This study delves into Industry 5.0's Human Centric Manufacturing and Systems (HCM and HCS), emphasizing worker welfare and sustainability. Industry 5.0 advocates a human-centric approach, built upon three foundational pillars safety, inclusivity, and empowerment. The paper highlights the successful integration of Design and Systems Thinking in HCM and proposes a workshop at MADE COMPETENCE CENTRE proving the effectiveness in raising awareness and promoting Human-Centric principles throughout the system life cycle and in achieving Human-Centric Systems (HCS).

Following the end of universal testing in the UK, hospital admissions are a key measure of COVID-19 pandemic pressure. Understanding leading indicators of admissions at the National Health Service (NHS) Trust, regional and national geographies help health services plan for ongoing pressures. We explored the spatio-temporal relationships of leading indicators of hospitalisations across SARS-CoV-2 waves in England. This analysis includes an evaluation of internet search volumes from Google Trends, NHS triage calls and online queries, the NHS COVID-19 app, lateral flow devices (LFDs), and the ZOE app. Data sources were analysed for their feasibility as leading indicators using Granger causality, cross-correlation, and dynamic time warping at fine spatial scales. Google Trends and NHS triages consistently temporally led admissions in most locations, with lead times ranging from 5 to 20 days, whereas an inconsistent relationship was found for the ZOE app, NHS COVID-19 app, and LFD testing, which diminished with spatial resolution, showing cross-correlation of leads between –7 and 7 days. The results indicate that novel surveillance sources can be used effectively to understand the expected healthcare burden within hospital administrative areas though the temporal and spatial heterogeneity of these relationships is a key determinant of their operational public health utility.

Design, delivery and improvement processes in healthcare is of great challenge due to increasing pressures on healthcare systems alongside inherent complexities, resulting in limited benefits or unforeseen consequences. A recent Systems Approach framework has aimed at responding to the calls about implementing a more holistic approach. Though being an approach in its own right that can iteratively and systematically structure, guide, and/or facilitate design and improvement projects in healthcare, it can also augment existing approaches that have already place in healthcare designers' and improvement practitioners' agendas. Thus, the objective of this paper is to compare and contrast the questions, activities, and tools of the Systems Approach with processes of other major improvement approaches in healthcare to demonstrate their coverages, overlaps, and extended and new opportunities to pursue in the light of the Systems Approach.

Hydrogen lithography has been used to template phosphine-based surface chemistry to fabricate atomic-scale devices, a process we abbreviate as atomic precision advanced manufacturing (APAM). Here, we use mid-infrared variable angle spectroscopic ellipsometry (IR-VASE) to characterize single-nanometer thickness phosphorus dopant layers (δ-layers) in silicon made using APAM compatible processes. A large Drude response is directly attributable to the δ-layer and can be used for nondestructive monitoring of the condition of the APAM layer when integrating additional processing steps. The carrier density and mobility extracted from our room temperature IR-VASE measurements are consistent with cryogenic magneto-transport measurements, showing that APAM δ-layers function at room temperature. Finally, the permittivity extracted from these measurements shows that the doping in the APAM δ-layers is so large that their low-frequency in-plane response is reminiscent of a silicide. However, there is no indication of a plasma resonance, likely due to reduced dimensionality and/or low scattering lifetime.

Ongoing, rapid innovations in fields ranging from microelectronics, aerospace, and automotive to defense, energy, and health demand new advanced materials at even greater rates and lower costs. Traditional materials R&D methods offer few paths to achieve both outcomes simultaneously. Materials informatics, while a nascent field, offers such a promise through screening, growing databases of materials for new applications, learning new relationships from existing data resources, and building fast predictive models. We highlight key materials informatics successes from the atomic-scale modeling community, and discuss the ecosystem of open data, software, services, and infrastructure that have led to broad adoption of materials informatics approaches. We then examine emerging opportunities for informatics in materials science and describe an ideal data ecosystem capable of supporting similar widespread adoption of materials informatics, which we believe will enable the faster design of materials.

Maastrichtian sediments exposed in the Bay of Biscay region at coastal sections at Zumaya and Sopelana, northern Spain, and Hendaye and Bidart, France, yield the most diverse Upper Maastrichtian ammonite faunas yet recovered. Thirty-two species/subspecies referred to 21 genera are described, one of which, Anapachydiscus terminus, is new. The ranges of all taxa are fully documented and provide the basis for a four-fold division of the uppermost Campanian and Maastrichtian, with zones of Pseudokossmaticeras tercense (oldest), Pachydiscus (P.) epiplectus, Anapachydiscus fresvillensis, and A. terminus (youngest). This represents the most refined, and first properly documented, ammonite zonation for the Maastrichtian of western Europe, and can be directly correlated with the belemnite zonation developed for the white chalks of northern Europe. The extinction of the last ammonites, documented here, occurred at relatively high standing diversity and appears to have been sudden and catastrophic.

Objectives: Despite recent development of health technology assessment (HTA) methods, there are still methodological gaps for the assessment of complex health technologies. The INTEGRATE-HTA guidance for effectiveness, economic, ethical, socio-cultural, and legal aspects, deals with challenges when assessing complex technologies, such as heterogeneous study designs, multiple stakeholder perspectives, and unpredictable outcomes. The objective of this article is to outline this guidance and describe the added value of integrating these assessment aspects.

Methods: Different methods were used to develop the various parts of the guidance, but all draw on existing, published knowledge and were supported by stakeholder involvement. The guidance was modified after application in a case study and in response to feedback from internal and external reviewers.

Results: The guidance consists of five parts, addressing five core aspects of HTA, all presenting stepwise approaches based on the assessment of complexity, context, and stakeholder involvement. The guidance on effectiveness, health economics and ethics aspects focus on helping users choose appropriate, or further develop, existing methods. The recommendations are based on existing methods’ applicability for dealing with problems arising with complex interventions. The guidance offers new frameworks to identify socio-cultural and legal issues, along with overviews of relevant methods and sources.

Conclusions: The INTEGRATE-HTA guidance outlines a wide range of methods and facilitates appropriate choices among them. The guidance enables understanding of how complexity matters for HTA and brings together assessments from disciplines, such as epidemiology, economics, ethics, law, and social theory. This indicates relevance for a broad range of technologies.

Arterial wall thickening, stimulated by low-grade systemic inflammation, underlies many cardiovascular events. As diet is a significant moderator of systemic inflammation, the dietary inflammatory index (DIITM) has recently been devised to assess the overall inflammatory potential of an individual’s diet. The primary objective of this study was to assess the association of the DII with common carotid artery–intima-media thickness (CCA–IMT) and carotid plaques. To substantiate the clinical importance of these findings we assessed the relationship of DII score with atherosclerotic vascular disease (ASVD)-related mortality, ischaemic cerebrovascular disease (CVA)-related mortality and ischaemic heart disease (IHD)-related mortality more. The study was conducted in Western Australian women aged over 70 years (n 1304). Dietary data derived from a validated FFQ (completed at baseline) were used to calculate a DII score for each individual. In multivariable-adjusted models, DII scores were associated with sub-clinical atherosclerosis: a 1 sd (2·13 units) higher DII score was associated with a 0·013-mm higher mean CCA–IMT (P=0·016) and a 0·016-mm higher maximum CCA–IMT (P=0·008), measured at 36 months. No relationship was seen between DII score and carotid plaque severity. There were 269 deaths during follow-up. High DII scores were positively associated with ASVD-related death (per sd, hazard ratio (HR): 1·36; 95 % CI 1·15, 1·60), CVA-related death (per sd, HR: 1·30; 95 % CI 1·00, 1·69) and IHD-related death (per sd, HR: 1·40; 95 % CI 1·13, 1·75). These results support the hypothesis that a pro-inflammatory diet increases systemic inflammation leading to development and progression of atherosclerosis and eventual ASVD-related death.

Dicamba is a herbicide used for the control of broadleaf weeds in wheat. Dicamba, applied within the recommended growth stage interval, reduced the grain yield of Wakefield winter wheat by 95% in a herbicide sensitivity study at Michigan State University. Growers have also reported yield loss when using dicamba on Wakefield. Field and greenhouse experiments were conducted to characterize the response of Wakefield winter wheat to dicamba and to compare this response to that of ‘Harus’ winter wheat, a cultivar that is not considered sensitive to dicamba. This research was conducted to characterize the sensitivity of Wakefield to dicamba and to develop visual methods for detecting sensitivity of wheat cultivars to dicamba. Field experiments confirmed that dicamba affects the number of spikelets and the seed weight of Harus and Wakefield similarly. However, dicamba, applied within the recommended application interval, caused small, shriveled (underdeveloped) seeds to occur in Wakefield in the field and greenhouse. These seeds weighed very little, did not contribute to grain yield, and could not be harvested mechanically. Dicamba reduced the number of fully developed seeds of Wakefield by as much as 62% in the field and 92% in the greenhouse when applied within the recommended application interval. The number of fully developed seeds of Harus was reduced in the field only when dicamba was applied later than the recommended application interval. Decreases in grain yield due to dicamba were caused primarily by decreases in the number of fully developed seeds. Greenhouse experiments indicated that pollen abnormalities were only a minor cause of the development of underdeveloped seeds.