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DrJamesSmith @YorkU Profile picture
DrJamesSmith @YorkU
@jasmith_yorku
Teaching hands-on renaissance engineering @LassondeSchool @YorkU. Research in engg pedagogy, human birth, embedded systems & legged robots. Not an HVAC expert.
Jan 1 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
That kid in BC with bird flu?

The details are awful.

"plasma exchange was performed daily from November 14 through November 16."

Three plasma exchanges. To fight off bird flu?!

nejm.org/doi/full/10.10… What are plasma exchanges? Looks like you have to hook up the patient to a blood exchange machine... and replace their blood.

For bird flu.

Think about it. Now think about why it's important to stop bird flu from transmitting in people.

rheumatology.org/patients/plasm…
Jun 12, 2024 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Well, a kid I know has just been diagnosed with #WhoopingCough.

In Toronto.

The parents had gone 2 their GP, suspecting what it was. The doctor said "don't worry about it... go home."

So they left.

Then, in the parking lot, they get a call.

It's the GP: "Uh, come back." "I think that we need to run the tests for whooping cough. I looked it up. It's spreading here in Ontario."

They went back to the GP's office.

The tests came back a few days later.

Whooping cough.

The kid is in isolation. So is the kid's sister.

Because the parents cared.
Jun 22, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Remember how universities said "don't worry, the air in our buildings is fine?" Yeah. Turns out they don't know.

At YorkU we had an engineering firm check out six of our buildings. Turns out that the HVAC systems don't work as assumed.

Like this broken CO2 sensor. The Stedman CO2 sensor reads 42.6ppm. It shouldn't read be I reviewed the engineering firm's reports and found flaws in both the reports and in YorkU's HVAC systems.

Not being an HVAC expert, I examined the reports from the perspective of my background in robotics, control system and instrumentation.

assets.nationbuilder.com/yufa/pages/785…
Apr 14, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
The reality is that the pandemic will continue for the foreseeable future.

For public schools, colleges and universities: this means planning for 2022-23 being another pandemic year.

What does this mean? Well, if you want to do it right you need to... 1. Upgrade ventilation and air filtration in Summer 2022.

That's right. You'll need to spend money on infrastructure. It will take away from the pet projects that you were planning on as resumé-padders and legacy-makers.

HEPA in all classrooms, labs and eating areas.
Apr 12, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Well, well, well. Isn't this interesting? Students must have realized that I was keeping tabs on pirated course material, so they uploaded to DIFFERENT school pages on #CourseHero.

In this case, #YorkU course material is on the #XUniversity page.

Clever little pirates. Course Hero pirated materia... Both my students and #CourseHero routinely ignore the footnotes in my material which explicitly state that they are not to be distributed outside the course. Not for distribution outsid...
Mar 26, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Shopping this morning. Most customers and employees were maskless. Shopping with Dentec ComfortAir respirator Shopping for hummus in a respirator certainly triggered a lot of people.

While you're here, check out my blog page on COVID-19 resources.

yorku.ca/professor/drsm…