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NIST
A novel, quantum-based vacuum gauge system invented by researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has passed its first test to be a true primary standard—that is, intrinsically accurate without the need for calibration.
Precision pressure measurement is of urgent…
Seb Murray
In 1924, a cartel of light bulb manufacturers including General Electric and Philips agreed to artificially limit the lifespan of their products to about 1,000 hours—down from 2,500. The scandal, revealed decades later, came to epitomize the linear consumption model of making, consuming, and then…
Jennifer Chu
Ultrasound imaging is a safe and noninvasive window into the body’s workings, providing clinicians with live images of a patient’s internal organs. To capture these images, trained technicians manipulate ultrasound wands and probes to direct sound waves into the body. These waves reflect back out…
Grant Ramaley
The FDA Quality System Regulation (QSR) 21 CFR Part 820 was written in 1997 to harmonize with ISO 13485:1996. The goal was to relieve some of the burden of manufacturers having to meet two different criteria, the FDA’s and ISO 13485.
But by 2003, ISO 13485 had changed so significantly that the FDA…
Sarah Murray
John Foye remembers what sparked his passion for finding solutions to climate change. Backpacking in Utah’s Uinta Mountains with high school friends one day, they came across a patch of forest that had been clear-cut. While deforestation was not a problem in Utah, the sight of an area almost…
Gleb Tsipursky
The monumental battle over remote work is heating up this summer as more traditionalist business leaders demand that their employees come to the office much or all of the time. Yet what these traditionalist executives are failing to realize is that the drama, stress, and tensions caused by their…
Christian Terwiesch
As labor becomes more costly and emerges as a major bottleneck for many manufacturing and service industries, improving labor productivity is an obvious priority. Whether it’s the preparation time it takes for a restaurant worker to cook a meal, the time for an autoworker to install a component,…
John Courtney
Customers are the lifeblood of any business. Without them, there would be no profits to distribute, no people to serve, and no reason to continue operating. To keep your business running on a path to growing success, you need to offer a customer experience that will make customers choose your brand…
Dawn Bailey
According to a survey of a broad cross-section of CEOs, the Foundation for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award noted that “deploying strategy is three times more difficult than developing strategy. If deployment is so challenging, the questions [should be], Are you making progress? How do…
Julie Winkle Giulioni
Despite recent high-profile examples of rescinded offers, it’s still a seller’s employment market with two jobs for every unemployed American. And even as inflation rages and economic contraction looms, employee retention remains a pressing issue. In fact, a study of 87 percent of human resources…
Gartner
Seventy-six percent of human resource leaders feel that hybrid work challenges employees’ connection to organizational culture, according to a recent survey by Gartner. A February 2022 Gartner poll of more than 200 HR leaders reveals the most challenging aspect of setting their hybrid strategy is…
Claudine Mangen
Work has become an around-the-clock activity, courtesy of the pandemic and technology that makes us reachable anytime, anywhere. Throw in expectations to deliver fast and create faster, and it becomes hard to take a step back.
Not surprising, many of us are feeling burned out. Burnout—which often…
Bryan Christiansen
Retirement is inevitable. This is why HR departments exist: To find new workers and replace the veterans. While technical schools can churn out recruits with a reasonable knowledge of basic maintenance, they can’t replicate actual work experience.
Nowhere is this skill gap felt more acutely than…
Jill Roberts
Florida’s outbreak of listeria has so far led to at least one death, 22 hospitalizations, and an ice cream recall since January 2022. Humans get sick with listeria infections, called listeriosis, from eating soil-contaminated food, undercooked meat, or dairy products that are raw or unpasteurized.…
Prashant Kapadia
Workforce scarcity and remote employment made it challenging to maintain industrial machinery during and after the Covid-19 epidemic. With the global industrial automation market expected to nearly double in the next six years, maintaining an increasing number of assets will result in more…
Gregory Way
Drugs don’t always behave exactly as expected. While researchers may develop a drug to perform one specific function that may be tailored to work for a specific genetic profile, sometimes the drug might perform several other functions outside of its intended purpose.
This concept of drugs having…
Huw Thomas
In what has been called the “biggest moment for workers’ rights in a quarter of a century,” the International Labour Organization (ILO) adopted a safe and healthy work environment as one of its five fundamental principles and rights at work for all at its June 2022 international conference. This is…
Adam Zewe
Physicians often query a patient’s electronic health record for information that helps them make treatment decisions, but the cumbersome nature of these records hampers the process. Research has shown that even when a doctor has been trained to use an electronic health record (EHR), finding an…
Gleb Tsipursky
Imagine you’re driving along the highway and you see an electric sign that reads, “79 traffic deaths this year.” Would this make you less likely to crash your car shortly after seeing the sign? Perhaps you think it would have no effect?
Neither are true. According to a recent peer-reviewed study…
Karina Montoya
Close to 9 million people in India suffer from hepatitis C. If left untreated, the virus leads to cirrhosis or liver damage, which eventually causes death from organ failure or cancer. On average, a 50-year-old man in India with asymptomatic liver damage who doesn’t receive treatment is expected to…
Alixandra Barasch
If you’ve ever played Wordle, learned a new language on Duolingo, or worked out with Peloton, you may be familiar with daily app notifications that nudge you to keep at it—or risk breaking a streak of consecutive efforts. Do you or don’t you heed the clarion call?
If you do, you’re in good company…
NIST
You need to measure length accurately to do things like make a dress, build a house, survey a plot of land, or determine if the home team made a first down on the football field. These length measurements and many others are often made with the help of a measuring tape. The major companies that…
Tom Rish
Your design history file (DHF) is one of the most critical components of your QMS. That’s because the DHF should contain all the product development documentation for a specific medical device. Its purpose is to show regulatory bodies and internal stakeholders that you appropriately followed the…
Donald J. Wheeler
The analysis of residuals is commonly recommended when fitting a regression equation to a data set. It has even been recommended for the analysis of experimental data where the independent variable is categorical (i.e., treatment levels). In both of these contexts, it has been said that the…
Patricia Santos-Serrao
The pharmaceutical industry has seen significant upheaval and disruption during the past several years. These changes are due in part to the impacts of Covid—for example, interruptions in the supply chain and overwhelming market demand for shortened production times.
They are also being driven by…
