In response to the 2014 Ebola virus disease outbreak, the Worker Training Program embarked on an assessment of existing training for those at risk for exposure to the virus. Searches of the recent peer-reviewed literature were conducted for descriptions of relevant training. Federal guidance issued during 2015 was also reviewed. Four stakeholder meetings were conducted with representatives from health care, academia, private industry, and public health to discuss issues associated with ongoing training. Our results revealed few articles about training that provided sufficient detail to serve as models. Training programs struggled to adjust to frequently updated federal guidance. Stakeholders commented that most healthcare training focused solely on infection control, and there was an absence of employee health-related training for non-healthcare providers. Challenges to ongoing training included funding and organizational complacency. Best practices were noted where management and employees planned training cooperatively and where infection control, employee health, and hospital emergency managers worked together on the development of protective guidance. We conclude that sustainable training for infectious disease outbreaks requires annual funding, full support from organizational management, input from all stakeholders, and integration of infection control, emergency management, and employee health when implementing guidance and training.

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Several committees were established by the National Association of Physicians for the Environment to investigate and report on various topics at the National Leadership Conference on Biomedical Research and the Environment held at the 1--2 November 1999 at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. This is the report of the Committee on Minimization and Management of Wastes from Biomedical Research. Biomedical research facilities contribute a small fraction of the total amount of wastes generated in the United States, and the rate of generation appears to be decreasing. Significant reductions in generation of hazardous, radioactive, and mixed wastes have recently been reported, even at facilities with rapidly expanding research programs. Changes in the focus of research, improvements in laboratory techniques, and greater emphasis on waste minimization (volume and toxicity reduction) explain the declining trend in generation. The potential for uncontrolled releases of wastes from biomedical research facilities and adverse impacts on the general environment from these wastes appears to be low. Wastes are subject to numerous regulatory requirements and are contained and managed in a manner protective of the environment. Most biohazardous agents, chemicals, and radionuclides that find significant use in research are not likely to be persistent, bioaccumulative, or toxic if they are released. Today, the primary motivations for the ongoing efforts by facilities to improve minimization and management of wastes are regulatory compliance and avoidance of the high disposal costs and liabilities associated with generation of regulated wastes. The committee concluded that there was no evidence suggesting that the anticipated increases in biomedical research will significantly increase generation of hazardous wastes or have adverse impacts on the general environment. This conclusion assumes the positive, countervailing trends of enhanced pollution prevention efforts by facilities and reductions in waste generation resulting from improvements in research methods will continue.

This paper describes the electrical architecture and design of the IBM eServere BladeCentert midplane and media interface card. The midplane provides the redundant interconnects among processor blades, switch modules, media interface card, and management modules. It also serves as the redundant power distribution medium from the power modules to all blades and other devices. A major attribute of the BladeCenter electrical design is the redundant nature of the interconnects, which gives this product superior reliability and availability. The media interface card provides the interface between the CD-ROM and floppy disk drives and the blades that share these devices. The sharing of these devices was a key BladeCenter innovation. Also, to ensure that the architecture will be flexible enough to support multiple input/output fabric protocols, SerDes (serialized/deserialized) is used as the internal high-speed communication electrical interface. Since highspeed designs can easily result in higher implementation costs, a significant predesign simulation effort was undertaken to analyze and prioritize design guidelines in order to develop a high-speed midplane at a competitive cost. This paper highlights how we reduced board costs by finding solutions that overcame some of the challenges of 2.5-Gb/s data transmission over multiple printed circuit boards and connectors.

This paper describes the electrical architecture and design of the IBM eServere BladeCentert processor blades, expansion blades, and input/output (I/O) expansion adapters and units. The processor blades are independent, general-purpose servers containing processors, chipsets, main memory, hard drives, network interface controllers, power input control circuitry, and local systems management. The blade architecture is robust and flexible enough to enable the design of general-purpose Intelprocessor-based two-way and four-way blades, IBM POWEReprocessor-based blades, blades based on AMD Opterone processors, and common expansion blades. In addition, the processor blades, expansion adapters, and units use a serializeddeserialized (SerDes) interface for the internal I/O fabrics, thus giving blades the flexibility to support virtually any I/O protocol that supports SerDes. Support for I/O fabrics beyond the base Gigabit Ethernet is accomplished via optional I/O expansion adapters for Fibre Channel, Myricom Myrinet t, InfiniBand t, or additional Gigabit Ethernet. Additional storage or peripheral component interface capability can be added to the processor blades via expansion blades.

The training of workers plays a critical role in the prevention of injury and disease in the workplace. The important role of worker training and education in prevention programs is recognized in numerous OSHA substance-specific regulations such as those for asbestos, lead, arsenic, and cotton dust, as well as in several process-specific standards, such as those for respiratory protection, lock-out/tag-out, HAZWOPER, blood-borne pathogens, and process safety management for highly hazardous materials.Because OSHA standards have little specificity concerning detailed training program content, delivery, or quality assurance, it has been critically important to develop innovative methods for delivery of training to workers, as well as valid methods for evaluating the quality and impacts of such training.We have learned that safety and health training efforts must convey complex information on toxicity, safe work practices, and control measures in a way that is useful and understandable to both high-literacy and low-literacy individuals. Curriculum development and pedagogical approaches must be flexible enough to reach numerous, diverse target groups.This volume reflects a range of forms that training evaluations have taken, including a focus on individuals or groups, use of qualitative or quantitative methodologies, and findings that are descriptive or inferential.Research has documented that trained workers can, through knowledge gained and skills developed, help to establish a safety-conscious work climate to assure that proper methods and techniques are utilized during the conduct of work in dozens of complex and highly hazardous operations.

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Green Chemistry is a fundamentally different approach to manufacturing and using chemicals and chemical products that seeks to design out human and environmental hazards through the replacement of hazardous chemicals, processes, and products. This approach differs markedly with current chemical 240 / HUGHES ET AL.