Since the initial publication of A Compendium of Strategies to Prevent Healthcare-Associated Infections in Acute Care Hospitals in 2008, the prevention of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) has continued to be a national priority. Progress in healthcare epidemiology, infection prevention, antimicrobial stewardship, and implementation science research has led to improvements in our understanding of effective strategies for HAI prevention. Despite these advances, HAIs continue to affect ∼1 of every 31 hospitalized patients,1 leading to substantial morbidity, mortality, and excess healthcare expenditures,1 and persistent gaps remain between what is recommended and what is practiced.

The widespread impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on HAI outcomes2 in acute-care hospitals has further highlighted the essential role of infection prevention programs and the critical importance of prioritizing efforts that can be sustained even in the face of resource requirements from COVID-19 and future infectious diseases crises.3

The Compendium: 2022 Updates document provides acute-care hospitals with up-to-date, practical expert guidance to assist in prioritizing and implementing HAI prevention efforts. It is the product of a highly collaborative effort led by the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA), the Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA), the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC), the American Hospital Association (AHA), and The Joint Commission, with major contributions from representatives of organizations and societies with content expertise, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Pediatric Infectious Disease Society (PIDS), the Society for Critical Care Medicine (SCCM), the Society for Hospital Medicine (SHM), the Surgical Infection Society (SIS), and others.

Reliable spatially resolved compositional analysis through atom probe tomography requires an accurate placement of the detected ions within the three-dimensional reconstruction. Unfortunately, for heterogeneous systems, traditional reconstruction protocols are prone to position some ions incorrectly. This stems from the use of simplified projection laws which treat the emitter apex as a spherical cap, although the actual shape may be far more complex. For instance, sampled materials with compositional heterogeneities are known to develop local variations in curvature across the emitter due to their material phase specific evaporation fields. This work provides three pivotal precursors to improve the spatial accuracy of the reconstructed volume in such cases. First, we show scanning probe microscopy enables the determination of the local curvature of heterogeneous emitters, thus providing the essential information for a more advanced reconstruction considering the actual shape. Second, we demonstrate the cyclability between scanning probe characterization and atom probe analysis. This is a key ingredient of more advanced reconstruction protocols whereby the characterization of the emitter topography is executed at multiple stages of the atom probe analysis. Third, we show advances in the development of an electrostatically driven reconstruction protocol which are expected to enable reconstruction based on experimental tip shapes.

The seemingly aberrant coiling of heteromorphic ammonoids suggests that they underwent more significant changes in hydrostatic properties throughout ontogeny than their planispiral counterparts. Such changes may have been responses to different selective pressures at different life stages. The hydrostatic properties of three species of Didymoceras (D. stevensoni, D. nebrascense, and D. cheyennense) were investigated by creating virtual 3D models at several stages during growth. These models were used to compute the conditions for neutral buoyancy, hydrostatic stability, orientation during life, and thrust angles (efficiency of directional movement). These properties suggest that Didymoceras and similar heteromorphs lived low-energy lifestyles with the ability to hover above the seafloor. The resultant static orientations yielded a downward-facing aperture in the hatchling and a horizontally facing aperture throughout most of the juvenile stage, before terminating in an upward direction at maturity. Relatively high hydrostatic stabilities would not have permitted the orientation of Didymoceras to be considerably modified with active locomotion. During the helical phase, Didymoceras would have been poorly suited for horizontal movement, yet equipped to pirouette about the vertical axis. Two stages throughout growth, however, would have enhanced lateral mobility: a juvenile stage just after the formation of the first bend in the shell and the terminal stage after completion of the U-shaped hook. These two more mobile phases in ontogeny may have improved juvenile dispersal potential and mate acquisition during adulthood, respectively. In general, life orientation and hydrostatic stability change more wildly for these aberrantly coiled ammonoids than their planispiral counterparts.

Specimen survivability is a primary concern to those who utilize atom probe tomography (APT) for materials analysis. The state-of-the-art in understanding survivability might best be described as common-sense application of basic physics principles to describe failure mechanisms. For example, APT samples are placed under near-failure mechanical-stress conditions, so reduction in the force required to initiate field evaporation must provide for higher survivability—a common sense explanation of survivability. However, the interplay of various analytical conditions (or instrumentation) and how they influence survivability (e.g., decreasing the applied evaporation field improves survivability), and which factors have more impact than others has not been studied. In this paper, we report on the systematic analysis of a material composed of a silicon-dioxide layer surrounded on two sides by silicon. In total, 261 specimens were fabricated and analyzed under a variety of conditions to correlate statistically significant survivability trends with analysis conditions and other specimen characteristics. The primary result suggests that, while applied field/force plays an obvious role in survivability for this material, the applied field alone does not predict survivability trends for silicon/silicon-dioxide interfaces. The rate at which ions are extracted from the specimen (both in terms of ions-per-pulse and pulse-frequency) has similar importance.