Emergency medicine (EM) training programs incorporate simulation for teaching as well as formative and summative assessment. The development of a simulation curriculum for Canadian postgraduate EM programs is underway and would be facilitated by a standardized, user-friendly, nationally endorsed simulation template. We convened a nationally representative group of simulation educators to participate in a three-phase process to develop and refine a simulation case template for Canadian EM educators. Participants provided feedback by means of free text comments and focus groups which were analyzed to inform modification of the template. We anticipate that this template will facilitate the sharing of cases across sites and the development of standardized cases for simulation-based assessment.

In decision-based design, the principal role of a designer is to make decisions. Decision support is crucial to augment this role. In this paper, we present an ontology that provides decision support from both the “construct” and the “information” perspectives that address the gap that existing research focus on these two perspectives separately and cannot provide effective decision support. The decision support construct in the ontology is the compromise decision support problem (cDSP) that is used to make multiobjective design decisions. The information for decision making is archived as cDSP templates and represented using frame-based ontology for facilitating reuse, consistency maintaining, and rapid execution. In order to facilitate designers’ effective reuse of the populated cDSP templates ontology instances, we identified three types of modification that can be made when design consideration evolves. In our earlier work, part of the utilization (consistency checking) of the ontology has been demonstrated through a thin-walled pressure vessel redesign example. In this paper, we comprehensively present the ontology utilization including consistency checking, trade-off analysis, and design space visualization based on the pressure vessel example.

Methods: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials selected 17 state and large local jurisdictions on the basis of their proximity to federal quarantine stations and collaborated with their state health department legal counsel to conduct formulaic self-assessments of social distancing legal authorities, create tables of authority, and test and report on the laws' sufficiency (ie, scope and breadth). Select jurisdictions also held tabletop exercises to test public health and law enforcement officials' understanding and implementation of pertinent laws. This report presents findings for Michigan, which completed the legal assessment and tabletop exercise and made several recommendations for change as a result.

Results: Officials in Michigan concluded that there are sufficient existing laws to support social distancing measures but that a spectrum of questions remained regarding implementation of these legal authorities. Based on the findings of this assessment, Michigan initiated actions to address areas for improvement.

Conclusions: The results of this project highlighted the value of integrally involving the state health department's legal counsel—those most familiar with and who advise on a given state's public health laws—in the periodic identification, assessment, and testing of the state's legal authorities for social distancing and other measures used in response to many public health emergencies.

(Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2010;4:74-80)

The template-based approach has been employed for the synthesis of nanomaterials with the potential application in the development of new material, energy and microelectronic devices. The templates are carbon nanotubes, to which the external contour is applied. Both plasmaenhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) and atomic layer deposition (ALD) processes have been studied for various materials, including SiO2 and Al2O3. It is found that PECVD processes can give conformal coating on the template of carbon nanotubes, and the plasmaenhanced ALD (PEALD) processes do not show obvious damage to the morphology of carbon nanotubes. Pretreatment is also not necessary for the formation of conformal coatings of SiO2 and Al2O3. Moreover, the carbon nanotubes can be treated as the sacrificial template and removed to prepare the nanostructures with original contour. As an example, the 3-dimensional structure of Al2O3 has been demonstrated. This can be explored to develop 2D and 3D nanostructures of the intended materials. The approach of using PECVD and ALD processes makes it possible to integrate in a continuous way such kind of synthesis process with production processes of current semiconductor and energy industries.

The effect of different combinations of a new tri-templating agent TEAOH/DEA/TEA, namely tetraethyl ammonium hydroxide (TEAOH)/diethylamine (DEA)/triethylamine (TEA), on the catalytic performance of SAPO-34 was investigated in MTO conversion. It was found that SAPO-34 and SAPO-5 are competing phases at TEA concentrations higher than 40 %. Pure SAPO-34 with high crystallinity, large BET surface area and small crystal size (0.8~1.4μm) was obtained at a low TEA concentrations. The combination of TEAOH/DEA/TEA strongly governed the acidity of crystals. TEAOH:DEA:TEA=0.67:0.67:0.67 gave an economical catalyst active in MTO reaction with 100 % methanol conversion, 89.39 % ethylene and propylene selectivity, a longest lifetime and a high coke capability of 24.2 wt %.

The fabrication and applications of porous anodic alumina (PAA) have been studied for decades. Recently, preparation of PAA template directly formed on Si has been developed to enhance the performance of the fabricated nanostructures. However, less attention is paid to the anodization mechanism of the Al film on the Si substrate. In the current study, the PAA template was fabricated on Si of which an interlayer was sandwiched between the Al film and the Si substrate. The anodization behavior of the Al film, especially at the alumina–substrate interface, was investigated through the observation of the variation of oxidation current and the structural change of alumina. Different degree of dissolution at the pore base of alumina was revealed when a different interlayer was introduced, leading to the formation of the arched pore bottom. At the same time, difference in the variation of current was also observed as the pore base reached the alumina–Si interface. These features were different from those observed in conventional anodization of Al foils. The findings in this study are of scientific and technological importance for the template-mediated growth of nanostructures, especially for those to be integrated into Si devices.

The document is published in collaboration with the following organisations: the European Society of Emergency Medicine (Leuven); the European Resuscitation Council (Antwerpen); the Air Medical Physician Association (Salt Lake City, US); the German Interdisciplinary Association of Critical Care Medicine; and the German Society of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care. The document is to be published jointly in the following journals: 1) Trauma Care (ITACCS); 2) Resuscitation; 3) Prehospital and Disaster Medicine; 4) European Journal of Emergency Medicine; 5) Trauma and Emergency Medicine Journal (SA); 6) Emergency Medicine(Norway); 7) JEUR; and 8) Notfall und Rettungsmedizin (Germany).

Disasters always have been a part of life, whether caused by unavoidable natural events or by avoidable, man-made events. Being rendered helpless by such events has caused fear and concern in all periods of history. To some extent, a disaster is expected, but there are varying degrees of uncertainty as to how and when it will occur. The occurrence of a disaster creates varying degrees of chaos combined with a mismatch between resources and needs. Therefore, in order to restore an affected society back to its pre-event status requires extraordinary efforts.