The gastrointestinal microbiota plays a crucial role in host nutrition and health. While culture-independent techniques have advanced microbial research, they often overlook low-abundance bacteria in the microbial community. Furthermore, empirical studies and mechanistic research rely on bacterial isolates obtained through culturing. The introduction of culturomics in 2012 significantly advanced culture-dependent techniques, contributing to microbial research. However, these methods remain labor-intensive, time-consuming, and costly, similar to traditional culture methods. This review provides an overview of the contributions of culturomics, summarizes procedures for optimizing sample and culture processes, and offers guidance on utilizing metagenomic data to enhance culturomics workflows. By collating and synthesizing these developments, this review aims to provide valuable insights into improving the practicality and productivity of culturomics for capturing gastrointestinal bacterial communities.

In the summer of 2022, Tulane University, in collaboration with archaeologists from other institutions, began excavations at the site of Pompeii. The archaeological work was focused on Insula 14 of Region 1, located in the southeastern sector of the site. To overcome the challenges of recording a complex urban excavation, and of working with a collaborative team, we designed and implemented a unique workflow that combines paperless and 3D data-capture methods through the use of GIS technologies. The final product of our documentation workflow was a robust and easy-to-use online geodatabase where archaeologists can revisit, explore, visualize, and analyze each excavated context using virtual tools. We present our workflow for digitally documenting observational and spatial data in the field, and how we made these data available to project archaeologists during and after the field season. First, we describe the development of digital forms in ESRI's Survey123. Then, we explain our procedures for 3D documentation through SfM photogrammetric methods and discuss how we integrated the data and transformed it into an accessible format by using interactive dashboards and online 3D web scenes. Finally, we discuss the components of our workflow that are broadly applicable and that can easily be adapted to other projects.

Organisational priorities for health care focus on efficiency as the health and care needs of populations increase. But evidence suggests that excessive planning can be counterproductive, leading to resistance from staff and patients, particularly those living with cognitive impairment. The current paper adds to this debate reporting an Institutional Ethnography of staff delivering care for older patients with cognitive impairment on acute orthopaedic wards in three National Health Service hospitals in the United Kingdom. A key problematic identified in this study is the point of disjuncture seen between the actualities of staff experience and intentions of protocols and policies. We identified three forms of disjuncture typified as: ‘disruptions’, where sequenced care was interrupted by patient events; ‘discontinuities’, where divisions in professional culture, space or time interrupted sequenced tasks; and ‘dispersions’, where displaced objects or people interrupted sequenced care flow. Arguably disruption is an integral characteristic of care work; it follows that to enable staff to flourish, organisations need to confer staff the autonomy to address systemic disruptions rather than attempt to eradicate them. Ultimately, organisational representations of ‘good practice’ as readily joined up, impose a care standard ‘stereotype’ that obscures rather than clarifies the interactional problems encountered by staff.

Interdisciplinary engineering of cyber physical production systems (CPPS) are often subject to delay, cost overrun and quality problems or may even fail due to the lack of efficient information exchange between multiple interdisciplinary teams working in complex networks within and across companies. We propose a direct integration of multiteam and organisational aspects into the graphical notation of the systems engineering workflow. BPMN++, with eight new notational elements and two subdiagrams, enables the modelling of the required cooperation aspects. BPMN++ provides an improved overview, uniform notation, more compact presentation and easier modifiability from an engineering point of view. We also included a first set of empirical studies and historical qualitative and quantitative data in addition to subjective expert-based ratings to increase validity. The use case introduced to explain the procedure and the notation is derived from surveys in plant manufacturing focussing on the start-up phase and decision support at site. This, in particular, is one of the most complex and critical phases with potentially high economic impact. For evaluation purposes, we compare two alternative solutions for a short-term management decision in the start-up phase of CPPS using the BPMN++ approach.

Introduction: The growing scrutiny to improve Emergency Department (ED) wait times and patient flow have resulted in many efforts to increase efficiency and maximize patient throughput via systems improvements. This study investigates areas of efficiency improvement from the Emergency Physician (EP) perspective by examining EP workflow in a two phased observational time-motion study. In the initial phase, the distribution of time and activities of EPs were dissected to identify potential sources for streamlining to maximize physician productivity. The first phase was of the study was completed during the period immediately preceding the implementation of an Electronic Health Records (EHR). The second phase of the study will repeat the analysis one year post EHR implementation. This data will be dissected to again identify sources for streamlining in an EHR environment and to identify shifts in work flow from a paper-based system. Methods: An observational time motion study was conducted at St. Mary's Hospital ED, in Kitchener Ontario. An observer was paired with an EP for the duration of an 8 hour shift, to a total of 14 shifts in the first phase of the study. Nine task categories were measured concurrently with a stopwatch application on a tablet, along with the number of interruptions experienced by the EP. Means of each category were calculated and converted to percentages, representing the amount of time per 8 hour shift dedicated to each activity. The second phase will be repeated in Fall 2020, 1 year after EHR implementation. Results: A total of 14 shifts were observed, accounting for 112 hours of observation. EP's time was allocated amongst the following categories: direct patient interaction (40.8%), documentation (27.1%), reviewing patient results (18.4%), communicating with ED staff (7.63%), personal activities (5.7%), writing orders (5.1%), communicating with consultants (3.3%), teaching (1.7%) and medical information searches (1.3%). On average, EPs experienced 15.8 interruptions over the course of an 8 hour shift. Conclusion: In a paper charting system, the direct patient interaction accounts for the largest timeshare over the course of a given shift. However, the next two largest categories, documentation and reviewing patient data, both represent areas of potential streamlining via clerical improvements. Additionally, detailed measurements of EPs’ activities have proven feasible and provides the potential for future insight into the impact of EHR's on EP workflow.

Airborne electromagnetics (AEM) is an effective technique for geophysical investigations of the shallow subsurface and has successfully been applied in various geological settings to analyse the depositional architecture of sedimentary systems for groundwater and environmental purposes. However, interpretation of AEM data is often restricted to 1D inversion results imaged on resistivity maps and vertical resistivity sections. The integration of geophysical data based on AEM surveys with geological data is often missing and this deficiency can lead to uncertainties in the interpretation process. The aim of this study is to provide an improved methodology for the interpretation of AEM data and the construction of more realistic 3D geological subsurface models. This is achieved by the development of an integrated workflow and 3D modelling approaches based on combining different geophysical and geological data sets (frequency-domain helicopter-borne electromagnetic data (HFEM), time-domain helicopter-borne electromagnetic data (HTEM), three 2D reflection seismic sections and 488 borehole logs). We used 1D inversion results gained from both HFEM and HTEM surveys and applied a 3D resistivity gridding procedure based on geostatistical analyses and interpolation techniques to create continuous 3D resistivity grids. Subsequently, geological interpretations have been performed by combining with, and validation against, borehole and reflection seismic data. To verify the modelling results and to identify uncertainties of AEM inversions and interpretation, we compared the apparent resistivity values of the constructed 3D geological subsurface models with those of AEM field measurements. Our methodology is applied to a test site near Cuxhaven, northwest Germany, where Neogene sediments are incised by a Pleistocene tunnel valley. The Neogene succession is subdivided by four unconformities and consists of fine-grained shelf to marginal marine deposits. At the end of the Miocene an incised valley was formed and filled with Pliocene delta deposits, probably indicating a palaeo-course of the River Weser or Elbe. The Middle Pleistocene (Elsterian) tunnel valley is up to 350 m deep, 0.8–2 km wide, and incised into the Neogene succession. The unconsolidated fill of the Late Miocene to Pliocene incised valley probably formed a preferred pathway for the Pleistocene meltwater flows, favouring the incision. Based on the 3D AEM resistivity model the tunnel-valley fills could be imaged in high detail. They consist of a complex sedimentary succession with alternating fine- and coarse-grained Elsterian meltwater deposits, overlain by glaciolacustrine (Lauenburg Clay Complex) and marine Holsteinian interglacial deposits. The applied approaches and results show a reliable methodology, especially for future investigations of similar geological settings. The 3D resistivity models clearly allow a distinction to be made between different lithologies and enables the detection of major bounding surfaces and architectural elements.