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Application of COVID-19 single-use shredded nitrile gloves in structural concrete: Case study from Australia.

ABSTRACT: The use of single-use nitrile gloves has been on a sharp incline since the Coronavirus pandemic first started in late 2019. This led to a significant increase in the generation of this clinical waste that requires various recycling solutions to reduce its environmental impact from disposal or incineration. This paper explores its application in structural concrete by adding shredded nitrile gloves at 0.1%, 0.2%, and 0.3% of the volume of concrete. The compressive strength, modulus of elasticity, ultrasonic pulse velocity, and SEM-EDS analysis were undertaken to ascertain the effect of different concentrations of shredded nitrile gloves on the mechanical properties, quality of concrete, and its bond performance with the cement matrix. The results demonstrate that the inclusion of up to 0.2% of shredded nitrile gloves can provide ~22% improvement in the compressive strength of blended concrete composites at 28-days of curing. In comparison, the inclusion of 0.3% of shredded nitrile gloves shows improvements of ~20% in compressive strength at 28-days. The SEM-EDS analysis shows a very good bond formation between the nitrile rubber and the cement matrix with no gap identified in the interfacial transition zone (ITZ).

SUBMITTER: Kilmartin-Lynch S

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8568329 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:Reinforced concrete is the most widely used building material in history. However, alternative natural and synthetic materials are being investigated for reinforcing concrete structures, given the limited availability of steel in developing countries, the rising costs of steel as the main reinforcement material, the amount of energy required by the production of steel, and the sensitivity of steel to corrosion. This paper reports on a unique use of bamboo as a sustainable alternative to synthetic fibers for production of bamboo fiber-reinforced polymer composite as reinforcement for structural-concrete beams. The aim of this study is to evaluate the feasibility of using this novel bamboo composite reinforcement system for reinforced structural-concrete beams. The bond strength with concrete matrix, as well as durability properties, including the water absorption and alkali resistance of the bamboo composite reinforcement, are also investigated in this study. The results of this study indicate that bamboo composite reinforced concrete beams show comparable ultimate loads with regards to fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) reinforced concrete beams according to the ACI standard. Furthermore, the results demonstrate the potential of the newly developed bamboo composite material for use as a new type of element for non-deflection-critical applications of reinforced structural-concrete members. The design guidelines that are stated in ACI 440.1R-15 for fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) reinforcement bars are also compared with the experimental results that were obtained in this study. The American Concrete Institute (ACI) design guidelines are suitable for non-deflection-critical design and construction of bamboo-composite reinforced-concrete members. This study demonstrates that there is significant potential for practical implementation of the bamboo-composite reinforcement described in this paper. The results of this study can be utilized for construction of low-cost and low-rise housing units where the need for ductility is low and where secondary-element failure provides adequate warning of collapse.

Project description:Gloves are often needed for hand protection at work, but they can impair manual dexterity, especially if they are multilayered or ill-fitting. This article describes two studies of gloves to be worn with airfed suits (AFS) for nuclear decommissioning or containment level 4 (CL4) microbiological work. Both sets of workers wear multiple layers of gloves for protection and to accommodate decontamination procedures. Nuclear workers are also often required to wear cut-resistant gloves as an extra layer of protection. A total of 15 subjects volunteered to take part in manual dexterity testing of the different gloving systems. The subjects' hands were measured to ensure that the appropriate sized gloves were used. The gloves were tested with the subjects wearing the complete clothing ensembles appropriate to the work, using a combination of standard dexterity tests: the nine-hole peg test; a pin test adapted from the European Standard for protective gloves, the Purdue Pegboard test, and the Minnesota turning test. Specialized tests such as a hand tool test were used to test nuclear gloves, and laboratory-type manipulation tasks were used to test CL4 gloves. Subjective assessments of temperature sensation and skin wettedness were made before and after the dexterity tests of the nuclear gloves only. During all assessments, we made observations and questioned the subjects about ergonomic issues related to the clothing ensembles. Overall, the results show that the greater the thickness of the gloves and the number of layers the more the levels of manual dexterity performance are degraded. The nuclear cut-resistant gloves with the worst level of dexterity were stiff and inflexible and the subjects experienced problems picking up small items and bending their hands. The work also highlighted other factors that affect manual dexterity performance, including proper sizing, interactions with the other garments worn at the time, and the work equipment in use. In conclusion, when evaluating gloves for use in the workplace it is important to use tests that reflect the working environment and always to consider the balance between protection and usability.

Project description:BackgroundSequence analysis aims to identify biologically relevant signals against a backdrop of functionally meaningless variation. Increasingly, it is recognized that the quality of the background model directly affects the performance of analyses. State-of-the-art approaches rely on classical sequence models that are adapted to the studied dataset. Although performing well in the analysis of globular protein domains, these models break down in regions of stronger compositional bias or low complexity. While these regions are typically filtered, there is increasing anecdotal evidence of functional roles. This motivates an exploration of more complex sequence models and application-specific approaches for the investigation of biased regions.ResultsTraditional Markov-chains and application-specific regression models are compared using the example of predicting runs of single amino acids, a particularly simple class of biased regions. Cross-fold validation experiments reveal that the alternative regression models capture the multi-variate trends well, despite their low dimensionality and in contrast even to higher-order Markov-predictors. We show how the significance of unusual observations can be computed for such empirical models. The power of a dedicated model in the detection of biologically interesting signals is then demonstrated in an analysis identifying the unexpected enrichment of contiguous leucine-repeats in signal-peptides. Considering different reference sets, we show how the question examined actually defines what constitutes the 'background'. Results can thus be highly sensitive to the choice of appropriate model training sets. Conversely, the choice of reference data determines the questions that can be investigated in an analysis.ConclusionsUsing a specific case of studying biased regions as an example, we have demonstrated that the construction of application-specific background models is both necessary and feasible in a challenging sequence analysis situation.

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Application of COVID-19 single-use shredded nitrile gloves in structural concrete: Case study from Australia.

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