In developed countries, many hospitals have special facilities for prematurely born infants. This type of hospital unit is usually called a "neonatal intensive care unit" (NICU, pronounced "NICK-you"). In the NICU, premature babies are kept warm in incubators or other warming machines. They are enclosed in plastic with climate control equipment which keeps them warm and keeps germs away from them.
Modern neonatal intensive care involves sophisticated measurement of temperature, respiration, heart function, oxygen supply, and brain activity. Treatments may include fluids and nutrition given through intravenous catheters; oxygen, breathing support; and medications.
In developing countries, where advanced equipment may not be available or reliable, simple measures such as "kangaroo care" (skin-to-skin warming), encouraging breastfeeding, and basic infection control measures help reduce death rate and illness.
The earliest time in the pregnancy where the infant has at least a 50% chance of survival is called the "limit of viability". In countries with good health care, viability has been reduced to about 24 weeks. Rare survivors have been documented as early as 21 weeks, but this date is controversial because the pregnancy was measured from the date of conception rather than the date of her mother's last menstrual period. This makes gestation appear 2 weeks less than if calculated by the more common method. Risk of brain damage and developmental delay is significant at that early time. Even if the infant lives, there are ethical controversies over the care given to such infants. The limit of viability has also become a factor in the abortion debate.
Autoclave
An autoclave is a device that uses pressure to heat aqueous solutions above their boiling point. It is done to kill microbiological organisms, called sterilization. The autoclave was invented by Charles Chamberland in 1879.
Martin O'Neill
Martin Hugh Michael O'Neill, OBE (b. 1 March 1952) is an Irish football manager. He is currently the manager of Sunderland F.C., and has previously managed Celtic F.C.. and Aston Villa F.C. O'Neill was born in Kilrea, Northern Ireland.
Jim Duffy
James Duffy (born 27 April 1959) is a former Scottish football player and manager.
Nicotine replacement therapy
The nicotine in cigarettes and other tobacco products makes people dependent. When they quit, they will get withdrawal symptoms. Nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) is there to reduce the dependency symptoms. This is usually done by delivering nicotine (or a substance very similar to it) in other ways. Common methods include "nicotine patches" and chewing gums with nicotine in them.
Cigarettes are responsible for the deaths of about 5 million people each year. These people are not killed by the nicotine in the cigarette, but by other substances in tobacco smoke such as carbon monoxide and tars.
NRT delivers nicotine to the smoker's brain in a much slower way than cigarettes do. It helps to damp down the urges to smoke that most smokers have in the early days and weeks after quitting, rather than remove them totally. It gives the smoker the chance to break smoking cues in their daily lives, and might provide a more comfortable exit from the smoking habit. NRT however is best used with some form of support, ideally from someone who knows something about smoking cessation.
In 2005 the Committee on the Safety of Medicines recommended that NRT be given to pregnant smokers and also to adolescent smokers.
Findings from a recent Cochrane review of controlled trials testing NRT products (Stead et al. 2008) indicated that smokers using NRT were 1.5 to 2 times more likely to be abstinent from smoking at followup than those in the placebo or control treatment condition.
Nicotine is the addictive drug in tobacco products, so there is a chance when using NRT products, to become addicted to those products in place of the tobacco habit. Generally it is argued that NRT products are safer then smoking tobacco. NRT products are generally expensive, sometimes even more so then cigarettes, so a minority of people may become addicted to the NRT product and turn back to tobacco products to save money.
An electronic cigarette is an electronic item used instead of cigarettes. It gives a little nicotine, propylene glycol, and sometimes flavours, when you breathe through it. It was invented in China.
The electronic cigarette cannot be classed as an NRT as no recognized tests or studies have taken place. Furthermore WHO (World Health Organisation) has advised that any manufacturer or seller who is marketing the electronic cigarette as an NRT should halt unproven therapy claims. Currently most sellers who adhere to this guideline are marketing the device as a tobacco alternative.
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (also referred to as Cal, Berkeley and UC Berkeley) is a major university in Berkeley, California, United States. The oldest of the ten major campuses affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley offers some 300 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines. The university occupies 6651 acres with the central campus resting on approximately 200 acres.
The University was founded in 1868 when the private College of California and the public Agricultural, Mining, and Mechanical Arts College merged. Berkeley was a founding member of the Association of American Universities and 61 Nobel Laureates have been affiliated with the university as faculty, researchers and alumni. Berkeley physicists worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II and the university now manages the nation's two principal nuclear weapons laboratories: "Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory" and "Los Alamos National Laboratory".
Berkeley student-athletes compete intercollegiately as the "California Golden Bears". A member of both the Pacific-12 Conference and the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation in the NCAA, Cal students have won national titles in many sports, including football, men's basketball, baseball, softball, water polo, rugby and crew. In addition, they have won over 100 Olympic medals. The official colors of the university and its athletic teams are Berkeley blue and California gold.
Metadata
Metadata (also "Meta data") is data about data, that is information about other information. This is often useful. Libraries usually group books by subject and keep a catalog of the books. In that context the metadata in the catalog include various pieces of information including the author and the subject it is classified under. The index and table of contents of a book also present metadata.
Digital cameras allow people to take pictures. Here the data is the picture taken, and the metadata is information about the picture taken, like when (the date and time), photographic exposure, focal length and other technical details about how the camera made the picture. Some cameras, especially smartphones, have GPS and can include the location in metadata.
Failure rate
Failure rate is the frequency with which an engineered system or component fails. Usually it is expressed in a number of failures per time period, like failures per hour. It is often written as the Greek letter λ (lambda) and is important in reliability theory. In practice, the closely related Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) is more commonly expressed and used for high quality components or systems.
Failure rate is usually time dependent, and an intuitive corollary is that the rate changes over time versus the expected life cycle of a system. For example, as an automobile grows older, the failure rate in its fifth year of service may be many times greater than its failure rate during its first year of service–one simply does not expect to replace an exhaust pipe, overhaul the brakes, or have major transmission problems in a new vehicle.