Innovative Makeshift Technique for Removing Ingested Rare Earth Magnets

Swallowing foreign bodies is common in pediatrics. However, ingestion of rare earth magnets, composed of a neodymium alloy with powerful attractive forces, pose unique risks to children. The attraction of the magnets to each other when positioned in separate areas of the intestinal tract can lead to bowel obstruction, perforation, fistula formation, or pressure necrosis. These significant complications have led NASPGHAN to offer guidance for their urgent removal in children. Upon medical presentation and determination of their position on x-ray, ingested magnets should be removed urgently before entering the small intestine to prevent severe adverse events.1,2 However, endoscopic location and removal can be challenging especially if the child has not been in a fasting state. We present a makeshift technique for easily removing magnetic foreign bodies in such a scenario

Changing the Shape of Sickle Cell Disease Treatment: A Hermeneutic Study of a Case that Changed a Family and a Medical Practice

This hermeneutic study analyzes a case of one family who chose to undergo two hematopoietic stem cell transplants for two of their four children affected with sickle cell disease (SCD) with full knowledge of the risks involved with curative therapy. This case had a life-changing impact on the family and on the medical practice of the physician who worked with them. As a result of this family, international treatment of early transplant for SCD has adopted different protocols. In this study, interviewing the mother in the family, the physician, and the transplant nurse, and analyzing the data hermeneutically brings us to a deeper understanding of how change occurs and its profound effect on lives and medical treatment.

Detection and Localization of Traffic Signals with GPS Floating Car Data and Random Forest

As Floating Car Data are becoming increasingly available, in recent years many research works focused on leveraging them to infer road map geometry, topology and attributes. In this paper, we present an algorithm, relying on supervised learning to detect and localize traffic signals based on the spatial distribution of vehicle stop points. Our main contribution is to provide a single framework to address both problems. The proposed method has been experimented with a one-month dataset of real-world GPS traces, collected on the road network of Mitaka (Japan). The results show that this method provides accurate results in terms of localization and performs advantageously compared to the OpenStreetMap database in exhaustivity. Among many potential applications, the output predictions may be used as a prior map and/or combined with other sources of data to guide autonomous vehicles

Determinants of research use in clinical decision making among physical therapists providing services post-stroke: a cross-sectional study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Despite evidence of the benefits of research use in post-acute stroke rehabilitation where compliance with clinical practice guidelines has been associated with functional recovery and patient satisfaction, the rate of reliance on the research literature in clinical decision making among physical therapists is low. More research examining factors that motivate physical therapists to consider research findings in neurological practice is needed to inform efforts to intervene. The objective of this study was to identify practitioner, organizational, and research characteristics associated with research use among physical therapists providing services post-stroke.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A cross-sectional mail survey of physical therapists providing services to people with stroke in Ontario, Canada was conducted. The survey questionnaire contained items to evaluate practitioner and organizational characteristics and perceptions of research considered to influence evidence-based practice (EBP), as well as the frequency of using research evidence in clinical decision making in a typical month. Ordinal regression was used to identify factors associated with research use.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The percentage of respondents reporting research use in clinical decision making 0 to 1, 2 to 5, or 6+ times in a typical month was 33.8%, 52.9%, and 13.3%, respectively (n = 263). Academic preparation in the principles of EBP, research participation, service as a clinical instructor, self-efficacy to implement EBP, a positive attitude towards research, perceived organizational support of research use, and Internet access to bibliographic databases at work were each associated with research use and placed in the final regression model. In the final model (n = 244), academic preparation in EBP, EBP self-efficacy, agreement that research findings are useful, and research participation each remained significantly associated with research use after adjusting for the effects of the other variables in the model.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>A third of therapists rarely use research evidence in clinical decision making. Education in the principles of EBP, EBP self-efficacy, a positive attitude towards research, and involvement in research at work may promote research use in neurological physical therapy practice. Future research is needed to confirm these findings and to determine the type of research participation that may promote research use.</p

Jean-Michel Guilcher

D’une discrétion exemplaire et d’une honnêteté scientifique sans faille, Jean-Michel Guilcher a réalisé patiemment, avec son épouse Hélène, et parfois ses enfants Yves, Naïk et Mône, une œuvre considérable qui force l’admiration. Ses travaux sur la danse traditionnelle sont d’une portée internationale et font autorité au sein de la communauté scientifique élargie (ethnologues, ethnochoréologues, ethnomusicologues, sociologues, historiens, danseurs, chorégraphes…). La pertinence de ses écrits,..

Jean-Michel Guilcher

D’une discrétion exemplaire et d’une honnêteté scientifique sans faille, Jean-Michel Guilcher a réalisé patiemment, avec son épouse Hélène, et parfois ses enfants Yves, Naïk et Mône, une œuvre considérable qui force l’admiration. Ses travaux sur la danse traditionnelle sont d’une portée internationale et font autorité au sein de la communauté scientifique élargie (ethnologues, ethnochoréologues, ethnomusicologues, sociologues, historiens, danseurs, chorégraphes…). La pertinence de ses écrits,..

Traffic signal detection from in-vehicle GPS speed profiles using functional data analysis and machine learning

International audienceThe increasing availability of large-scale Global Positioning System (GPS) data stemming from in-vehicle embedded terminal devices enables the design of methods deriving road network cartographic information from drivers' recorded traces. Some machine learning approaches have been proposed in the past to train automatic road network map inference, and recently this approach has been successfully extended to infer road attributes as well, such as speed limitation or number of lanes. In this paper, we address the problem of detecting traffic signals from a set of vehicle speed profiles, under a classification perspective. Each data instance is a speed versus distance plot depicting over a hundred profiles on a 100-meter-long road span. We proposed three different ways of deriving features: the first one relies on the raw speed measurements; the second one uses image recognition techniques; and the third one is based on functional data analysis. We input them into most commonly used classification algorithms and a comparative analysis demonstrated that a functional description of speed profiles with wavelet transforms seems to outperform the other approaches with most of the tested classifiers. It also highlighted that Random Forests yield an accurate detection of traffic signals, regardless of the chosen feature extraction method, while keeping a remarkably low confusion rate with stop signs