Venous Thromboembolism Prevention Education for Practitioners in the Acute Care Setting

During the last several decades, venous thromboembolism (VTE) has been identified as a preventable health condition. The gaps in clinical practice have led to an increased incidence of VTE. The lack of using existing evidence-based VTE prevention guidelines in practice has limited the implementation of VTE risk assessment stratifications and affected the appropriateness and timeliness of addressing pharmacologic and mechanical prophylaxis. The purpose of the scholarly project was to educate practitioners on existing VTE prevention practice guidelines. The practice-focused question explored whether an educational learning activity on evidence-based VTE prevention guidelines improved the awareness, knowledge, and compliance with existing evidence-based VTE guidelines of practitioners that assess and treat patients at risk for VTE. The theoretical framework for the project was Lewin\u27s change process theory. A total of 38 participants comprised registered nurses (82%), physicians (5%), nurse practitioners (2%), and nonclinical personnel (11%). A program evaluation was provided to determine the effectiveness of the project. The findings showed that practitioners participated in the learning activity to improve knowledge (48%), increase VTE awareness (43%), and would change the management and treatment of patients at risk for VTE (39%). Hospitalized patients at risk for VTE can benefit from the results of this project through a change in clinical practice that might decrease the incidence of VTE and potentially bring about social change by reducing the number of preventable deaths

Surface mapping and automatic tool path generation

With the use of machine vision systems in the manufacturing cycle of a product, the lead time for producing the final product has been substantially reduced. Efforts in the past have aimed at automating the tasks right from the drawing board stage to final production of the product. Such technologies include CAD, CAM, and CAPP. However the task of tool path (NC code) generation has not yet been fully automated. In the current techniques, the user plays a crucial role in the NC code generation process. There is an increasing trend for using machine vision systems in the fabrication of a part. Most machine vision (surface mapping) techniques generate a huge amount of data. Ideally, a CAM system should be capable of accepting data in any format for tool path generation with minimum intervention from the user. This thesis proposes a four step, computer based method for tool path (NC Code) generation from X,Y,Z data, aimed at minimizing if not eliminating the user role. The different techniques of surface mapping and curve fitting are also presented. These four steps extract relevant information needed for the generation of NC code, thereby automating the process traditionally handled by a user a interface

Status of art of reaction models for projectiles far from stability

This talk will review the status of art of nuclear and Coulomb breakup theories and their relation to optical models of elastic scattering of exotic projectiles. The effect of the final state interactions between the breakup particle and the core and target nuclei will be clarified and some typical numerical calculations for the relevant observables will be presented and compared to experimental data. Finally new results will be shown to demonstrate the feasibility of a novel type of experiment involving heavy projectiles far from stability on heavy targets.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures. Proceedings of NN2007, Rio de Janeir

Neutron Transfer Studied with a Radioactive beam of 24Ne, using TIARA at SPIRAL

A general experimental technique for high resolution studies of nucleon transfer reactions using radioactive beams is briefly described, together with the first new physics results that have been obtained with the new TIARA array. These first results from TIARA are for the reaction 24Ne(d,p)25Ne, studied in inverse kinematics with a pure radioactive beam of 100,000 pps from the SPIRAL facility at GANIL. The reaction probes the energies of neutron orbitals relevant to very neutron rich nuclei in this mass region and the results highlight the emergence of the N=16 magic number for neutrons and the associated disappearance of the N=20 neutron magic number for the very neutron rich neon isotopes.Comment: Proceedings of the Carpathian Summer School of Physics, Mamaia-Constanta, Romania, 13-24 June 200

Prevalence of overweight and obesity in children and adolescents in Seychelles : results of the School Screening Program in 2013

Results related to overweight and obesity in 2013: Participation to the school screening program was satisfactory in 2013, but a bit less than in previous years (4220 children seen out of a total of approximately 6000 eligible ones). Less than maximal participation to the screening program can relate to different factors, e.g.; a trend for obese children to decline participation; lack of time of school nurses to complete the screening program due to competing duties at health centre level. Good organization by the school nurses and adequate facilities for screening are also important factors for a good conduct of the screening program

Multi-objective construction of an entire adequate test suite for an EFSM

In this paper we propose a method and a tool to generate test suites from extended finite state machines, accounting for multiple (potentially conflicting) objectives. We aim at maximizing coverage and feasibility of a test suite while minimizing similarity between its test cases and minimizing overall cost. Therefore, we define a multi-objective genetic algorithm that searches for optimal test suites based on four objective functions. In doing so, we create an entire test suite at once as opposed to test cases one at a time. Our approach is evaluated on two different case studies, showing interesting initial results

Analytical E1 strength functions of two-neutron halo nuclei: the 6-He example

An analytical model is developed to study the spectra of electromagnetic dissociation of two-neutron halo nuclei without precise knowledge about initial and final states. Phenomenological three-cluster bound state wave functions, reproducing the most relevant features of these nuclei, are used along with no interaction final states. The 6-He nucleus is considered as a test case, and a good agreement with experimental data concerning the shape of the spectrum and the magnitude of the strength function is found.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figures Accepted for publishing in Nuclear Physics

Unbound exotic nuclei studied by projectile fragmentation

We call "projectile fragmentation" of neutron halo nuclei the elastic breakup (diffraction) reaction, when the observable studied is the neutron-core relative energy spectrum. This observable has been measured in relation to the Coulomb breakup on heavy target and recently also on light targets. Such data enlighten the effect of the neutron final state interaction with the core of origin. Projectile fragmentation is studied here by a time dependent model for the excitation of a nucleon from a bound state to a continuum resonant state in a neutron-core complex potential which acts as a final state interaction. The final state is described by an optical model S-matrix so that both resonant and non resonant states of any continuum energy can be studied as well as deeply bound initial states. It turns out that due to the coupling between the initial and final states, the neutron-core free particle phase shifts are modified, in the exit channel, by an additional phase. Some typical numerical calculations for the relevant observables are presented and compared to experimental data. It is suggest that the excitation energy spectra of an unbound nucleus might reflect the structure of the parent nucleus from whose fragmentation they are obtained.Comment: Proceedings of the 11th Conference on Problems in Theoretican Nuclear Physics, Cortona, Italy, 2006. World Scientifi