Safety management of nasopharyngeal specimen collection from suspected cases of coronavirus disease 2019

This article introduces safety management strategies of nasopharyngeal specimen collection from suspected cases of coronavirus disease 2019 in a tertiary designated hospital.The key points include establishing a special sampling room,strict sterilization of the entire environment,training of professional nurses,enhancement of personal protection,standardization of methods and processes for swab collection,and a timely and safety sample submission.More than 11,000 nasopharyngeal specimens were collected by eight nurses,with an average of 1,375 specimen swab collections each nurse,and no one was infected.

The Role of Blood Station Quality Management System in the Quality Control of Blood Collection

With the continuous development of China’s medical industry in recent years,relevant staff has also paid more attention to the quality management of blood stations,and China has gradually improved during the setting of laws and regulations for blood station quality management.The policies set by the Chinese government have been fully implemented through the reasonable implementation of relevant staff.With the continuous development of China’s medical industry in recent years,relevant staff have also paid more attention to the quality management of blood stations,and China has gradually improved during the setting of laws and regulations for blood station quality management.The policies set by the Chinese government have been fully implemented through the reasonable implementation of relevant staff.On this basis,the management model of the Chinese blood station has been continuously innovated in the application process,and the blood collection work of the Chinese blood station has been greatly developed.However,when the blood station in China is conducting blood collection,its quality control program is still not fully mature.Therefore,in this context,it is necessary to do a good job in the construction of the corresponding blood station quality management system and make effective adjustments,which will give full play to the role of the management system in the quality control process of blood collection.In this paper,the construction plan of the blood station quality management system is analyzed to explore the role of the blood station quality management system in the process of blood collection quality control,aiming to provide assistance for the quality management of blood collection in China.

Recent advances in water collection based on solar evaporation

Solar evaporation attracted lots of attention due to its environment-friendly and high efficiency,which is a potential approach to collecting fresh water.Many efforts have been made to improve the evaporation rate in the open space.While the actual water collection rate is far less than the evaporation rate,especially in passive water collection,limiting its practical and scalable applications.In this review,we focus on freshwater collection based on solar evaporation.Firstly,heat and mass transfer behaviors on the evaporation side were summarized to improve evaporation performance,including heat transfer processes in thermal radiation,convection,and conduction;mass transfer processes in water supply,evaporation enthalpy,and salt rejection.Sequentially,subcooling,wettability,and geometry of the condensation side were discussed to improve water collection performance,which should be designed collaboratively with the evaporation side in a confined space.Finally,thermal recovery and electricity generation beyond water collection were also introduced,and some challenges still need to improve in the further for scalable and practical applications,including passive water collection rate,integrated system,and long-term issues.

Collective Action in Common Pool Resource Management, Including Heterogeneity of Opportunities and Exit Options

The mechanism through which exit options and outside opportunities affect cooperation outcomes has not been well studied in the resource management literature, since a deep analysis of the concepts of “exit options” and “outside opportunities” is missing. This article analyzes these concepts across the common pool resource management literature, investigates the factors that underlie “opting out” decisions, and reviews potential ways to operationalize these concepts for empirical analysis. It also explores how the relationship of cooperation and exit options may be influenced by broad economic processes, such as economic integration.

Urban garbage disposal and management in China

This paper, probing into the present situation of urban domestic garbage by analyzing its growing trend, compositional change and regional difference, reveals the problems existing in its disposal and management in China. Meanwhile, a questionnaire was conducted in five big cities around China for surveying urban residents' attitudes towards garbage disposal and management policies and measures. Results showed the output of urban domestic garbage in Chinese cities is ever increasing, and the recoverable materials and energy in garbage composition are also increasing. The population growth, economic development, and increase of residents' expenditure level are the main factors influencing the growing output and changing composition of the garbage. Information acquired from the questionnaire showed that majority of the urban residents are in favor of the garbage reduction policies and managerial measures and are willing to collaborate with municipal government in battling against garbage. Based on the analysis and questionnaire, some policymaking oriented suggestions such as operating the garbage disposal from a social welfare service to a sector of profit gaining enterprises, transferring the garbage management from passive end control to active source control, promoting the classified garbage collection in cities around China, and charging garbage fees for its cleanup and disposal, have also been put forward in the paper.

Study on the Technology of Supplying Water Safely by Long-Distance Pipeline

The extensively built long-distance water transmission pipelines have become the main water sources for urban areas. To ensure the reliability and safety of the water supply, from the viewpoint of overall management, it would be necessary to establish a system of information management for the pipeline. The monitoring, calculating and analyzing functions of the system serve to give controlling instructions and safe operating rules to the automatic equipment and technician, making sure the resistance coefficient distribution along the pipeline is reasonable; the hydraulic state transition is smooth when operating conditions change or water supply accidents occur, avoiding the damage of water hammer. This paper covered the composition structures of the information management system of long-distance water transmission pipelines and the functions of the subsystems, and finally elaborated on the approaches and steps of building a mathematics model for the analysis of dynamic hydraulic status.

Global Memory Net and the development of digital image information management system: Experience and practice

Global Memory Net (GMNet) is intended to be an effective gateway to the world cultural, historical, and heritage image collections from selected academic educational and research partners in the world. Much of these unique collections of great value to education and research are not currently accessible due to distance, form, and technical barriers. This project is to find new ways to enable users to access and exploit these significant research collections via global network. As GMNet is ending its first 5-year phase in October 2005, it has contributed substantially to the community building in digital library development by ac- commodating numerous collaborators and technical staff from various parts of the world to spend 3 to 5 months as a full-member of the GMNet team in Boston. They have come from different parts of China—such as Sichuan, Hainan, Shanghai and Xi’an; Croatia; and Hanoi, Vietnam. In addition to contribute to the overall system development and enhancement of system function- alities, they have brought valuable sample image collections of their own institutions/countries, and actually developed prototype collections as a part of GMNet. This paper describes the exciting and productive experience of the first of this visiting research group in developing the GMNet’s Version 2.0 PHP-based system under Prof. Chen’s overall supervision. It also describes both the system’s technical level structure—user/Web-based application/data, and complex functionalities with multi-collection, multi-lingual, multi-modal searching capabilities; system management capabilities; as well as provisions for user uploads and retrieval for our own projects. This Version 2.0 system is built on the Linux/Apache/PHP/MySQL platform. What is described in this paper is an actual case which has formed a base for further new development by others in the research group. It demonstrates fully the value of the synergistic collaboration among global partners for universal digital library development. More information can be found in http://www.memorynet.org/.

Conservation utility of botanic garden living collections:Setting a strategy and appropriate methodology

In the realities of the modern world, when the natural habitat is rapidly disappearing and the number of imperiled plants is constantly growing, ex situ conservation is gaining importance. To meet this challenge, botanic gardens need to revise both their strategic goals and their methodologies to achieve the new goals. This paper proposes a strategy for the management of threatened plants in living collections,which includes setting regional conservation priorities for the species, creation of genetically representative collections for the high priority species, and usage of these collections in in situ actions. In this strategy, the value of existing and future species living collections for conservation is determined by the species' conservation status and how well the accessions represent their natural genetic variation.

Current Status of Sludge Collection, Transportation and Treatment in Ho Chi Minh City

In the process of construction and development, Ho Chi Minh City is discharging about six types of sludge: 1) sludge from urban wastewater drainage systems;2) sludge from industrial wastewater drainage system;3) sludge from the canal dredging activities periodically;4) sludge from septic tanks;5) sludge from the water treatment station/plant;6) sludge from the construction sites. Sludge’s components are very different among types of sludge, sludge from the sewer network and canal dredging contain mainly sand and soil (70% - 90% dry weight), while the sludge from the wastewater/water treatment station/plant and from septic tanks contain mainly biodegradable organic substances (55% - 80% dry weight). The concentrations of all above-mentioned sludge (except sludge from the hazardous industrial wastewater treatment plant) are lower than toxic threshold. The volume of total sludge is about 3000 - 4000 m3/day (5000 - 6000 tons/day), excepting the amount of sludge generated from the water treatment plant (which is collected and treated separately). Sludge from wastewater treatment plants and septic tanks is collected, transported and recycled to become organic fertilizer. The other types of sludge are collected, transported, and disposed at the “unknown” locations, even though they have different values for use.

Participatory forest management in Burkina Faso: Members' perception of performance

This study examines variations in the performance of partic-ipatory forest management programs among four forest management groups (FMGs) in southern Burkina Faso, and assesses the factors that influence their members’ perceptions of performance through a house-hold survey of 216 members. Variations in performance scores among the FMGs were analyzed through multivariate analysis of variance while multinomial regression analysis was used to identify factors that influ-ence their perception of the performance. The results reveal significant differences in performance scores among FMGs. Members of some FMGs perceived that the participatory forest management program ena-bled them to get benefits from the sale of fuelwood while performance scores in the forest conservation and decision-making processes is gener-ally poor. The score for economic performance of FMGs in turn was related to better access to roads and markets. Group size tended to en-hance economic performance via its strong influence on annual fuelwood harvest, while the resource base appeared to be inconsequential. Mem-bers of the forest management groups perceived that large group size and group heterogeneity, particularly in terms of ethnicity, as well as knowledge and awareness of problems related to the forest environment have no influence on the performance of their respective groups. For rural communities to have a favorable disposition toward sustainable forest management, differences in member understanding of collective actions and their impact before and during the implementation of partic-ipatory forest management programs should be considered.

Critical Analysis of the Challenges of Solid Waste Management Initiatives in Keko Machungwa Informal Settlement, Dar es Salaam

Solid waste is inevitable because by nature every human activity generates a certain amount of solid waste. The rate of solid waste generated tends to increase with the increase in population. Despite existence of various efforts on solid waste collection, still the quantity of solid waste collected is small compared to the solid waste generated. The situation is even worse in unplanned settlements of developing countries, where, ineffective solid waste collection is contributed to by haphazard solid waste disposal and hence environmental pollution. Therefore, having an effective and efficient solid waste management system is a major challenge in cities of developing countries, and thus more consulted efforts are needed. This paper presents finding based on the study carried out in Keko Machungwa informal settlement in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The study explored challenges facing solid waste management initiatives in Keko Machungwa and recommended measures for improvement. Data for this study was collected through documentary review, household interviews, focus group discussions, physical observations and official interviews. The analysis reveals that solid waste generated in Keko Machungwa is 16 tones per day, among those, only 4.56 (less than 50%) are collected. About 11.44 tones of uncollected waste are illegally dumped into a seasonal stream and in different vacant lots hence causing blockage of the seasonal stream. Different groups engaged in solid waste collection are deterred by many challenges. The challenges include: lack of cooperation among the existing solid waste collection organs, inaccessibility in some places, low public participation, financial constraints and unwillingness of local community to pay for solid waste collection fees. The paper recommends four options on how solid waste management, particularly collection in Keko Machungwa can be enhanced. 1) Alliance among the existing organ, 2) placing dust-bins in different points within the settlement, 3) linking the fees of solid waste collection to other public services and 4) education and awareness creation campaigns accompanied by community stakeholder consultations.

Comparative Analysis and Assessment of States’ Traffic Management Center Programs

This research presents a step-by-step guideline for traffic data collection standards set by the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) and American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO). This study reviews manual and automatic methods of traffic counting and provides detailed information on traffic volume and vehicle classification studies. This research also provides a detailed analysis of the Delaware Department of Transportation (DelDOT)-TMC (Transportation Management Center) websites and compares it to selected Department of Transportation websites of other states such as Vermont, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, Texas, and Virginia. The purpose of the comparison is to analyze the data sources;user friendliness, accessibility, types of data available, presentation formats, and style for each state to determine how they compared to DelDOT-TMC. Although there were some similarities, the findings suggest that two major differences are present. The overall results revealed that DelDOT-TMC provides limited traffic and roadway weather data, and presentation formats to the public as compared to the other states. Further, a unitless variable, called the Capacity Factor (Q), has been developed within this study to represent this relative comparison. This study shows that DelDOT TMC performs well within the group of selected states and better than selected states of similar size and most selected states of larger size;where only Virginia performs better then DelDOT TMC. DelDOT TMC does not perform as well as selected neighboring states;however, it performs in an acceptable range relative to neighboring states.

Waste Management Workers’ Safety Concerns during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Ghana

Waste management is one of urgent challenges in the world. In rapidly growing cities of developing countries like Accura, Ghana, waste collection is done without sufficient protection of workers. This situation became worse when the COVID-19 pandemic began to threaten the health and safety of waste collection workers. This paper aims to examine waste management workers’ safety concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic in Ghana. To better understand waste management workers’ safety concerns during the pandemic, we used the questionnaire survey. Our questionnaire survey was conducted among 60 waste management workers in Accra, the capital city of Ghana. The study then discusses how municipal waste management authorities can ensure safety of waste management workers during the pandemic. Our results showed that 58% of the respondents were worried about the COVID-19 pandemic, while 20% were not even sure of the existence of the Covid-19 pandemic. Besides their worry, we also found that about 40% of the respondents had access to face masks/shields at their workplace, and 30% had hand sanitizers. This paper highlights that providing more advanced safety protocols in terms of workers daily operations and safety measures will enable a safe working environment for the workers even in terms of future pandemics.

Working Capital Management and Firms’ Profitability: Evidence from Quoted Firms on the Nigerian Stock Exchange

Over the years, it appeared that firms failed to subject short-term investments to proper management thereby leading to either excessive or inadequate working capital which in turn affected their profitability. To empirically satisfy this, this paper examined working capital management and firms’ profitability in Nigeria quoted firms on Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE). A panel data methodology was used with different regression estimators to analyze this relationship based on a balanced panel of 10 listed firms during the period 2008-2017. It was discovered that cash collection period and cash payment period exerted a negative impact on return on assets, though the impact was only significant for cash payment period on the ground of −0.064 (p = 0.000 −0.032 (p = 0.077 > 0.05). Also discovered was that both the current ratio and inventory period exerted a positive impact on return on assets, though the impact was only significant for current ratio on the ground of 8.172 (p = 0.000 0.05). The study concluded that working capital management affected firms’ profitability in Nigeria. Therefore it was recommended that while the shorter collection was maintained, payment to creditors should not be elongated so as to enjoy cash discount (if any) and that firms should be proactive in the management of raw materials in order to avoid idle resources that might negatively impact their financial performance.

Some Aspects of Waste Management of Ukraine

The development of waste management can be considered in some way dictates of time. Ukraine has unique conditions of the secondary usage of natural resources, which is particularly important given to the increasing generation of waste and its progressive accumulation. The relevant provisions relate to the industrial sector as well as areas of consumption. However, for most of recyclable materials is still low. The formation of market relations in Ukraine contributed to enhance this process and relevant field of entrepreneurship. Now the formation of a separate segment is taking place. The state and the perspectives of the development of collection, accumulation and recycling of waste stream have been analyzed in the article. Conceptual position of the legislative regulation of this field is defined. The ways of improving the legal support of secondary raw materials have been defined. The peculiarities of waste management of Ukraine are considered.

Informal Sector Solid Waste Collection and Recycling in Zaria, Nigeria

Management of solid wastes has become a critical issue for almost all the major cities in Nigeria. Although the responsibility for solid waste management remains primarily with the local government councils, several other stakeholders are playing significant roles in the system. In Zaria, the scavengers, waste pickers and collectors eke out a living by collecting waste and selling recyclable materials out of the urban solid wastes. The paper utilized data collected using questionnaire survey, in-depth discussion guides and open-ended interviews to examine the socio-economic characteristics, the functions, aspects of involvement of children, the working conditions and problems of waste collectors and pickers in Zaria. The paper found that the sector is the only means of solid waste collection in several sections of the town and is a source of livelihood for the poor. The activities help in realizing the aim of modern waste management, that is to move up the solid waste management hierarchy by reducing reliance on disposal and increasing recycling. In spite of these important functions, informal waste collection and recycling are associated with problems of unsanitary conditions and health risks to the communities and the waste collectors. Recommendations have been made to integrate the informal sector into the formal waste management by incorporating the employment needs of the urban poor and enhancing the efficiency of government in addressing the main problems.

An International Survey on State of the Art of Grain Legume Management in Gene Banks

An online survey addressed to members listed in the European Cooperative Programme for Crop Genetic Resources Networks Working Group on Graithe current problems in the management of GL germplasm, to work out the criterian Legumes and Grain Legumes （GL） germplasm managers and breeders was carded out to pinpoint and decisions involved in the implementation of regeneration procedures and to identify strategic areas where further research is required. The survey was divided into three sections： （1） germplasm collection details and current status of the regeneration needs; （2） assessment over the understanding of basic information required to carry out appropriate regeneration procedures such as the breeding systems, the pollination requirements and pollinating agents, the isolation techniques and regeneration facilities; and （3） assessment of different options, in addition to ＂ex situ＂, such as ＂in situ＂ and ＂on farm＂ conservation. Obtaining, collating and analysing different kinds of existing data on mating system of GL species, effective pollination control methods and isolation facilities by species and location is one example of a priority issue. The GL community makes a clear request for greater support for the development of well-designed methodologies of regeneration that maintain the genetic structure of populations and that the optimum regeneration strategy is most likely to be achieved through integrating pollinators with the regeneration procedures. A major concern of the GL community is the lack of empirical scientific information on the most suitable pollinator agents.

Development of a data collection and management system in West Africa:challenges and sustainability

Background:Developing and sustaining a data collection and management system(DCMS)is difficult in malariaendemic countries because of limitations in internet bandwidth,computer resources and numbers of trained personnel.The premise of this paper is that development of a DCMS in West Africa was a critically important outcome of the West African International Centers of Excellence for Malaria Research.The purposes of this paper are to make that information available to other investigators and to encourage the linkage of DCMSs to international research and Ministry of Health data systems and repositories.Methods:We designed and implemented a DCMS to link study sites in Mali,Senegal and The Gambia.This system was based on case report forms for epidemiologic,entomologic,clinical and laboratory aspects of plasmodial infection and malarial disease for a longitudinal cohort study and included on-site training for Principal Investigators and Data Managers.Based on this experience,we propose guidelines for the design and sustainability of DCMSs in environments with limited resources and personnel.Results:From 2012 to 2017,we performed biannual thick smear surveys for plasmodial infection,mosquito collections for anopheline biting rates and sporozoite rates and year-round passive case detection for malarial disease in four longitudinal cohorts with 7708 individuals and 918 households in Senegal,The Gambia and Mali.Major challenges included the development of uniform definitions and reporting,assessment of data entry error rates,unstable and limited internet access and software and technology maintenance.Strengths included entomologic collections linked to longitudinal cohort studies,on-site data centres and a cloud-based data repository.Conclusions:At a time when research on diseases of poverty in low and middle-income countries is a global priority,the resources available to ensure accurate data collection and the electronic availability of those data remain severely limited.Based on our experience,we suggest the development of a regional DCMS.This approach is more economical than separate data centres and has the potential to improve data quality by encouraging shared case definitions,data validation strategies and analytic approaches including the molecular analysis of treatment successes and failures.

NETMANAGE电信综合网管系统的设计与实现

就网络规模而言,中国的通信网目前已是世界第一大网,但在网络管理方面距世界一流水平还有不小的差距,运营商对综合网管产品的需求也很迫切。探讨了NETMANAGE电信综合网管系统的设计与实现,并重点探讨了为系统总体设计目标服务的数据采集模块的设计与实现,提出了采集算法与采集过程相分离的思想。

Collection and Management of Shop-floor Controller Data

This paper describes shop floor data collection and management. An architecture is presented for a shop floor data collection and management system based on the analysis of the features of these data. Two critical aspects of the system are discussed in detail: the various communication protocols between computers and machines, and the real time demands of the shop floor controller.