A standardized and safe method of sterile field maintenance during intra-operative horizontal plane fluoroscopy

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Intra-operative fluoroscopy for orthopaedic procedures frequently involves imaging in the horizontal plane, which requires the lower portion of the C-arm (x-ray tube) to be rotated from an unsterile zone (beneath the table) into the sterile field. To protect the integrity of the sterile field the C-arm must be draped repeatedly throughout the surgical case. The current, un-standardized, practice employs draping procedures which violate the Association of peri-Operative Registered Nurses (AORN) Standards and Recommended Practices, waste time and material, and pose an increased risk for surgical site infection.</p> <p>Presentation of the hypothesis</p> <p>Use of a novel sterile C-arm drape (C-armor) that maintains the integrity of the sterile field, will improve operating room efficiency and reduce surgical site infection risk factors. This reduction in risk factors may potentially reduce surgical site infections in orthopaedic surgical cases requiring repeated horizontal x-ray imaging.</p> <p>Testing the Hypothesis</p> <p>Savings in time and material and the reduction in surgical site infection risk factors afforded by using C-armor are intuitive to those skilled in the practice of orthopaedic surgery. Testing for a reduction in the number of microorganisms introduced to the surgical site by improved C-arm draping would be challenging due to the multiple confounding factors during a surgical operation. Determination of an absolute reduction in surgical site infections may be possible, but will require accounting for many confounding variables and a large study sample in order to achieve statistical significance.</p> <p>Implications of the Hypothesis</p> <p>Improved intraoperative workflow, healthcare savings and a reduction in surgical site infection risk factors will be achieved by utilizing a standardized and safe method of sterile field maintenance during intra-operative horizontal plane fluoroscopy.</p

Planning-based Social Partners for Children with Autism

This paper describes the design and implementation of a planning-based socially intelligent agent built to help young children with Autism Spectrum Conditions acquire social communication skills. We explain how planning technology allowed us to satisfy agent’s design requirements that we identified through our consultations with children and carers and through a review of best practices for autism intervention.We discuss the design principles implemented, the engineering challenges faced and the lessons learned from building our pedagogical agent. We conclude by presenting substantial experimental results concerning the agent’s efficacy

Using k-anonymization for registry data: pitfalls and alternatives

We describe an applied study of ICT students' employment in Estonia based on data from two national registries. The study offered an opportunity to compare results from both k-anonymised data as well as those from the novel Sharemind platform for privacy-preserving statistical computing, which offers a way to use confidential data for research without loss of information. Comparison of results using k-anonymized and lossless data indicate substantial differences in estimates of students' employment rates. The results illustrate, on the basis of a real-world study, how the effects of k-anonymization can lead to considerable bias in estimates. While privacy-preserving computing does entail inconveniences because original microdata is not revealed to the statistician, this can be offset by greater confidence in the results

Studies on the embryology, ecology and evolution of sea turtles in the Eastern Mediterranean

1-) The temperature of sea turtle nests in the Eastern Mediterranean was between 24 and 35 "C and rose by up to 10 "C during incubation. 2-) The mean incubation temperature can be used for estimating the incubation period but provides a poor prediction of sex ratio. 3-) The mean temperature during the middle third of the incubation period was closely correlated with the percent sex ratio. 4-) There was a female dominated sex ratio among the 22 nests and only one loggerhead turtle nest showed less than a 50 % female sex ratio. 5-) There was a consistent temperature difference within the nest with top eggs warmer, bottom eggs cooler and middle ones intermediate. Therefore the majority of hatchlings 11'0111 [he top level in nests were females and those from the bottom level were predominantly males. 6-) Temperature differences within the nest also influenced the rate of development; the greater the difference in temperature between top and bottom the longer the time required to complete hatching of all embryos of the nest. The hatching intervals of green turtle nests were shorter than those at loggerhead turtle nests. Temperature variation between top and bottom of nests was low within green turtle nests. In general, a 1 "C temperature difference within the clutch caused a 4 day range in both hatching and emergence of hatchlings. 7-) Since the temperature within the nest and between the nests was so variable, sand air or sea water temperatures gave a poor prediction of the temperature of a nest and therefore the sex ratio. 8-) Although the predation pattern of sea turtle nests varied in relation to nest age, this predation can be reduced by screening the nest with mesh grids.9-) lnundation was one of the main abiotic factors lowering the hatching success on the beaches. Hatching success can be increased by relocating the nests to a safer area on the night of laying 10-) The mean grain sizes of sand ranged from 0.49 to 2.20 phi(<!»on 10 beaches but hatching success was not related to mean grain size of sand on the beaches. 11-) Simple embryonic staging of Mediterranean sea turtles was developed after measuring Cl set of selected morphological characteristics. The frequency of gross abnormalities among the samples was also calculated. Most common abnormalities were supernumerary and subnumerary scutes, albinos, head and jaw abnormalities and twinning l2-) The heavy metal concentrations III the tissues (yolk, liver and eggshell) of loggerhead turtle eggs and hatchlings were analysed. The concentrations of mercury, cadmium, lead, iron and copper were highest in the liver, while zinc concentrations were highest in the yolk. The concentrations of metals were similar on different beaches, except for lead concentrations in the eggshells, which varied between sites. 13 -) The genetic structure of loggerhead turtle samples from Cyprus exhibited haplotype B and green turtle samples haplotype XIII. No additional haplotypes were found. The presence of only single haplotypes suggests little variation in genetics within the Mediterranean and that these population were recently established by a small number of immigrants from the Atlantic

Sex ratio estimations of Chelonia mydas hatchlings at Samandağ Beach, Turkey

Samandağ Beach, an important nesting location for endangered green turtles (Chelonia mydas), is located at the most eastern part of the Mediterranean in Turkey. Hatchling sex ratio can be one of the key factors for green turtle protection, which is under the threat of global climate change. In this study, sex ratios of hatchlings were estimated by histological examination of dead hatchlings (n = 190) and by nest temperatures (n = 14) at Samandağ Beach between the 2003 and 2007 nesting seasons. The histological examination of dead C. mydas hatchlings and temperature-recorded nests indicated a female-biased sex ratio on Samandağ Beach. By histological examination, top and bottom levels of nests were recorded as 94% and 64% of females. Sex ratios during the middle third of the incubation period ranged from 39% to 97% for females with a mean of 74%. Distance from the sea was correlated with the middle third of incubation temperature (r = –0.604, P = 0.022) and female ratio (r = –0.573, P = 0.032). While nest temperatures and nest parameters such as hatching success, clutch size, nest distance from the sea and from vegetation, nest depth, and the day of emergence were not found significantly different among years (P > 0.05), incubation duration was found significantly different among years (P < 0.05). The results showed a female-dominated sex ratio by both histology and nest temperature. The knowledge of hatchling sex ratios provides information on demographic parameters, and coupled with appropriate conservation measures this can make important contributions to studies of climate change effects on green sea turtle populations. © TÜBİTAK

AI in Education needs interpretable machine learning: Lessons from Open Learner Modelling

Interpretability of the underlying AI representations is a key raison d'\^{e}tre for Open Learner Modelling (OLM) -- a branch of Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) research. OLMs provide tools for 'opening' up the AI models of learners' cognition and emotions for the purpose of supporting human learning and teaching. Over thirty years of research in ITS (also known as AI in Education) produced important work, which informs about how AI can be used in Education to best effects and, through the OLM research, what are the necessary considerations to make it interpretable and explainable for the benefit of learning. We argue that this work can provide a valuable starting point for a framework of interpretable AI, and as such is of relevance to the application of both knowledge-based and machine learning systems in other high-stakes contexts, beyond education.Comment: presented at 2018 ICML Workshop on Human Interpretability in Machine Learning (WHI 2018), Stockholm, Swede

Palvetest kontrastiivselt eesti ja prantsuse keeles

http://www.ester.ee/record=b4490320*es

Psychometric properties of the self-report and informant-rated versions of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire

Käesolev magistritöö on osa suuremast projektist, mille eesmärgiks on kohandada laste ja noorukite psüühikahäireid skriinivate testide (Tugevuste ja nõrkuste küsimustik (The strengths and difficulties questionnaire), Achenbachi küsimustik, Child behavior checklist, Youth self-report questionnaire, Teacher Report Form) kohandamine Eesti oludele. Magistritöö eesmärgiks on uurida tugevuste ja raskuste küsimustiku (TRK) psühhomeetrilisi omadusi. Valimisse kuulus 2350 last, neist 370 kuulus kliinilisse, 1980 normgruppi. Eesti laste tulemused nii enesekohastes testides kui vanemate hinnangul olid veidi madalamad kui Suurbritannias. Originaalküsimustiku viiefaktoriline struktuur ei leidnud kinnitava faktoranalüüsi tulemustes täielikku kinnitust. Reliaablusnäitajad olid nii enesekohaste- kui vanemate ja õpetajate küsimustike puhul head. Üldvalimi enesekohasel küsimustikul esines üsna hea eristusvõime, kuid prosotsiaalsuse skaala ei eristanud psüühikahäirega lapsi tervetest

Influence of Situational Context on Language Production: Modelling Teachers’ Corrective Responses.

Institute for Communicating and Collaborative SystemsNatural language is characterised by enormous linguistic variation (e.g., Fetzer (2003)). Such variation is not random, but is determined by a number of contextual factors. These factors encapsulate the socio-cultural conventions of a speech community and dictate the socially acceptable, i.e. polite, use of language. Producing polite language may not always be a trivial task. The ability to assess a situation with respect to a hearer’s social, cultural or emotional needs constitutes a crucial facet of a speaker’s social and linguistic competence. It is surprising then that it is also a facet which, to date, has received very little attention from researchers in the natural language generation community. Linguistic variation occurs in all linguistic sub-domains including the language of education (Person et al., 1995). Thanks to being relatively more constrained (and hence more predictable with respect to its intentional aspects than normal conversations), teachers’ language is taken in this thesis as a starting point for building a formal, computational model of language generation based on the theory of linguistic politeness. To date, the most formalised theory of linguistic politeness is that by Brown and Levinson (1987), in which face constitutes the central notion. With its two dimensions of Autonomy and Approval, face can be used to characterise different linguistic choices available to speakers in a systematic way. In this thesis, the basic idea of face is applied in the analysis of teachers’ corrective responses produced in real one-to-one and classroom dialogues, and it is redefined to suit the educational context. A computational model of selecting corrective responses is developed which demonstrates how the two dimensions of face can be derived from a situation and how they can be used to classify the many linguistic choices available to teachers. The model is fully implemented using a combination of naive Bayesian Networks and Case-Based Reasoning techniques. The evaluation of the model confirms the validity of the model, by demonstrating that politeness-based natural language generation in the context of teachers’ corrective responses can be used to model linguistic variation and that the resulting language is not singnificantly different from that produced by a human in identical situations