Antimicrobial and Aging Properties of Ag-, Ag/Cu-, and Ag Cluster-Doped Amorphous Carbon Coatings Produced by Magnetron Sputtering for Space Applications.

Inside a spacecraft, the temperature and humidity, suitable for the human crew onboard, also creates an ideal breeding environment for the proliferation of bacteria and fungi; this can present a hazard to human health and create issues for the safe running of equipment. To address this issue, wear-resistant antimicrobial thin films prepared by magnetron sputtering were developed, with the aim to coat key internal components within spacecrafts. Silver and copper are among the most studied active bactericidal materials, thus this work investigated the antibacterial properties of amorphous carbon coatings, doped with either silver, silver and copper, or with silver clusters. The longevity of these antimicrobial coatings, which is heavily influenced by metal diffusion within the coating, was also investigated. With a conventional approach, amorphous carbon coatings were prepared by cosputtering, to generate coatings that contained a range of silver and copper concentrations. In addition, coatings containing silver clusters were prepared using a separate cluster source to better control the metal particle size distribution in the amorphous carbon matrix. The particle size distributions were characterized by grazing-incidence small-angle X-ray scattering (GISAXS). Antibacterial tests were performed under both terrestrial gravity and microgravity conditions, to simulate the condition in space. Results show that although silver-doped coatings possess extremely high levels of antimicrobial activity, silver cluster-doped coatings are equally effective, while being more long-lived, despite containing a lower absolute silver concentration.

Statewide collaborative curriculum project: a shared vision.

In 2011, national accreditation was mandated for all nursing programs within the state of Minnesota. Only three of the 23 practical nursing (PN) programs were nationally accredited at the time. The majority of the PN programs needed major curricular revisions to meet national accreditation standards. Many of the PN programs were rural, with limited resources, faculty, or expertise. A collaborative process between industry and nursing programs was established to develop a curriculum framework that met national accreditation standards and could be used as a foundation by the PN programs for curriculum development and revision. The results of the collaborative process included a curriculum framework that was guided by eight student learning outcomes and included an online resource of course outlines, assignments, rubrics, and clinical evaluation tools. The process described in this article can be replicated to guide other programs in development of a curriculum framework to ease the burden of individual nursing programs.

Antenatal visits. A comparative study between integrated and shared antenatal care.

A comparison was made of the number of antenatal visits made by 96 women receiving integrated antenatal care in an experimental community clinic with 100 women receiving traditional shared care from two control practices. Most women from the experimental group were cared for within the traditional framework of visits whether or not they had experienced problems or complications in their pregnancies. Women from the control group made higher total numbers of visits per pregnancy and also more visits to the hospital source of care. Most women from both groups were satisfied with the number of visits they made although some women from the experimental group thought that they made too few visits in early pregnancy and some women from the control group thought that they made too many visits to the hospital source of care. A policy for keeping the number of hospital visits to three, where appropriate, should enable specialist obstetricians to spend more time with 'high risk' patients.