The Impact of Facial Personal Protective Equipment on Speech Intensity.

Importance: Facial personal protective equipment (FPPE) filters small particles in the operating room (OR) but also affects speech production, diminishing the effective transfer of information among OR team members.

Objective: The aim of the study is to assess the attenuating effects of different combinations of layered FPPE on speech intensity, including potential differences in the effect of talkers with varying backgrounds and speaking volumes.

Study Design: We recruited 30 speakers from health and nonhealth occupations with English as either their first or second language.

Human-Caused Sound Distractors and their Impact on Operating Room Team Function.

Background: Patient safety in the Operating Room (OR) depends on unobstructed team communication. Yet the typical OR is loud, containing numerous sounds from surgical machinery overlayed with human-caused sounds. Our objective was to compare machine vs human-caused sounds for their loudness and distraction, and potential impact on team communication.

Natural killer cell detection, quantification, and subpopulation identification on paper microfluidic cell chromatography using smartphone-based machine learning classification.

Natural killer (NK) cells are immune cells that defend against viral infections and cancer and are used in cancer immunotherapies. Subpopulations of NK cells include CD56 and CD56 which either produce cytokines or cytotoxically kill cells directly. The absolute number and proportion of these cells in peripheral blood are tied to proper immune function.

An all optical dynamical dark trap for neutral atoms.

We describe the experimental realization of a dynamical optical trap for atoms: the Rotating Off-resonant Dipole Optical (RODiO) Trap. A blue detuned circularly scanned laser beam creates a time averaged ;;box" for the atoms. We characterized this novel confinement technique by varying the trapping geometry and the laser beam parameters.