Work of breathing Work of breathing Work of breathing (WOB) is the energy expended to inhale and exhale a breathing gas. It is usually expressed as work per unit volume, for example, joules/litre, or as a work rate (power), such as joules/min or equivalent units, as it is not particularly useful without a reference to volume or time. It can be calculated in terms of the pulmonary pressure multiplied by the change in pulmonary volume, or in terms of the oxygen consumption attributable to breathing. In a normal resting state the work of breathing constitutes about 5% of the total body oxygen consumption.
Information Bridge: Department of Energy Scientific and Technical Information and 1954, the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974, the Department of Energy Act of 1977, and the Energy Policy Act of 2005, all call for the dissemination of scientific and technical information (STI) to the public, especially information resulting from DOE and predecessor agency research and development R&D. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 states: "The Secretary, through the Office of Scientific and Technical Information, shall maintain within the Department publicly available collections of scientific and technical information resulting from research, development, demonstration, and commercial applications activities supported by the Department." Since 1947, OSTI and its predecessor organizations have helped