Infectious Risk Factors Related to Operating Rooms

Risk factors related to operating rooms include patient-associated risks, the operating room environment, ventilation systems, cleansing and sterilization, and operating room personnel. Although constantly debated, surgical wound infection surveillance with appropriate feedback to surgeons is one of the few effective measures that helps reduce surgical infection rates, and we strongly recommend its use. We also recommend the further study of other potential components of effective infection control programs for surgical patient

Langues « par défaut » ? Analyse contrastive et diachronique des langues non citées dans les articles de TALN et d'ACL

National audienceWe study the application of the #BenderRule in natural language processing articles, taking into account a contrastive and a diachronic dimensions, by examining the proceedings of two NLP conferences, TALN and ACL, over time. A sample of articles was annotated manually and two classifiers were developed to automatically annotate the remaining articles. This allows us to quantify the extent to which the #BenderRule is applied and to show a slight advantage in favor of TALN.Cet article étudie l'application de la #RègledeBender dans des articles de traitement automatique des langues (TAL), en prenant en compte une dimension contrastive, par l'examen des actes de deux conférences du domaine, TALN et ACL, et une dimension diachronique, en examinant ces conférences au fil du temps. Un échantillon d'articles a été annoté manuellement et deux classifieurs ont été développés afin d'annoter automatiquement les autres articles. Nous quantifions ainsi l'application de la #RègledeBender, et mettons en évidence un léger mieux en faveur de TALN sur cet aspect

The Elephant in the Room: Analyzing the Presence of Big Tech in Natural Language Processing Research

Recent advances in deep learning methods for natural language processing (NLP) have created new business opportunities and made NLP research critical for industry development. As one of the big players in the field of NLP, together with governments and universities, it is important to track the influence of industry on research. In this study, we seek to quantify and characterize industry presence in the NLP community over time. Using a corpus with comprehensive metadata of 78,187 NLP publications and 701 resumes of NLP publication authors, we explore the industry presence in the field since the early 90s. We find that industry presence among NLP authors has been steady before a steep increase over the past five years (180% growth from 2017 to 2022). A few companies account for most of the publications and provide funding to academic researchers through grants and internships. Our study shows that the presence and impact of the industry on natural language processing research are significant and fast-growing. This work calls for increased transparency of industry influence in the field

Do we Name the Languages we Study? The #BenderRule in LREC and ACL articles

International audienceThis article studies the application of the #BenderRule in Natural Language Processing (NLP) articles according to two dimensions. Firstly, in a contrastive manner, by considering two major international conferences, LREC and ACL, and secondly, in a diachronic manner, by inspecting nearly 14,000 articles over a period of time ranging from 2000 to 2020 for LREC and from 1979 to 2020 for ACL. For this purpose, we created a corpus from LREC and ACL articles from the above-mentioned periods, from which we manually annotated nearly 1,000. We then developed two classifiers to automatically annotate the rest of the corpus. We show that LREC articles tend to respect the #BenderRule (80 to 90% of them respect it), whereas only around half of ACL articles do. Interestingly, over the considered periods, the results appear to be stable for the two conferences, even though a rebound in ACL 2020 could be a sign of the influence of the blog post about the #BenderRule

A Review of Heterogeneous Photocatalysis for Water and Surface Disinfection

Photo-excitation of certain semiconductors can lead to the production of reactive oxygen species that can inactivate microorganisms. The mechanisms involved are reviewed, along with two important applications. The first is the use of photocatalysis to enhance the solar disinfection of water. It is estimated that 750 million people do not have accessed to an improved source for drinking and many more rely on sources that are not safe. If one can utilize photocatalysis to enhance the solar disinfection of water and provide an inexpensive, simple method of water disinfection, then it could help reduce the risk of waterborne disease. The second application is the use of photocatalytic coatings to combat healthcare associated infections. Two challenges are considered, i.e., the use of photocatalytic coatings to give “self-disinfecting” surfaces to reduce the risk of transmission of infection via environmental surfaces, and the use of photocatalytic coatings for the decontamination and disinfection of medical devices. In the final section, the development of novel photocatalytic materials for use in disinfection applications is reviewed, taking account of materials, developed for other photocatalytic applications, but which may be transferable for disinfection purposes

Enhanced Bactericidal Activity of Silver Thin Films Deposited via Aerosol-Assisted Chemical Vapor Deposition

Silver thin films were deposited on SiO2-barrier-coated float glass, fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) glass, Activ glass, and TiO2-coated float glass via AACVD using silver nitrate at 350 °C. The films were annealed at 600 °C and analyzed by X-ray powder diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, UV/vis/near-IR spectroscopy, and scanning electron microscopy. All the films were crystalline, and the silver was present in its elemental form and of nanometer dimension. The antibacterial activity of these samples was tested against Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus in the dark and under UV light (365 nm). All Ag-deposited films reduced the numbers of E. coli by 99.9% within 6 h and the numbers of S. aureus by 99.9% within only 2 h. FTO/Ag reduced bacterial numbers of E. coli to below the detection limit after 60 min and caused a 99.9% reduction of S. aureus within only 15 min of UV irradiation. Activ/Ag reduced the numbers of S. aureus by 66.6% after 60 min and TiO2/Ag killed 99.9% of S. aureus within 60 min of UV exposure. More remarkably, we observed a 99.9% reduction in the numbers of E. coli within 6 h and the numbers of S. aureus within 4 h in the dark using our novel TiO2/Ag system

Birds of the Pantanal floodplains, Brazil: historical data, diversity, and conservation

The Pantanal floodplains of Brazil are a region of rich biodiversity. To date, the true richness of the Pantanal avifauna has not been explored satisfactorily caused by a lack of studies in the region and, especially, by the divergence of opinion among the works published by various authors on the many species found in the region. This is due to the lack of criteria in examining records, both with regard to the reliability of the identifications and in the precise geographical allocation. Therefore, in the study, we collage findings from various studies and records created by us in the last few decades from 199 distinct locations to produce a list of birds in the Pantanal floodplains. We grouped the results into three lists: primary, secondary, and tertiary. We found that the avifauna of the Pantanal floodplain is composed of a total of 617 species, of which 571 (92%) have supporting records of occurrence (primary list) and 46 still lack documentation (secondary list). The number of species listed here for the Pantanal floodplain represents 32% of all avifauna known to the Brazilian territory. This reflects the importance of the biome, as part of the national territory, for the maintenance of a meaningful avifaunistic richness. Migratory birds (n = 183), notably northern ones (n = 43), are among the main players involved in ecological processes of nutrient cycling and dispersion of important pathogens between the two continents. With regard to conservation, 25 species are included in some category of threat in the lists of threatened species with global extinction. We hope that our list will help future researchers a more definitive approach when researching the avian fauna in this bountiful region

Surfactant controlled zwitterionic cellulose nanofibril dispersions

Zwitterionic cellulose nanofibrils (ZCNF) with isoelectric point of 3.4 were obtained by grafting glycidyltrimethylammonium chloride onto TEMPO/NaBr/NaOCl-oxidised cellulose nanofibrils. ZCNF aqueous dispersions were characterized via transmission electron microscopy, rheology and small angle neutron scattering, revealing a fibril-bundle structure with pronounced aggregation at pH 7. Surfactants were successfully employed to tune the stability of the ZCNF dispersions. Upon addition of the anionic surfactant, sodium dodecyl sulfate, the ZCNF dispersion shows individualized fibrils due to electrostatic stabilization. On the contrary, upon addition of the cationic species dodecyltrimethylammonium bromide, the dispersion undergoes charge neutralization, leading to more pronounced flocculation