108 research outputs found
Reading Room Encounters in the Archival Context: The Example of the Swiss Federal Archives (SFA)
In democratic constitutional states, public archives have the duty to enable access to historical information of state action in order to help secure the traceability of politics and the accountability of authorities. However, this is not an obvious statement and it has not always and everywhere been true. Th is paper traces the history of the access services of the Swiss Federal Archives (SFA) since 1848. Drawing on the concept of street-level bureaucracy, it focuses on face-to-face interactions between users and archivists in the reading room. In this vein, it provides an organisational history from bottom-up. It argues that the opening of access and increasing numbers of users intensified the bureaucratization of access procedures. Within this context, particular attention is paid to the digitization of the access interface and its bearing on (reading room) encounters of users and archivists.In democratic constitutional states, public archives have the duty to enable access to historical information of state action in order to help secure the traceability of politics and the accountability of authorities. However, this is not an obvious statement and it has not always and everywhere been true. Th is paper traces the history of the access services of the Swiss Federal Archives (SFA) since 1848. Drawing on the concept of street-level bureaucracy, it focuses on face-to-face interactions between users and archivists in the reading room. In this vein, it provides an organisational history from bottom-up. It argues that the opening of access and increasing numbers of users intensified the bureaucratization of access procedures. Within this context, particular attention is paid to the digitization of the access interface and its bearing on (reading room) encounters of users and archivists
When Geometry is not Enough: Using Reflector Markers in Lidar SLAM
Lidar-based SLAM systems perform well in a wide range of circumstances by
relying on the geometry of the environment. However, even mature and reliable
approaches struggle when the environment contains structureless areas such as
long hallways. To allow the use of lidar-based SLAM in such environments, we
propose to add reflector markers in specific locations that would otherwise be
difficult. We present an algorithm to reliably detect these markers and two
approaches to fuse the detected markers with geometry-based scan matching. The
performance of the proposed methods is demonstrated on real-world datasets from
several industrial environments.Comment: Accepted at IROS 202
Sediment trap experiments in the deep North Atlantic: Isotopic and elemental fluxes
We have carried out sediment trap experiments at sites in the Sargasso Sea (S2) and in the Atlantic off Barbados (E) to determine the mass flux and chemical composition of material sinking to the sea floor…
Validation of the Dutch translation of the quality of recovery-15 scale
BACKGROUND: The 15-item Quality of Recovery-15 (QoR-15) scale is strongly recommended as a standard patient-reported outcome measure assessing the quality of recovery after surgery and anesthesia in the postoperative period. This study aimed to validate the Dutch translation of the questionnaire (QoR-15NL). MATERIALS AND METHODS: An observational, prospective, single-centre cohort study was conducted. Patients who underwent surgery under general anesthesia completed the QoR-15NL (preoperatively (t1) and twice postoperatively (t2 and t3)) and a visual analogue scale (VAS) for general recovery at t2. A psychometric evaluation was performed to assess the QoR-15NL's validity, reliability, responsiveness, reproducibility and feasibility. RESULTS: Two hundred and eleven patients agreed to participate (recruitment rate 94%), and 165 patients were included (completion rate 78%). The QoR-15NL score correlated with the VAS for general recovery (rs = 0.59). Construct validity was further demonstrated by confirmation of expected negative associations between the QoR-15NL and duration of surgery (rs = -0.25), duration of Post Anesthesia Care Unit stay (rs = -0.31), and duration of hospital stay (rs = -0.27). The QoR-15NL score decreased significantly according to the extent of surgery. Cronbach's alpha was 0.87, split-half reliability was 0.8, and the test-retest intra-class coefficient was 0.93. No significant floor- or ceiling effect was observed. CONCLUSION: The QoR-15NL scale is a valid, easy-to-use, and reliable outcome assessment tool with high responsiveness for patient-reported quality of recovery after surgery and general anesthesia in the Dutch-speaking population. The QoR-15NL's measurement properties are comparable to the original questionnaire and other translated versions. TRIAL REGISTRATION: not applicable
Persistence of clones of coagulase-negative staphylococci among premature neonates in neonatal intensive care units: two-center study of bacterial genotyping and patient risk factors
From 1 January 1995 until 1 January 1996, we studied the molecular
epidemiology of blood isolates of coagulase-negative staphylococci (CoNS)
in the Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs) of the Sophia Children's
Hospital (SCH; Rotterdam, The Netherlands) and the Wilhelmina Children's
Hospital (WCH; Utrecht, The Netherlands). The main goal of the present
study was to detect putatively endemic clones of CoNS persisting in these
NICUs. Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis was used to detect the possible
presence of endemic clones of clinical significance. In addition, clinical
data of patients in the SCH were analyzed retrospectively to identify risk
factors for the acquisition of positive blood cultures. In both centers,
endemic CoNS clones were persistently present. Thirty-three percent of the
bacterial isolates derived from blood cultures in the SCH belonged to a
single genotype. In the WCH, 45% of all bacterial strains belonged to a
single clone. These clones were clearly different from each other, which
implies that site specificity is involved. Interestingly, we observe that
the clonal type in the SCH differed significantly from the incidentally
occurring strains with respect to both the average pH and partial CO2
pressure of the patient's blood at the time of bacterial culture. We found
that the use of intravascular catheters, low gestational age, and a long
hospital stay were important risk factors for the development of a
putative CoNS infection. When the antibiotic susceptibility of the
bacterial isolates was assessed, a clear correlation between the nature of
the antibiotics most frequently used as a first line of defense versus the
resistance profile was observed. We conclude that the intensive use of
antibiotics in an NICU setting with highly susceptible patients causes
selection of multiresistant clones of CoNS which subsequently become
endemic
Construction and physiochemical characterisation of a multi-composite, potential oral vaccine delivery system (VDS)
An increasing human population requires a secure food supply and a cost effective, oral vaccine delivery system for livestock would help facilitate this end. Recombinant antigen adsorbed onto silica beads and coated with myristic acid, was released (∼15% (w/v)) over 24 h at pH 8.8. At pH 2, the myristic acid acted as an enteric coating, protecting the antigen from a variety of proteases. The antigen adsorbed onto silica particles, coated in myristic acid had a conserved secondary structure (measured by circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy) following its pH-triggered release. Small angle neutron scattering (SANS) was used to measure the thickness of the adsorbed antigen, finding that its adsorbed conformation was slightly greater than its solution radius of gyration, i.e. 120–160 Å. The addition of myristic acid led to a further increase in particle size, with scattering data consistent with an acid thickness slightly greater than a monolayer of fully extended alkyl chains and a degree of hydration of around 50%. Whilst adsorbed onto the silica and coated in myristic acid, the protein was stable over 14 days at 42 °C, indicating a reduced need for cold chain storage. These data indicate that further investigation is warranted into the development of this technology
Ontogeny of Toll-Like and NOD-Like Receptor-Mediated Innate Immune Responses in Papua New Guinean Infants
Studies addressing the ontogeny of the innate immune system in early life have reported mainly on Toll-like receptor (TLR) responses in infants living in high-income countries, with little or even no information on other pattern recognition receptors or on early life innate immune responses in children living under very different environmental conditions in less-developed parts of the world. In this study, we describe whole blood innate immune responses to both Toll-like and nucleotide-binding oligomerization domain (NOD)-like receptor agonists including the widely used vaccine adjuvant ‘alum’ in a group of Papua New Guinean infants aged 1–3 (n = 18), 4–6 (n = 18), 7–12 (n = 21) and 13–18 (n = 10) months old. Depending on the ligands and cytokines studied, different age-related patterns were found: alum-induced IL-1β and CXCL8 responses were found to significantly decline with increasing age; inflammatory (IL-6, IL-1β, IFN-γ) responses to TLR2 and TLR3 agonists increased; and IL-10 responses remained constant or increased during infancy, while TNF-α responses either declined or remained the same. We report for the first time that whole blood innate immune responses to the vaccine adjuvant alum decrease with age in infancy; a finding that may imply that the adjuvant effect of alum in pediatric vaccines could be age-related. Our findings further suggest that patterns of innate immune development may vary between geographically diverse populations, which in line with the ‘hygiene hypothesis’ particularly involves persistence of innate IL-10 responses in populations experiencing higher infectious pressure
- …