共找到 20 条结果
Asbestos was used in certain packing products for much of the twentieth century. The objective of this study was to characterize exposure from working with and around chrysotile-containing packing during valve repair and overhaul to better understand the exposure potential of career pipefitters and other tradesmen, as well as bystanders and household contacts. Airborne fiber and chrysotile concentrations during packing (20.91-62.77% chrysotile) replacement were measured during standard and nonstandard work tasks involving valve repair and overhaul, cleanup, and clothes handling. Packing replacement was performed on 21 valves by a career engineer at a facility with no mechanical ventilation. Out of 126 air samples, 56 had airborne fiber concentrations above the limit of detection using phase contrast microscopy (PCM) analysis and were subsequently analyzed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM); chrysotile was detected in 21 of the 56 samples. Packing replacement in 16 valves in succession without additional manipulation (such as sanding or compressed air blowout) resulted in a task-based personal average concentration of 0.0378 f/cc, PCM-equivalent asbestos-specific fibers or PCME, while one valve replacement event with compressed air use resulted in an average concentration of 0 f/cc, PCME, and compressed air and sanding combined resulted in an average concentration of 0.0018 f/cc, PCME. Task-based personal sampling during cleanup resulted in concentrations averaging 0.0047 to 0.0162 f/cc, PCME; no chrysotile was detected in task-based close bystander area samples, nor in any samples collected during clothes handling and post-handling cleanup. Regression analysis showed no correlation between PCM concentrations and measured size-fractionated and total airborne particulate matter concentrations. The results indicated that for packing replacement, including work on 16 valves in succession, lack of mechanical ventilation, and nonstandard work practices, all partial-shift and task-based average personal and area airborne fiber concentrations were below the OSHA 8-hr Time-Weighted Average (TWA) Permissible Exposure Limit (PEL) of 0.1 f/cc and 30-min TWA Excursion Limit (EL) for asbestos of 1 f/cc, consistent with previous literature.
暂无摘要（点击查看详情）
Boarding of patients in the Emergency Department (ED) impedes patient flow through the department and deprives medical students of valuable educational opportunities. We designed a curriculum for medical students during their required Emergency Medicine (EM) clerkships aimed to circumvent lost educational opportunities. Participants should gain increased appreciation of interprofessional collaboration, procedural competency, and ED flow. Students learned of the optional curriculum as they began their required EM clerkship. From August 2023 through January 2024, 120 students were contacted for recruitment into the optional curriculum. Students were provided with an ED-BINGO card with 25 pre-identified patient care activities deemed relevant to EM across 5 different categories. Participants were surveyed regarding educational value and enjoyment on a 5-point Likert scale. The 32 fully completed surveys were evaluated (26.7%), and 16 students (13.4%) reported using the ED-BINGO card during their EM clerkships. Participants reported that the ED-BINGO card tasks were appropriate for their level of training (median: 5, interquartile range (IQR): 1, mean 4.56, standard deviation (STD) 0.68), enhanced their understanding of flow/throughput of the ED (median: 4, IQR: 1.75, mean 3.94, STD 1.22), improved their knowledge/skills (median: 4, IQR: 2, mean 4, STD 1.06), helped them feel more valuable to the team (median score: 5, IQR: 2, mean 3.89, STD 1.49), and should remain a permanent fixture of the rotation (median: 4.5, IQR: 1, mean 4.5, STD 1.01). The ED-BINGO activity for the EM clerkship was perceived by medical students as educationally beneficial and enjoyable. While the limited number of participant respondents precludes any definitive conclusions about its broader effectiveness or its suitability for formal incorporation into the clerkship, the warm reception, especially noted in our student narrative responses, shows promising opportunities for other clerkships to adopt similar activity-driven gamification for self-driven adult learners. Further study with greater response rates would determine whether gamified interventions can meaningfully mitigate the educational challenges posed by ED boarding.
暂无摘要（点击查看详情）
Hearing loss is a common congenital anomaly and there is clear evidence of the benefits of early diagnosis and then treatment. For maximum positive impact, the diagnosis needs to be made as early as possible, ideally in the first months of life-this is the rationale for the national newborn hearing screening programme in the UK. When diagnosis and treatment do not occur early, the opportunity for the child to develop spoken language is slowly diminished over time with potentially devastating consequences.A national review into children's hearing services in England was commissioned by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care when it became clear that many children were being failed by these services. The scale of the harm may never be fully understood, but well over 300 children had their hearing loss missed, with likely lifelong consequences. Hearing services were found to be highly varied and outcomes unacceptably variable, with poor assurance of quality at trust and integrated care board level. The audiology workforce has been neglected for years with little professional governance and no coherent workforce planning.The Kingdon review has made 12 recommendations to place hearing services for children on a surer footing, underpinning services with a clear approach to commissioning and suggesting a networked model of service delivery. A structured data-driven quality assurance approach to monitoring of service quality is recommended, as is a wholescale review of education and training of the audiology workforce.
暂无摘要（点击查看详情）
暂无摘要（点击查看详情）
暂无摘要（点击查看详情）
暂无摘要（点击查看详情）
Convergent evolution, or the independent acquisition of similar phenotypes in distinct lineages, provides a powerful framework for investigating genomic changes associated with a phenotype. This paper details an update to RERconverge, a powerful R package that tests for associations between gene relative evolutionary rates (RERs) and convergent phenotypes to infer genomic regions associated with traits or selective pressures. We introduce new customizable analysis choices and scalable and efficient algorithms that can process larger genomic datasets, a critical improvement as genomic data become available for more species. Modifications to core functions in the RERconverge pipeline resulted in an immense speedup (by a factor of up to 28.6). The function that tests for associations between phenotypes and RERs has been expanded to include two new analytical methods for outlier control; we also provide here a summary of the statistical tests users can perform, along with their use cases. The code and walkthrough vignettes for the package are available at https://github.com/nclark-lab/RERconverge . Nathan L. Clark nclark@pitt.edu ; Maria Chikina mchikina@pitt.edu.
暂无摘要（点击查看详情）
暂无摘要（点击查看详情）
暂无摘要（点击查看详情）
暂无摘要（点击查看详情）
Biological emergencies strain health care facilities that are typically designed to accommodate routine surges. The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic exposed vulnerabilities in hospital oxygen delivery systems worldwide, resulting in ventilator failures and disruptions in patient care. At the American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC), the Emergency Department experienced significant challenges in maintaining the oxygen delivery system due to the unprecedented oxygen demand, over-frosting of pipelines, and system-wide depressurization. In response, the AUBMC established the Emergency Engineering Response Team (EERT) to rapidly develop and implement innovative, engineering-based strategies. This report shares the challenges faced by the AUBMC during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, details the solutions implemented, and provides recommendations to strengthen health care facility preparedness for future biological emergencies.
Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) is a high-quality, manually curated, and open-access database and ontology of chemical entities available online at https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chebi/. The chemical entities in question are either naturally occurring compounds or synthetic compounds that play a vital role in the processes of living organisms. ChEBI was launched in 2004, and over the years the original codebase has become increasingly difficult to maintain. Here, we describe the complete overhaul and modernization of ChEBI's infrastructure, including its codebase and associated tools (website, web services, and submission tool) to ensure the continued availability and growth of this critical resource for the global bioinformatics community and beyond. The infrastructure overhaul also enabled us to introduce new features and capabilities into ChEBI as well as to update or deprecate redundant ones.
Following the judicial overhaul enacted by the Israeli government in early 2023, a wave of unprecedented protests surged in the streets. This study aims to understand the experiences of older activists who participated in the initial protests against the judicial overhaul. It explores why some continued protesting, while others disengaged after the October 7 massacre and the subsequent war, using a life course perspective with an emphasis on the concept of linked lives. Between February and May 2025, 22 older activists who had been involved in the initial protests in 2023 were interviewed. Thematic analysis was employed. Results show diverging viewpoints: some activists believe protests remain vital, while others have ceased due to fears of societal division, perceived ineffectiveness, and prioritizing national unity during wartime. Ambivalence was a common thread, especially regarding the legitimacy of protests amid ongoing war. The findings highlight how historical events, personal experiences, and social contexts influence activism. The socioemotional selectivity theory and the concept of linked lives illuminate the reasons behind continued or discontinued protest engagement. • Older persons’ activism is constrained by societal and structural factors.• The concept of linked lives and the socioemotional selectivity theory can explain engagement and disengagement in protesting behaviors over time.• As the nature of the protests changes, so does their legitimacy.• Some activists have internalized the perspective of the ruling government about the legitimacy of their acts.