During the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic there is unprecedented demand for personal protective equipment (PPE), especially N95 respirators and surgical masks. The ability of SARS-CoV-2 to be ...transmitted via respiratory droplets from asymptomatic individuals has necessitated increased usage of both N95 respirators in the healthcare setting and masks (both surgical and homemade) in public spaces. These precautions rely on two fundamental principles of transmission prevention: particle filtration and droplet containment. The former is the focus of NIOSH N95 testing guidelines, and the latter is an FDA guideline for respirators and surgical masks. While studies have investigated droplet containment to provide guidance for homemade mask production, limited work has been done to characterize the filtration efficiency (FE) of materials used in home mask making. In this work, we demonstrate the low-cost (<$300) conversion of standard equipment used to fit-test respirators in hospital and industrial settings into a setup that measures quantitative FEs of materials based on NIOSH N95 guidelines, and subsequently measure FEs of materials found in healthcare and consumer spaces. These materials demonstrate significant variability in filtration characteristics, even for visually similar materials. We demonstrate a FE of 96.49% and pressure drop of 25.4 mmH20 for a double-layer of sterilization wrap used in surgical suites and a FE of 90.37% for a combination of consumer-grade materials. The excellent filtration characteristics of the former demonstrate potential utility for emergent situations when N95 respirators are not available, while those of the latter demonstrate that a high FE can be achieved using publicly available materials.
The world is facing an unprecedented outbreak affecting all aspects of human lives which is caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to the virus novelty, healthcare systems are challenged by a high rate ...of patients and the shortage of medical products. To address an increased need for essential medical products, national authorities, worldwide, made various legislative concessions. This has led to essential medical products being produced by automotive, textile and other companies from various industries and approved under the emergency use authorizations or legal concessions of national regulatory bodies. This paper presents a narrative commentary of the available documentation on emergency use authorizations and legal concessions for medical products during COVID-19 pandemic.
The basis for narrative commentary includes scientific articles published in Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed and Embase databases, official publications of international organizations: Food and Drug Agency (FDA), World Health Organisation (WHO), World Bank and United Nations (UN), and national regulatory agency reports in native languages (English, German, Bosnian, and Croatian) published from November 1, 2019 to May 1, 2020. This paper focuses on three types of essential medical products: mechanical ventilators, personal protective equipment (PPE) and diagnostic tests. Evidence-informed commentary of available data and potential identified risks of emergency use authorizations and legal concessions is presented.
It is recognized that now more than ever, raising global awareness and knowledge about the importance of respecting the essential requirements is needed to guarantee the appropriate quality, performance and safety of medical products, especially during outbreak situation, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Emergency use authorizations for production, import and approval of medical products should be strictly specified and clearly targeted from case to case and should not be general or universal for all medical products, because all of them are associated with different risk level.
Presented considerations and experiences should be taken as a guide for all possible future outbreak situations to prevent improvised reactions of national regulatory bodies.
Remarkable efforts have been dedicated to paper-based chemosensors and biosensors over the last few years, mainly driven by the promise of reaching the best trade-off between performance, ...affordability and simplicity. Because of the low-cost and rapid prototyping of these sensors, recent research has been focused on providing affordable diagnostic devices to the developing world. The recent progress in sensitivity, multi-functionality and integration of microfluidic paper-based analytical devices (µPADs), increasingly suggests that this technology is not only attractive in resource-limited environments but it also represents a serious challenger to silicon, glass and polymer-based biosensors. This review discusses the design, chemistry and engineering aspects of these developments, with a focus on the past few years.
•Focus on the engineering aspects (paper microfluidics, design and fabrication, surface chemistry).•Updates of the last three years in paper-based analytical devices.•New insight on the future, challenges and perspectives of paper-based analytical devices.
Recent decades have seen a dramatic shift away from social forms of gambling played around roulette wheels and card tables to solitary gambling at electronic terminals. Slot machines, revamped by ...ever more compelling digital and video technology, have unseated traditional casino games as the gambling industry's revenue mainstay.Addiction by Designtakes readers into the intriguing world of machine gambling, an increasingly popular and absorbing form of play that blurs the line between human and machine, compulsion and control, risk and reward.
Drawing on fifteen years of field research in Las Vegas, anthropologist Natasha Dow Schüll shows how the mechanical rhythm of electronic gambling pulls players into a trancelike state they call the "machine zone," in which daily worries, social demands, and even bodily awareness fade away. Once in the zone, gambling addicts play not to win but simply to keep playing, for as long as possible--even at the cost of physical and economic exhaustion. In continuous machine play, gamblers seek to lose themselves while the gambling industry seeks profit. Schüll describes the strategic calculations behind game algorithms and machine ergonomics, casino architecture and "ambience management," player tracking and cash access systems--all designed to meet the market's desire for maximum "time on device." Her account moves from casino floors into gamblers' everyday lives, from gambling industry conventions and Gamblers Anonymous meetings to regulatory debates over whether addiction to gambling machines stems from the consumer, the product, or the interplay between the two.
Addiction by Designis a compelling inquiry into the intensifying traffic between people and machines of chance, offering clues to some of the broader anxieties and predicaments of contemporary life. At stake in Schüll's account of the intensifying traffic between people and machines of chance is a blurring of the line between design and experience, profit and loss, control and compulsion.
Textile Technology and Design addresses the critical role of the interior at the intersection of design and technology, with a range of interdisciplinary arguments by a wide range of contributors: ...from design practitioners to researchers and scholars to aerospace engineers. Chapters examine the way in which textiles and technology – while seemingly distinct – continually inform each other through their persistent overlapping of interests, and eventually coalesce in the practice of interior design. Covering all kinds of interiors from domestic (prefabricated kitchens and 3D wallpaper) to extreme (underwater habitats and space stations), it features a variety of critical aspects including pattern and ornament, domestic technologies, craft and the imperfect, gender issues, sound and smart textiles. This book is essential reading for students of textile technology, textile and interior design.
•Identification of the critical hazards in construction industry.•Prioritization the most critical and harmful criteria and alternatives, for the environment, society and economy.•Provide the policy ...recommendations to the construction industry and government of Pakistan.•Proposal of a new multicriteria methodology Modified-SIRA.
For any industry, Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) is a business strategy to foster a safe and healthy work environment. In the developed countries, the companies are focusing on the workplace safety in order to reduce the harmful results i.e. harmful impacts on the human health, environment, economy, productivity, society and reputation of a company. On the other hand, the construction industry (CI) in developing countries like Pakistan are not properly focusing on the OHS because of the high cost of personal protective equipment (PPE), safety trainings and activities. The objective of this research paper is to identify the critical hazards, its causes and consequences and to prioritize the most critical and harmful criteria and alternatives. For this purpose, a method called Modified-Safety Improve Risk Assessment (Modified-SIRA) was used. Within the Modified-SIRA, the criteria and alternatives are prioritized based on Risk Priority Number (RPN) and MCDM methodology called Fuzzy-TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution), respectively. The results of RPN shows that most of the accidents in CI of Pakistan occurs due to the deficiency of PPEs followed by Electrocution due to electrical equipment, improper way of using the available PPE and falling of personnel from elevated platforms. Similarly, the results of Fuzzy-TOPSIS shows that chemical and fire hazards are the most responsible for the accidents in CI of Pakistan.
•We focus on deterministic scheduling of jobs on batch processing machines.•A taxonomy of parallel batching problems is provided.•We survey the literature with parallel batching.•Recent trends are ...discussed.•Future research directions are identified.
Multiple jobs are processed simultaneously on a given batch processing machine in parallel batching. The resulting batch is called a p-batch. Batching can lead to reduced production costs, but depending how the jobs are grouped into a batch can lead to better or worse delivery times of products. Scheduling jobs on batch processing machines requires grouping decisions in addition to the conventional assignment and sequencing decisions. Parallel batching is important in such diverse areas such as semiconductor manufacturing, aircraft manufacturing, shoe manufacturing, and healthcare. This paper surveys the literature on parallel batching and will focus primarily on deterministic scheduling. We provide a taxonomy of parallel batching problems, distinguishing the compatible case where all jobs can be used to form a batch from the incompatible families setting where only jobs from the same family can be used to form a batch. Makespan, flow time-, and due date-related measures are considered. We discuss scheduling approaches for single machines, parallel machines, and other environments such as flow shops and job shops. In addition to the discussion of archived and current papers, we discuss also recent trends in scheduling jobs on machines with parallel batch processing. Finally, we provide a discussion of future research directions for p-batch scheduling.
Cryotherapy machines, also known as cryosurgery machines, continue to be widely used for surgical procedures of the eye such as retinal detachment repair, cataract extraction, glaucoma and so on.
Aim
To explore nursing management issues within COVID‐19 narratives of Italian front‐line nurses.
Background
The COVID‐19 pandemic has dramatically affected health systems and professionals ...worldwide. Italian nurses have key messages for nursing leaders following their acute experiences in the pandemic.
Method
A descriptive qualitative study with thematic analysis.
Results
Twenty‐three testimonies from clinical nurses were analysed. Six macrothemes were identified as follows: organisational and logistic change; leadership models adopted to manage the emergency; changes in nursing approaches; personal protective equipment issues; physical and psychological impact on nurses; and team value/spirit.
Conclusions
Our testimonies highlighted the huge impact of COVID‐19 on the Italian nursing workforce, especially in terms of the high risks associated with caring for COVID‐19 patients, exacerbated by the shortage of appropriate personal protective equipment. Nurses had to care for their colleagues and live separately from their families to avoid infecting them, revealing nurses' resilience and the important role of effective and sensitive management.
Implications for Nursing Management
Nurse managers must be prepared for the impact of pandemics on staff and need to ensure availability and replacement of quality personal protective equipment, rehearse strategies for communicating with patients while wearing personal protective equipment and establish protocols for communicating with relatives.
Wearable biosensors for healthcare monitoring Kim, Jayoung; Campbell, Alan S; de Ávila, Berta Esteban-Fernández ...
Nature biotechnology,
04/2019, Volume:
37, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Wearable biosensors are garnering substantial interest due to their potential to provide continuous, real-time physiological information via dynamic, noninvasive measurements of biochemical markers ...in biofluids, such as sweat, tears, saliva and interstitial fluid. Recent developments have focused on electrochemical and optical biosensors, together with advances in the noninvasive monitoring of biomarkers including metabolites, bacteria and hormones. A combination of multiplexed biosensing, microfluidic sampling and transport systems have been integrated, miniaturized and combined with flexible materials for improved wearability and ease of operation. Although wearable biosensors hold promise, a better understanding of the correlations between analyte concentrations in the blood and noninvasive biofluids is needed to improve reliability. An expanded set of on-body bioaffinity assays and more sensing strategies are needed to make more biomarkers accessible to monitoring. Large-cohort validation studies of wearable biosensor performance will be needed to underpin clinical acceptance. Accurate and reliable real-time sensing of physiological information using wearable biosensor technologies would have a broad impact on our daily lives.
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