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Developments in nitrous oxide capture technologies: bridging current research to clinical applications
Get PDFIntroduction
Many inhaled anaesthetic agents are greenhouse gases. Capture technologies have been developed to prevent environmental emissions of volatile agents, but no such devices exist for nitrous oxide. Further to this, the unique societal position of the use of nitrous oxide for patients in labour means it cannot readily be substituted for alternatives. Currently, there are no mandated scavenging systems for nitrous oxide in maternity wards, resulting in not only loss to the environment, but also occupational exposure among labour ward staff, often at levels well above regulatory limits. Without a suitable analgesic alternative, and with contemporary catalytic destruction (cracking) devices for nitrous oxide relatively underutilised, more work must be done to develop capture technologies. While nitrous oxide capture for anaesthetic purposes is severely under-researched, a wide range of literature exists for other applications, including directly from the atmosphere and from waste effluent during chemical processing.
Methods
A literature search was used to identify original research articles describing adsorbents for nitrous oxide uptake. The search was limited to published articles over the last 5 years and relevance was screened by abstract review.
Results
Different classes of adsorbents that could be used for nitrous oxide capture include activated charcoals, zeolites and metal–organic frameworks. We highlight their important properties and describe their key drawbacks. Recent literature was also examined and strategies in nitrous oxide capture across different industries drawn together to address the unique scenario of maternity analgesia.
Discussion
Metal–organic frameworks are identified as a promising class of porous adsorbents that could be applied to a wide range of anaesthetic settings. With over 100,000 structures identified, they have a remarkable tuneability which should be further exploited in clinical settings to not only further progress towards ‘net zero’ targets but also to improve safety outcomes
A sustainable route to manufacture refractory high entropy alloy of AlMoNbTaTiZr from metal powder produced in solid state
Get PDFTo enhance efficiency and reduce CO2 emissions in applications such as jet-engines, gas turbines, and nuclear powerplants, alloys that withstand high temperatures are essential. High entropy alloys (HEA) containing refractory elements offer superior high-temperature properties. One of these refractory high entropy alloys (RHEAs) is AlMo0.5NbTa0.5TiZr. There are challenges when manufacturing these compositionally complex alloys using conventional techniques since they have elements with very high (Nb, Ta, Mo), high (Zr, Ti) and lower (Al) melting temperatures, creating mixing and homogeneity issues in alloy preparation. The Fray-Farthing-Chen (FFC) Cambridge process directly creates RHEA’s powders without melting, but these feedstocks require a suitable consolidation technique. In this work field-assisted sintering technique (FAST), a novel rapid sintering technique, was used to make parts from powder of this alloy produced in solid-state. Among the process parameters the consolidation temperature had a more profound effect on density. From studied temperatures 1400 °C with a dwell time of 15 minutes produced the highest density level. Such a manufacturing route, occurring at temperatures lower than traditional casting, increases sustainability, and produces a homogeneous microstructure leading to parts with uniform properties and enhanced in-service performance
Effects of rock amendment on soil physicochemical properties and organic carbon stabilization
No full textEnhanced mineral weathering in agricultural settings is an approach for carbon dioxide removal in which crushed silicate rocks are added to soils. However, the effects of long-term application of crushed basalt on soil structure and organic carbon stabilization are still poorly constrained. We investigated a wide range of soil chemical and physical indicators in control, basalt and lime treatment sites to provide a comprehensive evaluation of soil response to enhanced mineral weathering. The field study showed that soil organic carbon preservation was influenced by soil structure rather than rock additions. Basalt amendment improved overall soil chemical quality, and accumulating basalt from high application rates did not have any negative impact on soil physical characteristics even after 6 years
Community engagement in health guidelines and other normative products: a methodological review
Get PDFOBJECTIVE: To explore and map how community engagement is conducted in the development or adaptation of health guidelines, norms and standards.
METHODS: We conducted a methodological review by searching MEDLINE, Scopus and CINAHL databases for articles published from January 2007 to May 2025, excluding publications reporting the engagement of only one or two community members on the guideline development panel. We extracted and categorized data on guideline characteristics (type of guideline, issuing entity, health-care topic), community engagement methods, the stages of guideline development for which community members were engaged and any evidence of evaluation. We compared the study characteristics using descriptive statistics.
FINDINGS: We reviewed 267 publications representing 258 unique studies, predominantly based in high-income countries. We observed that people affected by the health condition were most commonly engaged, and typically through surveys, workshops or as panel members. We noted that community engagement was most commonly used to identify community priorities and values, but less frequently for defining guideline scope or implementation. Although some studies described innovative approaches (for example, including lived-experience panels), these are rarely implemented globally. Only a small proportion of our reviewed studies included any evaluation of guideline development practices.
CONCLUSION: Our review highlights the importance and challenges of implementing community engagement in global health guideline development, which may involve adapting existing engagement methods to a global context, leveraging technology while encouraging diversity, and carefully balancing the costs and benefits of extensive engagement. Striving for inclusive guideline development processes can lead to effective and equitable health recommendations worldwide
Religious and cultural influences on domestic violence attitudes and responses in UK ethnic minority and migrant communities: a qualitative inquiry
Get PDFThe current paper presents findings from qualitative research on domestic violence and abuse (DVA) with Christians and Muslims from Ethiopian, Eritrean, and Bangladeshi communities in the United Kingdom (UK). The study explored understandings of and attitudes toward DVA and responses that integrated cultural and religious institutions and resources. Qualitative research was conducted with the help of community-based researchers with existing links and relationships of trust in the respective communities. Three researchers conducted 16 interviews and one focus group discussion with eight participants (total
n
= 24). The study added to the existing evidence on barriers that DVA victims from ethnic minority faith communities face in migration contexts, adding insight into the complex interactions between norms and pressures at country of origin and conditions in the host society, and the role of religious beliefs as culturally contextualized in this relationship. The study also reinforced the significant role that religious establishments and mediators can play in domestic violence responses, but also their general unpreparedness to do so. Participants proposed that integrating religious institutions and resources in DVA responses would be an effective way forward
The global importance of gas-phase peroxy radical accretion reactions for secondary organic aerosol loading
Get PDFSecondary organic aerosol (SOA) is an important class of atmospheric species with influences on air quality and climate. One understudied SOA formation pathway is gas-phase peroxy radical (RO2) accretion reactions, where two peroxy radicals combine to form a dimer species. This work makes use of recent advances in the theoretical understanding of RO2 accretion reactions to assess their contribution to SOA. After evaluation in a chemical box model, a reduced representation of RO2 accretion reactions was added to a global chemical transport model (GEOS -Chem) to assess the contribution to global SOA and the associated radiative impact. The results of this work suggest that RO2 accretion products may comprise 30 %-50 % of particulate matter (PM2.5) in tropical forested environments, and a smaller proportion in more temperate regions like the south-eastern USA (≈5 %). This work suggests that biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) are the main precursors to accretion products globally, but that a notable fraction of aerosol-phase accretion products come from aromatic-derived RO2 and small acyl-peroxy radicals. Contrary to previous assumptions that accretion products are organic peroxides, the box modelling investigations suggest that non-peroxide accretion products (ethers and esters) could comprise the majority of accretion products in both the gas and aerosol phase. This work provides justification for more extensive measurements of RO2 accretion reactions in laboratory experiments and RO2 accretion products in the ambient atmosphere in order to better constrain the representation of this chemistry in atmospheric models, including a greater level of mechanistic chemical representation of SOA formation processes
Online Continual Learning via Dynamic Expandable Recursive Model
Get PDFThe continual learning (CL) of novel concepts from new environ-ments represents a popular and important topic aiming to manage catastrophic forgetting. Research studies have developed dynamic expansion models to deal with network forgetting in CL. ExistingCL models usually explore the full capacity of activating parameters and representations while ignoring the previously learned representations when learning new tasks. In this paper, we propose a novel dynamic expansion model that incrementally accumulates and incorporates all previously learned representations into defining new experts to add to a mixture of experts in a recursive manner, aiming to reuse previously learned parameters and features to promote future task learning. We define a graph structure having each expert as a component node. We then propose a novel expandable expert graph attention mechanism that dynamically optimizes the graph when learning new tasks, maximizing the positive knowledge transfer. In addition, we propose a novel expert cooperation mechanism to promote the cooperation between all previous experts and with the currently updated expert. Furthermore, we propose a novel memory optimization approach, which encourages each expert to capture and learn completely different information, further improving performance. We provide the results of a series of experiments demonstrating that the proposed approach outperforms the state-of-the-art performance in CL
Estimating Discrimination in Sentencing: Distinguishing between Good and Bad Controls
Get PDFTo minimise confounding bias and disentangle warranted from unwarranted disparities, researchers examining sentencing discrimination have traditionally sought to control for as many legal factors as possible. However, over the past decade, a growing number of scholars have questioned this strategy, noting that many legal factors are themselves subject to judicial discretion and that controlling for them can introduce post-treatment bias. Here, we use directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) to provide a formal and comprehensive assessment of the different types of bias that may arise from different choices of controls. In addition, we propose a new modelling framework to facilitate the selection of controls and reflect the model uncertainty created by the trade-off inherent in judicially-defined legal factors and other factors with a similar dual causal role. We apply this framework to examine race disparities in US federal courts and gender disparities in the England and Wales magistrates’ court. We find substantial model uncertainty for gender disparities and for race disparities affecting Hispanic offenders, rendering estimates of the latter inconclusive. Disparities against black offenders are more consistent and — under specific conditions — could be interpreted as evidence of direct discrimination
Adhirons are efficient tools to guide antiviral ligand discovery
No full textAdhirons are small, antibody-like proteins expressed in bacteria that bind to biological targets with high affinity. Since their discovery, Adhirons have been isolated against over 350 targets, and they can be used for many research applications. However, their therapeutic application is at present in its early stages, hence the interest in developing novel small molecules to mimic their effect. We develop a pipeline for small molecule discovery where Adhirons act as starting templates in a ligand-based virtual screening workflow. For proof of concept, we use Adhirons against two viral systems: Crimean-Congo Haemorrhagic Fever Virus and Influenza A Virus. In both cases, a hit was identified from the mimics using biophysical and cell-based assays, highlighting how Adhirons, commercial libraries and structural approaches can be combined to accelerate small molecule inhibitor discovery of viruses
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