OSHA's bloodborne pathogens rule an opportunity/threat

If you supply healthcare linen, OSHA's new ruling comes with a price tag, but it may be a marketing boon as well. The costs of compliance are high--about $1.19 million annually. One of the most costly and important parts of the ruling is the required employer-paid hepatitis B vaccination of employees. But behind the costs, there's good news for the textile rental industry. The opportunity to serve small medical facilities and nursing homes as well as hospitals with reusable healthcare garments could create a revenue source estimated to be at least $177 million a year.     

Knowing healthcare customer needs key to profitable niche marketing

A potential $177 million-a-year market has been opened to textile rental operators, thanks to OSHA's recent ruling on bloodborne pathogens. Healthcare providers nationwide are now searching for solutions to their protective apparel needs. Such customer needs are what drive niche markets. Whether you've been serving the healthcare market for years or are just now targeting it, here are the marketing strategies you need.     

Bloodborne pathogens compliance update. Local OSHA regulations cover textile rental companies in 23 states and two U.S. territories

The last phase of the federal OSHA standard on occupational exposure to bloodborne pathogens became effective July 6. However, compliance deadlines may vary in the 23 states and two U.S. territories that have their own OSHA offices. The states and territories have the option of adopting the federal standard or drafting their own plans. Here's a status report on the OSHA-approved state programs for bloodborne pathogens.     

Gaussian,Lobatto and Radau positive quadrature rules with a prescribed abscissa

For a given $\theta \in (a,b)$ , we investigate the question whether there exists a positive quadrature formula with maximal degree of precision which has the prescribed abscissa $\theta $ plus possibly $a$ and/or $b$ , the endpoints of the interval of integration. This study relies on recent results on the location of roots of quasi-orthogonal polynomials. The above positive quadrature formulae are useful in studying problems in one-sided polynomial $L_1$ approximation.     

Numerical characterization and experimental verification of an in-plane MEMS-actuator with thin-film aluminum heater

In this paper, a novel concept of a thermo-mechanical MEMS actuator using aluminum thin-film heaters on a thermal oxide for electrical insulation is presented. The actuator is part of an universal tensile testing platform for thermo-mechanical material characterization of one dimensional materials on a micro- and nano-scopic scale under different environmental conditions, as varying temperatures, pressure, moisture or even vacuum and is realised in BDRIE technology. It is shown, that the actuator concept fulfills the requirements for the use in a tensile loading stage along with heterogeneously integrated nanofunctional elements, following a specimen centered approach in line with bottom-up self-assembly processes. Simulation and experiment agree very well in the thermal and mechanical domain and allow subsequent optimisation of the actuator performance.     

Induction of DNA-double-strand breaks by auger electrons from 99mTc complexes with DNA-binding ligands

The potential of certain Auger electron emitting nuclides for systemic radiotherapeutic applications has recently gained much attention. In particular, the ability of several nuclides, including 111In, 125I, and 123I, to induce DNA double-strand breaks (dsb), a good indicator of cytotoxicity, has been extensively studied. However, this ability has never previously been shown experimentally for 99mTc, which, besides the well-known gamma radiation that is used for diagnostic applications, also emits an average of 1.1 conversion electrons and 4 Auger or Coster-Kronig electrons per decay. Owing to the short range of Auger electrons, the radionuclide needs to be located very close to the DNA for dsb to occur. We synthesized two cationic 99mTcI-tricarbonyl complexes with pendant DNA binders, pyrene and anthraquinone. The X-ray crystal structures of the two complexes could be elucidated. Linear dichroism and UV/Vis spectroscopy revealed that the complex with pyrene intercalates DNA with a stability constant, K, of 1.1 x 10(6) M(-1), while the analogous complex with anthraquinone interacts with DNA in a groove-binding mode and has an affinity value of K=8.9 x 10(4) M(-1). We showed with phiX174 double-stranded DNA that the corresponding 99mTc complexes induce a significant amount of dsb, whereas non-DNA-binding [TcO4]- and nonradioactive Re compounds did not. These results indicate that the Auger electron emitter 99mTc can induce dsb in DNA when decaying in its direct vicinity and this implies potential for systemic radiotherapy with 99mTc complexes.     

Heat capacities of polyethylene and linear fluoropolymers

Heat capacities at constant pressure, C_p, and at constant volume C_v, were calculated with the help of normal mode frequency spectra and compared to experimental data for crystalline or semicrystalline polyethylene, poly(vinyl fluoride), poly(vinylidene fluoride), polytrifluooroethylene and poly(tetrafluoroethylene). A calculation scheme using a Tarasov function for 2N skeletal vibrational modes and an approximation of the residual 7N normal modes from known data on polyethylene and polytetrafluoroethylene is developed for all homologous, linear fluoropolymers. N is the number of carbon backbone atoms of the repeating unit. Calculations can be carried out over the whole temperature range 0 K to melting. For the two theta temperatures and the constant A₀ used for C_v to C_p conversion, fluorine-concentration dependent curves are given. The relations are expected to hold also for copolymers and blends of intermediate fluorine contents. Recommended experimental (data bank) heat capacities agree to ±2.5% with the calculations.     

On‐the‐fly generation and rendering of infinite cities on the GPU

In this paper, we present a new approach for shape‐grammar‐based generation and rendering of huge cities in real‐time on the graphics processing unit (GPU). Traditional approaches rely on evaluating a shape grammar and storing the geometry produced as a preprocessing step. During rendering, the pregenerated data is then streamed to the GPU. By interweaving generation and rendering, we overcome the problems and limitations of streaming pregenerated data. Using our methods of visibility pruning and adaptive level of detail, we are able to dynamically generate only the geometry needed to render the current view in real‐time directly on the GPU. We also present a robust and efficient way to dynamically update a scene's derivation tree and geometry, enabling us to exploit frame‐to‐frame coherence. Our combined generation and rendering is significantly faster than all previous work. For detailed scenes, we are capable of generating geometry more rapidly than even just copying pregenerated data from main memory, enabling us to render cities with thousands of buildings at up to 100 frames per second, even with the camera moving at supersonic speed.