Overview

The UAB Hospital’s Transfusion Services (aka “Blood Bank”) is the largest of the clinical laboratories with 40+ employees working under Connie Langley, MT (ASCP), laboratory supervisor. They staff the main laboratory in the Spain-Wallace building, the satellite laboratory next to the North Pavilion 7th floor operating rooms, and the Highlands Hospital Blood Bank a mile away. In addition, we are fortunate to have a transfusion safety officer (TSO), Ashton Kornbrust, BSN, RN, OCN, a previously Oncology nurse. Ashton now serves as the main liaison between the Blood Bank and the clinical providers of both hospitals to ensure safe transfusion practices. Our “team” works closely with clinical colleagues from many departments regarding many clinical questions such as appropriateness of transfusions and the need for specialized products such as phenotype-matched PRBCs, crossmatched platelets, coagulation factors, etc. As the only level 1 adult trauma center in central Alabama, UAB treats more than 4,000 trauma victims each year, often with life-threatening hemorrhage. A massive transfusion protocol (MTP) has been in place for almost 10 years to ensure emergent release of whole blood, PRBCs, plasma and/or platelets for exsanguinating patients. Dr. Kerby, division director of acute care surgery, in a story in al.com in May of 2017, granted the improved survival of massively injured patients to the availability of a MTP: 'They walked out alive': As Birmingham area gun violence soars, so do survival rates. Other patients who depend on our blood products routinely are those with sickle cell anemia, cancer, or undergoing major surgery such as cardiovascular or solid organ transplants.

Our Faculty

Katayoun Fomani, MD
Associate Professor, Laboratory Medicine

Jose Lima, MD
Assistant Professor, Laboratory Medicine
Medical Director, Therapeutic Apheresis

Marisa Marques, MD
Professor, Division Director, Laboratory Medicine
Medical Director, Apheresis Collection Facility

Rance C. Siniard, MD
Assistant Professor, Laboratory Medicine

Nirupama Singh, MD
Assistant Professor, Laboratory Medicine

Elizabeth Staley, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor, Laboratory Medicine

Residency/Fellowship Training

Two residents rotate in our service for 4 consecutive months and alternate primary coverage of Blood Bank or Apheresis. Each resident works with a separate Attending from Monday to Friday, while the BB/Transfusion Medicine fellow oversees the training of both residents and work alongside them. On weekdays, all trainees (including rotating medical students), Attendings and the TSO get together for Morning Report when night calls and all ongoing patients’ needs are discussed as a group. At this meeting, the residents also learn how to maintain a proper blood inventory, how to evaluate and manage patients with abnormal bleeding or presumed transfusion reactions, how to deal with risk management issues, etc. Every week, residents and fellow also attend rotation-specific lectures by UAB faculty or outside guests. In addition, they are welcome to attend multidisciplinary conferences to complement their training in our department. Our fellows are encouraged to pursue unique training opportunities that match with their future career interests, such as additional training in cell therapy or Hematopathology.

Our Testing

The 60,000+ tests performed in the Transfusion Services are mainly intended to prepare patients to be transfused (blood type and antibody screen). Other tests aid in the investigation of hemolysis, as well as hemolytic disease of the fetus and newborn. We also evaluate for the possibility of a hemolytic transfusion reaction. We utilize automated and manual methodology depending on the circumstances of the patient and the physician order. For pre-operative patients, we have a UAB-specific maximum surgical blood order schedule (MSBOS) to guide appropriateness of orders. The MSBOS is an example of collaboration between Pathology, Anesthesiology and Surgery that ensures proper laboratory utilization.

The Transfusion Services also stores and dispenses blood products - PRBCs, plasma, apheresis platelets and cryoprecipitate as well as blood derivatives such as Rh immunoglobulin and coagulation factors, for inpatients and outpatients. Annually, approximately 36,000 units of PRBCs, 12,000+ units of plasma, around 8,500 units of platelets, and more than 2,000 cryoprecipitate units are transfused to our patients. While critically ill patients in the 8 adult intensive care units receive approximately one third of the total units of PRBCs per year, other patients who depend on such transfusions include those with cancer (especially leukemia) and sickle cell anemia. In order to optimize the utilization of PRBCs, UAB has had a patient blood management (PBM) for the past 12 years, and restrictive transfusions are the standard of care with individualized decisions in every case.

Contact Us

Marisa B. Marques, MD
Professor and Division Director, Laboratory Medicine
Director, Blood Bank/Transfusion Medicine Fellowship
The University of Alabama at Birmingham
619 19th Street South, P230K
Birmingham, AL 35233
mmarques@uabmc.edu

Blood Bank/Transfusion Medicine Fellowship information:
Program Coordinator
Telephone: (205) 975-3450 Fax: (205) 975-PATH
E-mail: path-fellowships@uabmc.edu
Website: https://www.uab.edu/medicine/pathology/education/fellowship-program

The development of new energy sources is one of the main tasks of the 21st century, as energy requirements increase, resources of coal, oil and gas decline, and climate change accelerates. Hydrogen technology is particularly important in this regard. Fuel cells allow electricity to be produced directly from hydrogen and oxygen. Their only waste product is water. The cells contained in our sets can do both: generate electricity and produce hydrogen. They allow all stages of the solar hydrogen cycle to be clearly explained through simple experiments. The laboratory outlines a simple principle, which works on small and large scales, and in doing so conserves resources and helps the environment. Numerous experiments and suggestions for using the equipment in the experiments can be found. The De Lorenzo GREEN KIT consisted smaller solar panels and wind turbines. It also had a small DC fan and motor. Generated energy can be directly coupled with these equipment and observe renewable energy being put to use. This system communicated through a USB cable with the LVDAC-EMS software that runs on the computer. This software can be used to obtain real-time data from the system and save/export data for further analysis.

A representative experiment uses an infrared camera to capture the two-dimensional temperature profile of a microfluidic heat exchanger for energy efficiency analysis. This experiment introduces students to the techniques of infrared imaging.  Its subject of analysis is a microsystem instrumented with sensors and hosting microfluidic ‘circuits’ carrying heated liquids. The fluid flow can also be imaged with a visible imaging camera to make videos of the flow, and quantify flow characteristics. This shows the complementary and supplemental information provided by imaging in two spectral regions. Such microsystems are of technical interest for lab-on-a-chip technologies which seek to provide miniature, sustainable implementations of fluidic processes that are traditionally implemented on laboratory benches, or pilot plants at much larger scale. These systems will reduce consumption of materials, generation of waste, and use of energy.

Have you ever wondered...

Welcome to the world inside the medical laboratory, a world where clinical laboratory scientists and other laboratory professionals find answers to these questions and much more.

The Clinical Laboratory Sciences program is committed to providing a high-quality education to prepare students with a solid educational background and a set of skills translatable to a variety of healthcare settings. Visit the UAB Graduate School catalog for the curriculum and course descriptions for this program.

Humans may have gotten one step closer to figuring out how to make wormholes thanks to fascinating new research.

That's at least according to Hatim Saleh, a research fellow at the University of Bristol and co-founder of the startup DotQuantum, who claims to have invented what he calls "counterportation," which "provides the first-ever practical blueprint for creating in the lab a wormhole that verifiably bridges space," according to a statement.

Published in the journal Quantum Science and Technology, Saleh's research focused on a novel quantum computing technique that should — at least on paper — be able to reconstitute a small object across space "without any particles crossing."

While it's an exciting prospect, realizing his vision will require a lot more time and effort — not to mention next-generation quantum computers that haven't been designed, let alone built yet. That is if it's even possible at all.

Counterportation can be achieved, the study suggests, by the construction of a small "local wormhole" in a lab — and as the press release notes, plans are already underway to actually build the groundbreaking technology described in the paper.

While it sounds a lot like teleportation, Saleh noted that it's not quite the same thing.

"While counterportation achieves the end goal of teleportation, namely disembodied transport, it remarkably does so without any detectable information carriers traveling across," the quantum expert said.

The concept relies on a unique aspect of quantum physics called quantum entanglement, which allows "entirely separate quantum particles" to "be correlated without ever interacting," as University of Bristol optical communication systems professor John Rarity explained in the statement.

"This correlation at a distance can then be used to transport quantum information (qubits) from one location to another without a particle having to traverse the space, creating what could be called a traversable wormhole," he added.

To make counterportation a reality, however, is going to take a whole lot more research — and future breakthroughs in the quantum computing field.

"If counterportation is to be realized, an entirely new type of quantum computer has to be built: an exchange-free one, where communicating parties exchange no particles," said Saleh.

Unfortunately, these machines are still a distant dream as "no one yet knows how to build" them, Saleh admitted.

When and if this exchange-free quantum computer is built, per the researcher, it could prove revolutionary in the field.

"By contrast to large-scale quantum computers that promise remarkable speed-ups, which no one yet knows how to build, the promise of exchange-free quantum computers of even the smallest scale is to make seemingly impossible tasks — such as counterportation — possible, by incorporating space in a fundamental way alongside time," Saleh boasted.

While this definitely sounds like something out of the plot of the 2014 film "Interstellar," reconstituting small objects by leveraging the weirdness of the quantum world is an exciting proposition whether it's a long shot or not.

More on wormholes: Objects We Thought Were Black Holes May Actually Be Wormholes, Scientists Say

Welcome to the University of New Haven, a vibrant and welcoming community in the heart of New England.

Within our distinctive colleges and schools, students find dynamic, responsive, engaging, and pragmatic paths of discovery across a wide variety of programs and disciplines. There are more than 100 academic programs to choose from, all grounded in a longstanding commitment to collaborative, interdisciplinary, project-based learning.

Our colleges and schools are at the center of University life, and that’s where we lay the foundation for future scientists, artists, entrepreneurs, forensic psychologists, doctors, engineers, programmers, attorneys, and scholars – soon-to-be global citizens who, before long, will take their places in the world.

Your success starts here.

A group of farmers is taking part in a four-year project to explore the impact of bale grazing on forage quality and soil health.

The Innovative Farmers field lab will fill a research gap: to date, there have been no published, UK-based trials to quantify the practice, which involves outwintering on bales rolled out within a paddock management system similar to mob-grazing.

We speak to four of the six farmers to find out about their experiences of bale grazing so far.

See also: FW Awards 2022: Mixed Farmer of the Year finalists

FAI Farms, Oxfordshire

Annie Rayner and Silas Hedley-Lawrence © MAG/Judith Tooth

Bale grazing is in its fourth year at FAI Farms, a 567ha (1,400-acre) organic farm on medium heavy clay in the floodplain of the River Thames.

“Planning is key – I’m doing this now for next winter,” says farm manager Silas Hedley-Lawrence.

He is calculating feed requirements and plotting the layout of grazing cells for daily moves using AgriNet software.

He maps 160 cells of 0.5ha on a block of parkland, each with five round bales of hay made from the floodplain meadows.

“If it’s very wet, the cattle might get 1ha instead, or we might move them more frequently,” Silas explains.

The previous system of winter housing cost £2.40 a cow and calf a day (calculated before exact high inflation). He costs bale grazing at £1.04 a cow and calf a day – a saving of £1.36.

For a 100-cow herd and an average housing period of 180 days, the overall saving is £24,480. And for growing stock, the daily saving is even greater, at £1.49 a head a day.

“It’s a huge cost saving,” he says. “We’ve also seen massively improved diversity in the sward, and infiltration rates have gone from more than two hours four years ago to less than 30 seconds now.”

Gowbarrow Hall Farm, Lake District

Sam and Claire Beaumont © Sarah Alderton

Claire Beaumont farms 186ha (460 acres) at Gowbarrow Hall Farm, of which 156ha (385 acres) is a mix of meadows, rough grazing and wood pasture grazed by 63 head of Shorthorn cattle.

Last winter, following a small trial in a rough field the previous year, 34 bales were set out in a 5ha (12-acre) field that had been rested for 10 months.

They fed 32 cattle for 34 days in February/March, forming a bridge between winter and the growing season.

“I was quite surprised by how little hay you lose – about 10% the cows don’t eat – and this gets rotted down,” says Claire.

“After bale grazing, there were some areas of poaching, but we saw this as an opportunity for seeding.

“The field is not species rich, but there are definite changes.” She plans to use species-rich hay from another farm to introduce more diversity into the sward for bale grazing next winter.

Baston Hall, Malvern Hills

Rosanna and Ian Horsley © MAG/Michael Priestley

Cows bale-graze with calves at foot at Baston Hall, where Ian Horsley has completed his second winter trialling the system.

He runs 18 pedigree Aberdeen Angus cows and followers and 45 sheep on 36ha (90 acres) of grazing.

In 2021-22, he ran 14 cows and 10 calves (14.2 livestock units (LU)) on 1.4ha (3.5 acres) for 43 days.

They then bale-grazed a second area for 34 days in March/April and used a total of 90 bales across the two systems.

Despite a wet December, the ground recovered, and Ian expanded the area of bale grazing in the second winter, to 80 25x25m cells for 13 cows and calves, and seven yearlings – a 45% increase.

These animals used 140 bales over 94 days at a cost of £22.50/day, or £1.09/LU a day, compared with £2.82/LU a day when housed.

“This time, snow in March was challenging and made the area very wet, very quickly,” he says.

“Sections of the field have been damaged – parts of 10 cells out of 80, so about 2%. It’s not too bad, but there’s room for improvement.”

Whitriggs Farm, Scottish Borders

Stuart Mitchell © Angus Findlay

Bale grazing has resulted in big savings for Stuart Mitchell, now in his fourth year of the system.

His fittest 60 cows winter on the hill with one bale/day, while 40 bulling heifers and first-calved heifers outwinter on lower land on the same system.

He costs housing 140 cows for six months at £18 a cow a week at a total of £60,480.

By contrast, outwintering 100 cows at £4.50/day and housing 40 for four months costs a total of £23,760 – a saving of £36,720, or £262 a cow.

And rather than using four hours of labour a day, the system requires just one.

By mob-grazing through the summer on herbal leys, hay can be made from the 405ha (1,000-acre) organic farm’s permanent pasture. Calves are weaned before the cows go on the hill.

“The cows eat 50% hay, 50% grass, and if they go on the hill in good condition, they come back off OK, five days before calving,” says Stuart.

“They have to cope with the system and get back in-calf within six weeks, no excuses.”

The four farmers were speaking at Groundswell (28-29 June)