scholarly journals A national retrospective study of the association between serious operational problems and COVID-19 specific intensive care mortality risk

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (7) ◽  
pp. e0255377
Author(s):  
Harrison Wilde ◽  
John M. Dennis ◽  
Andrew P. McGovern ◽  
Sebastian J. Vollmer ◽  
Bilal A. Mateen

Objectives To describe the relationship between reported serious operational problems (SOPs), and mortality for patients with COVID-19 admitted to intensive care units (ICUs). Design English national retrospective cohort study. Setting 89 English hospital trusts (i.e. small groups of hospitals functioning as single operational units). Patients All adults with COVID-19 admitted to ICU between 2nd April and 1st December, 2020 (n = 6,737). Interventions N/A Main outcomes and measures Hospital trusts routinely submit declarations of whether they have experienced ‘serious operational problems’ in the last 24 hours (e.g. due to staffing issues, adverse weather conditions, etc.). Bayesian hierarchical models were used to estimate the association between in-hospital mortality (binary outcome) and: 1) an indicator for whether a SOP occurred on the date of a patient’s admission, and; 2) the proportion of the days in a patient’s stay that had a SOP occur within their trust. These models were adjusted for individual demographic characteristics (age, sex, ethnicity), and recorded comorbidities. Results Serious operational problems (SOPs) were common; reported in 47 trusts (52.8%) and were present for 2,701 (of 21,716; 12.4%) trust days. Overall mortality was 37.7% (2,539 deaths). Admission during a period of SOPs was associated with a substantially increased mortality; adjusted odds ratio (OR) 1.34 (95% posterior credible interval (PCI): 1.07 to 1.68). Mortality was also associated with the proportion of a patient’s admission duration that had concurrent SOPs; OR 1.47 (95% PCI: 1.10 to 1.96) for mortality where SOPs were present for 100% compared to 0% of the stay. Conclusion and relevance Serious operational problems at the trust-level are associated with a significant increase in mortality in patients with COVID-19 admitted to critical care. The link isn’t necessarily causal, but this observation justifies further research to determine if a binary indicator might be a valid prognostic marker for deteriorating quality of care.

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 52
Author(s):  
Yazan Hamzeh ◽  
Samir A. Rawashdeh

Research on the effect of adverse weather conditions on the performance of vision-based algorithms for automotive tasks has had significant interest. It is generally accepted that adverse weather conditions reduce the quality of captured images and have a detrimental effect on the performance of algorithms that rely on these images. Rain is a common and significant source of image quality degradation. Adherent rain on a vehicle’s windshield in the camera’s field of view causes distortion that affects a wide range of essential automotive perception tasks, such as object recognition, traffic sign recognition, localization, mapping, and other advanced driver assist systems (ADAS) and self-driving features. As rain is a common occurrence and as these systems are safety-critical, algorithm reliability in the presence of rain and potential countermeasures must be well understood. This survey paper describes the main techniques for detecting and removing adherent raindrops from images that accumulate on the protective cover of cameras.


2021 ◽  
pp. 227-237
Author(s):  
Yu. Вerezovsky ◽  
T. Kuzmina ◽  
M. Yedynovych ◽  
G. Boyko ◽  
N. Lyalina ◽  
...  

The article contains theoretical and experimental researches in the field of the preservation of flax raw material of high moisture content. In the article, factors that are worsening the quality of flax raw material, resulting in non-observance of agrotechnical and technological requirements of preparing, collecting, harvesting the stem material, adverse weather conditions and other factors, are considered. The objective of this paper is to study the influence of preservation agents’ concentrations and of hollow structure device on the quality of flax raw material during long-time storage. In the article, the influence of aqueous preservatives’ concentration, humidity, storage length on the quality of fibrous products, obtained as a result of processing stem material, is analyzed. The influence of the device of hollow structures, as an alternative to preservatives, on the storage process of bast crops stem material was evaluated. The method of flax retted straw storage is described, actions of the main factors influence on the strength of fibers are analyzed. It is demonstrated, that prolongation of flax raw material preservation time can be made by using preservatives without considerable wastes of quality.


2018 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 296-302
Author(s):  
I. V. Vedmed ◽  
V. I. Sheremeta ◽  
V. G. Kaplunenko

An experiment was conducted in order to detect the influence of quality of queen bees of the Carpathian bee breed derived with using of biologically active substances on melliferous capacity of bee family, it was formed two experimental and control groups of twenty-five breed of bees. Bees breeds formed in June by the generally accepted rules were used. For the formation of group, analogical couples of bees breeds in strength, the number of sealed brood, honey and bee cerago were taken. The best queen bees’ sisters by development obtained from spring 2015 were sat to the experimental group. It means that they were genotype analogues and analogical couples by weight and body length. Queen bees derived from queen bees families which were fed with biologically active feeding Apistimulin BM and Nanostimulin were introduced to the first and second research groups. Queen bees derived from queen bees families which were fed only with sugar syrup were introduced into breeds of control group. Introducing queen bees in breeds was carried out by using conventional method of Titov’s cage. The experimental bee families were in the beehives of the similar construction in equal conditions of care and feeding. Bee families were taken to honey harvest of linden and sunflower during the season. After finishing of honey harvest from each plant, pumping honey was conducted. Determination of the amount received from each of honey bee families was performed by the method of conducting experiments in beekeeping. The influence of queen bees quality on melliferous capacity was judged by indicators of biometric processing of data from the output of trade honey during the season 2015, both separately for each breeds and overall. Honey harvest of linden from June 26 to July 5 was held under very unfavourable weather conditions for the allocation of nectar caused by high temperatures. Also unfavourable weather conditions for honey harvest were during sunflower blooming from July 19 to August 11. During flowering sunflowers, especially in the beginning, there were heavy rains, with the air temperature significantly reduced, and since the middle to the end of honey harvest it has become too high. All climatic factors influenced the quality and quantity of honey harvest. Analysis of the data showed that bees breeds formed on the basis of queen bees derived by using biologically active substances had more honey harvest than queen bees derived under usual conditions of feeding with sugar syrup. Thus, during honey harvest of linden, bees breeds of research groups have brought significantly more marketable honey by 16.4% and 51.5% than in the control. The best result was obtained in the first experimental group formed by the queen bees derived by using stimulating bioactive feeding Apistimulin BM. The results of this group were 51.5% and 23.2% higher than in the control group and second group and received an average 14.71 kg of honey of bee family. Bees breeds of the second experimental group increased honey harvest by 16.4% that is a good result for increasing the output of marketable honey in the apiary. The first experimental group had the lowest coefficient of variability, which indicates the similarity of queen bees and positive impact on their quality of honey harvest. The greatest individual features of queen bees were shown in families formed on the basis of queen bees derived by using stimulating bioactive feeding Nanostimulin. This group had the highest coefficient of variability. During honey harvest of sunflower, the number of honey exceeded the indicators of the control ones by 17.5% and 52.4%. The smallest effect was manifested in families of the second experimental group and was 17.5%. The largest melliferous capacity was showed by bee families of the first group and it was 52.4% higher, in average 16.78 kg of honey per each family. General results of marketable honey production by research bee families have confirmed significant influence of the quality of queen bees on the honey harvest. Thus, during the season 2015, the first and second research groups of bee families gathered 52% and 17% honey higher than the control ones. So, developed biotechnological method, the essence of which is feeding queen bees families with the bioactive feeding in the embryonic period, provided high-quality queen bees whose families under adverse weather conditions for honey harvest had the best melliferous capacity. It was established that bee families formed by using queen bees derived from queen bees families which were fed with bioactive feeding Nanostimulin and ApistimulinBM had 17% and 52% higher melliferous capacity under adverse weather conditions during honey harvest. Melliferous capacity of bee families depends upon the individual productive qualities of queen bees. At that, queen bees derived by using feeding ApistimulinBM are the most similar and their families have higher melliferous capacity than derived by using Nanostimulin and by generally accepted method.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-62
Author(s):  
Santiago Iglesias-Baniela ◽  
Juan Vinagre-Ríos ◽  
José M. Pérez-Canosa

It is a well-known fact that the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster caused the escort towing of laden tankers in many coastal areas of the world to become compulsory. In order to implement a new type of escort towing, specially designed to be employed in very adverse weather conditions, considerable changes in the hull form of escort tugs had to be made to improve their stability and performance. Since traditional winch and ropes technologies were only effective in calm waters, tugs had to be fitted with new devices. These improvements allowed the remodeled tugs to counterbalance the strong forces generated by the maneuvers in open waters. The aim of this paper is to perform a comprehensive literature review of the new high-performance automatic dynamic winches. Furthermore, a thorough analysis of the best available technologies regarding towline, essential to properly exploit the new winches, will be carried out. Through this review, the way in which the escort towing industry has faced this technological challenge is shown.


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