High-tech Approaches Research Articles

From site formation processes to human behaviour: Towards a constructive approach to depict palimpsests in Roca dels Bous

Study of the archaeological record underpins characterization of human behaviour in the past. However, site formation processes modify archaeological deposits affecting identification of activities and/or contexts which provide information on those behaviours. Such phenomena form palimpsests in which associations between artefacts and behaviour are not always clear.Roca dels Bous is a multi-layered Mousterian rock shelter where we apply a series of high-tech approaches. Design of a digital environment is connected with assessment of the influence of site formation processes on archaeological levels. We present examples of this application which represent a significant improvement in the quality of information recovered during fieldwork.Integration of these technologies enables development of a constructive approach to fieldwork which does not concentrate exclusively on the recovery and recording of artefacts during excavation with a view to their future ‘reconstruction’ through post-excavation techniques. Alternatively we propose to intervene directly with the archaeological record in parallel with its excavation. The application of new technologies integrates spatial and contextual information obtained during fieldwork with which to create hypotheses that will be verified or rejected according to data obtained in excavation. The continual interaction between data and hypotheses makes it possible to detect errors in interpretation of the archaeological record which would be difficult to recognise when applying post-excavation techniques where, at times, associated contextual evidence is lost.This approach reminds us of the difficulty in defining concepts such as ‘spatial/temporal association’ or ‘archaeological level’, which are basic to discussion in Archaeology. Finally, we think this constructive approach to fieldwork enables us to address the study of palimpsests, a key concept in the interpretation of the archaeological record.

TREATMENT OF COLORECTAL CANCER COMPLICATED BY INTESTINAL OBSTRUCTION USING THE METHOD OF «FAST-TRACK» RECOVERY

A medical trend which is currently gaining strength includes the complex treatment based on the concept of «fast-track» recovery in oncology. An application of modern high-tech approaches allowed minimizing the terms of treatment, shortening economic costs and getting the highest final results. It provides a high quality treatment. Given method could exclude an interim treatment stages, sufficiently reduces terms of general treatment and rehabilitation of patients and could succeed in high quality of life for the patients in short- and long-term period. The authors present the results of successful clinical surgery of 78 patients using this method in public health.

Conformational and Functional Disturbances of Serum Albumin Are Characteristic for First Episode Drug-naive Schizophrenic Patients.

Objective Conformational changes of human serum albumin (HSA) can disturb its main functions. Aim To reveal serum albumin disturbances using the high-tech approaches in first episode schizophrenia. Methods First-episode drug-naive schizophrenic (FES) patients were investigated. There were employed laser time resolved subnanosecond fluorescence spectroscopy (LTRSFS) using specific albumin fluorescent probe and high resolution nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) 1 H spectroscopy. Results There were revealed 3 binding sites in albumin molecule with fluorescent decay time of 1, 3 and 9 nanoseconds (A1, A3 and A9 sites, respectively) in healthy volunteers using LTRSFS approach. There was found significant decrease of fluorescent decay time of probe bound to albumin A3 site of FES patients as compared with controls. It points out on the conformational changes in HSA molecule in FES patients. NMR 1 H spectra of blood serum and its albumin fraction of healthy donors and FES patients were studied. There were shown clear differences in NMR 1 H spectra between these two groups that points out to the conformational changes of albumin molecule in FES patients and disturbances in albumin transport functions. The reaction ability of thiol groups of albumin molecules in FES patients was significantly lower in comparison with healthy persons. It also points out on disturbances of antioxidant albumin properties in FES patients. Conclusion High-tech approaches can be useful for the development of new biomarkers for diagnostic and predicting methods and methods for the evaluation of the efficacy of different types of therapy of mental disorders.

High fidelity trainee simulation to improve trainer performance

Using trained actors to simulate trainee doctors in difficulty is a cost-effective communication skills teaching tool that can be enhanced by techniques that are familiar to hi-fidelity electronic simulation. Simulation has two broad strands: the first exchanges the patient for an actor in the clinical encounter, and the second introduces some form of technology to the encounter. The strand concerning actors is well developed, and generally focuses on 'the consultation'. Where simulation draws on technology, the spectrum is broad: it may be relatively low-tech, for example computer-based scenarios to test prescribing, through to more high-tech approaches to learning practical skills using sophisticated manikins that replicate patient signs and symptoms. Over the years simulation has radically changed medical training, and is set to continue to do so in the future. Actors have been used for many years to contribute to the training and assessment of medical students, specialty trainees and established doctors. Their role to date has largely been limited to playing patients in scenarios. This innovation in communication skills teaching seeks to draw on both strands of simulation. It sees actors playing general practice (GP) trainees to enhance the continuing professional development of established GP trainers, in contrast to the more usual use of actors playing patients. It also makes use of the control mechanisms afforded by technological simulation in fine-tuning role-play scenarios. By using actors, the scenarios can be played up or down in order to challenge participants and maximise their learning. More research is needed to develop this approach further in other medical education contexts.

Achieving Probiotic Effects via Modulating Oral Microbial Ecology

Unlike many pathogens are foreign invaders, oral “pathogens” such as Streptococcus mutans are part of the “normal” oral microbial flora. While they express certain pathogenic properties, the balance of synergistic and antagonistic interactions determines whether these commensal pathogens cause damage or not. Recognition of these microbial ecology based pathogeneses argues for new strategies for disease treatment and prevention. Probiotics, potentially beneficial live bacteria or yeasts, have been used to combat dental caries. This includes the application of S. mutans types that cannot produce acids or other bacteria that interfere with the pathogenic effects of S. mutans. While these approaches show therapeutic effects against S. mutans experimentally, the conversion into commercial products remains a challenge, due to safety and shelf life issues. New high-tech approaches, such as quorum sensing interference of pathogenic bacteria or targeted antimicrobial therapies, offer novel ways to achieve probiotic effects against dental caries.

Assistive Technology Toolkit to Increase Access to Early Learning Environments for Young Children With Disabilities

Abstract The development of assistive technology (AT) and augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) interventions for young children with disabilities is rapidly expanding with a range of no-tech, low-tech, and high-tech approaches to provide access to adapted and augmented tools for participation in inclusive early childhood settings. Discrepancies exist in the legal requirements to consider AT and AAC for all children in the IFSP/IEP planning process. Researchers in the applications of AT and AAC with young children identify the importance of activity-based approaches that infuse AT methods and AAC systems within natural routines for young children. This article focuses on the development of an AT Toolkit Guide for early intervention and early childhood providers. The development of the AT Toolkit concept, content, and applications is based on research-based methods and tools with demonstrated effectiveness to promote language development, emergent literacy skills, play, mobility, and interaction with the environment for young children with disabilities. Suggested items, sources, applications and development guidelines for the SWEET AT Toolkit are provided.

Graft rejection: pharmacogenetic analysis or drug anamnesis?

A 23-year-old Caucasian woman, with cystic fibrosis, bilateral lung-transplantation and immunosuppressive therapy with prednisolone, tacrolimus and sirolimus, presented with clinical symptoms of a chronic transplant rejection. Since constant sufficient blood level of tacrolimus and sirolimus had never been achieved, a genetic analysis was carried out to clarify drug metabolism. The genetic analysis for polymorphisms of cytochrome P450 (CYP) 3A4,5,7 revealed no sequence alterations in the CYP 3A4,5,7 gene. Thus, drug intake was scrutinized in detail, disclosing a missing interval between the intake of both immunosuppressive agents. After a correct drug intake the woman's condition ameliorated and the blood levels reached normal range. This case report highlights the crucial importance of basic medical skills like an accurate and dainty drug anamnesis before high tech approaches were applied.

Esthetic and cosmetic dermatology

The field of esthetic and cosmetic dermatology has gained remarkable interest all over the world. The major advantage of recent years is the high scientific levels of the most significant new developments in techniques and pharmacotherapy and other nonsurgical approaches. The present paper reviews selected fields of interest under this view. Sexual hormones are involved in the aging process of men and women. Skin function, in particular the epidermal barrier, is affected by a loss of endocrine activity. Hormone replacement therapy has only recently been introduced in treatment of aging males. This is an area of gender-medicine in dermatology with a strong well-aging attempt. Botulinum toxin therapy for hyperfunctional lines has become not only well-established but evidence-based medicine on its highest level. Recent advantages were gained in objective evaluation and monitoring the effect. Digital imaging techniques with various facets have been introduced to assess the achievements of treatment in the most objective way. This may become an example for other techniques as peeling, laser therapy, or radiofrequency in esthetic and cosmetic dermatology. Botulinum toxin has become a valuable tool for brow lifts. Details of the technique are discussed. Cellulite is a strongly female gender-related condition. During the past decades numerous treatments had been recommended but only recently a more critical scientific approach led to improvements in therapy of this common and disfiguring condition. Three major approaches are developed: (a) skin loosing with techniques such as subcision, (b) skin tightening with radiofrequency and other approaches, and (c) improving circulation in blood and lymphatic microvasculature using both physical treatments and pharmacotherapy. The last two chapters are devoted to body sculpturing by lipotransfer and lipolysis. Lipotransfer for facial or body sculpturing has a history of about 100 years. Nevertheless, recently the role of adult stem cells in adipose tissue has gained much interest. By optimizing the harvesting, storage, and transplantation of adipose tissue, remarkable long-standing results have been obtained. Here the present authors will focus on midface contouring, where lipotransfer competes with dermal fillers. Lipolysis is another effective tool in body sculpturing. The present authors will focus on recent advances in laser-assisted lipolysis for delicate body sculpturing in the submental region but also for gynecomastia abdominal region, flanks, and hips. In conclusion, esthetic and cosmetic dermatology has become a scientific-based subspeciality of dermatology with evidence-based treatments and a great variety of high-tech approaches to provide more effective, more selective, and safer therapeutic options.

Sharing Knowledge: A Comparison of High and Low Tech Approaches to Developing Nursing Expertise

A scholarly article by authors Bonnie Raingruber, Carol Robinson, and Neda Afshar, Jim Hill, Peter Rutan, Kate Shade, Denise Wall, Celeste Roseberry McKibbin, Robin Brewster Kennedy, Mary Braham, Susan Eggman published in The International Journal of Knowledge, Culture, and Change Management: Annual Review

The Human Proteome Organization: a mission to advance proteome knowledge.

With the completion of the genome project, it has been viewed that the proteome is the next major challenge. With heightened expectations comes the need for organizing public effort. The Human Proteome Organization (HUPO) was founded to regroup scientists in the public and private sectors engaged worldwide in various aspects of proteomics. Over the past year, HUPO has strived to develop a mission for itself and to begin the process of organizing its activities. The mission of HUPO as it is currently defined is to: 1) consolidate national and regional proteome organizations into a worldwide organization; 2) engage in scientific and educational activities to encourage the spread of proteomics technologies and disseminate knowledge pertaining to the human proteome and that of model organisms; and 3) assist in the coordination of public proteome initiatives. HUPO consists of three major geographic spheres that include Europe, Asia/ Oceania, and the Americas. In addition to current national proteome organizations affiliated with HUPO, plans are underway to assist in the formation of additional national proteome organizations and to expand affiliations with HUPO of other organizations that have a significant proteomics component such as biochemistry and cell biology societies.

Activities for Students: The Volume of a Pyramid: Low-Tech and High-Tech Approaches

This lesson came about spontaneously during a geometry unit on volume. I had used the lesson shown here in activity sheet 1, in which students use cubic blocks to rediscover the formulas for volumes of right prisms, that is, V = Bh and V = lwh. This lesson was a simple review for my tenth-grade class, and they completed it easily before the end of the period. With the wooden cubes still on their desks, most of them used the remaining time to build towers and other objects. I noticed that many students piled the cubes into bumpy pyramidal shapes. Because the next day's lesson involved studying the volume of pyramids, I wondered whether these bumpy shapes could be useful for discovering the volume of a real pyramid with smooth sides. Students could compare the volumes of these “pyramids of cubes” with the volumes of corresponding right prisms and perhaps discover the ratio 1/3 to obtain the formula for the volume of a pyramid, V = (1/3)Bh. As it turns out, the ratio of 1/3 does not become evident right away. To my students' delight, we found that using a spreadsheet is an excellent way to investigate this problem. My geometry classes had not used spreadsheets before, and the students enjoyed the experience of using the efficiency of technology to compare hundreds— and even thousands—of shapes with ease.

Signs of Hubris: The Shaping of Wind Technology Styles in Germany, Denmark, and the United States, 1940-1990

Signs of Hubris : The Shaping of Wind Technology Styles in Germany, Denmark, and the United States, 1940–1990 Matthias Heymann (bio) A huge body of scholarship in recent decades has convincingly demonstrated the contingent and contextual character of technological development. Technologies are shaped by social factors and thus “mirror our societies.” 1 Regional and national characteristics of technological developments can often be explained by their embedment in different cultures and environments. 2 To describe or explain technological differences, historians of technology have employed the loosely defined concept of “technological style,” which in recent years has received growing attention. 3 Drawing [End Page 641] extensively on this concept, John Staudenmaier has raised the possibility of a “link between technological style and national character.” 4 The development of wind technology from 1940 to 1990 in Germany, Denmark, and the United States does at first glance appear to corroborate Staudenmaier’s hypothesis. Wind technology in these countries differs in conspicuous ways. The renaissance of wind power technology in California and Denmark in the 1980s contained several notable surprises. California produced scores of unsuccessful turbine designs, poorly performing turbines, and disastrous turbine failures, especially when compared to the clearly superior Danish wind technology. The American failure looks even worse when one considers that between 1975 and 1988 the United States government spent twenty times (and Germany five times) as much for wind power research and development as did Denmark, yet Danish manufacturers made better turbines—have, indeed, since the early 1980s been the most successful wind turbine producers. Danish wind turbines supplied about 45 percent of the total worldwide wind turbine capacity in 1990. 5 Most U.S. manufacturers failed in the 1980s, and by 1990 only one major manufacturer of commercial turbines (US Windpower) remained. Producers from other countries had little impact on the total wind turbine capacity in the 1980s. 6 The failure of numerous turbine designs and the remarkable contrast between R&D expenditures and commercial success raise important questions. Why did so many designs fail? What made Danish turbines superior? How could small Danish companies outclass large American and German high-tech concerns? Forrest Stoddard, an American engineer, identified characteristic technical differences of Danish and American turbines that [End Page 642] he considered responsible for Danish success and American failures. 7 Peter Karnøe, a Danish political scientist, has explained the superiority of Danish wind turbines as a result of Danish manufacturers’ “bottom-up” strategy for development: a slow, crafts-oriented, step-by-step process including incremental learning through practical experience. This strategy, Karnøe argues, proved superior to the “top-down” approaches of science-oriented German and American researchers and manufacturers, which aimed at both quick and ambitious full-scale developments. Karnøe has shown that many striking wind turbine failures may be attributed to the disadvantages of top-down development. 8 Stoddard’s and Karnøe’s interpretations offer interesting explanations for the remarkable Danish success, but they do not answer all the questions posed. Why did the Danish bottom-up strategy prove more successful than American and German top-down approaches, and why did this strategy evolve in Denmark, and only there? Historical analysis shows that technical and conceptual differences in wind turbine development had important roots in the 1940s and 1950s. Individual and collective ideas and working styles can be attributed to individual actors and particular communities, both of which have characteristic patterns of knowledge, actions, and artifacts. These patterns may be called technological styles. The failure of a top-down approach to the development of wind technology reveals the limits of science-oriented technological development, or engineering science, and hints at technological hubris. 9 Big-science and high-tech approaches were in this case mistakenly considered powerful [End Page 643] enough to support gigantism, extreme technical sophistication, and immediate full-scale development. Wind power’s long and rich history reached its zenith in industrializing western Europe and North America in the late nineteenth century. In the twentieth century the use of wind power declined, and thousands of windmills and wind turbines disappeared within a few decades. By the 1980s, however, oil crises, growing concern over environmental degradation, and nuclear-power protests were contributing to a...

Los Angeles 1997

Abstract This paper examines the question of whether there is a Los Angeles identity and offers recommendations for capacity building in this culturally intermixed megalopolis from the vantage point of roles of local individuals, citizen associations and neighborhood initiatives and institutions. Community development in greater Los Angeles is described as occurring within a context of conflict, change, and power-characteristics found in all American cities. The paper concludes by recommending that the people of Los Angeles need to look toward themselves for sustenance and simultaneously collaborate with caregivers and community builders. Both formal high tech approaches and informal social capital generating acts are necessary for capacity building and community development in Los Angeles.

Social origins of cardiopulmonary disease: The need for population-focussed prevention studies

Purpose: High-tech medical approaches have, no doubt, contributed some to the substantial decline in coronary heart disease (CHD) mortality, the principal fatal form of cardiopulmonary disease. These approaches have thereby gained much public attention. Methods: Thoughtful observers however, have emphasized the role of lifestyle changes in the CHD decline. Coronary heart disease has followed a unique epidemic course during the 20th century: it started among more affluent members of a society and then has descended down the social scale. Why has this pattern prevailed, not only in the United States, but in other countries, as well? Results: Evidence now shows that the major risk factors, in this epidemic as well as in others, are, for the main part, socially determined. Contrary to most epidemics, however, this one affects, first, more socially advantaged people. The risk factors—cigarette smoking, excessive fat consumption, physical inactivity, and high blood pressure—accompany advancing industrialization and commercialization. The first three categories appeal strongly to certain human propensities and, hence, are adopted by many people as soon as they become accessible. Thus, the more affluent are the first to suffer (and also to recover from) the consequences of indulging beyond the DNA-determined health capacity of our species; the population's poorer sections can afford exposure only in subsequent decades as they achieve access to the risk factors. Powerful social forces, including product marketing, reinforce the biological propensities. Conclusions: Coronary heart disease's epidemic course reflects these social origins, and social reinforcements. Hence, it should be viewed as a community phenomenon. As such, it must be attacked in the community. Trials of control strategies at the local community level should be continued. In addition, attention is due at state, national, and global community levels.

Overview of Coast Guard Plan Review for High-Tech Ship Design

The competitive nature of the marine industry has compelled ship and drill rig owners to expect vessel designs which operate more efficiently and are less expensive to build. Designers have abandoned the "old reliable" rule based designs of the 1960's and 1970's in favor of state-of-the-art, high-tech approaches to reduce design unknowns. Analysis techniques include six-degree-of-freedom motion simulation, finite-element structural analysis, fatigue and fracture mechanics techniques, structural and component reliabilities, and electronic on-board monitoring systems. At the Coast Guard Marine Safety Center, where construction plans are reviewed and approved, evaluating the safety of these designs is not an easy task! Unlike the rule-based designs, there are no "cookbook" formulas for double-checking the designer's calculations. An acceptable level of safety must be established and the design approach must be proven for its application to be accepted. Unfortunately, the level of safety that is built into "the rules" is not completely clear, so "acceptable" becomes difficult to establish. This paper discusses the requirements and capabilities of the Coast Guard commercial vessel plan review program and proposes an alternative plan submittal procedure for nonstandard designs.

The Computerized Self-Help Clearinghouse

This paper notes the rapid growth of self-help groups and the potential for co-optation of self-help initiatives on the part of professionals who work with these groups and organizations. The nation's first statewide, computerized Self-Help Clearinghouse is then described, which adapts a variety of high tech approaches from the computer and telecommunications field to referral, consultation, networking and epidemiological research efforts with self-help groups. Through these approaches, the Clearinghouse promotes the growth, development, and accessibility of self-help groups while protecting their autonomy.