876 research outputs found

    Target BACRIM: Blurring fact and fiction to create an interactive documentary game

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    Target: BACRIM is an immersive and interactive documentary game that exposes the atrocities of Colombia’s paramilitary forces in one of its most violent regions. The producers combine both non - fiction and fiction to create a game that places the user at the heart of the story. Through this docufiction , which is anchored in augmented reality, the user or participant experiences danger first - hand. For the user, this violence is a game. For the people who live in this region, it is a reality. Target: BACRIM wants to blur tha t distinction. We therefore create a world, where fiction and non - fiction are interrelated, where genres merge and where individual disciplines escape the shackles of tradition to converge and create an interactive documentary that places user experience a t its cor

    Conceptual modelling of the flow of frail elderly through acute-care hospitals: An evidence-based management approach

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    This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Emerald via the DOI in this record.The ageing of the world’s population is causing an increase in the number of frail patients admitted to hospitals. In the absence of appropriate management and organisation, these patients risk an excessive length of stay and poor outcomes. To deal with this problem, we propose a conceptual model to facilitate the pathway of frail elderly patients across acute-care hospitals, focused on avoiding improper wait times and treatment during the process. The conceptual model is developed to enrich the standard flowchart of a clinical pathway in the hospital. The modified flowchart encompasses new organisational units and activities carried out by new dedicated professional roles. The proposed variant aims to provide a correct assessment of frailty at the entrance, a better management of the patient’s stay during different clinical stages and an early discharge, sending the patient home or to other facilities, avoiding a delayed discharge. The model is completed by a set of indicators aimed at measuring performance improvements and creating a strong database of evidence on the managing of frail elderly’s pathways, providing proper information that can validate the model when applied in current practice. The paper proposes a design of the clinical path of frail patients in acute-care hospitals, combining elements that, according to an evidence-based management approach, have proved to be effective in terms of outcomes, costs and organisational issues. We can therefore expect an improvement in the treatment of frail patients in hospital, avoiding their functional decline and worsening frailty conditions, as often happens in current practice following the standard path of other patients The framework proposed is a conceptual model to manage frail elderly patients in acute-care wards. Our research approach lacks application to real data and proof of effectiveness. Further work will be devoted to implementing a simulation model for a specific case study and verifying the impact of the conceptual model in real care settings. The framework proposed is a conceptual model to manage frail elderly patients in acute-care wards. Our research approach lacks application to real data and proof of effectiveness. Further work will be devoted to implementing a simulation model for a specific case study and verifying the impact of the conceptual model in real care settings. This paper fulfills an identified need to study and provide solutions for the management of frail elderly patients in acute-care hospitals, and generally to produce value in a patient-centred model

    Effect of material elastic properties and surface roughness on grip performances of ski boot soles under wet and icy conditions

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    A set of thermoplastic materials employed in soles for alpine skiing boots were characterized in terms of chemical composition, cristallinity, hardness, surface roughness, and grip. The results of friction experiments on different substrates reproducing the real environmental scenarios point out that materials provide more grip as they become softer. Moreover, higher roughness results in lower dynamic coefficient of friction (COF). Finite element simulations corroborate the experimental measures of COF and let to rationalize the role of material elasticity and surface roughness on the frictional characteristics of soles. The measure of grip on an inclined wet surface provides analogous results, indicating that COF can be used as key performance indicator in the design of ski-boot soles and of other anti-slip equipments in wet and icy environments

    A study of charge collection processes on polycrystalline diamond detectors

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    Abstract We performed a study of charge collection distance (CCD) on medium to high-quality prototypes of diamond sensors prepared by Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD). We studied the Charge Collection Efficiency in these materials supposing that it is limited by the presence of a recombination level and a distribution of trap levels centered at 1.7 eV from the band-edge. We also supposed that the exposition to ionizing radiation can make the trap levels ineffective (pumping effect). We have shown that these assumptions are valid by correlating the CCD to the pumping efficiency. Moreover, we have shown that the pumping efficiency is bias-dependent. We have explained our experimental results assuming that trapped carriers generate an electric field inside the diamond bulk

    Asymptomatic Primary Fallopian Tube Cancer: An Unusual Cause of Axillary Lymphadenopathy

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    Primary Fallopian tube malignancy is considered a rare disease and is often mistaken histologically and clinically for ovarian cancer. The etiology is poorly understood, and it typically presents at an advanced disease stage, as symptoms are often absent in the initial period. As a result, primary fallopian tube cancer is generally associated with a poor prognosis. We present the case of a 45-year-old female who presents with a 5-day history of left axillary swelling and a normal breast examination. Mammogram and biopsy of a lesion in the left breast revealed a fibroadenoma but no other abnormalities. Initial sampling of the axillary node was suspicious for a primary breast malignancy, but histology of the excised node refuted this. PET-CT showed an area of high uptake in the right pelvis, and a laparoscopy identified a tumor of the left fallopian tube which was subsequently excised and confirmed as a serous adenocarcinoma

    The influence of initial impurities and irradiation conditions on defect production and annealing in silicon for particle detectors

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    Silicon detectors in particle physics experiments at the new accelerators or in space missions for physics goals will be exposed to extreme radiation conditions. The principal obstacles to long-term operation in these environments are the changes in detector parameters, consequence of the modifications in material properties after irradiation. The phenomenological model developed in the present paper is able to explain quantitatively, without free parameters, the production of primary defects in silicon after particle irradiation and their evolution toward equilibrium, for a large range of generation rates of primary defects. Vacancy-interstitial annihilation, interstitial migration to sinks, divacancy and vacancy-impurity complex (VP, VO, V2O, CiOi and CiCs) formation are taken into account. The effects of different initial impurity concentrations of phosphorus, oxygen and carbon, as well as of irradiation conditions are systematically studied. The correlation between the rate of defect production, the temperature and the time evolution of defect concentrations is also investigated.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures, submitted to Nucl. Instrum. Meth. Phys. Res.

    Theoretical calculations of the primary defects induced by pions and protons in SiC

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    In the present work, the bulk degradation of SiC in hadron (pion and proton) fields, in the energy range between 100 MeV and 10 GeV, is characterised theoretically by means of the concentration of primary defects per unit fluence. The results are compared to the similar ones corresponding to diamond, silicon and GaAs.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures, in press to Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research A v2 - modified title, and major revision
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