Machine

In today’s society of humans and machines, automation, animation, and ecosystems are terms of concern. Categories of life and technology have become mixed in governmental policies and drive economic exploitation and the pathologies of everyday life. This book both curiously and critically advances the term that underlies these new developments: machine. Contents: Introduction: Un/Civil Engineering (Thomas Pringle); Animation of the Technical and the Quest for Beauty (Gertrud Koch); For a Neganthropology of Automatic Society (Bernard Stiegler); The Ecosystem Is an Apparatus: From Machinic Ecology to the Politics of Resilience (Thomas Pringle)

Machine

In today’s society of humans and machines, automation, animation, and ecosystems are terms of concern. Categories of life and technology have become mixed in governmental policies and drive economic exploitation and the pathologies of everyday life. This book both curiously and critically advances the term that underlies these new developments: machine

Threat and error management for anesthesiologists: a predictive risk taxonomy

Patient care in the operating room is a dynamic interaction that requires cooperation among team members and reliance upon sophisticated technology. Most human factors research in medicine has been focused on analyzing errors and implementing system-wide changes to prevent them from recurring. We describe a set of techniques that has been used successfully by the aviation industry to analyze errors and adverse events and explain how these techniques can be applied to patient care

Developing community-based urine sampling methods to deploy biomarker technology for the assessment of dietary exposure

Objective: Obtaining objective, dietary exposure information from individuals is challenging because of the complexity of food consumption patterns and the limitations of self-reporting tools (e.g., FFQ and diet diaries). This hinders research efforts to associate intakes of specific foods or eating patterns with population health outcomes. Design: Dietary exposure can be assessed by the measurement of food-derived chemicals in urine samples. We aimed to develop methodologies for urine collection that minimised impact on the day-to-day activities of participants but also yielded samples that were data-rich in terms of targeted biomarker measurements. Setting: Urine collection methodologies were developed within home settings. Participants: Different cohorts of free-living volunteers. Results: Home collection of urine samples using vacuum transfer technology was deemed highly acceptable by volunteers. Statistical analysis of both metabolome and selected dietary exposure biomarkers in spot urine collected and stored using this method showed that they were compositionally similar to urine collected using a standard method with immediate sample freezing. Even without chemical preservatives, samples can be stored under different temperature regimes without any significant impact on the overall urine composition or concentration of forty-six exemplar dietary exposure biomarkers. Importantly, the samples could be posted directly to analytical facilities, without the need for refrigerated transport and involvement of clinical professionals. Conclusions: This urine sampling methodology appears to be suitable for routine use and may provide a scalable, cost-effective means to collect urine samples and to assess diet in epidemiological studies

Efficacy of emotion-focused parenting programs for children's internalizing and externalizing symptoms : a randomized clinical study

Objective Emotion-Focused Skills Training (EFST) is a 12-week parental program based on Emotion-Focused Therapy, developed to improve children and adolescents' mental health problems. Methods In a randomized clinical dismantling study, including parents of 236 children and adolescents (ages 6–13, Mage 8.9, 60.6% boys, 95.8% Caucasian) with externalizing and/or internalizing problems within clinical range, we examined the efficacy of two versions of EFST: one experiential condition (n = 120) involving emotionally evocative techniques and two-chair interventions, and one psychoeducational only condition (n = 116) involving didactic teaching of emotion skills. Both groups received a 2-day group training and 6 hours of individual supervision. Outcomes were parent- and teacher-reported symptoms at baseline, posttreatment, and 4-, 8-, and 12-month follow-up. Analyses were conducted using multilevel growth curve modeling and Bayesian post hoc analysis. Results EFST showed efficacy in reducing parent-reported externalizing (b = −1.72, p .05, d = 0.2) symptoms. Multilevel analyses showed nonsignificant differences between conditions (all p's > .05), although a Bayesian longitudinal sensitivity analysis indicated a better outcome for the experiential condition. Conclusion EFST showed efficacy in symptom reduction for children and adolescents with internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Outcomes were maintained over 12 months for both conditions, supporting EFST as a transdiagnostic parental approach for early intervention

Identification of Radiopure Titanium for the LZ Dark Matter Experiment and Future Rare Event Searches

The LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment will search for dark matter particle interactions with a detector containing a total of 10 tonnes of liquid xenon within a double-vessel cryostat. The large mass and proximity of the cryostat to the active detector volume demand the use of material with extremely low intrinsic radioactivity. We report on the radioassay campaign conducted to identify suitable metals, the determination of factors limiting radiopure production, and the selection of titanium for construction of the LZ cryostat and other detector components. This titanium has been measured with activities of $^{238}$U$_{e}$~$<$1.6~mBq/kg, $^{238}$U$_{l}$~$<$0.09~mBq/kg, $^{232}$Th$_{e}$~$=0.28\pm 0.03$~mBq/kg, $^{232}$Th$_{l}$~$=0.25\pm 0.02$~mBq/kg, $^{40}$K~$<$0.54~mBq/kg, and $^{60}$Co~$<$0.02~mBq/kg (68\% CL). Such low intrinsic activities, which are some of the lowest ever reported for titanium, enable its use for future dark matter and other rare event searches. Monte Carlo simulations have been performed to assess the expected background contribution from the LZ cryostat with this radioactivity. In 1,000 days of WIMP search exposure of a 5.6-tonne fiducial mass, the cryostat will contribute only a mean background of $0.160\pm0.001$(stat)$\pm0.030$(sys) counts.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Astroparticle Physic