Hours In Length Research Articles

John Gabriel Borkman (review)

Reviewed by: John Gabriel Borkman Andrew Friedman John Gabriel Borkman. By Henrik Ibsen. Directed by Vegard Vinge, Ida Müller, and Trond Reinholdtsen. Volksbühne-im-Prater, Berlin. 29 October 2011. Since 2006, the Ibsen-Saga, created by Vegard Vinge (director, performer) and Ida Müller (director, [End Page 430] scenographer, performer), has sent shockwaves through continental Europe’s experimental theatre scene. The uncompromising artists’ durational performances and radical aesthetics have made them two of the most noteworthy theatre practitioners of the past decade. In 2011, Vinge and Müller took up residency in the Volksbühne’s Prater theatre, where their John Gabriel Borkman, the fourth installment in the Saga, earned the duo an invitation to Germany’s prestigious Theatertreffen. The production is emblematic of the Ibsen-Saga’s provocative vision of the theatre and sustained investigation of Ibsen as the dramatic wellspring of the modern condition. What constitutes Ibsen’s oeuvre for Vinge and Müller, as Raymond Williams previously argued in Modern Tragedy, is the unresolvable state of the contemporary subject, who is impelled by his/her individuality but inevitably crushed by the weight of his/her biological and cultural inheritance. This modern double bind permeated every element of Vinge and Müller’s production, which integrated durational performance, popular-culture narratives, associative digressions, collectively created artisanal designs, and denaturalized performances in an effort to create a meditation on Ibsen’s ethos, rather than a faithful production of the text. Click for larger view View full resolution The ensemble in John Gabriel Borkman. (Photo: Angela Roudaut.) Averaging eight to thirteen hours in length, John Gabriel Borkman ran without scheduled intermissions or a predetermined end-time. Structured as a series of nearly wordless vignettes with a soundtrack of looped opera and popular music, scenes began and ended suddenly at the open or close of a massive curtain. Much of the plot was replaced with a range of well-known historical and contemporary narratives that emphasized the individual’s struggle with his/her inheritance. Leaping backward and forward in time, Erhart Borkman was followed from his gestation in his mother Gunhild’s womb through his childhood of playing video games and rapping. Erhart’s youthful idealism, innocence, and creativity were threatened by the corrupted adult world embodied in the overbearing Ella and Gunhild, and the unethical business practices of Borkman and the lawyer Hinkle, who haunted the stage as a demon in a business suit. Scenes from the Star Wars trilogy, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and Richard Wagner’s operas were referenced, if not wholly restaged, with Erhart in the roles of Siegfried or Luke Skywalker, for example, highlighting the archetypal and persistent significance of such generational clashes. The scenes’ content, order, and length changed nightly, and the action expanded the original timeframe of the play to include digressive scenes of exposition, quotidian moments from the characters’ lives, and metaphoric explorations of the play’s conflicts. Borkman’s crimes were evoked by the recent global financial collapse, while Hinkle used an image of Angela Merkle as a puppet; Gunhild, enraged by her [End Page 431] husband’s crimes, hurled cardboard cinderblocks at the audience; Borkman dug his own grave and mined the earth’s minerals; a parade of townspeople circled the Borkman home laughing at their downfall. These conflicts between warring individuals resulted in prolonged scenes of carnage that bathed the stage in buckets of fake blood, feces, and gore, and revealed Vinge and Müller’s aesthetic debt to horror films and performance artists like the Viennese Actionists and Paul McCarthy. Click for larger view View full resolution The ensemble in John Gabriel Borkman. (Photo: William Minke.) Vinge and Müller’s trademark artisanal aesthetic and stylized acting reinforced the production’s focus on individualism. By exclusively using their own handmade and painted objects onstage, the artists pitted themselves against a corrupted (or in terms of the production, commoditized and regulated) world. The show’s ensemble of seventy-eight collaborators constructed and painted the extensive costumes, props, and massive diorama-like sets, the sheer scale of which trumpeted the individual’s power to create. (Even so, performers are listed alphabetically in the program, rather than credited for their...

Withdrawal Symptoms Hindering Harm-Minimization and Drug Detoxification Efforts: Experiences of Injecting Drug Users in Nepal

In this study, the authors explored the perception and strategies used by 20 injecting drug users (IDUs) as they regularly confront life-threatening complications stemming from their drug use. The 20 IDUs were from four urban centers of Nepal: Kathmandu Valley, Pokhara, Narayanghaat, and Hetauda. The phenomenological study was conducted, using individual in-depth interviews ranging from 1 to 2 hours in length. All data were analyzed using the analytical approaches of grounded theory. It was found that the urgency and severity of withdrawal symptoms are the major precursors, leading drug users to share unsterile syringes and needles and thereby increasing the risks of HIV transmission and other health risks. The study also found that IDUs seemed aware and worried about HIV and other health risks, prompting them to devise their own seemingly suitable strategies for harm minimization. Understanding these high-risk strategies should inform public health and intensive harm-reduction services to be considered and implemented in Nepal. Attempts should be made to keep the IDUs in touch with suitable medication-assisted therapies to overcome the withdrawal symptoms, thus minimizing the chance of sharing syringes/needles with other IDUs.

Cave cricket exit counts: environmental influences and duration of surveys

Cave cricket abundance is used as an indicator of integrity of cave ecosystems. One means of monitoring cave cricket abundance is counting crickets as they emerge from cave entrances for two hours after sunset. The influence of cloud cover, relative humidity, and surface temperature on counts is unknown and there might be few cave crickets that emerge during the first hour of the survey. Using mixed effects models, I assessed the influence of these environmental variables on exit counts and estimated when cave crickets emerged within the two-hour survey period. Exit-count surveys were conducted in eleven caves over four years in central Texas, and caves were surveyed up to four times a year across the four calendar seasons. Cloud cover, relative humidity, and temperature influenced counts, but the greatest influence was from temperature. Peaks in cave cricket counts occurred 80 to 90 minutes after the start of a survey and declined thereafter. Cave cricket exit count surveys should record surface temperature, cloud cover, and relative humidity at the start of surveys so that counts can be adjusted for these environmental influences. Also, surveys can be shortened to 1 or 1.5 hours in length.

Letters: In search of a voice

What follows is a case study of a freshman at Millersville University who shall be referred to under the pseudonym “Root Beer,” who is enrolled in her first semester in the Spring semester of the 2010-2011 academic year. This case study began with an inquiry-based approach which was applied by presenting the student with a survey of questions which would help to identify the student, her background, and the various characteristics of her writing. This inquiry-based approach was utilized throughout the case study to address the puzzles of practice that came up during the course of determining this student’s needs as a writer. As the research process continued, the center of gravity for this student was identified as voice. Utilizing the knowledge gained about the writer, this researcher was able to provide materials that were selected based on the writer’s profile as a unique individual, in order to provide a familiar foundation to the student writer Root Beer as she worked through the difficulty of expressing voice in her writing. This case study with Root Beer was completed over the course of five separate one-on-one meetings with the student outside of class, each of which was at least one hour in length, although at least one meeting with the student ran two hours in length. This case study also included five observations of Root Beer’s English Composition class with Dr. Shea, conducted in Byerly Hall, Room 120, from 9 AM – 10:15 AM, Tuesdays and Thursdays. This case study will include a detailed explanation of the exercises employed to address the center of gravity issue of voice, the reasoning behind the selection of these exercises, an analysis the results, and how these results were employed in the selection of successive exercises. The potential implications and possible future applications of these exercises toward addressing this issue within a classroom of student writers in the future will also be expounded on in the final pages of this case study.

Domestic abuse and older women: exploring the opportunities for service development and care delivery

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of domestic abuse on the health and lives of older women.Design/methodology/approach – A qualitative research design was used and data were collected using in‐depth interviews with 16 older women who had experienced domestic abuse. The interviews varied between one and two hours in length and, with the participant's permission, all of the interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. Analysis was undertaken utilising an iterative approach. In the present study all data were manually indexed and coded.Findings – The findings of this study illustrate that the consequences of domestic abuse for older women are far reaching, impacting significantly on the long‐term health and emotional wellbeing of those affected. This paper also highlights that there is currently little available data regarding older women and domestic abuse within the particular context of health. This is increasingly being recognised as a significant deficit in awarene...

Video Review Using a Reliable Evaluation Metric Improves Team Function in High-Fidelity Simulated Trauma Resuscitation

To demonstrate that instruction of proper team function can occur using high-fidelity simulated trauma resuscitation with video-assisted debriefing and that this process can be integrated rapidly into a standard general surgery curriculum. The rater reliability of our team metric was assessed by having physicians and nonphysicians rate the same video-recorded trauma simulations at intervals in time. To assess the effectiveness of video debriefing, subjects participated in a 3-week trauma team training course that consisted of 2 video-recorded simulation sessions, each approximately 2 hours in length separated by a 90-minute debriefing session. To assess the impact of the debriefing session, video recordings of participants performing resuscitations before and after the debriefing were reviewed by a panel of blinded traumatologists and graded using our team evaluation instrument. The study took place at the high-fidelity simulation center at a large, urban academic training hospital. All 11 PGY-2 general surgery and combined general surgery and plastic surgery residents at our institution. Our instrument was found to have high interrater correlation (interclass correlation coefficient [ICC], 0.926; 95% confidence interval, 0.893-0.953). Initially, residents were either unsure as to their competency to serve as team leader (70%) or felt they were not competent to serve as team leader (30%). Ninety percent of residents found the video debriefing very to extremely helpful in improving team function and clinical competency. All participants felt more competent as both team leaders and team members because of the video debriefing. The mean team function score improved significantly after video debriefing (4.39 [±0.3] vs 5.45 [±0.4] prevideo vs postvideo review, p < 0.05). Video review with debriefing is an effective means of teaching team competencies and improving team function in simulated trauma resuscitation. This strategy can be integrated readily into the surgical curriculum analogous to other applications of simulation technology.

Listening to Graduates of a K-12 Bilingual Program: Language Ideologies and Literacy Practices of Former Bilingual Students.

This study investigated the language and literacy practices of five graduates of a Spanish-English K-12 dual language immersion program through semistructured interviews to understand the residual impact of thirteen years in a Spanish-English bilingual school program. Drawing from sociocultural theory, the interviews also sought to provide an understanding of the participants’ specific social networks and uses of Spanish and cultural affinities. Transcripts of the interviews, which were 1-2 hours in length, were analyzed primarily for content related to language use, social networks, and cultural affiliations. Coding by general themes that emerged was done first, and then patterns within and across interview transcripts were identified and analyzed. The basic research question guiding this interview study was: What can be learned about the Spanish-English bilingualism and biliteracy of former students who attended a 13-year bilingual school program? Three main findings were: 1) All of the former students reported being bilingual and biliterate in English and Spanish; 2) Two prominent language ideologies in the everyday uses of Spanish by the participants were identified. One language ideology may be described as a functional language ideology, where Spanish was used primarily to accomplish only specific, limited kinds of communication with others. The other language ideology was one where linguistic and cultural affinities with native Spanish speakers were a key part of the participants’ orientation and use of Spanish; and 3) The issue of who may be reaping the most benefits from the K-12 dual language immersion program arose through an analysis of the interviews, especially at the secondary levels, because of the relatively small numbers of Latina/o students that completed the program. The findings are significant because they indicate some of the strengths and limitations of K-12 bilingual programs in the U.S. Given that there has been very little research in

A formação de uma consciência sócio ambiental, através da interpretação de trilhas

As sociedades humanas sofreram um afastamento progressivo da natureza, um processo de autodestruição, onde se desencadeou uma verdadeira guerra com o meio ambiente. Para combater-se isso, deve-se alcançar um novo entendimento do indivíduo em relação ao meio ambiente, o que pode ser possível através da formação de uma consciência sócio ambiental mais justa, por meio da interpretação ambiental em práticas de trilhas, contextualizadas dentro das perspectivas da Educação Ambiental. O projeto fez uso de reflexões obtidas através do método dedutivo, adotando-se para a atividade de campo a metodologia de resgate/análise crítica, com a aplicação de trilhas guiadas e de interpretação da natureza. Tendo como sujeitos da pesquisa, 100 alunos do ensino médio da E. E. de E. M. Major Belarmino Côrtes, de Cruz Alta/RS. A área empregada situa-se na Estância Lara Gruhn, em Cruz Alta/RS, constituindo uma formação florestal representada por um fragmento de diferentes estruturas vegetais, circundados por lavouras e pastagem. Com 1.600 metros de extensão e duas horas de duração, a trilha foi considerada de baixo nível de dificuldade, onde de acordo com as respostas obtidas, pode-se perceber que as impressões positivas superaram as negativas. Constituindo-se dessa forma, de uma prática simples, que pode ser aplicada facilmente e que não necessita de altos investimentos, mas sim, de consciência e quebras de paradigmas, no sentido de se buscar novos hábitos sócio-culturais, os quais, auto-sustentáveis. Onde, a educação e a percepção despontam como mecanismos de defesa do meio natural, podendo contribuir para a tão necessária reaproximação do homem com natureza.

Exploration of technical and nontechnical employee attitudes toward participation in training

This study examined technical and nontechnical employee attitudes toward participation in training. A survey was administered to 337 self-identified technical and nontechnical university employees. Our findings are as follows: (a) most employees prefer training that is less than 2 hours in length, (b) employees do not want training outside their regular shift, (c) employees strongly prefer hands-on training, and (d) less than half were encouraged by their supervisor to apply what was learned in nontechnical training to their job.

Charudattam (Kathakali Julius Caesar) (review)

Reviewed by: Charudattam (Kathakali Julius Caesar) Graeme Vanderstoel Charudattam (Kathakali Julius Caesar). Adapted and composed by Sadanam Harikumaran. Sadanam Kathakali Academy, Kerala, India, 17 January 2010. Since its premiere at the National Drama Festival in 2001, Sadanam Harikumaran’s kathakali adaptation of Julius Caesar, Charudattam has been performed over two dozen times, in and outside Kerala, but still to date not overseas. Harikumaran is unusual in the present-day world of kathakali: he is at once actor, vocalist, playwright, composer, and designer of new forms of makeup and costumes. He is also principal of the Sadanam Kathakali Academy, where his play was staged on 17 January 2010. Harikumaran wrote six kathakali plays based on Indian epic puranas before turning to Shakespeare. “Why Julius Caesar?” I asked, to which he replied: “Most kathakali plays are man-woman love stories. I wanted to do a political play when the good and bad are not as obvious at the beginning as they usually are in kathakali.” Harikumaran named his adaptation Charudattam (Play of Charudatta, as he names Caesar). All the characters are given Indian names; however, for clarity I will here use those of Shakespeare. As author of a kathakali play, Harikumaran is composer of the text and music as well as choreographer and director. For the premiere, rather than acting, he was the lead vocalist so he “could manage the stage.” He has played the role of Brutus a number of times. At this performance Harikumaran had planned to perform Brutus, but the lead vocalist who knew the text was not available, so once again he was vocalist and another actor took the Brutus role. All the characters in Charudattam except one are in standard kathakali [End Page 569] makeup. Sadanam Suresh as Julius Caesar and Sadanam Manikandham as Brutus were both pacca, noble “green” face roles. Harikumaran created the makeup for Cassius and variation of the headdress (Fig. 1). The new makeup has been the most controversial. Kathakali audiences are accustomed to standard roles, and any deviations usually draw criticism and concern. Certainly with the new makeup they are left wondering about the qualities of Cassius’s character: Is he good, bad, or otherwise? Some thought katti makeup used for those having a noble streak but with major faults, for example the demon-king Ravana, would have been more appropriate. Julius Caesar is the one of the shortest Shakespeare plays at well under three hours. Nowadays kathakali performances are usually a few scenes from a longer play edited to about three to four hours in length. Shakespeare’s play has nineteen scenes; Harikumaran reduces that number by half. He reduced the number of characters from Shakespeare’s nineteen and dozens of supernumeraries to nine, more typical in a kathakali play. So, Brutus’s wife, Portia; Octavius’s first appearance; street scenes; ghosts; and omens (apart from Calpurnia’s dreams) were cut. Even then Charudattam lasted three hours and fifteen minutes. With so much omitted, why still so long? Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Sadanam Narayan Namboodiri as Cassius in the new makeup Sadanam Harikumaran created for Charudattam, his adaption of Julius Caesar for kathakali. (Photo: Graeme Vanderstoel) One of the glories of kathakali are the interpolations that allow actors to follow standard embellishments of the text or create their own, accompanied [End Page 570] by the drummers, with the vocalists playing only their handheld gong and cymbals. A few lines of text can become more than half an hour of improvisation by the actor. The aim is to convey the rasa (essence) of a character, and great actors are masters in doing so. Calpurnia’s dream scene is embellished when Caesar (Sadanam Suresh) declares his love in an extended sequence while she sleeps. Sadanam Sreenath, who plays Calpurnia, only recently added this fine Shakespearean woman to his large repertoire of streevesham heroines (female roles performed by male actors). Calpurnia awakes in terror. Harikumaran’s text changes the dream, and Calpurnia in gesture-language follows this new text: “I dreamt of many serpents emerging from your garlands. I saw them biting you and ripping you apart. Your jeweled crown turns into a thorny headdress. The cleansing waters of...

Upper Body Detection and Tracking in Extended Signing Sequences

The goal of this work is to detect and track the articulated pose of a human in signing videos of more than one hour in length. In particular we wish to accurately localise hands and arms, despite fast motion and a cluttered and changing background. We cast the problem as inference in a generative model of the image, and propose a complete model which accounts for self-occlusion of the arms. Under this model, limb detection is expensive due to the very large number of possible configurations each part can assume. We make the following contributions to reduce this cost: (i) efficient sampling from a pictorial structure proposal distribution to obtain reasonable configurations; (ii) identifying a large number of frames where configurations can be correctly inferred, and exploiting temporal tracking elsewhere. Results are reported for signing footage with challenging image conditions and for different signers. We show that the method is able to identify the true arm and hand locations with high reliability. The results exceed the state-of-the-art for the length and stability of continuous limb tracking.

‘Pots, privies and WCs; crapping at the opera in London before 1830’

AbstractWhat was the interplay between plumbing and the routines of audience behaviour at London's eighteenth-century opera house? A simple question, perhaps, but it proves to be a subject with scarce evidence, and even scarcer commentary. This article sets out to document as far as possible the developments in plumbing in the London theatres, moving from the chamber pot to the privy to the installation of the first water-closets, addressing questions of the audience's general behaviour, the beginnings in London of a ‘listening’ audience, and the performance of music between the acts. It concludes that the bills were performed without intervals, and that in an evening that frequently ran to four hours in length, audience members moved around the auditorium, and came and went much as they pleased (to the pot, privy or WC), demonstrating that singers would have had to contend throughout their performances with a large quantity of low-level noise.

Components of Early Outpatient Palliative Care Consultation in Patients with Metastatic Nonsmall Cell Lung Cancer

Although palliative care consultation is recommended early in the course of oncology treatment, little evidence exists to guide the nature of this intervention. We describe a clinical practice of early palliative care consultation that improved quality of life, mood, and survival in a randomized clinical trial. As part of a randomized trial of early palliative care versus standard care in patients with newly diagnosed metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), we analyzed documentation of the components of the initial palliative care consultation, self-reported quality of life as measured by the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Lung Trial Outcome Index (FACT-L TOI), and mood as measured by the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9). Seven palliative care clinicians provided consultation to 67 patients. The median total time spent with patients for the initial visit was 55 minutes (range, 20-120). Consultations focused on symptom management (median, 20 minutes; range, 0-75), patient and family coping (median, 15 minutes; range, 0-78), and illness understanding and education (median, 10 minutes; range, 0-35). Lower quality of life as measured by the FACT-L TOI predicted greater consultation time (odds ratio [OR] 0.95, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.91-0.99). Additionally, lower quality of life scores on the FACT-L TOI (OR = 0.93, 95% CI = 0.88-0.97) and higher depression scores on the PHQ-9 (OR = 1.15, 95% CI = 1.02-1.31) predicted greater time spent on symptom management. Initial palliative care consultation near the time of diagnosis in patients with metastatic NSCLC in this intervention is nearly an hour in length and largely addresses symptom management, patient and family coping, and illness understanding and education. Lower quality of life predicted longer consultations, with more time dedicated specifically to symptom management.

Outcomes and Opportunities: A Study of Children with Cortical Visual Impairment

Pediatric View is an evaluation project that began in 1999 and is located at Western Pennsylvania Hospital in Pittsburgh. It is affiliated with the hospital's Department of Pediatrics and Neonatology and was initiated as an adjunct to the neonatal developmental follow-up clinic. The purpose of Pediatric View is to provide developmental and functional vision evaluations to children who have ocular or cortical visual impairments. A team that includes a neonatologist and an individual who has expertise in child development and visual impairment conduct the evaluations. The evaluations are generally two hours in length, and a detailed report that provides specific follow-up intervention strategies is provided for each infant, child, or adolescent. Since 1999, more than 300 individuals with cortical visual impairment (CVI) have been evaluated at Pediatric View. In 2003, systematic data collection was initiated to monitor the progress of infants, children, and adolescents who have CVI. The data collection and analysis are based on two specific research questions: Are there commonalities in the medical histories of infants, children, and adolescents who have CVI? and Is there measurable improvement in the functional vision of children who have CVI? REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE The medical causes of CVI have been described by Huo, Burden, Hoyt, and Good (1999); Teplin (1995); and Jan and Groenveld (1993). Researchers have also reported on the coexisting ocular conditions of children with CVI (Good et al., 1994: Jan & Wong, 1991; Lowery, Atkinson, & Lambert, 2006). However, there have been no reviews of the birth history, length of medical intensive care, preterm or full-term birth, neonatal seizures or ongoing seizures, and treatment with medications in a diverse cohort of infants, children, and adolescents. It has been recognized that there are improvements in acuity in children with CVI (Good, 2001; Hoyt, 2007; Huo et al., 1999; Jan, Sykanda, & Groenveld, 1990). However, little is known about the functional vision status of individuals who have CVI. According to Topor (2009, p. 1), Vision is functional if a child is able to utilize visual information to plan and carry out a task.... A functional vision assessment measures how well a child uses vision to perform tasks in different places and with different materials throughout the day. The functional vision assessment paints a picture of how a child uses vision and what visual skills the child needs to develop further. The CVI Range (Roman-Lantzy, 2007) is a functional vision assessment that is designed for the specific visual and behavioral needs of individuals who have CVI. It has been shown to be a reliable evaluation instrument (Newcomb, 2010). Newcomb found that the CVI Range has a high degree of interrater, test-retest, and internal consistency reliability. These data indicate that scores that are obtained on the CVI Range measure the intended underlying construct: the degree of affect of CVI. The CVI Range is used with infants, children, and adolescents, and can be used with those who have mild, moderate, significant, or no additional disabilities. METHODS, QUESTION 1 The subset of individuals in this study was selected only if a complete data set was available. Of all the records that we reviewed, a cohort of 77 individuals met the criteria. The mandatory information included the following: medical etiologies, maternal pregnancy and perinatal history, an eye examination by an ophthalmologist, visual diagnoses of ocular or cortical visual impairment, the presence and type of seizures, and medications. The cohort included 77 individuals from 17 U.S. states and two countries outside the United States. Although the individuals traveled from all regions of the United States, they are not considered a random sample. All 77 families voluntarily sought the services offered at Pediatric View and scheduled their own appointments. …

431: “Resident as Teacher” Programs In Mandatory Emergency Medicine Clerkships

431: “Resident as Teacher” Programs In Mandatory Emergency Medicine Clerkships

Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?

There is no better time than now to take advantage of the offerings of the documentary film series Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick? (Adelman, Fortier, Smith, Stange, & Strain, 2008). Health care, its reform, and related attention to disparity is topical, and our nation is at a historical turning point with the Obama administration having identified addressing disparity as a necessary component of providing care for all (Council on Social Work Education, 2010). Currently, communities are provided with new investment opportunities to address from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act's (P.L. 111-148) (2009) Title IV: Prevention of Chronic Disease and Improving Public Health. Unnatural Causes has much to offer those who want to have a deeper understanding of disparity in the United States and how equity can be sought. However, it is misleading to describe Unnatural Causes as merely a film series; creator and executive producer Larry Adelman has a much larger goal, intending to public discourse about health (Adelman et al., 2008). Unnatural Causes aired on PBS in the spring of 2008 and is now available on DVD from California Newsreel. The series, designed to act as a springboard for a public engagement campaign, takes on an ambitious set of seven objectives: (1) to increase awareness of inequities, (2) to advance understanding of how social determinants of affect outcomes, (3) to exemplify how these outcomes are associated with social conditions, (4) to reveal how inequities affect the entire population at various levels, (5) to effect a change from an individual way of thinking about to a concern for holistic prevention, (6) to assess social and economic policies in terms of their impact on outcomes, and (7) to offer promising solutions for equity (Adelman et al., 2008). Although such dynamic aims are only partially addressed by the film itself, the Unnatural Causes Web site (http://www.unnaturalcauses.org) takes media consumers beyond the film to inspire action. both the film and Web site, the creators present a gently balanced blend of biology, environment, social conditions, and outcomes, giving each dimension the impartial attention necessitated by the complexities of this topic. Perhaps most important, Unnatural Causes offers hope by also looking at equity successes and providing materials to realize community change. Unnatural Causes puts a human face on and ease of insight into the ways in which racial and socioeconomic inequality affect from a diversity of American perspectives. This approach makes complex material comprehensible. Furthermore, the Unnatural Causes Web site goes even deeper into this content by providing a wealth of resources for those seeking to apply the information in different contexts. THE FILM This four-hour documentary consists of seven episodes, the first of which is titled In Sickness and in Wealth. It presents an overview of themes that are explored in the six succeeding episodes. Each following episode, approximately half an hour in length, depicts personal details and specific contexts to exemplify the inner workings of how race and socioeconomic inequality affect health. Specifically, the opening episode demonstrates connections between health, race, and income by comparing a CEO, a lab supervisor, a janitor, and an unemployed mother, examining how class results in a health-wealth gradient. Here, the filmmakers define class as access to power, resources, and opportunity and demystify the health-wealth gradient through the everyday experiences of various individuals in their communities (Adelman et al., 2008). The second episode, When the Bough Breaks, examines African American infant mortality rates by challenging viewers' thinking about the strength of contributing factors. Here, the filmmakers question what has more impact on birth outcomes--income and education or race. …

Co-occurrence Histograms of Oriented Gradients for Human Detection

The purpose of the work reported in this paper is to detect humans from images. This paper proposes a method for extracting feature descriptors consisting of co-occurrence histograms of oriented gradients (CoHOG). Including co-occurrence with various positional offsets, the feature descriptors can express complex shapes of objects with local and global distributions of gradient orientations. Our method is evaluated with a simple linear classifier on two well-known human detection benchmark datasets: “DaimlerChrysler pedestrian classification benchmark dataset” and “INRIA person data set”. The results show that our method reduces the miss rate by half compared with HOG, and outperforms the state-of-the-art methods on both datasets. Furthermore, as an example of a practical application, we applied our method to a surveillance video eight hours in length. The result shows that our method reduces false positives by half compared with HOG. In addition, CoHOG can be calculated 40% faster than HOG.

Harvesting Intellectual Property

Harvesting Intellectual Property

Gyne-Oncology Interactive Problem-Based Cases for Postgraduate Residents

OPEN ACCESSApril 1, 2010Gyne-Oncology Interactive Problem-Based Cases for Postgraduate Residents Leslie Sadownik, Sarah Finlayson, MD, FRCSC Leslie Sadownik University of British Columbia Faculty of Medicine Google Scholar More articles by this author , Sarah Finlayson, MD, FRCSC University of British Columbia Faculty of Medicine Google Scholar More articles by this author https://doi.org/10.15766/mep_2374-8265.1683 SectionsAbout ToolsDownload Citations ShareFacebookTwitterEmail AbstractThis educational resource is a series of five interactive problem-based cases that focus on the management of patients presenting with cancers of the female reproductive tract (cancer of the cervix, endometrium, vulva, ovary and gestational trophoblastic disease). Each case was originally designed to be used in an academic half-day 3 hours in length and facilitated by a content expert. However, the cases can be used by learners independently or in a group. Questions in the cases facilitate the diagnostic and clinical reasoning skills of residents. Ideally the cases can be enhanced by adding appropriate clinical, histology, and pathology images. The cases were designed and delivered as part of a medical education research project analyzing what type of learning was taking place in the protected time set aside for resident learning. Prior to the introduction of these cases, the formats of the educational sessions were primarily didactic (PowerPoint presentations). Although residents reported enjoying these sessions, they did not prepare for them, interact during them, or reflect on them. After these academic sessions were changed to case-based discussion, the residents uniformly reported a significant increase in self-directed study behaviors before, during, and after the sessions. Educational Objectives By the end of these cases, learners will be able to apply clinical reasoning skills to appropriately diagnose, counsel, and treat women presenting with symptoms and signs secondary to a gynecological cancer. Sign up for the latest publications from MedEdPORTAL Add your email below FILES INCLUDEDReferencesRelatedDetails FILES INCLUDED Included in this publication: Introduction to Cases for Facilitators.pdf Edith Edgard.pdf Ophelia Smith.pdf The Case of Carol Carmel.pdf The Case of Gertrude Marks.pdf Virginia Jones.pdf Virginia Jones Figures.doc To view all publication components, extract (i.e., unzip) them from the downloaded .zip file. Download editor’s noteThis publication may contain technology or a display format that is no longer in use. CitationSadownik L, Finlayson S. Gyne-Oncology Interactive Problem-Based Cases for Postgraduate Residents. MedEdPORTAL. 2010;6:1683. https://doi.org/10.15766/mep_2374-8265.1683 Copyright & Permissions© 2010 Sadownik and Finlayson. This is an open-access publication distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike license.KeywordsSpontaneous AbortionGestational Trophoblastic NeoplasmsPregnancy ComplicationsEndometriosisUterine Cervical NeoplasmsGyne-oncology Disclosures None to report. Funding/Support None to report. Prior Presentations Oral presentation at: Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada Meeting; 2007. Loading ...

Fluid Consumption and Sweating in National Football League and Collegiate Football Players With Different Access to Fluids During Practice

Considerable controversy regarding fluid replacement during exercise currently exists. To compare fluid turnover between National Football League (NFL) players who have constant fluid access and collegiate football players who replace fluids during water breaks in practices. Observational study. Respective preseason training camps of 1 National Collegiate Athletic Association Division II (DII) football team and 1 NFL football team. Both morning and afternoon practices for DII players were 2.25 hours in length, and NFL players practiced for 2.25 hours in the morning and 1 hour in the afternoon. Environmental conditions did not differ. Eight NFL players (4 linemen, 4 backs) and 8 physically matched DII players (4 linemen, 4 backs) participated. All players drank fluids only from their predetermined individual containers. The NFL players could consume both water and sports drinks, and the DII players could only consume water. We measured fluid consumption, sweat rate, total sweat loss, and percentage of sweat loss replaced. Sweat rate was calculated as change in mass adjusted for fluids consumed and urine produced. Mean sweat rate was not different between NFL (2.1 +/- 0.25 L/h) and DII (1.8 +/- 0.15 L/h) players (F(1,12) = 2, P = .18) but was different between linemen (2.3 +/- 0.2 L/h) and backs (1.6 +/- 0.2 L/h) (t(14) = 3.14, P = .007). We found no differences between NFL and DII players in terms of percentage of weight loss (t(7) = -0.03, P = .98) or rate of fluid consumption (t(7) = -0.76, P = .47). Daily sweat loss was greater in DII (8.0 +/- 2.0 L) than in NFL (6.4 +/- 2.1 L) players (t(7) = -3, P = .02), and fluid consumed was also greater in DII (5.0 +/- 1.5 L) than in NFL (4.0 +/- 1.1 L) players (t(7) = -2.8, P = .026). We found a correlation between sweat loss and fluids consumed (r = 0.79, P < .001). During preseason practices, the DII players drinking water at water breaks replaced the same volume of fluid (66% of weight lost) as NFL players with constant access to both water and sports drinks.