Numerous marine oil spill incidents and their environmental catastrophe have raised the concern of the research community and environmental agencies on the topic of the offshore crude oil spill. The oil transport through oil tankers and pipelines has further aggravated the risk of the oil spill. This has led to the necessity to develop an effective, environment-friendly, versatile oil spill clean-up strategy. The current review article analyses various nanotechnology-based methods for marine oil spill clean-up, focusing on their recovery rate, reusability and cost. The authors weighed the three primary factors recovery, reusability and cost distinctively for the analysis based on their significance in various contexts. The findings and analysis suggest that magnetic nanomaterials and nano-sorbent have been the most effective nanotechnology-based marine oil spill remediation techniques, with the magnetic paper based on ultralong hydroxyapatite nanowires standing out with a recovery rate of over 99%. The chitosan-silica hybrid nano-sorbent and multi-wall carbon nanotubes are also promising options with high recovery rates of up to 95-98% and the ability to be reused multiple times. Although the photocatalytic biodegradation approach and the nano-dispersion method do not offer benefits for recovery or reusability, they can nevertheless help lessen the negative ecological effects of marine oil spills. Therefore, careful evaluation and selection of the most appropriate method for each marine oil spill situation is crucial. The current review article provides valuable insights into the current state of nanotechnology-based marine oil spill clean-up methods and their potential applications.

In the area of Solid Waste Management, transportation of the collected waste is a critical aspect considering the substantial time spent by garbage trucks on public roads. Studies have reported that transporting garbage has challenges related to public exposure and aesthetics. This study presents a generalised bi-objective formulation for the optimal routing of garbage trucks from transfer stations to recycling sites/landfills considering the trade-off between public exposure and aesthetic loss and constraining the operating cost. The formulation uses the novel link capacity function to account for the delay at traffic signals and the mix of trucks and cars on link performance. The proposed formulation is solved using the weighted sum and ε-constraint methods and applied to a realistic case study of the City of Chicago, USA. The Pareto Front obtained for the bi-objective formulation offers diverse trade-off solutions catering to distinct performance metrics. The results highlight the disparity across the solutions; the solution (P0.95 on Pareto Front) for minimum operating cost (or travel time or distance travelled) is very different from the solution (P0.4 on Pareto Front) for aesthetic cost and public exposure. The parametric study indicated that a modest operating budget may suffice for achieving aesthetic benefits, but minimising public exposure requires a higher operating budget. Finally, the proposed framework is adaptable to address various challenges pertaining to waste transportation, thereby serving as a valuable tool for evaluating policies and practices geared towards sustainability objectives.

Nursing homes expressed concern about potential severe adverse financial outcomes of COVID-19, with worries extending to the possibility of some facilities facing closure. Maintaining a strong financial well-being is crucial, and there were concerns that the pandemic might have significantly impacted both expenses and income. This longitudinal study aimed to analyze the financial performance of nursing homes during COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, we examined the impact of the pandemic on nursing home operating margins, operating revenue per resident day, and operating cost per resident day. The study utilized secondary data from various sources, including CMS Medicare cost reports, Brown University\'s Long Term Care Focus (LTCFocus), CMS Payroll-Based Journal, CMS Care Compare, Area Health Resource File, Provider Relief Fund distribution data, and CDC\'s NH COVID-19 public file. The sample consisted of 45 833 nursing home-year observations from 2018 to 2021. Fixed-effects regression analysis was employed to assess the impact of the pandemic on financial performance while controlling for various organizational and market characteristics. The study found that nursing homes\' financial performance deteriorated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Operating margins decreased by approximately 4.3%, while operating costs per resident day increased by $26.51, outweighing the increase in operating revenue per resident day by about $17. Occupancy rates, payer mix, and staffing intensity were found to impact financial performance. The study highlights the significant financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on nursing homes. While nursing homes faced substantial financial strains, the findings offered lessons for the future, underscoring the need for nursing homes to improve the accuracy of their cost reports and enhance financial transparency and accountability.

Hospitals play a crucial role in providing medical care to patients, but they also have a significant environmental impact due to their high energy consumption and resource use. In recent years, there has been growing interest in the concept of green hospital design, which aims to reduce the environmental footprint of hospitals while simultaneously improving patient outcomes.10 articles were finalized for review and were coded in QDA Miner qualitative analysis software for descriptive and link analysis. Results indicated a strong correlation between green design aspects of hospital and patient well-being, it failed to provide any evidence of concrete relation between relation between green hospital design and lower operation cost.\"

The entire ecology is contaminated by the synthetic dyes that are widely utilised in the textile industries. They can be handled using a variety of technologies, but an eco-friendly method called electrocoagulation has been used to prevent additional contamination. Textile wastewater containing disperse dyes are successfully treated in Electrocoagulation (EC) utilizing Al, Fe, and Stainless Steel (SS), but it is not cost effective, also the treated water contains certain mg/L of the metals used, along with dye components, which obstructs the reuse of the same. The effects of initial pH, applied voltage, dye concentration, supporting electrolyte, and treatment time on the colour removal efficiency (CRE) and consumption of energy were examined in EC process followed by activated charcoal filtration (hybrid process) with a monopolar Ti/Ti electrode on the remediation of aqueous solution of Dispersive Blue-79 (dye 3G). The maximum CREobtained was 99.4%, chemical oxygen demand (COD) 93%, and biological oxygen demand (BOD) 85%, under the following optimized operating conditions, applied voltage 15 V, pH = 7, concentration of dye, electrolyte 110 mg/L, 0.2 g/L and time = 15 min. The overall operating cost for the treatment of aqueous dye 3G was 0.455US/m3. The mechanism of EC was studied using XPS analysis in the sludge obtained. For the purpose of the reuse, FTIR, AAS, and ICP-OES analysis were done and compared with the aqueous dye 3G, after EC and hybrid process to ensure the maximum removal of the degraded dye components and metal. ICP-OES results showed that there were no traces of metal in the treated aqueous dye 3G using this method. Throughout the study, the experimental outcomes indicated that the hybrid process upgraded the quality of the treated aqueous dye 3G.

OBJECTIVE: To analyze the medical equipment operation data of 44 clinical departments in the hospital from three aspects: materials and consumables, operation and maintenance depreciation, and operation management.
METHODS: To formulate the evaluation standards and scoring criteria for the operation indicators, the lowest score is 0 points, and the highest score is 5 points. Based on the operation indicators of medical equipment, establish a hierarchical structure model, determine the criterion layer and sub-criteria layer, construct a judgment matrix, normalize it, and calculate the weight coefficient.
RESULTS: Count equipment operation data in 2021 and 2022. Score according to the assessment standards, assign weights through the analytic hierarchy process, calculate the total score and sort, and making a special analysis on the top 10 departments and departments with a score below 4 points, and formulate a rectification plan.
CONCLUSIONS: The establishment of index assessment standards and the weight distribution of AHP can effectively enhance the control of equipment operating costs.

UNASSIGNED: This study aimed to investigate the matching degree between the donated supply and demand, clinical characteristics of both donors and recipients, along with the operation cost.
UNASSIGNED: From January 1, 2018 to December 31, 2021, the data on human milk donation and usage, the clinical characteristics of donors and recipients, and the cost of each operating center were collected from the Manual Donation Registration Form and Information Management System of the selected human milk bank.
UNASSIGNED: During the four years that the human milk bank was in operation, the volume of donated milk was slightly greater than the volume of consumed milk. A total of 1364 donors donated 2434.63 liters of qualified human milk, for RMB 1,791,000 (USD 257, 202), ie, RMB 385.3 (USD 55.3)/L; 97.8% of the donors were preterm puerperae, and 59% of the donors donated between 1 week and 1 month after delivery. All recipients were preterm infants and received donated human milk for a duration of 9.4 days on average. During the four years of operation, the proportion of donors who had previously received donated milk among all donors showed an overall increasing trend, while the incidence of NEC in preterm infants gradually decreased.
UNASSIGNED: The increasingly optimized structure of donors, the more economical operation, and the fact that the use of donated milk may not affect breastfeeding of the recipients have made it a human milk bank operation mode worthy of promotion.

Advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) using oxygen (O2) as an oxidant represent a low-cost and sustainable wastewater treatment process. Herein, a metal-free nanotubular carbon nitride photocatalyst (CN NT) was prepared to activate O2 to degrade organic contaminants. The nanotube structure allowed for sufficient O2 adsorption, while the optical and photoelectrochemical properties enabled photogenerated charge to be efficiently transferred to the adsorbed O2 to trigger the activation process. The developed CN NT/Vis-O2 system based on O2 aeration degraded various organic contaminants and mineralized 40.7% of chloroquine phosphate within 100 min. In addition, the toxicity and environmental risk of treated contaminants were reduced. Mechanistic studies suggested that the enhanced O2 adsorption capacity and fast charge transfer behavior on CN NT surface led to reactive·O2-, 1O2 and h+ generation, each of which played a distinct role in contaminants degradation. Importantly, the proposed process could overcome the interference from water matrices and outdoor sunlight, and the energy and chemical reagent savings reduced the operating cost to about 1.63 US$·m-3. Altogether, this work provides insights into the potential application of metal-free photocatalysts and green O2 activation for wastewater treatment.

Metrological traceability is essential to ensure the reliability of calibration tests. Calibration certificates usually include information on only one upper-level reference standard. As metrological traceability is multi-layered, generally there is no method available for end users to instantly confirm the traceability from the reference standard to a primary standard. This study focuses on the Ethereum blockchain, which has both tamper resistance and high availability, as a digital data management method. To improve the transparency and reliability of calibration tests, a smart contract that traces back to the primary standard is proposed. Consequently, it is confirmed that end users can instantly obtain traceability information. In addition, the execution of smart contracts requires transaction fees. Here, the calculation of the transaction fees is organized, and the traceability management system is discussed from a cost-effective perspective in the field of metrology.

The work describes the combination of granulated biomass fly ash (GBFA) with Fenton process to enhance the removal of adsorbable organic halides (AOX) from pulp bleaching wastewater. At optimal operating conditions, wastewater\'s chemical and biochemical oxygen demand (COD and BOD5, respectively) and colour were also quantified, and operating cost of treatment assessed. For the first time, raw pulp bleaching wastewater was used to granulate BFA, instead of water, reducing the water footprint of the treatment. Five wastewater treatment setups were studied: (i) conventional Fenton process; (ii) GBFA application; (iii) simultaneous application of GBFA and Fenton process; (iv) sequential treatment by GBFA followed by Fenton process; (v) sequential treatment by Fenton process followed by GBFA. The latter yielded the highest AOX removal (60-70%), whilst COD was also reduced (≈15%) and wastewater biodegradability (BOD5/COD) was enhanced from 0.075 to a maximum of 0.134. Another positive feature of the proposed solution was that GBFA were successfully recovered and reused without regeneration, yielding similar AOX removal compared with fresh GBFA. The operating cost of removing 1 g of AOX from the pulp bleaching wastewater by the optimal treatment setup (60-70% removal of AOX) was 14-26% lower than the operating cost of conducting Fenton process alone (50% removal of AOX).