1,721,039 research outputs found
La gestione delle infezioni in anestesia e terapia intensiva: procedure e ruolo degli operatori
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Comparison of novel ladle slag treatment and handling systems based on resource-efficiency metrics
No full textLadle slag is a by-product common to electric and basic oxygen steelmaking furnaces which is gaining increasing attention as a secondary material. Its main recycling path is internal to steelmaking process, since it can replace the lime used to remove impurities. However, storing and handling slag for internal recycling is problematic because cooled ladle slag soon becomes extremely dusty, determining harsh environmental conditions at the plant. Recently, a novel solution based on granulation of ladle slag was presented on the market, which could be integrated in the steelmaking process using diverse handling and storage systems. The implementation of such systems requires resources, specifically energy, but may produce benefits such as lower pollution from particulate emissions and easier storage, leading to lower material losses, reduced landfill disposal and savings of primary mineral resources. In this paper, three alternative treatment and handling systems are analyzed and ranked using ad hoc defined first level resource efficiency metrics. Results show that the best alternative in terms of carbon emission intensity is the more advanced configuration, which includes granulation within a casing and automatic transport with apron conveyors; however, open granulation with current handling systems apparently minimizes primary energy intensity. A possible cause for this discrepancy is that emission factors and primary energy consumption factors obtained from official sources refer to different years, and hence to a different electric energy generation mix. A clear ranking between the basic and the most advanced configuration cannot be obtained, but the resource efficiency evaluation leads to exclude the intermediate configuration (granulation within a casing and traditional materials handling) which is apparently dominated by the remaining alternatives
Renal function and icu
Full text linkIntroduction: The mortality of acute renal failure (ARF) is 50-80% in critically ill patients and has not fallen significantly despite numerous advances in critical care strategies and renal replacement technologies over several decades. (1) A major problem with conducting research into acute renal failure (ARF) is the lack of a consensus definition (2). More than 30 different definitions of ARF have been used in the literature. This lack of a common reference point created confusion and made comparisons difficult. The Acute Dialysis Initiative (ADQI) group of experts developed and published a consensus definition of ARF. This definition goes under the acronym of RIFLE. This definition classified the patients with renal dysfunction according to the degree of impairment into patient at risk (R), with injury (I), with failure (F), with sustained loss (L) and with end stage (E) status in relation to their renal function. (2) Rifle criteria were based on changes in the patients' glomerular filtration rate (GFR) and/or their urine output. (2)
Discussion: The prophylactic and therapeutic use of dopamine, the more studied vasoactive drug, actually has not been supported. For all other vasoactive drugs, at this moment, data available are contradictory and few conclusions can be made. To protect renal function, despite wide use of vasoactive drugs, only the maintenance of adequate volume replacement and perfusion pressure may be certainly recommended.
Conclusion: The use of vasoactive drugs is a pervasive practice in intensive care units, and hence, this area needs suitably powered, multi-center, randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind studies to provide more rational indications for clinical practice
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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