Stability of Drugs Stored in Helicopters for Use by Emergency Medical Services: A Prospective Observational Study.

STUDY OBJECTIVE Drugs stored in rescue helicopters may be subject to extreme environmental conditions. The aim of this study was to measure whether drugs stored under the real-life conditions of a Swiss helicopter emergency medical service (HEMS) would retain their potency over the course of 1 year. METHODS A prospective, longitudinal study measuring the temperature exposure and concentration of drugs stored on 2 rescue helicopters in Switzerland over 1 year. The study drugs included epinephrine, norepinephrine, amiodarone, midazolam, fentanyl, naloxone, rocuronium, etomidate, and ketamine. Temperatures were measured inside the medication storage bags and the crew cabins at 10-minute intervals. Drug stability was measured on a monthly basis over the course of 12 months using high-performance liquid chromatography. The medications were considered stable at a minimum remaining drug concentration of 90% of the label claim. RESULTS Temperatures ranged from -1.2 °C to 38.1 °C (29.84 °F to 100.58 °F) inside the drug storage bags. Of all the temperature measurements inside the drug storage bags, 37% lay outside the recommended storage conditions. All drugs maintained a concentration above 90% of the label claim. The observation periods for rocuronium and etomidate were shortened to 7 months because of a supply shortage of reference samples. CONCLUSION Drugs stored under the real-life conditions of Swiss HEMS are subjected to temperatures outside the manufacturer's approved storage requirements. Despite this, all drugs stored under these conditions remained stable throughout our study. Real-life stability testing could be a way to extend drug exchange intervals

Rainforest transformation reallocates energy from green to brown food webs.

Terrestrial animal biodiversity is increasingly being lost because of land-use change1,2. However, functional and energetic consequences aboveground and belowground and across trophic levels in megadiverse tropical ecosystems remain largely unknown. To fill this gap, we assessed changes in energy fluxes across 'green' aboveground (canopy arthropods and birds) and 'brown' belowground (soil arthropods and earthworms) animal food webs in tropical rainforests and plantations in Sumatra, Indonesia. Our results showed that most of the energy in rainforests is channelled to the belowground animal food web. Oil palm and rubber plantations had similar or, in the case of rubber agroforest, higher total animal energy fluxes compared to rainforest but the key energetic nodes were distinctly different: in rainforest more than 90% of the total animal energy flux was channelled by arthropods in soil and canopy, whereas in plantations more than 50% of the energy was allocated to annelids (earthworms). Land-use change led to a consistent decline in multitrophic energy flux aboveground, whereas belowground food webs responded with reduced energy flux to higher trophic levels, down to -90%, and with shifts from slow (fungal) to fast (bacterial) energy channels and from faeces production towards consumption of soil organic matter. This coincides with previously reported soil carbon stock depletion3. Here we show that well-documented animal biodiversity declines with tropical land-use change4-6 are associated with vast energetic and functional restructuring in food webs across aboveground and belowground ecosystem compartments

The Behavior of Novae Light Curves Before Eruption

In 1975, E. R. Robinson conducted the hallmark study of the behavior of classical nova light curves before eruption, and this work has now become part of the standard knowledge of novae. He made three points; that 5 out of 11 novae showed pre-eruption rises in the years before eruption, that one nova (V446 Her) showed drastic changes in the variability across eruptions, and that all but one of the novae (excepting BT Mon) have the same quiescent magnitudes before and after the outburst. This work has not been tested since it came out. We have now tested these results by going back to the original archival photographic plates and measuring large numbers of pre-eruption magnitudes for many novae using comparison stars on a modern magnitude scale. We find in particular that four out of five claimed pre-eruption rises are due to simple mistakes in the old literature, that V446 Her has the same amplitude of variations across its 1960 eruption, and that BT Mon has essentially unchanged brightness across its 1939 eruption. Out of 22 nova eruptions, we find two confirmed cases of significant pre-eruption rises (for V533 Her and V1500 Cyg), while T CrB has a deep pre-eruption dip. These events are a challenge to theorists. We find no significant cases of changes in variability across 27 nova eruptions beyond what is expected due to the usual fluctuations seen in novae away from eruptions. For 30 classical novae plus 19 eruptions from 6 recurrent novae, we find that the average change in magnitude from before the eruption to long after the eruption is 0.0 mag. However, we do find five novae (V723 Cas, V1500 Cyg, V1974 Cyg, V4633 Sgr, and RW UMi) that have significantly large changes, in that the post-eruption quiescent brightness level is over ten times brighter than the pre-eruption level.Comment: 91 pages (preprint), AJ accepte

Advances in Molecular Quantum Chemistry Contained in the Q-Chem 4 Program Package

A summary of the technical advances that are incorporated in the fourth major release of the Q-Chem quantum chemistry program is provided, covering approximately the last seven years. These include developments in density functional theory methods and algorithms, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) property evaluation, coupled cluster and perturbation theories, methods for electronically excited and open-shell species, tools for treating extended environments, algorithms for walking on potential surfaces, analysis tools, energy and electron transfer modelling, parallel computing capabilities, and graphical user interfaces. In addition, a selection of example case studies that illustrate these capabilities is given. These include extensive benchmarks of the comparative accuracy of modern density functionals for bonded and non-bonded interactions, tests of attenuated second order Møller–Plesset (MP2) methods for intermolecular interactions, a variety of parallel performance benchmarks, and tests of the accuracy of implicit solvation models. Some specific chemical examples include calculations on the strongly correlated Cr2 dimer, exploring zeolite-catalysed ethane dehydrogenation, energy decomposition analysis of a charged ter-molecular complex arising from glycerol photoionisation, and natural transition orbitals for a Frenkel exciton state in a nine-unit model of a self-assembling nanotube

Software for the frontiers of quantum chemistry:An overview of developments in the Q-Chem 5 package

This article summarizes technical advances contained in the fifth major release of the Q-Chem quantum chemistry program package, covering developments since 2015. A comprehensive library of exchange–correlation functionals, along with a suite of correlated many-body methods, continues to be a hallmark of the Q-Chem software. The many-body methods include novel variants of both coupled-cluster and configuration-interaction approaches along with methods based on the algebraic diagrammatic construction and variational reduced density-matrix methods. Methods highlighted in Q-Chem 5 include a suite of tools for modeling core-level spectroscopy, methods for describing metastable resonances, methods for computing vibronic spectra, the nuclear–electronic orbital method, and several different energy decomposition analysis techniques. High-performance capabilities including multithreaded parallelism and support for calculations on graphics processing units are described. Q-Chem boasts a community of well over 100 active academic developers, and the continuing evolution of the software is supported by an “open teamware” model and an increasingly modular design

Farmland biodiversity and associated ecosystem services across tropical rural- urban landscapes

Driven by the unprecedented growth of human populations, cities all over the globe are expanding. Especially Asia and Africa are hotspots of current and future urbanization. As cities grow, they extend in area, sprawling into surrounding rural landscapes, creating a mosaic of urban developments and agricultural land-uses. At the same time, small-scale urban agriculture within city limits becomes increasingly popular. Given the alleged negative environmental impacts of urbanization, the question arises whether and how sustainable agriculture can be maintained in an increasingly urbanized world. In particular, functional biodiversity, indispensable for ecosystem services such as pollination or biological pest control, could be adversely affected. In my dissertation, I dwell on this question, focusing on the tropical south Indian megacity Bangalore. Megacities represent the most extreme form of urbanization. However, they have received only limited research attention so far, especially in tropical locations. As part of my dissertation, I conducted a systematic literature review on the effects of urbanization on pollination and pollinators and showed that urbanization is not always a threat for wildlife. To the contrary, I found that pollinator responses to urbanization are actually highly mixed with both positive and negative outcomes. Positive responses were often associated with urban sprawl, i.e. moderate levels of urbanization of rural, mostly agricultural land, whereas high levels of densification with high percentages of impervious area largely led to pollinator declines and loss of pollination. Furthermore, urbanization reduced pollinator diversity when compared to semi-natural areas, but also enhanced it when compared to intensified agricultural landscapes. In addition, I show that pollinator responses were commonly highly trait- and scale- specific and identified local and landscape drivers of urbanization for pollinator diversity. I conclude that urbanization can be designed to be biodiversity-friendly and that it could make a valuable contribution to pollinator conservation, in particular in the face of the continued intensification of rural agriculture. However, it also became clear that qualitative research is missing from tropical locations in the global south. In my second chapter, I studied farmland birds within Bangalore’s rural-urban interface. As farmland birds are important biocontrol agents, they occupy a key role for sustainable agricultural production. I sampled birds via point counts on 36 farms across three seasons and along two urbanization gradients. I employed a paired site design to separate local and landscape effects. I found high bird species losses through urbanization. With an increase of Abstract 6 landscape-wide impervious surface area from 0 % to 20 %, farmland bird abundance and diversity were halved. Particularly high declines in invertebrate-feeding birds indicated a great decrease in biocontrol potential, especially amid the monsoon, the high crop season, during which I found a drop of overall bird abundance by 20 %. However, bird richness benefitted from woody vegetation in combination with fallow fields, which could be employed in conservation efforts. In conclusion, my second chapter, somewhat contrary to the encouraging results of the review, revealed that the urbanization of Bangalore causes dramatic, exponential losses of farmland birds both locally as well as on a landscape scale. A worrying finding, not only for bird conservation but also for urban farmers, as the provision of biological pest control by local bird communities may be undermined. Lastly, I conducted a pollinator exclusion experiment and sampled bees on small-scale lablab (Lablab purpureous) farms along an urbanization gradient in Bangalore. I found that wild bees benefited from initial to intermediate urbanization, confirming the results of the review. Both the abundance and richness of bees increased with increasing grey areas in the farms’ surroundings. In particular, large bodied and ground nesting species were more abundant under grey shares of up to 30 %. I argue that these positive effects were associated to a higher availability of forage and nesting resources near built-up areas, as well as a landscape-wide reduction in pesticide applications. I could also show that wild bees did significantly boost lablab yields and hence farmers’ income. However, I could not find any evidence for a better pollination due to urbanization, as pollination was unaffected by grey proportions or differences in local bee communities. Overall, I found that responses of farmland dwelling birds and bees to urbanization were diverged in the Bangalore area. Many of my results are partly contrasting to findings from temperate cities. This highlights that our knowledge of the effects of urbanization in the tropics is limited. In the face of dramatic urbanization prospects, more research efforts are desperately needed.2022-07-2

Yet another PHP-Framework : Konzeption und Implementation eines modularen HMVC-Webframeworks zur schnellen Anwendungsentwicklung auf Basis von PHP

Diese Arbeit soll wiederkehrende Probleme beim Erstellen von Webapplikationen lösen. Dabei geht das Projekt über die Funktionen einer klassischen Programm-Bibliothek hinaus und bietet zusätzlich vorgefertigte Abläufe und Problemlösungen an. Das hierbei entstehende Softwareprodukt steckt somit einen Rahmen ab, in dem Anwendungen vornehmlich mittels Protoyping oder einer anderen (agilen) Entwurfsmethodik implementiert werden können. Es fällt daher in die Kategorie der Web-Frameworks. Ziel einer solchen Software ist es, schneller Web-Applikationen entwickeln zu können, Programmcode zu modul-arisieren und Handlungsabläufe zu standardisieren

Sonitor: open-source microphone system for terrestrial ecology

contains supplementary information and figures, raw data, R script, STP files for housings and horns, and Target files for PCB

Regulations in the Nordic countries concerning oral and maxillofacial radiographic imaging technologies and their use

The first national recommendations for radiation protection were given by the British Roentgen Society (1915) and American Roentgen Society (1922). The basis for modern radiation protection was given in the recommendations of ICRP (ICRP 26) in 1977. Dental education in all Nordic countries takes five years and leads to the competence of using intraoral radiography in Sweden and intraoral and panoramic radiography Norway and all dentomaxillofacial radiological (DMFR) units in Denmark and Finland. There is obligatory special training for using panoramic units in Sweden. For performing CBCT examinations and interpreting the images, a specialist degree in oral-maxillo-facial radiology is required in Sweden and Norway. Dental assistants and hygienists can perform intraoral radiography under the responsibility of a dentist. In Sweden and Norway dental hygienists can also record caries and periodontal diseases, although in Sweden all radiographs must be shown to the dentist. In Denmark and Norway the dental hygienists may be responsible for a dental x-ray unit, and they can refer the patient for a radiographic examination.Updating education is mandatory only in Finland according to EU guidelines. The demands for dental radiographic units are very similar in all countries. Quality assurance programs are regulated by law in Finland, Sweden and Denmark. The programs comprise daily, monthly or yearly checks of radiographic procedures. Regulations for digital dental radiography are still under construction, though some are available in Denmark