Following the trail: understanding information flow in the emergency department

A hospital emergency department (ED) is a complex cognitive work system. ED providers routinely create, process and share various kinds of information in their work. They may constantly transform information using technological artifacts such as an electronic patient information system. The functionality in the technology, however, limits their tasks and activities. So, they create their own artifacts (such as handwritten notes on a post-it note), to share and process information. The goal of the paper is to illustrate how health providers in EDs create, process, transform and share information to achieve work goals. We present the information trail model in the ED to illustrate various facets of information creation activity and generate insights for health information technology design.     

Fifth sustainable development goal gender equality in India: analysis by mathematics of uncertainty and covering of fuzzy graphs

Neural Computing and Applications - In the present situation, the sustainable development goal on “Gender Equality” (SDG 5) is a challenging problem over the entire globe, also in...     

Development of cerium and silicon co-doped hydroxyapatite nanopowder and its in vitro biological studies for bone regeneration applications

Multi-ion, co-substituted bioactive glass ceramics play a significant role in the stimulation of physical and biological properties for outstanding effects in biomedical application. The following work attempts to develop HAP as a parent material doped with a combination of cerium (Ce⁴⁺ @1.25?wt%) and silicon (Si⁴⁺ @1, 3 and 5?wt%) by refluxing based sol-gel technique. The anti-bacterial tests exhibit E. coli showing higher inhibition efficiency, in vitro hemolytic test exhibit good compatible nature of dual doped HAP with erythrocytes (<5% of hemolytic). In vitro bioactivity assay confirms that the developed dual doped HAP possesses excellent bone-like apatite layer formation on their surfaces. In vitro cellular study was performed for Ce/Si-HAP@5% powder against MG-63 cells, which demonstrated the good cell viability at higher concentrations (up to 800?µg/ml). Further, dual doped HAP powders were characterized by various analytical techniques such as ATR-FTIR, Powder-XRD, TGA-DTA, SEM-EDS, TEM and XPS analysis. The studies confirm that the synthesized dual doped HAP will act as better bioactive glass ceramics for potential orthopedic and dentistry applications.     

Structural and morphological investigations on DC-magnetron-sputtered nickel films deposited on Si (100)

Pure nickel thin films were deposited on Si (100) substrates under different conditions of sputtering using direct current magnetron sputtering from a nickel metal target. The different deposition parameters employed for this study are target power, argon gas pressure, substrate temperature and substrate-bias voltage. The films exhibited high density of void boundaries with reduction in <111> texture deposited under high argon gas pressures. At argon gas pressure of 5 mTorr and target power of 300 W, Ni deposition rate was ~40 nm/min. In addition, coalescence of grains accompanied with increase in the film texture was observed at high DC power. Ni films undergo morphological transition from continuous, dense void boundaries to microstructure free from voids as the substrate-bias voltage was increased from −10 to −90 V. Furthermore, as the substrate temperature was increased, the films revealed strong <111> fiber texture accompanied with near-equiaxed grain structure. Ni films deposited at 770 K showed the layer-by-layer film formation which lead to dense, continuous microstructure with increase in the grain size.     

Purification,characterization, antibacterial activity and N-terminal sequencing of buffalo-milk lysozyme

Lysozyme from buffalo milk was purified to homogeneity and its N-terminal amino acid sequence, biochemical properties and antibacterial spectrum were determined. The purification procedure, comprising ion-exchange chromatography using CM-cellulose and size-exclusion chromatography using Sephadex G-50, conferred 8622-fold purification and 39.3% recovery of lysozyme. The purified enzyme migrated as a single band on sodium dodecyl sulphate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) and native PAGE. Immunological purity of lysozyme preparation was confirmed by immuno-electrophoresis. Molecular weight of buffalo-milk lysozyme as determined by SDS-PAGE was 16 kDa and its amino acid composition was determined by reverse phase high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The sequence of 23 amino acid residues at the N-terminal end showed 56.5% homology with bovine milk lysozyme and 30.4% with equine milk lysozyme. The specific activity of buffalo milk lysozyme was ten-times that of bovine milk lysozyme. Buffalo-milk lysozyme was active over a wide range of pH and its activity was strongly influenced by molarity of the medium. Antibacterial activity of buffalo-milk lysozyme was determined against 11 species of bacteria; out of seven Gram-positive bacteria tested, four were inhibited, while Gram-negative bacteria were resistant.     

Evaluating the fabric performance and antibacterial properties of 3-D piezoelectric spacer fabric

The increasing need of on-demand power for enabling portable low-power devices and sensors has necessitated work in novel energy harvesting materials and devices. In a recent work, we demonstrated the production and suitability of three-dimensional (3-D) spacer all fibre piezoelectric textiles for converting mechanical energy into electrical energy for wearable and technical applications. The current work investigates the textile performance properties of these 3-D piezoelectric fabrics including porosity, air permeability, water vapour transmission and bursting strength. Furthermore, as these textiles are intended for wearable applications, we have assessed their wear abrasion and consequently provide surface resistance measurements which can affect the lifetime and efficiency of charge collection in the piezoelectric textile structures. The results show that the novel smart fabric with a measured porosity of 68% had good air (1855 l/m²/s) and water vapour permeability (1.34 g/m²/day) values, good wear abrasion resistance over 60,000 rotations applied by a load of 12 kPa and bursting strength higher than 2400 kPa. Moreover, the antibacterial activity of 3-D piezoelectric fabrics revealed that owing to the use of Ag/PA66 yarns, the textiles exhibit excellent antibacterial activity against not only Gram-negative bacteria E. coli but they are also capable of killing antibiotic methicillin-resistant bacteria S. aureus.     

High‐Throughput Block Optical DNA Sequence Identification

Optical techniques for molecular diagnostics or DNA sequencing generally rely on small molecule fluorescent labels, which utilize light with a wavelength of several hundred nanometers for detection. Developing a label‐free optical DNA sequencing technique will require nanoscale focusing of light, a high‐throughput and multiplexed identification method, and a data compression technique to rapidly identify sequences and analyze genomic heterogeneity for big datasets. Such a method should identify characteristic molecular vibrations using optical spectroscopy, especially in the “fingerprinting region” from ≈400–1400 cm^?1. Here, surface‐enhanced Raman spectroscopy is used to demonstrate label‐free identification of DNA nucleobases with multiplexed 3D plasmonic nanofocusing. While nanometer‐scale mode volumes prevent identification of single nucleobases within a DNA sequence, the block optical technique can identify A, T, G, and C content in DNA k‐mers. The content of each nucleotide in a DNA block can be a unique and high‐throughput method for identifying sequences, genes, and other biomarkers as an alternative to single‐letter sequencing. Additionally, coupling two complementary vibrational spectroscopy techniques (infrared and Raman) can improve block characterization. These results pave the way for developing a novel, high‐throughput block optical sequencing method with lossy genomic data compression using k‐mer identification from multiplexed optical data acquisition.