Discharge planning and community housing in Ontario

As hospital budgets in Ontario (and elsewhere) continue to shrink in the face of governmental fiscal pressure, bed closures lead to the discharge of increasingly vulnerable persons. Many of these persons have no family and no obvious place to go. Community supports to assist people outside the hospitals are not provided at a level commensurate with the need. The result is inadequate housing, social isolation, non-existent care and, in too many cases, reinstitutionalization and/or preventable deaths. This paper describes the process by which vulnerable adults wind up in unsuitable community settings, as a result of ill-conceived deinstitutionalization in the province of Ontario. It places a particular focus on the difficult role played by the discharge planner as conduit from hospital to community. The planner is often caught in the middle, facing hospital (and physician) directives to empty beds precipitously, alongside an acute shortage of suitable housing in the community. Departing patients are often sent to settings that lack any form of governmental inspection, regulation, licensure, or control: they are at the mercy of often indifferent and, at times, overtly rapacious landlords who may take the welfare cheque and give little in return. Selected case material, including one recent inquest, highlight the difficulties.     

Effectiveness of liquid cooling systems in motors and manufacturing equipment

Problems arising in the operation of liquid cooling systems in motors and technological equipment are considered. Improvement in the reliability and effectiveness of cooling systems on the basis of multifunctional chemical additives is proposed. This method is subjected to laboratory and operational tests.     

Averaging method in calculations of the exothermal reaction in porous-body—Gas systems

Chernogolovka. Translated from Fizika Goreniya i Vzryva, Vol. 25, No. 3, pp. 47–53, May–June, 1989.     

The effect of haemolysis on blood glucose meter measurement

A study was performed to assess the effect of varying degrees of sample haemolysis on the measurement of blood glucose by the Accutrend, Companion 2, ExacTech, Glucometer II, Glucometer 4, One Touch II, and Reflolux II blood glucose meters. Fresh venous blood was sonicated to induce complete haemolysis and then added in increasing proportions to homologous untreated blood to obtain nine samples with free haemoglobin concentrations up to 50 g l-1. The Accutrend meter showed the only significant (p < 0.05) linear relationship to degree of haemolysis (r = 0.988, p < 0.0001). For every 7% of red cells lysed, the Accutrend value increased by 15%. All other meters gave results which were within 15% of the non-haemolysed value. However, extreme (100%) haemolysis not only affected the Accutrend (glucose value 108% greater than reference) but also the ExacTech (+98%), the Glucometer II (-32%), and the Companion 2 (-41%). Thus, unwitting use of a haemolysed sample to measure whole blood glucose may, with the Accutrend in particular, lead to erroneous results.     

Suppression of the Karman vortex street and reduction in the frontal drag of a circular cylinder with two vortex cells

Numerical analysis of an unsteady-state two-dimensional incompressible flow at a Reynolds number of 40000 around a circular cylinder with two vortex cells is carried out on the basis of the finite-volume solution of the Reynolds equations closed by the Menter’s shear-stress transport model. The vortex cells are fitted with slots that ensure suction into the central channel via a fan located and through outflow of a low-pressure jet. It is shown that the suction in small-size cells intensifies the circulatory flow inside it and leads to the rearrangement of a large-scale structure of the flow around the cylinder accompanied by suppression of the Karman vortex street and a slightly symmetrical stabilization of the wake. The frontal drag of the cylinder decreases almost by three times with an optimal coefficient of the sucked air rate.