Safety Watchdog Research Articles

Safety Watchdog for universally safe gaseous high pressure hydrogen fillings

The fast filling time for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles makes them a user-friendly zero emission alternative to fossil fuel powered vehicles. The filling, by compressing gas into the vehicle tanks, produces heat that can be damaging. There are different protocols, standardized or the intellectual property of station operators, dedicated for different specific applications taking into account the specificity of the vessel and customer requirements. Standard protocols are developed for worst case conditions across a broad range of vehicle tank sizes and configurations. These worst case conditions do not result in the most economical equipment solution for hydrogen fueling. To ensure safety for different existing and future potential protocols a new “Safety Watchdog” approach is suggested in the current paper. This “Safety Watchdog” monitors the fueling process boundary conditions independently from the main process controls. The decoupling between the watchdog and the protocol allows use of protocols that are more economically beneficial while ensuring full safety conditions. The current paper provides a mathematical formulation of the Safety Watchdog as well as its validation versus modeling and field experimental data.

MR safety watchdog for active catheters: Wireless impedance control with real-time feedback.

To dynamically minimize radiofrequency (RF)-induced heating of an active catheter through an automatic change of the termination impedance. A prototype wireless module was designed that modifies the input impedance of an active catheter to keep the temperature rise during MRI below a threshold, ΔTmax . The wireless module (MR safety watchdog; MRsWD) measures the local temperature at the catheter tip using either a built-in thermistor or external data from a fiber-optical thermometer. It automatically changes the catheter input impedance until the temperature rise during MRI is minimized. If ΔTmax is exceeded, RF transmission is blocked by a feedback system. The thermistor and fiber-optical thermometer provided consistent temperature data in a phantom experiment. During MRI, the MRsWD was able to reduce the maximum temperature rise by 25% when operated in real-time feedback mode. This study demonstrates the technical feasibility of an MRsWD as an alternative or complementary approach to reduce RF-induced heating of active interventional devices. The automatic MRsWD can reduce heating using direct temperature measurements at the tip of the catheter. Given that temperature measurements are intrinsically slow, for a clinical implementation, a faster feedback parameter would be required such as the RF currents along the catheter or scattered electric fields at the tip.

Health and safety watchdog receives six reports of pharmacy staff contracting COVID-19

Health and safety watchdog receives six reports of pharmacy staff contracting COVID-19

European Food Watchdog Slashes Dubious Health Claims

Europe's food safety watchdog on 25 February issued a scientific mass-verdict on more than 400 so-called health claims, the promises that food producers make on their labels and in advertisements, rejecting purported health benefits of a raft of substances.

Update: Magnetic Field Sensors Could Help Halt Runway Crashes

Air-traffic control is a complex and high-stress business. Mistakes are not allowed. And it's not limited to directing planes for takeoff and landing - a job that's been memorably described as three-dimensional chess. It also includes keeping track of where planes are on the ground. According to safety watchdog Eurocontrol, in 2005 alone there were 600 occasions when people, cars, or planes crossed Europe's airport taxiways when they shouldn't have. In fact, the most deadly airline accident ever happened on the ground: in 1977, two 747 jumbo jets collided in the Canary Islands, killing 583 people. Most big airports have expensive ground-radar systems to keep track of where the hundreds of moving planes are on the sprawling tarmacs. But ground radar sometimes reflects off buildings and terminals, leaving small gaps in coverage. Smaller airports like the one in Thessaloniki, Greece, can't afford ground radar. Such blind spots on the ground at airports large and small have prompted European researchers to explore the use of fluctuations in the Earth's magnetic field to better pinpoint where planes are on busy taxiways. The results, researchers say, show that using US $150 sensors can fill in the blind spots.

Twenty Years After Chornobyl, Legal Fallout Lingers

FRANCEPARIS-- Last week, a judge opened a preliminary investigation against the now 82-year-old former head of a nuclear safety watchdog, who stands accused of covering up the true extent of the fallout in France after the 1986 Chornobyl nuclear reactor explosion. ([Read more][1].) [1]: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/312/5779/1455a

New chemical safety watchdog

New chemical safety watchdog