Use of plastic adhesive drapes during surgery for preventing surgical site infection (Review)

Background: Surgical site infection has been estimated to occur in about 15% of clean surgery and 30% of contaminated surgery cases. Using plastic adhesive drapes to protect the wound from organisms that may be present on the surrounding skin during surgery is one strategy used to prevent surgical site infection. Results from non-randomised studies have produced conflicting results about the efficacy of this approach. A systematic review was required to guide clinical practice. Objectives: To assess the effect of adhesive drapes used during surgery on surgical site infection, cost, mortality and morbidity. Search methods: For this fourth update we searched the Cochrane Wounds Group Specialised Register (searched 4th March 2015); the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) (The Cochrane Library 2015, Issue 2); Ovid MEDLINE (2012 to 3rd March 2015); Ovid MEDLINE (In-Process & Other Non-Indexed Citations, 2012 to 3rd March 2015); Ovid EMBASE (2012 to 3rd March 2015); and EBSCO CINAHL (2012 to 4th March 2015). Selection criteria: Randomised controlled trials comparing any plastic adhesive drape with no plastic adhesive drape, used alone or in combination with woven (material) drapes or disposable (paper) drapes, in patients undergoing any type of surgery. Ring drapes were excluded. Data collection and analysis: Two review authors independently selected and assessed studies for trial quality and both independently extracted data. We contacted study authors for additional information. Main results: We identified no new studies for this fourth update. The review includes five studies involving 3082 participants comparing plastic adhesive drapes with no drapes and two studies involving 1113 participants comparing iodine-impregnated adhesive drapes with no drapes. A significantly higher proportion of patients in the adhesive drape group developed a surgical site infection when compared with no drapes (risk ratio (RR) 1.23, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.02 to 1.48, P = 0.03). Iodine-impregnated adhesive drapes had no effect on the surgical site infection rate (RR 1.03, 95% CI 0.06 to 1.66, P = 0.89). Length of hospital stay was similar in the adhesive drape and non-adhesive drape groups. Authors' conclusions: There was no evidence from the seven trials that plastic adhesive drapes reduce surgical site infection rates, and some evidence that they increase infection rates. Further trials may be justified, using blinded outcome assessment to examine the effect of adhesive drapes on surgical site infection, based on different wound classifications

Use of Gray Water in Cooling Air Conditioning Condenser

Arid and semi-arid countries experience challenges especially in the use of air conditioning units which tend to consume more electricity in the summer due to the effect of the heat on the compressor. The solution to this problem is the use of spray cooling with the spray targeting the compressor to cool it through evaporation as a result of the absorption of the latent heat of vaporization. However, a problem still exists in these countries mainly because they lack adequate water and have to resort to the use of gray water. This paper, therefore, investigates the use of gray water as a spray coolant and its effects on nozzles of various sizes.Gray water contains minerals and chemicals which are bound to accumulate at the tip of the nozzle in a process called scaling. Scaling results in the narrowing of the nozzle affecting the spread diameter, nozzle diameter and the cone angle of the resultant spray. The experiment highlighted in this paper will use tap water and gray water both of which are tested using two nozzles. The diameter of the nozzles is measured with the utilization of a microscope while the cone angle of the resultant spray is measured with the use of images taken from a high-resolution camera.It is observed that both tap water and gray water produce a certain amount of scaling at the tip of the nozzles. The scaling affects the cone angles and the spread diameters. While tap water has a small reduction in the cone angle, the gray water results in a larger reduction. The tap water also results in an increase in the effective spread diameter while the gray water results in its decrease. However, because water is scarce in the arid countries, gray water is the most suitable with the solution to the problem being the constant replacement of the nozzles after a particular period

Job ready or future-ready? The role of IS research in PG IS curriculum

Research on IS curriculum focus on how IS curriculum objectives are consistent with what ICT/IS employers’ demand. Emerging IS trends are the motivation for research on updating IS curriculum. Of particular concern is that most scholarship on IS curriculum is focused on undergraduate studies, with little literature on post-graduate curriculum. There is a gap in the current literature that trending research issues, as articulated in IS journals, have not been explicitly linked to the development of IS curriculum. Consequently, how the AIS/ACM curriculum models reflect current IS research issues has not been explicitly investigated. We would argue that the link between research and curriculum is particularly relevant to post-graduate studies. We conducted a review of recently published papers in the IS basket of eight journals and listed key subject terms that emerged from our review and compare the subject terms with the IS competency realm proposed in IS2020

Understanding Individuals’ Intention to Use E-Government Services: Development of an Integrated Model

In recent years, governments worldwide are acknowledging the importance of delivering services to their citizens using multiple channels. Thus, in addition to letting citizens to access government services via traditional channels, governments are making substantial investments in e-government initiatives. However, the success of these initiatives is largely influenced by the usage intention of individuals to access e-government services. In this research-in-progress paper, we thus report on the development of a theory driven model to understand individuals’ intention to use various types of e-government services. We also indicate the current status of our empirical efforts to evaluate this model. The implications of this model to theory and practice are outlined

Measurement of Impact Forces on Teeth and Jaw when Wearing Sports Mouth Guards

The objective of this project is to accurately measure the forces the teeth and jaw experience when subjected to impact. For this purpose piezoelectric technology (PVDF), which converts voltage to force and vice versa can be used to measure forces applied to teeth. A PVDF cable is calibrated and used for measuring force along with a control measuring device (PCB Piezotronics). The method involves wrapping the PVDF cable around a 3D home-printed, customized denture. The cable was chosen due to the fact that it allows for adequate fit between mouth guard and denture. Two masses, a baseball and 2 lbs - 3D printed projectile, were dropped from a height of 1m onto the denture with and without mouth guard. Results showed a significant force absorption by the mouth guard (more than 50% of initial impact force). After several trials, (n=10 for each group, baseball with and without mouthguard, as well as 2lbs), it was found that the impact shock absorption by the mouth guard ranged between 60-70%. Figure 1 shows the values at which the denture was impacted, with and without a mouth guard for baseball and 2 lbm cylinder. Finally, FEA Analysis was also used to show the regional stress and strain along the denture.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/capstone/1201/thumbnail.jp

Studies on the perturbations of CD4+T cells function by cigarette smoke.

Background: A number of genes including HLA-DRB1 and variants of PTPN22 (which codes for Lyp phosphatase) are associated with the development of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Environmental factors, particularly cigarette smoking also promote RA and preliminary data suggested that cigarette smoke could impact Lyp phosphatase function in immune cells. Moreover, unpublished data suggested that Lyp may be involved in regulating metabolism in T cells. This project sought to discover then mechanisms by which PTPN22 and cigarette smoke may interact to alter immune cell metabolism and function. Methods: Isolated naïve and memory T cells from human blood cones were treated with cigarette smoke extract CSE or Lyp inhibitor for 24h and then stimulated with anti CD3/CD28 for 72h. Protein expression and phosphorylation were assessed using immunoblotting, changes in energy metabolism were assessed using the Seahorse instrument and cytokines expression was assessed using Luminex assay. All the experiments and the analysis were done after 24h of CSE or Lyp inhibitor treatment and 72h of stimulation. Results: CSE increased Lyp phosphatase activity in naïve, whereas Lyp inhibitor increased Lyp activity in memory only. Both treatments increased the phosphorylation of ZAP-70 in naïve and memory but not Lck. Lyp inhibitor increased Vav1 and Akt phosphorylation in naïve but not in memory, whereas CSE did not show any. CSE increased mTORC1 in naïve but not in memory, whereas CSE increased AMPK only in memory. Both treatments increased calcium (Ca$^2$$^+$) flux made in response to TCR stimulation. Moreover, CSE and Lyp inhibitor increased glycolysis and oxidative phosphorylation of naïve and memory T cells. Generally, CSE increased inflammatory cytokines such as IL6, IL-1β, IFNγ and TNFα, IL8, but not IL10. Conclusions: Overall, these data suggest that CSE may promote altered TCR function through interaction with Lyp. One consequence is an alteration in energy metabolism through changes in signalling pathway and cytokines production. This may explain part of the underlying mechanisms by which cigarette smoke promote RA development

Cloud-Based Retrieval Information System Using Concept for Multi-Format Data

The need of effective and efficient method to retrieving non-Web-enabled and Web-enabled information entities is essential, due to the fact of inaccuracy of the existing search engines that still use traditional term-based indexing for text documents and annotation text for images, audio and video files. Previous works showed that incorporating the knowledge in the form of concepts into an information retrieval system may increase the effectiveness of the retrieving method. Unfortunately, most of the works that implemented the concept-based information retrieval system still focused on one information format. This paper proposes a multi-format (text, image, video and, audio) concept-based information retrieval method for Cloud environment. The proposed method is implemented in a laboratory-scale heterogeneous cloud environment using Eucalyptus middleware.  755 multi-format information is experimented and the performance of the proposed method is measured