Plumbing Fixture Traps

Plumbing Pathogens: A Fixture in Hospitals and Homes

Practicing good hygiene is supposed to make you healthier, not sicker. However, a growing body of research shows that certain bacteria can thrive in household and hospital plumbing systems and may cause life-threatening infections among susceptible individuals after inhalation or ingestion. In this issue of EHP, Joseph Falkinham of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksbu...

Airway plumbing.

Basket, Flat Plumbing and Flat Plumbing Basket Numbers of Links

We define the basket number, the flat plumbing number and the flat plumbing basket number of a link. Then we provide some upperbounds for these plumbing numbers by using Seifert’s algorithm. We study the relation between these plumbing numbers and the genera of links.

Generic fixture design algorithms for minimal modular fixture toolkits

Fixturing, i.e. the process of immobilizing a work-piece for manufacturing or assembly operations, is a fundamental task in manufacturing. Fixtures can either be fabricated from scratch or assembled from a toolkit of modular components; the latter approach is termed modular xturing. Recently, many researchers have proposed generate and test xture design algorithms for minimal modular xture tool...

Plumbing carbon nanotubes.

Since their discovery, the possibility of connecting carbon nanotubes together like water pipes has been an intriguing prospect for these hollow nanostructures. The serial joining of carbon nanotubes in a controlled manner offers a promising approach for the bottom-up engineering of nanotube structures--from simply increasing their aspect ratio to making integrated carbon nanotube devices. To d...