Hospital-acquired pneumonia (HAP) is the second most common nosocomial infection in the critically ill patient and is associated with the greatest mortality and increased morbidity and cost of care. The major risk factor for the development of HAP in intensive care is the occurrence of intubation and mechanical ventilation, giving rise to the term ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP). Incidence of VAP varies in different populations of critically ill patients and generally ranges from 9 to 20%, with an overall rate of 10 to 15 cases per 1,000 ventilator days. The cumulative risk of developing VAP is ~1% per day of mechanical ventilation (MV). The crude mortality rate of VAP is 60% and the estimates of attributable risk range from 27 to 43%. Mortality from VAP is influenced by host factors, the virulence of the pathogens, and the adequacy of initial antimicrobial therapy. The etiologic agents for VAP differ according to the population studied, duration of hospital stay, time after intubation, and prior antimicrobial therapy. Risk factors include nonmodifiable factors like age, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, severe head trauma, and multiple trauma, and modifiable factors like large volume gastric aspiration, duration of MV, elevated gastric pH, histamine type 2 blocker therapy, ventilator circuit change frequency, self-extubation, and reintubation. The impact that diagnosis using invasive diagnostic techniques may have on the epidemiological characteristics of VAP are unknown, but may potentially reduce problems resulting from misclassification of this entity.

A steady state superconducting tokamak (SST-1) has been commissioned after the successful experimental and engineering validations of its critical sub-systems. During the 'engineering validation phase' of SST-1; the cryostat was demonstrated to be leak-tight in all operational scenarios, 80 K thermal shields were demonstrated to be uniformly cooled without regions of 'thermal runaway and hot spots', the superconducting toroidal field magnets were demonstrated to be cooled to their nominal operational conditions and charged up to 1.5 T of the field at the major radius. The engineering validations further demonstrated the assembled SST-1 machine shell to be a graded, stress-strain optimized and distributed thermo-mechanical device, apart from the integrated vacuum vessel being validated to be UHV compatible etc. Subsequently, 'field error components' in SST-1 were measured to be acceptable towards plasma discharges. A successful breakdown in SST-1 was obtained in SST-1 in June 2013 assisted with electron cyclotron pre-ionization in the second harmonic mode, thus marking the 'first plasma' in SST-1 and the arrival of SST-1 into the league of contemporary steady state devices.Subsequent to the first plasma, successful repeatable plasma start-ups with E ∼ 0.4 V m −1 , and plasma current in excess of 70 kA for 400 ms assisted with electron cyclotron heating pre-ionization at a field of 1.5 T have so far been achieved in SST-1. Lengthening the plasma pulse duration with lower hybrid current drive, confinement and transport in SST-1 plasmas and magnetohydrodynamic activities typical to large aspect ratio SST-1 discharges are presently being investigated in SST-1. In parallel, SST-1 has uniquely demonstrated reliable cryo-stable high field operation of superconducting TF magnets in the two-phase cooling mode, operation of vapour-cooled current leads with cold gas instead of liquid helium and an order less dc joint resistance in superconducting magnet winding packs with high transport currents. In parallel, SST-1 is also continually getting up-graded with first wall integration, superconducting central solenoid installation and over-loaded MgB 2 -brass based current leads etc. Phase-1 of SST-1 up-gradation is scheduled by the first half of 2015, after which long pulse plasma experiments in both circular and elongated configurations have been planned in SST-1.

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In an event of a nuclear or dirty bomb explosion and a radiological accident, there is a need for self-indicating instant radiation dosemeter for monitoring radiation exposure. The self-indicating instant radiation alert dosemeter (SIRAD) is a credit card size radiation dosemeter for monitoring ionising radiation from a few hundredths of a Gray to a few Gray. It is always active and is ready to use. It needs no battery. The dosemeter develops colour instantly upon exposure, and the colour intensifies with dose. It has a colour chart so that the dose on the active element may be read by matching its colour with the chart that is printed next to it on the card. However, in this work, the dose is measured by the optical density of the element. The dosemeter cannot be reset. The response changes by <1% per degrees C from -20 to +60 degrees C. The shelf-life is >3 y at room temperature. It contains no hazardous materials. The dosemeter would meet the requirements of instantly monitoring high dose in an event of a nuclear or dirty bomb explosion or a radiation accident.

This article describes hardware and software solutions to a need which is comprised of (i) acquisition of a large volume of high speed data with multiple time scales, (ii) control of various operational parameters of device and diagnostics, and (iii) processing and management of the acquired data for a large volume plasma device. The solution relies on the base of a VXI bus and uses a standard PC with a Windows 98/NT operating system and C as the programming language. The system is networked with the existing network with the result of allowing a large data storage space of processing facilities from any terminal in the laboratory.