This underground suite makes the best of a space problem.
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Hospital Design and Construction↗
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Alarming readings.
The confined space standard has spawned a proliferation of confined space instruments. Careful reading of published specifications shows that some instruments are not suited for confined space testing. Therefore, it is important to read and understand those boring, mind-numbing specifications before making an instrument purchase.
Accidents, Occupational↗
The volume and capacity of colonoscopy procedures performed at New York City hospitals in 2002.
INTRODUCTION: Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in New York City. In March 2003, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene recommended colonoscopy every 10 years as the preferred screening test for adults aged 50 years and older in New York City. To screen all eligible adults in New York City would require that approximately 200,000 colonoscopy exams be performed annually. As part of this recommendation, we evaluated current colonoscopy capacity in New York City hospitals. METHODS: We surveyed endoscopy suite nursing or administrative staff at all 66 adult acute care hospitals performing colonoscopy in New York City. Data on colonoscopy procedures performed in 2002 were collected between February and June 2003. RESULTS: All hospitals and two affiliated clinics responded. The number of hospital-based colonoscopy exams performed in 2002 was estimated to be 126,000. Of these, 53,600 (43%) were estimated to be for screening. Hospitals reported their maximum annual capacity to be 195,200, approximately 69,100 more than current practice. Reported barriers to performing more colonoscopy exams included inadequate suite time and space (31%), inadequate staffing (28%), and insufficient patient referrals (24%). CONCLUSION: In 2003, endoscopy suites at New York City hospitals performed approximately one quarter of the estimated citywide need of 200,000 screening colonoscopies. Procedures conducted in outpatient office settings were not assessed. Most endoscopy suites, particularly private hospitals, reported having the capacity to conduct additional procedures. Hospitals and endoscopy suites should prioritize the development of institutional measures to increase the number of persons receiving screening colonoscopy.
Colonoscopy↗
Neurovestibular symptoms following space flight.
Neurovestibular symptoms experienced by astronauts in the post-flight period were examined using data from medical debriefs contained in the NASA Longitudinal Study of Astronaut Health database. Ten symptoms were identified (clumsiness, difficulty concentrating, persisting sensation aftereffects, nausea, vomiting, vertigo while walking, vertigo while standing, difficulty walking a straight line, blurred vision, and dry heaves), of which eight were crossed with twelve demographic parameters (mission duration, astronaut gender, age, one-g piloting experience, previous space flight experience, g-suit inflation, g-suit deflation, in-flight space motion sickness, in-flight exercise, post-flight exercise, mission role, fluid loading). Three symptoms were experienced by a majority of subjects, and another two by more than a quarter of the subjects. Intensity of the symptoms was mild, suggesting that they are unlikely to pose a risk to the crew during landing and the post-flight period. Seven of the symptoms and eight of the parameters under study were found to be significantly associated with each other.
Astronauts↗
Human +Gx tolerance with the use of anti-G suits during descent from orbit of the Soyuz space vehicles.
Previous investigations have shown the necessity of anti-G protection of cosmonauts on the stage of descent from orbit. Purpose of this research is to evaluate effectiveness of an elastic anti-G suits in opposing the descent accelerations in the Soyuz space vehicles.
Acceleration↗
[Research and realization of technique of intra-vehicular pressure garment].
OBJECTIVE: To study the technology of intra-vehicular pressure protection for manned space craft pressure emergency and to develop the pressure garment. METHOD: According to the requirements of manned spacecraft emergency, the research scheme was proposed. Then the realization method of the following techniques were studied: structure of the pressure suit, pressure control, ergonomics, ventilation and oxygen supply, vision support and anti-fog. The performance of the space suit was verified by research and environment experiment. RESULT: An intra-vehicular pressure garment system was realized. It could fulfil the requirements of pressure protection and ergonomics and has passed overall performance test, interface test, and environment test. CONCLUSION: The intra-vehicular pressure garment developed by us can meet the requirements of space transportation system during pressure emergency.
Atmospheric Pressure↗
Prevention of decompression sickness during extravehicular activity in space: a review.
Extended and more frequent extravehicular activity (EVA) is planned in NASA's future space programs. The more EVAs are conducted, the higher the incidence of decompression sickness (DCS) that is anticipated. Since Japan is also promoting the Space Station Freedom project with NASA, DCS during EVA will be an inevitable complication. The author reviewed the pathophysiology of DCS and detailed four possible ways of preventing decompression sickness during EVA in space: (1) higher pressure suit technology; (2) preoxygenation/prebreathing; (3) staged decompression; and (4) habitat or vehicle pressurization. Among these measures, development of zero-prebreathe higher pressure suit technology seems most ideal, but because of economic and technical reasons and in cases of emergency, other methods must also be improved. Unsolved problems like repeated decompression or oxygen toxicity were also listed.
Aerospace Medicine↗
Oligo kernels for datamining on biological sequences: a case study on prokaryotic translation initiation sites.
BACKGROUND: Kernel-based learning algorithms are among the most advanced machine learning methods and have been successfully applied to a variety of sequence classification tasks within the field of bioinformatics. Conventional kernels utilized so far do not provide an easy interpretation of the learnt representations in terms of positional and compositional variability of the underlying biological signals. RESULTS: We propose a kernel-based approach to datamining on biological sequences. With our method it is possible to model and analyze positional variability of oligomers of any length in a natural way. On one hand this is achieved by mapping the sequences to an intuitive but high-dimensional feature space, well-suited for interpretation of the learnt models. On the other hand, by means of the kernel trick we can provide a general learning algorithm for that high-dimensional representation because all required statistics can be computed without performing an explicit feature space mapping of the sequences. By introducing a kernel parameter that controls the degree of position-dependency, our feature space representation can be tailored to the characteristics of the biological problem at hand. A regularized learning scheme enables application even to biological problems for which only small sets of example sequences are available. Our approach includes a visualization method for transparent representation of characteristic sequence features. Thereby importance of features can be measured in terms of discriminative strength with respect to classification of the underlying sequences. To demonstrate and validate our concept on a biochemically well-defined case, we analyze E. coli translation initiation sites in order to show that we can find biologically relevant signals. For that case, our results clearly show that the Shine-Dalgarno sequence is the most important signal upstream a start codon. The variability in position and composition we found for that signal is in accordance with previous biological knowledge. We also find evidence for signals downstream of the start codon, previously introduced as transcriptional enhancers. These signals are mainly characterized by occurrences of adenine in a region of about 4 nucleotides next to the start codon. CONCLUSIONS: We showed that the oligo kernel can provide a valuable tool for the analysis of relevant signals in biological sequences. In the case of translation initiation sites we could clearly deduce the most discriminative motifs and their positional variation from example sequences. Attractive features of our approach are its flexibility with respect to oligomer length and position conservation. By means of these two parameters oligo kernels can easily be adapted to different biological problems.
Algorithms↗
Renovated space, skywalk 'reconnect' blood bank with surgical suites--4 floors up. Presbyterian Hospital, New York City.
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Blood Banks↗
Capillary filtration rate, venous compliance, and blood flow in arms and legs do not change during bed rest for 20 days.
It has been generally accepted that pooling of the blood in the legs is one reason for the orthostatic intolerance experienced after space flights. This is also the reasoning behind the application of anti-G suits during reentry after space flights. Fighter pilots also use the anti-G suit, the hypothesis being that this prevents the pooling of blood in the legs. In order to investigate if immobilization during bed rest would induce peripheral cardiovascular deconditioning we measured capillary filtration rate, venous compliance, and blood flow in arms and legs during bed rest.
Adult↗
Selected excitation for CAS-SDCI calculations.
A new selected-configuration interaction method is proposed, based on the use of local orbitals. A corresponding code has been written, which is devoted to CI calculations of rather large systems (about 50-100 carbon-like atoms). Taking advantage of the locality, and then of the fact that interactions vanish when the distance is large, the dimension of the CI space is largely reduced. The determinants that would be created by long range excitations are expected to have a small weight in the wave function and are therefore eliminated. This selected excitation CI space is particularly suited for large molecules. It is tested on large polyene chains and on a transition metal complex. For large enough systems, the CPU time saving is important and, what is more noticeable, calculations that were impossible to perform without selection are feasible in this approach.
Polyenes↗
The contraceptive diaphragm. Is it an acceptable method in the 1980s?
A prospective study of diaphragm users at the Family Planning Association of Victoria was undertaken. Despite the women being well motivated and instructed the pregnancy rate was high (24 per 100 woman years) and the continuation rate was only 35% at 12 months. Three-quarters of the women who became pregnant admitted that they did not use a diaphragm on every occasion. Therefore emphasis must be placed on the committed use of the diaphragm every time coitus occurs. Even so, the diaphragm does not appear to be a very safe method of contraception, and may be better suited to family spacing rather than as a method when high efficacy is required.
Contraception Behavior↗
Initial three-dimensional finite-difference time-domain phenomenology study of the transient response of a large vertically coupled photonic racetrack.
We report the initial three-dimensional finite-difference time-domain modeling of a vertically coupled photonic racetrack. The modeling reveals details of the full suite of space-time behavior of electromagnetic-wave phenomena involved in guiding, coupling, multimoding, dispersion, and radiation. This behavior is not easily obtainable by analytical or full-vector frequency-domain methods, measurements of terminal properties, or near-field scanning optical microscopy.
Journal Article↗
Some medical aspects of an 8-month's space flight.
In 1984 a 237-day space flight was performed on board the orbital complex Salyut-7-Soyuz-T with the crew members Leonid D. Kizim (Commander), Vladimnir A. Solovyov (Flight-Engineer), and Oleg Yu. Atkov (Cosmonaut Researcher). The major medical task was to continue the study of the acute stage of adaptation to weightlessness, phenomenology and mechanisms of changes in hemodynamics, metabolism and other functions. During flight, echocardiographic and biochemical measurements, vestibular and sensory studies were conducted extensively. In 1988-1989, the fourth prime crew performed its flight on the Mir orbital station. The crew consisted of: A.A. Volkov (Commander, Cr), S.K. Krikalyov (Flight-Engineer, FE) who were launched together with J.L. Cretien on November 26, 1988 as well as V.V. Polyakov (physician, cosmonaut-researcher, CP) who was in orbit until August 29, 1988 as a member of the third and fourth expeditions. Cr and FE remained in orbit for 151 days and CP for 421 days. Now we have 4 people experiencing 8 months space flight. The countermeasures included regular exercises on a treadmill and bicycle ergometer, use of G-suits and lower body negative pressure (LBNP) training at the final stage. The cosmonauts exercised for a hour twice a day for 3 days on end and then had an "active rest" day. On the recovery day the cosmonauts were recommended to take water-salt supplements according to the following protocol: 2.7 g NaCl in 300 ml liquid during lunch and dinner plus 1.8 g NaCl in 150 ml liquid immediately before they began preparing for the descent (after they donned their space suits). During re-entry the cosmonauts had an anti-G suit on (without bladders).
Adaptation, Physiological↗
Carbon dioxide accumulation, walking performance, and metabolic cost in the NASA launch and entry suit.
BACKGROUND: In the event of an emergency on landing, Space Shuttle crewmembers while wearing the Launch and Entry Suit (LES) must stand, move to the hatch, exit the spacecraft with the helmet visor closed breathing 100% O2, and walk or run unassisted to a distance of 380 m upwind from the vehicle. The purpose of this study was to characterize the inspired CO2 and metabolic requirements during a simulated unaided egress from the Space Shuttle in healthy subjects wearing the LES. METHODS: As a simulation of a Shuttle landing with an unaided egress, 12 male subjects completed a 6-min seated pre-breathe with 100% O2 followed by a 2-min stand and 5-min walking at 1.56 m x s(-1) (5.6 km x h(-1), 3.5 mph) with the helmet visor closed. During walks with four different G-suit pressures (0.0, 0.5, 1.0, 1.5 psi; 3.4, 6.9, 10.3 kPa), inspired CO2 and walking time were measured. After a 10-min seated recovery, subjects repeated the 5-min walk with the same G-suit pressure and the helmet visor open for the measurement of metabolic rate (VO2). RESULTS: When G-suit inflation levels were 1.0 or 1.5 psi, only one-third of our subjects were able to complete the 5-min visor-closed walk after a 6-min pre-breathe. Inspired CO2 levels measured at the mouth were routinely greater than 4% (30 mmHg) during walking. The metabolic cost at the 1.5 psi G-suit inflation was over 135% of the metabolic cost at 0.0 psi inflation. CONCLUSION: During unaided egress, G-suit inflation pressures of 1.0 and 1.5 psi resulted in elevated CO2 in the LES helmet and increased metabolic cost of walking, both of which may impact unaided egress performance. Neither the LES, the LES helmet, nor the G-suit were designed for ambulation. Data from this investigation suggests that adapting flight equipment for uses other than those for which it was originally designed can result in unforeseen problems.
Adult↗
[Blood plasma volume dynamics in monkeys during immersion].
Dynamics of blood plasma volume (PV) was studied with indirect methods (hematocrit count, hemoglobin, total protein and high-molecular protein) during 9-d immersion of monkeys Macaca mulatta. The animals were donned in waterproof suits, motor restrained in space seat liners and immersed down to the xiphisternum. Two monkeys were immersed in the bath at one time. The suits were changed every day under ketamine (10 mg/kg of body mass). There were two groups with 12 animals in each. The first group was kept in the bath 3 days and the second--9 days. Prior to the experiment, the animals had been trained to stay in the seat liner put down into the dry bath. It was shown that already two days of exposure to the hydrostatic forces (approximately 15 mm Hg) and absence of negative pressure breathing reduced PV by 18-20% on the average in all animals. Subsequent PV dynamics was individual by character; however, PV deficit persisted during 4 days of immersion in the whole group. In this period, albumin filtration was increased significantly, whereas high-molecular protein filtration was increased to a less degree. During the remaining days in immersion PV regained normal values. Ten days of readaptation (reclined positioning of monkeys brought back into cage) raised VP beyond baseline values. This phenomenon can be attributed to the necessity to provide appropriate venous return and sufficient blood supply of organs and tissues following extension of blood vessels capacity.
Albumins↗
Visual artifacts in chromatically subsampled images.
Colors sampled in an array of pixels were converted into various luminance-chrominance representations, and the chrominance values were spatially subsampled to achieve a compression of the data. For viewing, the chrominance values were reinterpolated and then transformed back to RGB. For each of a range of image types and color spaces, we varied the chromatic sample spacing to determine how much compression would be possible before perceptual artifacts appeared, as determined by a panel of individual viewers. The spacing at which an image was mistaken half the time for a remembered original depended on image content and also on the color representation. Some color spaces, such as hue-lightness-saturation, a polar-coordinate color space, are inherently ill suited for chrominance averaging and produce noticeable artifacts on almost any image. Likewise, some images cannot be subsampled satisfactorily, regardless of the color space used. In general, however, images with 16-fold reduction in the amount of chrominance information (that is, a factor of 4 in each spatial direction) are still satisfactory in appearance.
Color↗
Evaluation of a needle-free injection system for local anaesthesia prior to venous cannulation.
We evaluated a single-use, disposable, carbon-dioxide-powered, needleless injector (J-Tip, National Medical Products Inc., CA, USA), which is claimed to deliver a virtually painless, subcutaneous injection. Seventy-two patients undergoing various types of surgery had a large-bore intravenous cannula inserted prior to induction of general anaesthesia. Three minutes beforehand, a subcutaneous injection of 0.3 ml of 1% plain lidocaine was administered. Subjects were randomly allocated to receive the lidocaine either by the needleless injector or from a conventional syringe and a 25 G needle. Pain scores were recorded on injection of the lidocaine and on insertion of the cannula. There was significantly less pain on injection with the needleless injector than with the 25 G needle (p < 0.001) but, surprisingly, there was more pain on cannulation (p < 0. 001). We conclude that the device certainly delivers a less painful subcutaneous injection than a 25 G needle, but perhaps provides less effective skin anaesthesia for venous cannulation at sites where the subcutaneous space is small; its use might be better suited to areas where the subcutaneous space is deeper.
Anesthesia, Local↗