mid-lower crustal interface. The New England Appalachians are characterized by an average crustal velocity of 6.4 km/s and a sharply reflective Moho delineating crustal thinning from 41 km to 37 km towards the Atlantic margin. The lower crustal velocity is 6.8 km/s, with a Poisson's ratio of 0.26+0.01. In contrast to the Grenvillian craton the seismic properties of the Appalachian lower crust are consistent with an intermediate composition interlaced with mafic sills related to extensional underplating and intrusion during the rifting of the Atlantic Ocean

Anderson Localization in Disordered <i>LN</i> Photonic Crystal Slab Cavities

We present a detailed theoretical study of the effects of structural disorder on <i>LN</i> photonic crystal slab cavities, ranging from short to long length scales (<i>N</i> = 3–35 cavity lengths), using a fully three-dimensional Bloch mode expansion technique. We compute the optical density of states (DOS), quality factors and effective mode volumes of the cavity modes, with and without lattice disorder, and compare with the localized modes of the corresponding disordered photonic crystal waveguide. We demonstrate how the quality factors and effective mode volumes saturate at a specific cavity length, and become bounded by the corresponding values of the Anderson modes appearing in the disordered waveguide. By means of the intensity fluctuation criterion, we find Anderson-like localization for cavity lengths larger than around <i>L</i>31, and show that the field confinement in the disordered <i>LN</i> cavities is mainly determined by the local characteristics of the structural disorder as long as the confinement region is far enough away from the cavity mirrors and the effective mode localization length is much smaller than the cavity length; under this regime, the disordered cavity system becomes insensitive to changes in the cavity boundaries, and a good agreement with the intensity fluctuation criterion is found for Anderson localization. Surprisingly, we find that the Anderson-like localized modes do not appear as new disorder-induced resonances in the main spectral region of the <i>LN</i> cavity modes, and moreover, the disordered DOS enhancement is largest for the disordered waveguide system with the same length. These results are fundamentally interesting for applications such as lasing and cavity-QED, and provide new insights into the role of the boundary condition (e.g., open vs mirrors) on finite-size slow-light waveguides. They also point out the limits of using models based on the cavity boundaries/mirrors and a single slow-light Bloch mode to describe cavity systems with large <i>N</i>

Supplement 1: Spontaneous emission from a quantum dot in a structured photonic reservoir: phonon-mediated breakdown of Fermi’s golden rule

Originally published in Optica on 20 May 2015 (optica-2-5-434

The international labour standards regime: a case study in global regulation

The World Trade Organisation's (WTO) consistent rejection of proposals for the inclusion of a social clause into its existing rules and regulations has prompted the International Labour Organisation (ILO) to examine alternative ways in which global consensus on the regulation of labour standards can be developed. In this paper we map the failure of the social clause debate by reference to the outcome of successive WTO ministerials and we examine the role of executive leadership and related epistemic activity in the development of the international labour standards regime (ILSR). We conclude that the switch to a focus on a regime of core labour standards provides the most promising platform for progress in labour protection and an influential outcome in placing the ILO at the heart of attempts to integrate social policy into global economic governance

Supplementary document for Reconciling quantum and classical spectral theories of ultrastrong coupling: Role of cavity bath coupling and gauge corrections - 6902240.pdf

Sup Mat documen

MOESM1 of Efficacies of Cabotegravir and Bictegravir against drug-resistant HIV-1 integrase mutants

Additional file 1. Two sets of supplementary tables are included for Figs. 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, and 10. One set of tables (A) shows the antiviral activities of the INSTIs against INSTI-resistant mutants and the other set of tables (B) shows the statistical significance (p values) when comparing antiviral activities against INSTI-resistant mutants among the INSTIs

Media 2: Vortex electron energy loss spectroscopy for near-field mapping of magnetic plasmons

Originally published in Optics Express on 02 July 2012 (oe-20-14-15024

MOESM2 of Drug resistant integrase mutants cause aberrant HIV integrations

Additional file 2. Structure of the aberrant proviruses isolated from cells treated with suboptimal concentrations of EVG (Table S1); from cells infected with viruses harboring RAL resistant mutations and treated with suboptimal doses of RAL (Tables S2–S4). The inhibitory concentrations of EVG or RAL used to treat the cells are indicated. The aberrations in the viral LTRs and in the integrated host chromosome(s) are indicated. U-LTR: the LTR adjacent to the primer binding site; D-LTR: the LTR adjacent to the polypurine tract

MOESM1 of Drug resistant integrase mutants cause aberrant HIV integrations

Additional file 1: Figure S1. Structure of DNAs used to generate the HIV-1 vectors. At the top is a diagram of the DNA used to generate the genomic RNA that is packaged into the viral vector. When the vector infects human cells, a DNA copy of vector genome is inserted into host DNA. This allows the expression of GFP, which is under the control of a CMV promoter. The vector genome also carries an E. coli plasmid origin of replication (Ori) and a zeocin resistance gene that allows circular DNA forms of the vector genome to replicate and be selected in E. coli. The other three DNAs express Gag–Pol, Rev, and VSV-G. Rev is expressed from an RSV promoter; Gag–Pol and VSVG are expressed from CMV promoters. All four DNAs are grown in E. coli as plasmids. The plasmids encode ampicillin resistance (Ampr)