The NICU flora: An effective technique to sample surfaces.

Objective: Environmental surface sampling in healthcare settings is not routinely recommended. There are several methods for environmental surface sampling, however the yield of these methods is not well defined. The aim of the present study is to compare two methods of environmental surface sampling, to characterize the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) flora, compare it with rates of infection and colonization and correlate it with the workload.

Quantitative relationship between cavitation and shear rheology.

Cavitation rheology is a powerful, simple, and inexpensive technique to study the moduli of polymer gels, however its use has not yet become widespread because few studies to date have directly compared this technique to traditional oscillatory shear rheology. Herein, we report a quantitative relationship between the gel modulus determined using cavitation and shear rheology for three series of model gels whose networks are composed of (1) permanently covalent, (2) dynamic-covalent, and (3) physical hydrogen-bond crosslinks. We determine a simple proportionality constant that allows for conversion of the moduli obtained from both types of experiments and is highly dependent on the bond energy responsible for gelation.