Background Gaming is a potentially dysfunctional consequence of performance measurement and management systems in the health sector and more generally. In 2009, the New Zealand government initiated a Shorter Stays in Emergency Department (SSED) target in which 95% of patients would be admitted, discharged or transferred from an emergency department (ED) within 6 hours. The implementation ...

•IN a previous article (Brown and Woods, Bnt. J. Anaesth., this issue, p. 333) we have referred to technical difficulties experienced with the machines we used in our closed circuit cases. As it seems possible that others working with similar apparatus may wish to employ halothane in this way, we thought that some account of the troubles encountered and the modifications required might be of in...

In a survey of health and environmental conditions in the Butterley Foundries (Keatinge and Potter, 1945) one of the principal health risks to which the workers were exposed was found to be pneumoconiosis, and it was estimated that the potential dust risk of fettlers was many times greater than that to which other workers in the foundries were exposed. Sixty foundry men, divided into broad occu...

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are ubiquitous environmental contaminants derived mainly from anthropogenic activities with minor contributions from natural sources (Law et al., 1997). Most PAHs enter the marine environment in urban runoff, municipal and industrial waste discharges, in bilge and fuel oil leaks associated with day-to-day shipping operations, and in oil spills from mariti...

Sugar Fermentation Tests The media are prepared from Coignet's gold medal gelatin in a manner similar to that described for the liquefaction test. Instead of sheet gelatin, Difco nutrient gelatin in about double strength poured out to form sheets can also be used with equally satisfactory results. After formolization the gelatin sheets are cut or punched into shapes, about 15 mm. diameter, conv...

For potential tissue engineered anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), ACL fibroblasts, medical collateral ligament (MCL) fibroblasts (Lin et al, 1999), mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) and embryonic stem cells all can serve as cell source theoretically. As ethical debate on embryonic stem cells continues (McLaren, 2001), mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are attracting more attention. Not only they have t...

Many studies on concentration of heavy metals in street dusts have been conducted. However, the distribution of metals in the different particle size fractions, which compose the dust, has been much less studied. Some authors have showed the effect of particle size in heavy metal distribution and have indicated that concentration of metals in soils increases with decreasing particle size. Fine ...

Although indispensable for the introduction of DNA fragments manipulated in vitro into bacteria, transformation using chemically prepared competent or electrocompetent cells is still a rather slow and labor-intensive technique, and apart from waiting for transformants to appear on selective plates, the preparation of competent cells is the slowest part of the whole process. Most published trans...

Acclimation of nitrifying bacteria using inorganic carbon source (bicarbonate) and organic carbon source (bicarbonate + glucose) was performed in this study. Sequential batch reactors were inoculated by activated sludge (mixed culture of heterotrophic and nitrifying bacteria), and fed by synthetic wastewater contain high concentration of ammonium (1000 mg·L). Adapted nitrifying bacteria, only u...

Results are reported of a collaborative study on the determination of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) including benz(a)anthracene, chrysene, benzofluoranthenes (b++k), benzo(a)pyrene, benzo(e)pyrene, and indeno(l,2,3-cd)pyrene in smoked meat. After calibration of the instrument with a standard solution, four samples of smoked meat (two of each were identical samples, respectively) were a...