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Acceptability of the Hall Technique in New Zealand
No full textObjective: To investigate the acceptability of stainless steel crowns placed by dental therapists on children’s primary molars using the Hall Technique.Design: Mixed methods approach, using qualitative inductive analysis and quantitative analysis.Setting: Hawke’s Bay Community Oral Health Service Methods: One focus group was conducted and ten thirty-minute phone interviews were undertaken with parents of children who had previously had a stainless steel crown placed using the Hall Technique (over the period 1 December 2011 to 31 May 2012). An inductive approach was used to analyse the qualitative research data, and the information was arranged into several categories based on the key themes which arose. Children treated with the Hall Technique were asked immediately after treatment whether they had enjoyedtheir visit to the clinic that day.Results: Common themes were found with regard to appearance, pain, the procedure, and general opinions on acceptability. Nearly all (90%) of the childrenresponded positively about their visit to the clinic.Conclusion: There was a high degree of acceptance among both parents and children for stainless steel crown placement using the Hall Technique in this group
The spectacle of urban consumption:the role of urban art in the reconfiguration of the public sphere
No full textThe paper examines the spectacle of contemporary forms of advertising and product placements techniques in the context of urban environments (including the phenomenon of the so called ‘brand city’).This is an ‘over-exposed city’, to use Virilio’s terminology, a city penetrated by media and advertising, a topical manifestation of what Guy Debord called the ‘Society of the Spectacle’. The paper juxtaposes to the above well rehearsed critical scenarios an examination of several urban art projects that attempt to design an image of the city as a locus of convergence, creativity and citizenship. There is a powerful visual language at work in the contemporary city, one that operates beyond the phantasmagoria of consumption. Inspired by the Situationists’ intent to stimulate permanent social dynamics in the city through playful interventions based on integration between art and technology, such projects show the ability of individuals and social groups to appropriate and co-create urban space. It remains to be seen, though whether such playful interventions bring about new viable conceptions of the public sphere or, conversely, whether their impact is similar, in its ineffectuality, to that of the Situationist precursors
Categorisation of new classes of digital interaction
No full textThis article introduces a new concept, digital interactivity, through examining local digital culture; and video game culture is employed as a metaphor to interpret local digital culture. As a result, 'control-' and 'communication-based interaction are initiated, based on 'user to media' relationships. Based on the degree of physical interaction, 'liminal' and 'transitive' interactions are initiated. Less physical digital interaction is described as 'liminal' interaction and more physical digital interaction is described as 'transitive' interaction. These new classes of digital interaction can be applied to real-world examples, such as digital interactive installation artworks and video games.</p
The case for randomized controlled trials to assess the impact of clinical information systems
No full textThere is a persistent view of a significant minority in the medical informatics community that the randomized controlled trial (ROT) has a limited role to play in evaluating clinical information systems. A common reason voiced by skeptics is that these systems are fundamentally different from drug interventions, so the RCT is irrelevant. There is an urgent need to promote the use of RCTs, given the shift to evidence-based policy and the need to demonstrate cost-effectiveness of these systems. The authors suggest returning to first principles and argue that what is required is clarity about how to match methods to evaluation questions. The authors address common concerns about RCTs, and the extent to which they are fallacious, and also discuss the challenges of conducting RCTs in informatics and alternative study designs when randomized trials are infeasible. While neither a perfect nor universal evaluation method, RCTs form an important part of an evaluator's toolkit.</p
Telehealthcare for asthma:a Cochrane review
No full textBACKGROUND:Telehealthcare has the potential to provide care for long-term conditions that are increasingly prevalent, such as asthma. We conducted a systematic review of studies of telehealthcare interventions used for the treatment of asthma to determine whether such approaches to care are effective.METHODS:We searched the Cochrane Airways Group Specialised Register of Trials, which is derived from systematic searches of bibliographic databases including CENTRAL (the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials), MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature) and PsycINFO, as well as other electronic resources. We also searched registers of ongoing and unpublished trials. We were interested in studies that measured the following outcomes: quality of life, number of visits to the emergency department and number of admissions to hospital. Two reviewers identified studies for inclusion in our meta-analysis. We extracted data and used fixed effect modelling for the meta-analyses.RESULTS:We identified 21 randomized controlled trials for inclusion in our analysis. The methods of telehealthcare intervention these studies investigated were the telephone and video- and Internet-based models of care. Meta-analysis did not show a clinically important improvement in patients' quality of life, and there was no significant change in the number of visits to the emergency department over 12 months. There was a significant reduction in the number of patients admitted to hospital once or more over 12 months (risk ratio 0.25 [95% confidence interval 0.09 to 0.66]).INTERPRETATION:We found no evidence of a clinically important impact on patients' quality of life, but telehealthcare interventions do appear to have the potential to reduce the risk of admission to hospital, particularly for patients with severe asthma. Further research is required to clarify the cost-effectiveness of models of care based on telehealthcare
Mapping the biomass of Bornean tropical rain forest from remotely sensed data
No full textThe biomass and biomass dynamics of forests are major uncertainties in our understanding of tropical environments. Remote sensing is often the only practical means of acquiring information on forest biomass but has not always been used successfully. Here the conventional approaches to the estimation of forest biomass from remotely sensed data were evaluated relative to techniques based on the application of artificial neural networks. Together these approaches were used to estimate and map the biomass of tropical forests in north-eastern Borneo from Landsat TM data. The neural networks were found to be particularly suited to the application. A basic multilayer perceptron network, for example, provided estimates of biomass that were strongly correlated with those measured in the field (r= 0.80). Moreover, these estimates were more strongly correlated with biomass than those derived from 230 conventional vegetation indices, including the widely used normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI)
Diversity oriented syntheses of fused pyrimidines designed as potential antifolates
No full textDiversity oriented syntheses of some furo[2,3-d]pyrimidines and pyrrolo[2,3-d] pyrimidines related to folate, guanine, and diaminopyrimidine-containing drugs have been developed for the preparation of potential anti-infective and anticancer compounds. Amide couplings and Suzuki couplings on the basic heterocyclic templates were used, in the latter case yields being especially high using aromatic trifluoroborates as the coupling partner. A new ring synthesis of 6-aryl-substituted deazaguanines bearing 2-alkylthio groups has been developed using Michael addition of substituted nitrostyrenes. Diversity at C-2 has been introduced by oxidation and substitution with a range of amino nucleophiles. The chemical reactivity of these pyrrolopyrimidines with respect to both electrophilic substitution in ring synthesis and nucleophilic substitution for diversity is discussed. Several compounds were found to inhibit pteridine reductases from the protozoan parasites Trypanosoma brucei and Leishmania major at the micromolar level and to inhibit the growth of Trypanosma brucei brucei in cell culture at higher concentrations. From these results, significant structural features required for inhibition of this important drug target enzyme have been identified.</p
Using a touch screen computer to support relationships between people with dementia and caregivers
No full textProgressive and irreversible cognitive impairments affect the ability of people with dementia to communicate and interact with caregivers. This places a burden on caregivers to initiate and manage interactions to the extent that they may avoid all but essential communication. CIRCA is an interactive, multimedia touch screen system that contains a wide range of stimuli to prompt reminiscing. The intention is that people with dementia and caregivers will explore CIRCA together, using the recollections sparked by the media as the basis for conversations. This paper reports an evaluation of the utility of CIRCA looking particularly at whether CIRCA can meet the needs of both people with dementia and caregivers to engage in mutually satisfying interactions. The findings confirm that people with dementia can use the touch screen system and that the contents prompt them to reminisce. The system also supports caregivers to interact with people with dementia as more equal participants in the conversation. The results suggest that interacting with the touch screen system is engaging and enjoyable for people with dementia and caregivers alike and provides a supportive interaction environment that positively benefits their relationships. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.</p
E-health::implementation and evaluation research in Scotland - a scoping exercise
No full textWe searched the National Research Register (NRR) to identify funded research in Scotland (or in collaboration with a Scottish partner) in the area of implementation and evaluation of e-health services. A total of 61 research projects were identified which had been funded since 1 January 1995. These projects shared almost 7 pound million of funding (1 pound is $1.9 or (sic)1.3), the main funding sources being the Scottish Government and the European Union. Based on the projects reviewed, the majority of e-health research in Scotland was being conducted within the communication systems domain. Most of the research was being conducted at a single centre: only 14 studies (23%) were multisite. Future collaboration between these researchers, involving larger scale funding bids, may increase the quantity of e-health implementation and evaluation research.</p
Mapping sub-pixel proportional land cover with AVHRR imagery
No full textA problem with NOAA AVHRR imagery is that the intrinsic scale of spatial variation in land cover in the U.K. is usually finer than the scale of sampling imposed by the image pixels. The result is that most NOAA AVHRR pixels contain a mixture of land cover types (sub-pixel mixing). Three techniques for mapping the sub-pixel proportions of land cover classes in the New Forest, U.K. were compared: (i) artificial neural networks (ANN); (ii) mixture modelling; and (iii) fuzzy c-means classification. NOAA AVHRR imagery and SPOT HRV imagery, both for 28 June 1994, were obtained. The SPOT HRV images were classified using the maximum likelihood method, and used to derive the 'known' sub-pixel proportions of each land cover class for each NOAA AVHRR pixel. These data were then used to evaluate the predictions made (using the three techniques and the NOAA AVHRR imagery) in terms of the amount of information provided, the accuracy with which that information is provided, and the ease of implementation. The ANN was the most accurate technique, but its successful implementation depended on accurate co-registration and the availability of a training data set. Supervised fuzzy c-means classification was slightly more accurate than mixture modelling.</p
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