Reducing the Carbon Footprint of the Anesthesia Provider

Abstract Background: Modern anesthesia contributes to environmental pollution with some anesthetics creating a larger carbon footprint.  Therefore, the selection among contemporary anesthetics can have a direct impact on the carbon footprint created by the anesthesia provider. Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists (CRNA) provided over 45 million anesthetics in 2018, and practice changes could dramatically reduce the carbon footprint.  Purpose:  Provide education to CRNAs about concrete measures which reduce the carbon footprint of anesthesia care and provide multiple secondary benefits.  Methods:  A presentation was given to participating Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists (CRNAs) on carbon footprint reducing anesthesia techniques.  CRNAs who participated completed a twenty question post-educational survey about carbon footprint reduction.  Results:  The data collected from a convenience sample (N=10) showed a marked improvement in the knowledge related to techniques to reduce the carbon footprint of the anesthesia provider.  The survey revealed that the participants found the educational session added valuable information to the educational training of the CRNA.  Conclusions and Recommendations:  The results showed that when given additional education about environmentally cleaner anesthetics, the clinicians became more aware of safer and greener alternatives for anesthetic use.  The reduced carbon footprint anesthetic is not only better environmentally but is also safer and leads to improved patient satisfaction by reducing postoperative nausea and vomiting.  The lowered carbon footprint anesthetics can also reduce pharmacological costs.  Therefore, a multitude of benefits will occur including financial, environmental, and patient quality outcomes when utilizing the reduced carbon footprint anesthetic techniques.   Key Words:  Carbon Footprint, Anesthesia, Greenhouse Gases, Global Warmin

Process and design of a once-through dimethyl ether process using aveva process simulation

In this project, an optimization and preliminary economic analysis based on the lowest rent and utility cost was performed on a dimethyl ether process plant. This process model was performed with AVEVA Process Simulation software. Basic chemical engineering design principles as well as 3D response surface modeling and the native AVEVA optimization tool were used to select the most cost-effective equipment by varying process specifications to minimize utility cost, finding the least expensive equipment combinations possible, and selecting the feed tray location. The rental prices were fixed, so only utility and limited process specifications such as feed tray location could be varied to find the minimum equivalent annual operating cost. It was found that dimethyl ether process has the ability to be profitable with an economic potential of $6.8 million annually and the rent and utility cost being about$642,000 annually. It is recommended based on the economic potential to continue the analysis of the project as outlined in this thesis

Video Manipulation Techniques for the Protection of Privacy in Remote Presence Systems

Systems that give control of a mobile robot to a remote user raise privacy concerns about what the remote user can see and do through the robot. We aim to preserve some of that privacy by manipulating the video data that the remote user sees. Through two user studies, we explore the effectiveness of different video manipulation techniques at providing different types of privacy. We simultaneously examine task performance in the presence of privacy protection. In the first study, participants were asked to watch a video captured by a robot exploring an office environment and to complete a series of observational tasks under differing video manipulation conditions. Our results show that using manipulations of the video stream can lead to fewer privacy violations for different privacy types. Through a second user study, it was demonstrated that these privacy-protecting techniques were effective without diminishing the task performance of the remote user.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figure

Multiscale reduction of discrete nonlinear Schroedinger equations

We use a discrete multiscale analysis to study the asymptotic integrability of differential-difference equations. In particular, we show that multiscale perturbation techniques provide an analytic tool to derive necessary integrability conditions for two well-known discretizations of the nonlinear Schroedinger equation.Comment: 12 page

The assessment of usability of electronic shopping: A heuristic evaluation

Today there are thousands of electronic shops accessible via the Web. Some provide user-friendly features whilst others seem not to consider usability factors at all. Yet, it is critical that the electronic shopping interface is user-friendly so as to help users to obtain their desired results. This study applied heuristic evaluation to examine the usability of current electronic shopping. In particular, it focused on four UK-based supermarkets offering electronic services: including ASDA, Iceland, Sainsbury, and Tesco. The evaluation consists of two stages: a free-flow inspection and a task-based inspection. The results indicate that the most significant and common usability problems have been found to lie within the areas of ‘User Control and Freedom’ and ‘Help and Documentation’. The findings of this study are applied to develop a set of usability guidelines to support the future design of effective interfaces for electronic shopping