Subglacial sediments have the potential to reveal information about the controls on glacier flow, changes in ice-sheet history and characterise life in those environments. Retrieving sediments from beneath the ice, through hot water drilled access holes at remote field locations, present many challenges. Motivated by the need to minimise weight, corer diameter and simplify assembly and operation, British Antarctic Survey, in collaboration with UWITEC, developed a simple mechanical percussion corer. At depths over 1000 m however, manual operation of the percussion hammer is compromised by the lack of clear operator feedback at the surface. To address this, we present a new auto-release-recovery percussion hammer mechanism that makes coring operations depth independent and improves hammer efficiency. Using a single rope tether for both the corer and hammer operation, this modified percussion corer is relatively simple to operate, easy to maintain, and has successfully operated at a depth of >2130 m.

Research shows that healthy ageing is defined differently by older adults and researchers, who may put more or less weight on the physiological, psychological, societal and personal aspects of ageing. Although there is growing interest in the research literature on lay models of healthy ageing in socio-cultural context, little work has been done to determine how important or feasible the various components of healthy ageing are viewed to be by older adults. This study asked a convenience sample of 54 older adults in the circumpolar North to rate the importance and feasibility of 36 previously identified components of healthy ageing in their community. Results indicate that seniors in the sample place the most importance on aspects of the social and physical environment, while least important concepts included psychological and individual behaviours. However, most feasible aspects were individual behaviours and least feasible were aspects of the social and physical environment. Although older adults are able to construct a model of what healthy ageing should look like in their community, they do not always view the most important aspects of healthy ageing to be the most feasible to achieve, providing ample opportunity for public and social policy change.

Background: Central-line–associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI) rates have steadily decreased as evidence-based prevention bundles were implemented. Bone marrow transplant (BMT) patients are at increased risk for CLABSI due to immunosuppression, prolonged central-line utilization, and frequent central-line accesses. We assessed the impact of an enhanced prevention bundle on BMT nonmucosal barrier injury CLABSI rates. Methods: The University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics is an 811-bed academic medical center that houses the only BMT program in Iowa. During October 2018, we added 3 interventions to the ongoing CLABSI prevention bundle in our BMT inpatient unit: (1) a standardized 2-person dressing change team, (2) enhanced quality daily chlorhexidine treatments, and (3) staff and patient line-care stewardship. The bundle included training of nurse champions to execute a team approach to changing central-line dressings. Standard process description and supplies are contained in a cart. In addition, 2 sets of sterile hands and a second person to monitor for breaches in sterile procedure are available. Site disinfection with chlorhexidine scrub and dry time are monitored. Training on quality chlorhexidine bathing includes evaluation of preferred product, application per product instructions for use and protection of the central-line site with a waterproof shoulder length glove. In addition to routine BMT education, staff and patients are instructed on device stewardship during dressing changes. CLABSIs are monitored using NHSN definitions. We performed an interrupted time-series analysis to determine the impact of our enhanced prevention bundle on CLABSI rates in the BMT unit. We used monthly CLABSI rates since January 2017 until the intervention (October 2018) as baseline. Because the BMT changed locations in December 2018, we included both time points in our analysis. For a sensitivity analysis, we assessed the impact of the enhanced prevention bundle in a hematology-oncology unit (March 2019) that did not change locations. Results: During the period preceding bundle implementation, the CLABSI rate was 2.2 per 1,000 central-line days. After the intervention, the rate decreased to 0.6 CLABSI per 1,000 central-line days (P = .03). The move in unit location did not have a significant impact on CLABSI rates (P = .85). CLABSI rates also decreased from 1.6 per 1,000 central-line days to 0 per 1,000 central-line days (P < .01) in the hematology-oncology unit. Conclusions: An enhanced CLABSI prevention bundle was associated with significant decreases in CLABSI rates in 2 high-risk units. Novel infection prevention bundle elements should be considered for special populations when all other evidence-based recommendations have been implemented.

Funding: None

Disclosures: None

Background: Antibiotic time outs (ABTOs), formal reassessments of all new antimicrobial regimens by the care team, can optimize antimicrobial regimens, reducing antimicrobial overuse and potentially improving outcomes. Implementation of ABTOs is a substantial challenge. We used quality improvement methods to implement robust, meaningful, team-driven ABTOs in general medicine ward services. Methods: We identified and engaged stakeholders to serve as champions for the quality improvement initiative. On October 1, 2018, 2 internal medicine teaching services (services A and B), began conducting ABTOs on all patients admitted to their services receiving systemic antimicrobials for at least 36 hours. Eligible patients were usually identified by the team pharmacist. ABTOs were completed within 72 hours of antibiotic initiation and were documented in the electronic medical record (EMR) by providers using a template. The process was modified as necessary in response to feedback from frontline clinicians using plan-do-study-act (PDSA) methods. We subsequently spread the project to 2 additional internal medicine services (services C and D); 2 family medicine teams (services E and F); and 1 general pediatric service (service G). The project is ongoing. We collected data for the following metrics: (1) proportion of ABTO-eligible patients with an ABTO; (2) proportion of ABTOs conducted within the recommended time frame; (3) documented plan changes as a result of ABTO (eg, change IV antibiotics to PO); (4) proportion of documented plan changes actually completed within 24 hours. Results: Within 12 weeks, services A and B were successfully completing time outs in >80% of their patients. This target was consistently reached by services C, D, E, F, and G almost immediately following launch on those services. As of June 29, 2019, >80% of eligible patients across all participating services have had a time out conducted for 16 consecutive weeks. ABTOs have resulted in a change in management in 35% of cases, including IV-to-PO change in 19% of cases and discontinuation in 5%. Overall, 77% of time outs occurred during the 36–72-hour window. Ultimately, 95% of documented plan changes were completed within 24 hours. Conclusions: ABTOs are effective but implementation is challenging. We achieved high compliance with ABTOs without using electronic reminders. Our results suggest that ABTOs were impactful in the non–critical-care general medicine setting. Next steps include (1) development of EMR-based tools to facilitate identifying eligible patients and ABTO documentation; (2) continued spread through our health care system; and (3) analysis of ABTO impact using ABTO-unexposed patients as a control group.

Funding: None

Disclosures: None

Life course research embraces the complexity of health and disease development, tackling the extensive interactions between genetics and environment. This interdisciplinary blueprint, or theoretical framework, offers a structure for research ideas and specifies relationships between related factors. Traditionally, methodological approaches attempt to reduce the complexity of these dynamic interactions and decompose health into component parts, ignoring the complex reciprocal interaction of factors that shape health over time. New methods that match the epistemological foundation of the life course framework are needed to fully explore adaptive, multilevel, and reciprocal interactions between individuals and their environment. The focus of this article is to (1) delineate the differences between lifespan and life course research, (2) articulate the importance of complex systems science as a methodological framework in the life course research toolbox to guide our research questions, (3) raise key questions that can be asked within the clinical and translational science domain utilizing this framework, and (4) provide recommendations for life course research implementation, charting the way forward. Recent advances in computational analytics, computer science, and data collection could be used to approximate, measure, and analyze the intertwining and dynamic nature of genetic and environmental factors involved in health development.

We present a detailed overview of the cosmological surveys that we aim to carry out with Phase 1 of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA1) and the science that they will enable. We highlight three main surveys: a medium-deep continuum weak lensing and low-redshift spectroscopic HI galaxy survey over 5 000 deg2; a wide and deep continuum galaxy and HI intensity mapping (IM) survey over 20 000 deg2 from $z = 0.35$ to 3; and a deep, high-redshift HI IM survey over 100 deg2 from $z = 3$ to 6. Taken together, these surveys will achieve an array of important scientific goals: measuring the equation of state of dark energy out to $z \sim 3$ with percent-level precision measurements of the cosmic expansion rate; constraining possible deviations from General Relativity on cosmological scales by measuring the growth rate of structure through multiple independent methods; mapping the structure of the Universe on the largest accessible scales, thus constraining fundamental properties such as isotropy, homogeneity, and non-Gaussianity; and measuring the HI density and bias out to $z = 6$ . These surveys will also provide highly complementary clustering and weak lensing measurements that have independent systematic uncertainties to those of optical and near-infrared (NIR) surveys like Euclid, LSST, and WFIRST leading to a multitude of synergies that can improve constraints significantly beyond what optical or radio surveys can achieve on their own. This document, the 2018 Red Book, provides reference technical specifications, cosmological parameter forecasts, and an overview of relevant systematic effects for the three key surveys and will be regularly updated by the Cosmology Science Working Group in the run up to start of operations and the Key Science Programme of SKA1.

Crack initiation in zirconium alloys is an important issue for the safety of water-cooled fission reactors. Zirconium hydrides that precipitate in service are potential crack nucleation sites. In this work, the deformation and cracking of zirconium hydrides was studied during room temperature deformation of a Zircaloy-4 tensile sample up to fracture. The sample contained a hydrogen concentration of 100 ± 20 ppm. The main aims of this study were to better understand the mechanisms behind the hydride fracture in a polycrystalline matrix, and to identify at which point in the deformation of the Zr matrix the first hydrides break. Cracks thus nucleated may coalesce and propagate through the hydrided Zr-alloy. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images of a number of hydrides, both intergranular and intragranular, were taken at discrete increments of deformation during an interrupted tensile test. The results show that cracks in hydrides tend to always occur normal to the applied load, signalling the importance of the external stress. However, evidence is also provided to support the hypothesis that internal stresses generated by microstructural constraints may lead to the fracture of some intergranular hydrides.

Ecosystems across the globe are vulnerable to the effects of climate change, as are the communities that depend on them. However, ecosystems can also protect people from climate change impacts. As the evidence base strengthens, nature-based solutions (NbS) are increasingly prominent in climate change policy, especially in developing nations. Yet intentions rarely translate into measurable, evidence-based targets. As Paris Agreement signatories revise their Nationally Determined Contributions, we argue that NbS are key to meeting global goals for climate and biodiversity, and we urge researchers to work more closely with policy-makers to identify targets that benefit both people and ecosystems.

The ability to make inferences is essential for effective language comprehension. While inferencing training benefits reading comprehension in school-aged children (see Elleman, 2017, for a review), we do not yet know whether it is beneficial to support the development of these skills prior to school entry. In a pre-registered randomised controlled trial, we evaluated the efficacy of a parent-delivered intervention intended to promote four-year-olds’ oral inferencing skills during shared book-reading. One hundred children from socioeconomically diverse backgrounds were randomly assigned to inferencing training or an active control condition of daily maths activities. The training was found to have no effect on inferencing. However, inferencing measures were highly correlated with children's baseline language ability. This suggests that a more effective approach to scaffolding inferencing in the preschool years might be to focus on promoting vocabulary to develop richer and stronger semantic networks.

Adolescent association with deviant and delinquent friends was examined for its roots in coercive parent–teen interactions and its links to functional difficulties extending beyond delinquent behavior and into adulthood. A community sample of 184 adolescents was followed from age 13 to age 27, with collateral data obtained from close friends, classmates, and parents. Even after accounting for adolescent levels of delinquent and deviant behavior, association with deviant friends was predicted by coercive parent–teen interactions and then linked to declining functioning with peers during adolescence and greater internalizing and externalizing symptoms and poorer overall adjustment in adulthood. Results are interpreted as suggesting that association with deviant friends may disrupt a core developmental task—establishing positive relationships with peers—with implications that extend well beyond deviancy-training effects.

We analyzed antibiotic use data from 29 southeastern US hospitals over a 5-year period to determine changes in antibiotic use after the fluoroquinolone US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory update in 2016. Fluoroquinolone use declined both before and after the FDA announcement, and the use of select, alternative antibiotics increased after the announcement.

Fluoroquinolones are among the 4 most commonly prescribed antibiotic classes.1,2 Postmarketing reports of serious adverse events linked to fluoroquinolones include tendonitis, neuropathy, hypoglycemia, psychiatric side effects, and possible aortic vessel rupture, leading to safety label changes in July 2008 and August 2013.3 In July 2016, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) strengthened the “black box” warning following an initial safety announcement in May 2016, recommending avoidance of fluoroquinolones for uncomplicated infections such as acute exacerbation of chronic bronchitis, uncomplicated urinary tract infections, and acute bacterial sinusitis.4 Concerns over safety and the association with Clostridiodes difficile infection have led inpatient antimicrobial stewardship programs (ASPs) to develop initiatives to promote avoidance of quinolones. The objective of this study was to quantify the effect of the 2016 FDA “black box” update on inpatient antibiotic use among a cohort of southeastern US hospitals.

Designing products with a focus on self-explanatory assembly can reduce the use of procedural instructions and the associated problems. This paper describes how different groups of students, in two different design-engineering courses designed or redesigned products in an attempt to make the assembly of the product self-explanatory. The design outcomes are discussed in relation to the design context and linked to existing theory on design for meaning.

Innovation and creativity are a mandatory for companies who wish to stay competitive. In order to promote an inventive dynamic, it implies to set up tools, habits, and an adapted environment to foster creativity. Creativity is the wealth of companies that should be valorized. To promote creativity, companies implement creativity workshops that gather people with various roles and expertise exchange and create knowledge to solve collectively open-ended engineering problems. However, group dynamics or facilitation can make the wrong decision and make the creative problem-solving unfruitful. The aim of our research project is to create a digital system to manage and valorize knowledge during creativity workshops. To design this system, we need to formalize the knowledge domain of creative workshops. The ontologies are used for decades to structure and manage information and knowledge in different domains. However, methodologies to design these ontologies are either hardly reproducible or not oriented to extract knowledge from organization. This article describes a methodology based on an organizational modeling to build ontologies. We will illustrate our approach by designing an ontology that models knowledge of creativity workshops.

Astrophysics Telescope for Large Area Spectroscopy Probe is a concept for a National Aeronautics and Space Administration probe-class space mission that will achieve ground-breaking science in the fields of galaxy evolution, cosmology, Milky Way, and the Solar System. It is the follow-up space mission to Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), boosting its scientific return by obtaining deep 1–4 μm slit spectroscopy for ∼70% of all galaxies imaged by the ∼2 000 deg2 WFIRST High Latitude Survey at z > 0.5. Astrophysics Telescope for Large Area Spectroscopy will measure accurate and precise redshifts for ∼200 M galaxies out to z < 7, and deliver spectra that enable a wide range of diagnostic studies of the physical properties of galaxies over most of cosmic history. Astrophysics Telescope for Large Area Spectroscopy Probe and WFIRST together will produce a 3D map of the Universe over 2 000 deg2, the definitive data sets for studying galaxy evolution, probing dark matter, dark energy and modifications of General Relativity, and quantifying the 3D structure and stellar content of the Milky Way. Astrophysics Telescope for Large Area Spectroscopy Probe science spans four broad categories: (1) Revolutionising galaxy evolution studies by tracing the relation between galaxies and dark matter from galaxy groups to cosmic voids and filaments, from the epoch of reionisation through the peak era of galaxy assembly; (2) Opening a new window into the dark Universe by weighing the dark matter filaments using 3D weak lensing with spectroscopic redshifts, and obtaining definitive measurements of dark energy and modification of General Relativity using galaxy clustering; (3) Probing the Milky Way’s dust-enshrouded regions, reaching the far side of our Galaxy; and (4) Exploring the formation history of the outer Solar System by characterising Kuiper Belt Objects. Astrophysics Telescope for Large Area Spectroscopy Probe is a 1.5 m telescope with a field of view of 0.4 deg2, and uses digital micro-mirror devices as slit selectors. It has a spectroscopic resolution of R = 1 000, and a wavelength range of 1–4 μm. The lack of slit spectroscopy from space over a wide field of view is the obvious gap in current and planned future space missions; Astrophysics Telescope for Large Area Spectroscopy fills this big gap with an unprecedented spectroscopic capability based on digital micro-mirror devices (with an estimated spectroscopic multiplex factor greater than 5 000). Astrophysics Telescope for Large Area Spectroscopy is designed to fit within the National Aeronautics and Space Administration probe-class space mission cost envelope; it has a single instrument, a telescope aperture that allows for a lighter launch vehicle, and mature technology (we have identified a path for digital micro-mirror devices to reach Technology Readiness Level 6 within 2 yr). Astrophysics Telescope for Large Area Spectroscopy Probe will lead to transformative science over the entire range of astrophysics: from galaxy evolution to the dark Universe, from Solar System objects to the dusty regions of the Milky Way.