The development of a new measure of quality of life for children with congenital cardiac disease

The purpose of the study was to develop a questionnaire measuring health-related R1 quality of life for children and adolescents with congenital heart disease, the ConQol, that would have both clinical and research applications. We describe here the process of construction of a questionnaire, the piloting and the development of a weighted scoring system, and data on the psychometric performance of the measure in a sample of 640 children and young people recruited via 6 regional centres for paediatric cardiology from across the United Kingdom. The ConQol has two versions, one designed for children aged from 8 to 11 years, and the other for young people aged from 12 to 16 years. Initial findings suggest that it is a valid and reliable instrument, is acceptable to respondents, and is simple to administer in both a research and clinical context

Usefulness of standard plasma coagulation tests in the management of perioperative coagulopathic bleeding: is there any evidence?

Standard laboratory coagulation tests (SLTs) such as prothrombin time/international normalized ratio or partial thromboplastin time are frequently used to assess coagulopathy and to guide haemostatic interventions. However, this has been challenged by numerous reports, including the current European guidelines for perioperative bleeding management, which question the utility and reliability of SLTs in this setting. Furthermore, the arbitrary definition of coagulopathy (i.e. SLTs are prolonged by more than 1.5-fold) has been questioned. The present study aims to review the evidence for the usefulness of SLTs to assess coagulopathy and to guide bleeding management in the perioperative and massive bleeding setting. Medline was searched for investigations using results of SLTs as a means to determine coagulopathy or to guide bleeding management, and the outcomes (i.e. blood loss, transfusion requirements, mortality) were reported. A total of 11 guidelines for management of massive bleeding or perioperative bleeding and 64 studies investigating the usefulness of SLTs in this setting were identified and were included for final data synthesis. Referenced evidence for the usefulness of SLTs was found in only three prospective trials, investigating a total of 108 patients (whereby microvascular bleeding was a rare finding). Furthermore, no data from randomized controlled trials support the use of SLTs. In contrast, numerous investigations have challenged the reliability of SLTs to assess coagulopathy or guide bleeding management. There is actually no sound evidence from well-designed studies that confirm the usefulness of SLTs for diagnosis of coagulopathy or to guide haemostatic therap

DatAR: Your brain, your data, on your desk - A research proposal

We present a research proposal that investigates the use of 3D representations in Augmented Reality (AR) to allow neuroscientists to explore literature they wish to understand for their own scientific purposes. Neuroscientists need to identify potential real-life experiments they wish to perform that provide the most information for their field with the minimum use of limited resources. This requires understanding both the already known relationships among concepts and those that have not yet been discovered. Our assumption is that by providing overviews of the correlations among concepts through the use of linked data, these will allow neuroscientists to better understand the gaps in their own literature and more quickly identify the most suitable experiments to carry out. We will identify candidate visualizations and improve upon these for a specific information need. We describe our planned prototype 3D AR implementation and directions we intend to explore

Suppression of Implanted MDA-MB 231 Human Breast Cancer Growth in Nude Mice by Dietary Walnut

Walnuts contain components that may slow cancer growth including omega 3 fatty acids, phytosterols, polyphenols, carotenoids, and melatonin. A pilot study was performed to determine whether consumption of walnuts could affect growth of MDA-MB 231 human breast cancers implanted into nude mice. Tumor cells were injected into nude mice that were consuming an AIN-76A diet slightly modified to contain 10% corn oil. After the tumors reached 3 to 5 mm diameter, the diet of one group of mice was changed to include ground walnuts, equivalent to 56 g (2 oz) per day in humans. The tumor growth rate from Day 10, when tumor sizes began to diverge, until the end of the study of the group that consumed walnuts (2.9 ± 1.1 mm3/day; mean ± standard error of the mean) was significantly less (P \u3e 0.05, t-test of the growth rates) than that of the group that did not consume walnuts (14.6 ± 1.3 mm 3 /day). The eicosapentaenoic and docosahexaenoic acid fractions of the livers of the group that consumed walnuts were significantly higher than that of the group that did not consume walnuts. Tumor cell proliferation was decreased, but apoptosis was not altered due to walnut consumption. Further work is merited to investigate applications to cancer in humans

Rebranding Dhea Bordir sebagai Upaya Meningkatkan Brand Awareness

Dhea Bordir is a fashion company with a product that is focusing in kebaya product either traditional kebaya or contemporary kebaya. Dhea Bordir founded in 1997 by Dewi Asia Arifin in Sidoarjo, East Java. Until 2015 Dhea Bordir still do not have a consistent brand identity that can representing Dhea Bordir product. In conducting promotional activities, Dhea Bordir only depend on mouth-to-mouth promotion. Based on the problem has been discussed, So the formulation problems of research is How to do rebranding Dhea Bordir to increase the brand awareness. The problems that will be discussed in this research was he concept of design and its application in rebranding and promotion media which covering; brand identity, packaging, and Prints promotional media wich including catalogue and brochure and also website promotion

An Interactive Multimedia Business Game

The playing of computer-based business games has changed little with recent technological improvements. Teams make decisions which are written down on paper and handed to a tutor who then has to enter these into the computer. To make it a richer and more real-life experience we have brought a business simulation into a multimedia environment. In order to create a sense of the passing of time the simulation is continuous, and players can enter input values throughout the game. Important parameters, such as product sales, are displayed as continuously updated graphs. Background information such as news items is provided in multimedia form. Players also have direct access to online tools, such as spreadsheets, from the game environment. We describe the prototype built to illustrate our approach

Structured Multimedia Authoring

Authoring context sensitive, interactive multimedia presentations is much more complex than authoring either purely audiovisual applications or text. Interactions among media objects need to be described as a set of spatio-temporal relationships that account for synchronous and asynchronous interactions, as well as on-demand linking behavior. This article considers the issues that need to be addressed by an authoring environment. We begin with a partitioning of concerns based on seven classes of authoring problems. We then describe a selection of multimedia authoring environments within four different authoring paradigms: structured, timeline, graph and scripting. We next provide observations and insights into the authoring process and argue that the structured paradigm provides the most useful framework for presentation authoring. We close with an example application of the structured multimedia authoring paradigm in the context of our own structure-based system GRiNS