ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Intensive care unit (ICU) sleep disturbance is severe and potentially related to abnormal light and sound exposure. OBJECTIVES: To assess the prevalence of measures of light and sound disturbance in ICU patient rooms, and whether these could be modified by a sleep-promotion intervention. METHODS: This observational study with a before and after design for a quality improvement initiative surveyed environmental factors in ICU rooms at 01:00 08:00, and 12:00. Surveys assessed light usage, television usage, window shade position, and room door/curtain position. Factors were compared before and after an ICU sleep-promotion intervention. RESULTS: 990 (pre-intervention) and 819 (post-intervention) occupied rooms were surveyed. Pre-intervention, the prevalence of night-time factors included: bright lights on (21%), television on (46%), and room door open (94%). Post-intervention, more rooms had all lights off at night (41% v 50%, p = 0.04), and fewer rooms had open door curtains (57% v 42%, p = 0.001) and window shades (78% v 62%, p = 0.002). CONCLUSIONS: Disruptive environmental factors are common in the ICU. Some factors improve with sleep-promotion interventions.
Subject(s)
Intensive Care Units/statistics & numerical data , Light/adverse effects , Noise/adverse effects , Sleep Wake Disorders/etiology , Sleep , Circadian Rhythm , Critical Care , Humans , Respiration, Artificial , Surveys and Questionnaires , Time FactorsABSTRACT
Interest in single-cell whole-transcriptome analysis is growing rapidly, especially for profiling rare or heterogeneous populations of cells. We compared commercially available single-cell RNA amplification methods with both microliter and nanoliter volumes, using sequence from bulk total RNA and multiplexed quantitative PCR as benchmarks to systematically evaluate the sensitivity and accuracy of various single-cell RNA-seq approaches. We show that single-cell RNA-seq can be used to perform accurate quantitative transcriptome measurement in individual cells with a relatively small number of sequencing reads and that sequencing large numbers of single cells can recapitulate bulk transcriptome complexity.
Subject(s)
Sequence Analysis, RNA/methods , Single-Cell Analysis/methods , Data Interpretation, Statistical , Electronic Data Processing , Gene Expression Profiling , Gene Expression Regulation , HCT116 Cells , Humans , Microfluidics , Nucleic Acid Amplification Techniques , Polymerase Chain Reaction/methods , Reproducibility of Results , Sequence Analysis, DNA , TranscriptomeABSTRACT
Heat treatment of Grevillea robusta, a tropical wood species of low natural durability, was carried-out under inert conditions to improve its decay resistance. Resistance of heat treated samples was evaluated by malt agar block tests after three months of exposure to several wood rotting fungi. Also resistance of heat treated wood against termites was tested in the laboratory and in the field. Results showed that durability against fungi and termites was greatly improved after treatment. There was a good correlation between decay resistance and mass loss due to thermal treatment. Microscopic, FTIR and (13)C MAS NMR analysis were performed to characterize wood chemical and anatomical modifications that occur after treatment to understand the reasons of the durability improvement.
