Observations of Reduced Turbulence and Wave Activity in the Arctic Middle Atmosphere Following the January 2015 Sudden Stratospheric Warming.

Measurements of turbulence and waves were made as part of the Mesosphere-Lower Thermosphere Turbulence Experiment (MTeX) on the night of 25-26 January 2015 at Poker Flat Research Range, Chatanika, Alaska (65°N, 147°W). Rocket-borne ionization gauge measurements revealed turbulence in the 70- to 88-km altitude region with energy dissipation rates between 0.1 and 24 mW/kg with an average value of 2.

Teams in a New Era: Some Considerations and Implications.

Teams have been a ubiquitous structure for conducting work and business for most of human history. However, today's organizations are markedly different than those of previous generations. The explosion of innovative ideas and novel technologies mandate changes in job descriptions, roles, responsibilities, and how employees interact and collaborate.

Electronic cigarettes in the indoor environment.

The use of electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes or "vaping") has seen an unprecedented increase worldwide. Vaping has been promoted as a beneficial smoking cessation tool and an alternative nicotine delivery device that contains no combustion by-products. However, nicotine is highly addictive, and the increased use of nicotine-containing e-cigarettes among teens and individuals who are not in need of smoking cessation may lead to overall greater nicotine dependence in the population.

Privacy and Security for Resource-Constrained IoT Devices and Networks: Research Challenges and Opportunities.

With the exponential growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) and cyber-physical systems (CPS), a wide range of IoT applications have been developed and deployed in recent years. To match the heterogeneous application requirements in IoT and CPS systems, many resource-constrained IoT devices are deployed, in which privacy and security have emerged as difficult challenges because the devices have not been designed to have effective security features.

Safety gaps in medical team communication: Results of quality improvement efforts in a cardiac catheterization laboratory.

Objectives: To assess closed-loop communications (readback), a fundamental aspect of effective communication, among cardiovascular teams and assess improvement efforts.

Background: Effective communication within teams is essential to assure safety and optimal outcomes. Readback of verbal physician orders is a hospital and national requirement.

Comparison of the 18-item and 6-item Lubben Social Network Scales with community-dwelling older adults in Mongolia.

This study compares the psychometric properties of two versions of the Lubben Social Network Scale (LSNS-18 and LSNS-6) with community dwelling older adults in Mongolia. We recruited 650 older adult in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar and the country's four rural regions. We used the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS-15), the Short Form 12 (SF-12) physical and mental health functioning measures, and a multi-dimensional scale of social isolation for confirmatory factor analyses of the LSNS-18 and the LSNS-6.

Prediction of Marine Pycnocline Based on Kernel Support Vector Machine and Convex Optimization Technology.

With the explosive growth of ocean data, it is of great significance to use ocean observation data to analyze ocean pycnocline data in military field. However, due to natural factors, most of the time the ocean hydrological data is not complete. In this case, predicting the ocean hydrological data by partial data has become a hot spot in marine science.

Safeuristics! Do Heuristic Evaluation Violation Severity Ratings Correlate with Patient Safety Severity Ratings for a Native Electronic Health Record Mobile Application?

Objective: Usability of electronic health records (EHRs) remains challenging, and poor EHR design has patient safety implications. Heuristic evaluation detects usability issues that can be classified by severity. The National Institute of Standards and Technology provides a safety scale for EHR usability.

E-cigarette nicotine deposition and persistence on glass and cotton surfaces.

Nicotine from electronic cigarette aerosol will deposit on surfaces immediately after vaping, but how long deposited nicotine will persist on various surfaces is unknown. This work exposed glass and terrycloth (cotton) materials to electronic cigarette aerosols for 1 hr, assessed the initial nicotine sorption, and characterized surface persistence over a 72-hr period. Exponential decay of surface concentration was observed for both materials.

Constraining the p-Mode-g-Mode Tidal Instability with GW170817.

We analyze the impact of a proposed tidal instability coupling p modes and g modes within neutron stars on GW170817. This nonresonant instability transfers energy from the orbit of the binary to internal modes of the stars, accelerating the gravitational-wave driven inspiral. We model the impact of this instability on the phasing of the gravitational wave signal using three parameters per star: an overall amplitude, a saturation frequency, and a spectral index.

An Intelligent Vision Based Sensing Approach for Spraying Droplets Deposition Detection.

The rapid development of vision sensor based on artificial intelligence (AI) is reforming industries and making our world smarter. Among these trends, it is of great significance to adapt AI technologies into the intelligent agricultural management. In smart agricultural aviation spraying, the droplets' distribution and deposition are important indexes for estimating effectiveness in plant protection process.

Medication safety in emergency medical services: approaching an evidence-based method of verification to reduce errors.

Lack of verification is often cited as a root cause of medication errors; however, medication errors occur in spite of conventional verification practices and it appears that human factors engineering (HFE) can inform the design of a more effective method. To this end, an HFE-driven process was designed and implemented in an urban, Midwestern emergency medical service agency. Medication error data were collected over a 54-month period, 27 months before and after implementation.

Search for Subsolar-Mass Ultracompact Binaries in Advanced LIGO's First Observing Run.

We present the first Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo search for ultracompact binary systems with component masses between 0.2  M_{⊙}-1.0  M_{⊙} using data taken between September 12, 2015 and January 19, 2016.

Assessment of confined space entry and rescue training for aircraft rescue and fire fighting (ARFF) members in the United States.

Introduction: Fire and emergency service workers, including Aircraft Rescue and Fire Fighting members, may be called on to perform confined space entry and rescue operations. The purpose of the present study was to develop a comprehensive and valid understanding of the present state of confined space entry and rescue training effectiveness and resultant compliance or use of best practices among trained Aircraft Rescue and Fire Fighting personnel.

Method: The study used a convergent, parallel mixed-methods approach.

Patient-Specific Multi-Scale Model Analysis of Hemodynamics Following the Hybrid Norwood Procedure for Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome: Effects of Reverse Blalock-Taussig Shunt Diameter.

Introduction: The hybrid Norwood (HN) is a relatively new first stage palliative procedure for neonates with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, in which a sustainable uni-ventricular circulation is established in a less invasive manner than with the standard Norwood procedure. A computational multiscale model of the circulation following the HN procedure was used to obtain detailed hemodynamics. Implementation of a reverse-BT shunt (RBTS), a synthetic bypass from the main pulmonary to the innominate artery placed to counteract aortic arch stenosis, and its effects on local and global hemodynamics were studied.

Dissecting Communication Barriers in Healthcare: A Path to Enhancing Communication Resiliency, Reliability, and Patient Safety.

Suboptimal exchange of information can have tragic consequences to patient's safety and survival. To this end, the Joint Commission lists communication error among the most common attributable causes of sentinel events. The risk management literature further supports this finding, ascribing communication error as a major factor (70%) in adverse events.

Factor Graph-Assisted Distributed Cooperative Positioning Algorithm in the GNSS System.

The development of smart cities calls for improved accuracy in navigation and positioning services; due to the effects of satellite orbit error, ionospheric error, poor quality of navigation signals and so on, it is difficult for existing navigation technology to achieve further improvements in positioning accuracy. Distributed cooperative positioning technology can further improve the accuracy of navigation and positioning with existing GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) systems. However, the measured range error and the positioning error of the cooperative nodes exhibit larger reductions in positioning accuracy.

GW170817: Measurements of Neutron Star Radii and Equation of State.

On 17 August 2017, the LIGO and Virgo observatories made the first direct detection of gravitational waves from the coalescence of a neutron star binary system. The detection of this gravitational-wave signal, GW170817, offers a novel opportunity to directly probe the properties of matter at the extreme conditions found in the interior of these stars. The initial, minimal-assumption analysis of the LIGO and Virgo data placed constraints on the tidal effects of the coalescing bodies, which were then translated to constraints on neutron star radii.

Surgical and Medical Applications of Drones: A Comprehensive Review.

Background: Drones have the ability to gather real time data cost effectively, to deliver payloads and have initiated the rapid evolution of many industrial, commercial, and recreational applications. Unfortunately, there has been a slower expansion in the field of medicine. This article provides a comprehensive review of current and future drone applications in medicine, in hopes of empowering and inspiring more aggressive investigation.

Adverse Hemodynamic Conditions Associated with Mechanical Heart Valve Leaflet Immobility.

Artificial heart valves may dysfunction, leading to thrombus and/or pannus formations. Computational fluid dynamics is a promising tool for improved understanding of heart valve hemodynamics that quantify detailed flow velocities and turbulent stresses to complement Doppler measurements. This combined information can assist in choosing optimal prosthesis for individual patients, aiding in the development of improved valve designs, and illuminating subtle changes to help guide more timely early intervention of valve dysfunction.

Imminent Death Donation: Ethical and Practical Policy Considerations.

While the practice of organ donation after cardiac death has long been trending upwards in acceptance and use, it is still a highly controversial and practically inefficient method of organ procurement. One policy that has recently been proposed to try and alleviate some of the ethical and practical concerns with organ donation after cardiac death is the practice of imminent death organ donation. This type of live organ donation comes in patients at the end of their life who have decided to withdraw life-sustaining treatment, but still want to ensure that their organs are donated and not wasted, which isn't always the case with organ donation after cardiac death.

A comparison of special category light-sport and corresponding type-certificated aircraft safety.

Introduction: The special category light sport airplane (light sport) sector of general aviation has grown 10-fold in as many years with solo operations requiring only a sports pilot's certificate. With little research on light sport airplane safety, the study objective was to compare light sport and type-certificated airplane accident rates.

Method: Accidents were identified from the National Transportation Safety Board database.

Ridge number in bat ears is related to both guild membership and ear length.

The ears of many mammals have a set of uniformly spaced horizontal ridges that form groove arrays. Contact of coherent waves (e.g.