What about the Rest of Them? Fatal Injuries Related to Production Agriculture Not Captured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI)

Surveillance of injuries in production agriculture is necessary to inform stakeholders about workplace hazards and risks in order to improve and advance injury prevention policies and practices for this dangerous industry. The most comprehensive fatal injury surveillance effort currently in the United States is the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI), which covers occupational fatalities in all U.S. industries, including production agriculture. However, this surveillance does not include many categories of fatalities that occur during agricultural work or on production agriculture worksites. To better capture the human cost of production agriculture, the authors of this paper call for the collection of additional data with a broader scope that supplements, not replaces, the current CFOI. This paper describes challenges in surveillance, highlights key procedural gaps, and offers recommendations for advancing national surveillance of fatal traumatic injuries associated with production agriculture

The proton radius puzzle

High-precision measurements of the proton radius from laser spectroscopy of muonic hydrogen demonstrated up to six standard deviations smaller values than obtained from electron-proton scattering and hydrogen spectroscopy. The status of this discrepancy, which is known as the proton radius puzzle will be discussed in this paper, complemented with the new insights obtained from spectroscopy of muonic deuterium.Comment: Moriond 2017 conference, 8 pages, 4 figure

Bronchopulmonary dysplasia: clinical aspects and preventive and therapeutic strategies

Abstract Background Bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) is the result of a complex process in which several prenatal and/or postnatal factors interfere with lower respiratory tract development, leading to a severe, lifelong disease. In this review, what is presently known regarding BPD pathogenesis, its impact on long-term pulmonary morbidity and mortality and the available preventive and therapeutic strategies are discussed. Main body Bronchopulmonary dysplasia is associated with persistent lung impairment later in life, significantly impacting health services because subjects with BPD have, in most cases, frequent respiratory diseases and reductions in quality of life and life expectancy. Prematurity per se is associated with an increased risk of long-term lung problems. However, in children with BPD, impairment of pulmonary structures and function is even greater, although the characterization of long-term outcomes of BPD is difficult because the adults presently available to study have received outdated treatment. Prenatal and postnatal preventive measures are extremely important to reduce the risk of BPD. Conclusion Bronchopulmonary dysplasia is a respiratory condition that presently occurs in preterm neonates and can lead to chronic respiratory problems. Although knowledge about BPD pathogenesis has significantly increased in recent years, not all of the mechanisms that lead to lung damage are completely understood, which explains why therapeutic approaches that are theoretically effective have been only partly satisfactory or useless and, in some cases, potentially negative. However, prevention of prematurity, systematic use of nonaggressive ventilator measures, avoiding supraphysiologic oxygen exposure and administration of surfactant, caffeine and vitamin A can significantly reduce the risk of BPD development. Cell therapy is the most fascinating new measure to address the lung damage due to BPD. It is desirable that ongoing studies yield positive results to definitively solve a major clinical, social and economic problem

New Illumination Technology for Mask Aligner Lithography: Lasers replacing mercury vapor lamps

Nowadays, integrated semiconductor circuits are used as components in nearly every electrical device. This would be difficult to imagine without the application of photolithography, one of the essential manufacturing methods in semiconductor and microsystem technology. In a German research project run by the Friedrich Schiller University Jena in collaboration with the Fraunhofer IOF, the conventionally used mercury vapor lamp for mask aligner lithography has been replaced by a laser from the manufacturer InnoLas Photonics and has opened completely new perspectives

Photomask displacement technology for continuous profile generation by mask aligner lithography

Mask aligner lithography is one of the most widely used technologies for micro-optical elements fabrication. It offers a high throughput with high-yield processing. With different resolution enhancement technologies shadow printing is a mature alternative to the more expensive projection or electron-beam lithography. We are presenting a novel mask aligner tool that allows shifting the photomask with high accuracy between sequential exposure shots. It offers possibilities such as double patterning or gray tone lithography by applying different light doses at different locations. Within this publication, we show the first results for high resolution blazed grating structures generated in photoresist by multiple exposures using a conventional binary photomask

Mask aligner lithography using laser illumination for versatile pattern generation

Mask aligner lithography is a well-established back-end fabrication process in microlithography. Within the last few years, resolution enhancement techniques have been transferred and adapted from projection lithography to further develop mask aligner lithography, especially concerning achievable resolution. Nonetheless, current technology using a mercury vapor lamp as a light source has reached its limits, e.g. for high-resolution pattering. Within this paper, we present the extension of the existing mask aligner illumination system by replacing the mercury vapor lamp with a solid-state laser. Full-field mask aligner lithography is guaranteed by a rotating diffuser expanding the laser beam and minimizing undesired speckle effects. An additional integrated galvanometer scanner allows a flexible choice of arbitrary angular spectrum distributions of the photomask illumination. We show versatile results like simple binary patterns of squares and triangles, as well as a more complex lateral shape like a blazed grating

Advanced photomask fabrication by e-beam lithography for mask aligner applications

Photomasks contain geometric information that will be transferred to substrates or pre-structured surfaces. Conventional mask aligner lithography in the sense of shadow printing of the photomask suffers from limited achievable resolution. Photomask and substrate are typically separated by an air gap causing diffraction effects and hence affecting the minimum structure size. Even though contact lithography offers a resolution in the wavelengthscale, yield problems and contamination of the photomask are its drawbacks. Using proximity lithography, these problems can be avoided since it profits from a contact-free exposure process. To overcome the resolution limitation of the shadow printing mode more advanced diffraction based photo masks need to be used

Crop Ground Cover Fraction and Canopy Chlorophyll Content Mapping using RapidEye imagery

Remote sensing is a suitable tool for estimating the spatial variability of crop canopy characteristics, such as canopy chlorophyll content (CCC) and green ground cover (GGC%), which are often used for crop productivity analysis and site-specific crop management. Empirical relationships exist between different vegetation indices (VI) and CCC and GGC% that allow spatial estimation of canopy characteristics from remote sensing imagery. However, the use of VIs is not suitable for an operational production of CCC and GGC% maps due to the limited transferability of derived empirical relationships to other regions. Thus, the operational value of crop status maps derived from remotely sensed data would be much higher if there was no need for reparametrization of the approach for different situations. This paper reports on the suitability of high-resolution RapidEye data for estimating crop development status of winter wheat over the growing season, and demonstrates two different approaches for mapping CCC and GGC%, which do not rely on empirical relationships. The final CCC map represents relative differences in CCC, which can be quickly calibrated to field specific conditions using SPAD chlorophyll meter readings at a few points. The prediction model is capable of predicting SPAD readings with an average accuracy of 77%. The GGC% map provides absolute values at any point in the field. A high R² value of 80% was obtained for the relationship between estimated and observed GGC%. The mean absolute error for each of the two acquisition dates was 5.3% and 8.7%, respectively

Intensity and phase fields behind Phase Shifting Masks studied with High Resolution Interference Microscopy

The proximity printing industry is in real need of high resolution results and it can be done using Phase Shift Mask (PSM) or by applying Optical Proximity Correction (OPC). In our research we are trying to find out details of how light fields behind the structures of photo masks develop in order to determine the best conditions and designs for proximity printing. We focus here on parameters that are used in real situation with gaps up to 50 μm and structure sizes down to 2 μm. The light field evolution behind the structures is studied and delivers insight in to precisions and tolerances that need to be respected. It is the first time that an experimental analysis of light propagation through mask is presented in detail, which includes information on intensity and phase. The instrument we use is known as High Resolution Interference Microscopy (HRIM). HRIM is a Mach-Zehnder interferometer which is capable of recording three dimensional distributions of intensity and phase with diffraction limited resolution. Our characterization technique allows plotting the evolution of the desired light field and therefore printable structure till the desired proximity gap. In this paper we discuss in detail the evolution of intensity and phase fields of elbow or corner structure at different position behind a phase mask and interpret the main parameters. Of particular interest are tolerances against proximity gap variation and the resolution in printed structures