Natural therapy modalities such as thermal therapy and balneotherapy are commonly being practiced for the management of chronic aches and pain all over the world. Nepal has many such natural hot ...water springs among which few are famous for therapeutic purposes. Thousands of people with some musculoskeletal problem visit those places in the hope of getting rid of their problems. This study aimed to understand their belief in such therapies, expectations, and satisfaction after treatment along with their knowledge of the safety of hot spring water bath. Among 126 participants interviewed, 31% had inflammatory arthritis, followed by degenerative disorders in 29.4% and soft-tissue rheumatism in 12.7%. Around three-quarters believed that hot spring water has natural healing power and thus can improve their pain. Many even believed that water in natural springs is devoid of any chemicals. So, it is a safe treatment option. Regarding the expectation of cure, they had mixed opinions. Naïve participants hoped they might find a permanent cure in thermal baths. However, repeated visitors said that the effect usually lasted for a few months and they have to visit there regularly. Almost two-thirds of people thought that such natural treatment does not have any side effects. Few stated that they had faced certain problems after the treatment. The water tested from the study site showed that it contained a higher amount of chlorine and sulfate in comparison to other hot water springs in Nepal. The minerals present in water might be a cause of temporary relief of pain. Also, outbreaks of infection from common spring baths have to be considered as such cases have been reported in the past. In conclusion, the medicinal benefits of such natural hot water springs have to be studied further and awareness regarding safety should be given to the people seeking treatment.
In the domestic segment, various appliances and processes consume great amount of water and, consequently, energy. In this context, the main aim of this study is to analyse the impact of water ...temperature, flow and bath duration in water and energy consumptions. The impact on CO
emissions and a simple costs analysis were also carried out. It included a monitoring plan of 197 baths taken under different scenarios of water temperature and flow. It was concluded that increasing water consumption leads to an increase on energy consumption and that both resources consumptions increase with bath duration. Bath temperature had influence not only on energy consumption, as expected, but also in water consumption, what may be explained by the user's satisfaction during baths with higher temperatures. The use of a flow reducing valve is not a guarantee of water saving which can also be related to the user's satisfaction patterns, given that the introduction of a flow reducing valve can lead to a bath duration increase. In what concerns to the CO
emissions, it was concluded, as expected, that higher values are obtained for baths with higher temperatures given their relation with higher energy consumptions patterns. A simple costs analysis revealed that having flow reducing valves, with a bath temperature of 75 °C, increased the costs with electricity and water in 119% and 32%, respectively, when compared with a temperature of 60 °C.
•Comparing the recrystallization behavior of annealing the sample under continuous time and under discontinuous time.•Combining the EBSD results and the TEM results to illustrate the difference of ...the recrystallization.•Adding a group of control samples to analyze the recrystallization mechanism.
Recrystallization behavior of Al-Mg-Mn-Sc-Zr alloy have been studied after two different annealing ways. The one way is keeping the cold rolling plate of the alloy in 550 °C for a continuous time (CT). The other way is putting the alloy plate into the salt bath furnace at 550 °C for 10S then quenching it into water and repeating this process. The annealing time is discontinuous (DT). Results show that grains in the CT sample grow up with the increase of annealing time but the grains in the DT sample are still very fine. The recrystallization fraction of the CT sample increases with the rise of annealing time. However, in the DT sample, the recrystallization fraction is low. Much grains are maintained in substructure state. The recrystallization result is due to the pinning effect of the Al3(Sc, Zr) particles.
In this work, we want to investigate the impact of different substrates and different environmental condition on the biofilm communities growing on plaster, marble, and mortar substrates inside the ...Herculaneum Suburban Baths. To do so, we measured environmental conditions and sampled biofilm communities along the walls of the baths and used culture-dependent and -independent molecular techniques (DGGE) to identify the species at each sampling sites. We used the species pool to infer structure and richness of communities within each site in each substrate, and confocal light scanning microscopy to assess the three-dimensional structure of the sampled biofilms. To gather further insights, we built a meta-community network and used its local realizations to analyze co-occurrence patterns of species. We found that light is a limiting factor in the baths environment, that moving along sites equals moving along an irradiation gradient, and that such gradient shapes the community structure, de facto separating a dark community, rich in Bacteria, Fungi and cyanobacteria, from two dim communities, rich in Chlorophyta. Almost all sites are dominated by photoautotrophs, with Fungi and Bacteria relegated to the role of rare species., and structural properties of biofilms are not consistent within the same substrate. We conclude that the Herculaneum suburban baths are an environment-shaped community, where one dark community (plaster) and one dim community (mortar) provides species to a "midway" community (marble).
Surgical site infections (SSIs) are wound infections that occur after invasive (surgical) procedures. Preoperative bathing or showering with an antiseptic skin wash product is a well-accepted ...procedure for reducing skin bacteria (microflora). It is less clear whether reducing skin microflora leads to a lower incidence of surgical site infection.
To review the evidence for preoperative bathing or showering with antiseptics for preventing hospital-acquired (nosocomial) surgical site infections.
For this fifth update we searched the Cochrane Wounds Group Specialised Register (searched 18 December 2014); the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (The Cochrane Library 2014 Issue 11); Ovid MEDLINE (2012 to December Week 4 2014), Ovid MEDLINE (In-Process & Other Non-Indexed Citations December 18, 2014); Ovid EMBASE (2012 to 2014 Week 51), EBSCO CINAHL (2012 to December 18 2014) and reference lists of articles.
Randomised controlled trials comparing any antiseptic preparation used for preoperative full-body bathing or showering with non-antiseptic preparations in people undergoing surgery.
Two review authors independently assessed studies for selection, risk of bias and extracted data. Study authors were contacted for additional information.
We did not identify any new trials for inclusion in this fifth update. Seven trials involving a total of 10,157 participants were included. Four of the included trials had three comparison groups. The antiseptic used in all trials was 4% chlorhexidine gluconate (Hibiscrub/Riohex). Three trials involving 7791 participants compared chlorhexidine with a placebo. Bathing with chlorhexidine compared with placebo did not result in a statistically significant reduction in SSIs; the relative risk of SSI (RR) was 0.91 (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.80 to 1.04). When only trials of high quality were included in this comparison, the RR of SSI was 0.95 (95%CI 0.82 to 1.10). Three trials of 1443 participants compared bar soap with chlorhexidine; when combined there was no difference in the risk of SSIs (RR 1.02, 95% CI 0.57 to 1.84). Three trials of 1192 patients compared bathing with chlorhexidine with no washing, one large study found a statistically significant difference in favour of bathing with chlorhexidine (RR 0.36, 95%CI 0.17 to 0.79). The smaller studies found no difference between patients who washed with chlorhexidine and those who did not wash preoperatively.
This review provides no clear evidence of benefit for preoperative showering or bathing with chlorhexidine over other wash products, to reduce surgical site infection. Efforts to reduce the incidence of nosocomial surgical site infection should focus on interventions where effect has been demonstrated.
Quantum systems strongly coupled to many-body systems equilibrate to the reduced state of a global thermal state, deviating from the local thermal state of the system as it occurs in the ...weak-coupling limit. Taking this insight as a starting point, we study the thermodynamics of systems strongly coupled to thermal baths. First, we provide strong-coupling corrections to the second law applicable to general systems in three of its different readings: As a statement of maximal extractable work, on heat dissipation, and bound to the Carnot efficiency. These corrections become relevant for small quantum systems and vanish in first order in the interaction strength. We then move to the question of power of heat engines, obtaining a bound on the power enhancement due to strong coupling. Our results are exemplified on the paradigmatic non-Markovian quantum Brownian motion.
Dark Matter from Exponential Growth Bringmann, Torsten; Depta, Paul Frederik; Hufnagel, Marco ...
Physical review letters,
11/2021, Volume:
127, Issue:
19
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
We propose a novel mechanism for the production of dark matter (DM) from a thermal bath based on the idea that DM particles χ can transform heat bath particles ψ: χψ→χχ. For a small initial abundance ...of χ, this leads to an exponential growth of the DM number density in close analogy to other familiar exponential growth processes in nature. We demonstrate that this mechanism complements freeze-in and freeze-out production in a generic way, opening new parameter space to explain the observed DM abundance, and we discuss observational prospects for such scenarios.
The laws of thermodynamics put limits to the efficiencies of thermal machines. Analogues of these laws are now established for quantum engines weakly and passively coupled to the environment ...providing a framework to find improvements to their performance. Systems whose interaction with the environment is actively controlled do not fall in that framework. Here we consider systems actively and locally coupled to the environment, evolving with a so-called boundary-driven Lindblad equation. Starting from a unitary description of the system plus the environment we simultaneously obtain the Lindblad equation and the appropriate expressions for heat, work and entropy-production of the system extending the framework for the analysis of new, and some already proposed, quantum heat engines. We illustrate our findings in spin 1/2 chains and explain why an XX chain coupled in this way to a single heat bath relaxes to thermodynamic-equilibrium while and XY chain does not. Additionally, we show that an XX chain coupled to a left and a right heat baths behaves as a quantum engine, a heater or refrigerator depending on the parameters, with efficiencies bounded by Carnot efficiencies.
To develop an evidence-based practice project to evaluate the effect of delaying a newborn's first bath on exclusive breastfeeding rates at discharge.
A pre- and post-implementation evaluation of the ...effect of delaying the first bath on exclusive breastfeeding rates at discharge.
A postpartum unit in a southern California community hospital.
Breastfeeding dyads of women and newborns (>37 weeks gestational age) who were admitted to the postpartum unit.
Postpartum nurses involved in the unit practice council, in collaboration with unit leadership, changed the newborn's first bath practice through development of a bathing guideline, nurse education, and mother education. Measurements of the practice change included time of the first bath and exclusive breastfeeding rates at discharge.
We observed an increased time for the newborn's first bath from 6.88 hours to 13.71 hours (p ≤ .001). The number of times women chose not to bathe their newborns while in the hospital also increased by approximately seven times, from 0.16% to 1.1%. The rate of exclusive breastfeeding at discharge did not change significantly after implementation (p ≥ .05), regardless of when the first bath was given.
Delaying a newborn's first bath was not associated with an increase in exclusive breastfeeding rates. More research is needed to determine the effect of bath times.
Insomnia is a major public health problem. Due to the side effects of pharmacological therapy, people are seeking to choose complementary and alternative therapies for insomnia disorder. Traditional ...Chinese herbal bath therapy is an important complementary therapy which combines advantages of Chinese herbs and bathing therapy. This protocol describes the methodology of a systematic review assessing the effectiveness and safety of traditional Chinese herbal bath therapy for insomnia.
Reporting of this review will be adherent to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement. We will electronically search the following seven databases from inception to January 23, 2020: PubMed, Cochrane database (CENTRAL), EMBASE, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Chinese Biomedical Literature Database (CBM), VIP Database, and Wanfang Database. Parallel randomized controlled trials evaluating the effectiveness and safety of traditional Chinese herbal bath therapy for insomnia will be included. Study selection, data extraction and assessment of risk of bias will be performed independently by two researchers. The sleep quality will be assessed as the primary outcome. Global symptom improvement, anxiety and depression, and adverse events will be evaluated as secondary outcomes. The Cochrane's risk of bias tool will be utilized for assessing the methodological quality of included studies. Revman software (v.5.3) will be used for data synthesis and statistical analysis. Data will be synthesized by either fixed-effects or random-effects model according to a heterogeneity test. If it is not appropriate for a meta-analysis, a descriptive analysis will be conducted. GRADE system will be used to assess the quality of evidence.
CRD42020168507.
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