Sepsis awareness and knowledge amongst nurses, physicians and paramedics of a tertiary care center in Switzerland: A survey-based cross-sectional study.

Background: Sepsis is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality. Prompt recognition and management are critical to improve outcomes.

Methods: We conducted a survey among nurses and physicians of all adult departments of the Lausanne University Hospital (LUH) and paramedics transporting patients to our hospital.

National Early Warning Score (NEWS) Outperforms Quick Sepsis-Related Organ Failure (qSOFA) Score for Early Detection of Sepsis in the Emergency Department.

Background: Prompt recognition of sepsis is critical to improving patients’ outcomes. We compared the performance of NEWS and qSOFA scores as sepsis detection tools in patients admitted to the emergency department (ED) with suspicion of sepsis. Methodology: A single-center 12-month retrospective study comparing NEWS using the recommended cut-off of ≥5 and qSOFA as sepsis screening tools in a cohort of patients transported by emergency medical services (EMS) to the Lausanne University Hospital (LUH).

Performance of the Digital Dietary Assessment Tool MyFoodRepo.

Digital dietary assessment devices could help overcome the limitations of traditional tools to assess dietary intake in clinical and/or epidemiological studies. We evaluated the accuracy of the automated dietary app MyFoodRepo (MFR) against controlled reference values from weighted food diaries (WFD). MFR's capability to identify, classify and analyze the content of 189 different records was assessed using Cohen and uniform kappa coefficients and linear regressions.

Development and validation of a knowledge-based score to predict Fried's frailty phenotype across multiple settings using one-year hospital discharge data: The electronic frailty score.

Background: Most claims-based frailty instruments have been designed for group stratification of older populations according to the risk of adverse health outcomes and not frailty itself. We aimed to develop and validate a tool based on one-year hospital discharge data for stratification on Fried's frailty phenotype (FP).

Methods: We used a three-stage development/validation approach.

Epidemiology, risk factors and clinical course of SARS-CoV-2 infected patients in a Swiss university hospital: An observational retrospective study.

Background: This study aims to describe the epidemiology of COVID-19 patients in a Swiss university hospital.

Methods: This retrospective observational study included all adult patients hospitalized with a laboratory confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection from March 1 to March 25, 2020. We extracted data from electronic health records.

Automated solvent vapor annealing with nanometer scale control of film swelling for block copolymer thin films.

Molecular self-assembly of block copolymers has been pursued as a next generation high-resolution, low-cost lithography technique. Solvent vapor annealing is a promising way of achieving self-assembled patterns from polymers with high interaction parameters, χ, or high molecular weights. Compared to thermal annealing, the assembly in a solvated state can be much faster, but the film swelling process is typically challenging to control and reproduce.

All-Metal Broadband Optical Absorbers Based on Block Copolymer Nanolithography.

The growing interest in solar energy during recent years has spurred on the development of high-efficiency optical absorbers using emerging concepts in plasmonics and metamaterials. Most absorber designs require patterning on a subwavelength scale, making large-scale fabrication expensive or impractical. This study presents an all-metal metasurface with tightly packed, sub-80 nm nanodomes fabricated by template-stripping thin gold films from reusable silicon templates.

Directed self-assembly of a high-chi block copolymer for the fabrication of optical nanoresonators.

In this paper, we report on the fabrication of optical nanoresonators using block copolymer lithography. The nanostructured gratings or nanofins were fabricated using a silicon-containing block copolymer on a chromium coated silicon-on-insulator substrate. The etch resistance of the block copolymer template enables a unique patterning technique for high-aspect-ratio silicon nanofins.

High molecular weight block copolymer lithography for nanofabrication of hard mask and photonic nanostructures.

An unusual dot pattern was realized via self-assembly of high molecular weight polystyrene-block-polydimethylsiloxane (PS-b-PDMS) copolymer by a simple one-step solvent annealing process, optimized based on Hansen solubility parameters. Annealing PS-b-PDMS under neutral solvent vapors at room temperature produces an ordered arrangement of dots with ∼112 nm spacing and ∼54 nm diameter. The template is highly resistant to dry etching with chlorine-based plasma, enabling its utilization on a variety of hard masks and substrates.

Ultra-large core birefringent Yb-doped tapered double clad fiber for high power amplifiers.

We present a birefringent Yb-doped tapered double-clad fiber with a record core diameter of 96 µm. An impressive gain of over 38 dB was demonstrated for linearly polarized CW and pulsed sources at a wavelength of 1040 nm. For the CW regime the output power was70 W.

Guided-mode resonance gratings for enhanced mid-infrared absorption in quantum dot intermediate-band solar cells.

Achieving strong absorption of low-energy photons is one of the key issues to demonstrate quantum dot solar cells working in the intermediate band regime at practical concentration factors and operating temperatures. Guided-mode resonance effects may enable large enhancement of quantum dot intraband optical transitions. We propose quantum dot thin-film cells designed to have significant field waveguiding in the quantum dot stack region and patterned at the rear-side with a sub-wavelength diffraction grating.

Comparison of metal/polymer back reflectors with half-sphere, blazed, and pyramid gratings for light trapping in III-V solar cells.

We report on the fabrication of diffraction gratings for application as back contact reflectors. The gratings are designed for thin-film solar cells incorporating absorbers with bandgap slightly lower than GaAs, i.e.

Nonlinear imaging of nanostructures using beams with binary phase modulation.

We demonstrate nonlinear microscopy of oriented nanowires using excitation beams with binary phase modulation. A simple and intuitive optical scheme comprising a spatial light modulator gives us the possibility to control the phase across an incident Hermite-Gaussian beam of order (1,0) (HG mode). This technique allows us to gradually vary the spatial distribution of the longitudinal electric fields in the focal volume, as demonstrated by second-harmonic generation from vertically-aligned GaAs nanowires.

Block Copolymer Patterning for Creating Porous Silicon Thin Films with Tunable Refractive Indices.

We investigated the use of block copolymer (BCP) self-assembly for tuning the optical properties of silicon. We fabricated porous silicon by etching a hexagonally ordered pore pattern onto the surface of silicon wafers using poly(styrene-2-vinylpyridine) to prepare the etch mask. Contrary to typical BCP lithography, we did not need to use a range of different polymers to vary the pore size.

Fabrication of Ion-Shaped Anisotropic Nanoparticles and their Orientational Imaging by Second-Harmonic Generation Microscopy.

Ion beam shaping is a novel and powerful tool to engineer nanocomposites with effective three-dimensional (3D) architectures. In particular, this technique offers the possibility to precisely control the size, shape and 3D orientation of metallic nanoparticles at the nanometer scale while keeping the particle volume constant. Here, we use swift heavy ions of xenon for irradiation in order to successfully fabricate nanocomposites consisting of anisotropic gold nanoparticle that are oriented in 3D and embedded in silica matrix.

Enhancement of second-harmonic generation from silicon nitride with gold gratings.

We report strong enhancement of second-harmonic generation in a hybrid nanostructure with gold gratings embedded in a silicon nitride film. Compared to a flat silicon nitride film, the enhancement factor can be as large as 10 to 10 for transverse magnetic and electric polarizations, respectively in good agreement with numerical results calculated using finite element method. For both polarizations, the enhancement arises from a resonance between the waveguide modes and grating.

Coating of gold nanoparticles made by pulsed laser ablation in liquids with silica shells by simultaneous chemical synthesis.

Coating of gold nanoparticles with silica shells by the well known Stöber-method requires the use of additional coupling agents to seed the growth of the shell as gold does not form a native oxide. Here we report a novel single-step process to create the gold nanoparticles directly into a mixture of tetraethyl orthosilicate and a catalyst by means of pulsed laser ablation in liquids. We observe that good silica shells are achieved only when all of the reagents are present during the production of the nanoparticles.

Broadband infrared mirror using guided-mode resonance in a subwavelength germanium grating.

We demonstrate a broadband mirror for the IR wavelength region comprising a subwavelength grating made of germanium. We design and optimize the guided-mode resonances in the structure for TM-polarized incident light by rigorous electromagnetic simulations. The grating structure is realized by nanoimprint lithography and dry etching.

How Grids are perceived in healthcare and the public service sector.

Computational and data grids have been developed to manage large amounts of data produced in scientific collaborations. While the developed technologies could be employed to help the daily work in the public sector and in healthcare, their wide adaptation has not been seen, yet. In this paper we present a survey, which we conducted to find out how the decision makers and system specialists in the public service sector see the role of Grid technologies in their future work.

Narrow linewidth templates for nanoimprint lithography utilizing conformal deposition.

Nanoimprint lithography has the potential to cost efficiently realize patterns with extremely narrow linewidth over a large area. A significant challenge to achieving this target is the fabrication of nanoimprint templates. The cost and writing time of conventional electron beam lithography for direct writing of the templates rapidly increases as the patterned area increases and the linewidth decreases.