Live Workshop Research Articles

Nuclear management in manual small incision cataract surgery by snare technique

Manual small incision cataract surgery has evolved into a popular method of cataract surgery in India. However, in supra hard cataract, bringing out the whole nucleus through the sclerocorneal flap valve incision becomes difficult. A bigger incision required in such cataracts loses its value action, as the internal incision and corneal valve slips beyond the limbus into sclera. Struggling with the supra hard cataracts through a regular small incision. Phacofracture in the anterior chamber becomes a useful option in these cases. In the snare technique, a stainless steel wire loop when lassoed around the nucleus in the anterior chamber constricts from the equator, easily dividing the hardest of the nuclei into two halves. The wire loop constricts in a controlled way when the second cannula of snare is pulled. The divided halves can easily be brought out by serrated crocodile forceps. This nuclear management can be safely performed through a smaller sclerocorneal flap valve incision where the corneal valve action is retained within the limbus without sutures, and the endothelium or the incision is not disturbed. However, the technique requires space in the anterior chamber to maneuver the wire loop and anterior chamber depth more than 2.5 mm is recommended. Much evidence to this wonderful technique is not available in literature, as its popularity grew through live surgical workshops and small interactive conferences.

Coming of Age: Online Continuing Education for the Journal and the Society for Simulation in Healthcare

Coming of Age: Online Continuing Education for the Journal and the Society for Simulation in Healthcare

Evaluation of speakers at CME: Cosmecon 2006, an international conference on ageing and anti-ageing

Aim:To determine what constitutes effective or ineffective lecturing in dermatological conferences and also the utility of a scientific programme for the dermatologists.Methods and Materials:Evaluation forms were circulated to delegates attending the Cosmecon conference on ageing and anti-ageing, held in July 2006 at Bangalore. Feedback from the delegates in the form of completed evaluation forms of individual speakers and each session of the 3-day conference Cosmecon (including the live workshop on aesthetic and surgical procedures) were studied. Comments were analysed with the help of a biostatistician to determine the positive and negative responses.Results:On day 1 of the conference, workshop included 14 procedures by different specialists and on the second and third days of the conference, there were a total of 10 sessions, with five on each day. Evaluation forms were handed out to 440 delegates on day 1 and 600 delegates on days 2 and 3. Fifty-five speakers were evaluated by an average 56 delegates out of 440 delegates on day 1 and 600 delegates on the second and third days. The delegate response to completing the evaluation form was poor. Only about 25% of the delegates completed the feedback forms. However, the feedback did give some insight to the scientific programme, on both positive and negative aspects. Most delegates stated that they benefited from the presentations. The main negative response was lack of opportunity to ask questions after a lecture. The main positive comment was that the time keeping in the conference was very good.Conclusion:The response of the delegates in providing feedback was poor. Efforts have to be made to educate and encourage delegates to complete the feedback forms. Systematic review of the speakers would provide information to design future CME programmes effectively and to incorporate improvements for effective lecturing and to avoid ineffective lectures. The CME evaluation can also help the organizers to provide training to presenters and to monitor performance.

The Keys to Successful Online Continuing Education Programs for Nurses

Asynchronous online tutorials that award continuing education units without cost and provide knowledge about computers and nursing informatics were made available to registered nurses in Southern California. Four hundred seventy-three nurses enrolled; 52% (246) completed tutorials. Nonsignificant differences in the number of tutorials completed were found across characteristics of participants, meaning that nurses were similarly disposed to participate regardless of age, educational preparation, experience, practice setting, or ethnicity. They tended to overestimate their computer capabilities at the time of enrollment and abandoned the tutorials when they encountered technical problems. Nurses need live workshops teaching computer basics, Internet skills, and how to enroll in and run asynchronous programs. Marketing of online programs should be multifaceted, including live and electronic strategies.

Comparison of the Instructional Efficacy of Internet-Based CME With Live Interactive CME Workshops: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Comparison of the Instructional Efficacy of Internet-Based CME With Live Interactive CME Workshops: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Comparison of the Instructional Efficacy of Internet-Based CME With Live Interactive CME Workshops: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Comparison of the Instructional Efficacy of Internet-Based CME With Live Interactive CME Workshops: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Co-sponsored by the international society of hair restoration surgery: Live Surgery Workshop XI: Advancing the Industry of Hair Restoration. March 2–5, 2005 orlando

co-sponsored by the international society of hair restoration surgery: Live Surgery Workshop XI: Advancing the Industry of Hair Restoration. March 2–5, 2005 orlando

Internet-based continuing medical education instruction and live interactive CME workshops produce similar knowledge gains of national cholesterol education program: Adult treatment panel III guidelines

Internet-based continuing medical education instruction and live interactive CME workshops produce similar knowledge gains of national cholesterol education program: Adult treatment panel III guidelines

Up Close and Personal in Orlando: 8th Annual ISHRS-Sponsored Live Surgery Workshop

Up Close and Personal in Orlando: <i>8^th Annual ISHRS-Sponsored Live Surgery Workshop</i>

News from the Editor

This issue introduces some new developments in the journal’s editorial structure. Most significant of these is that Charles Taylor has decided to step down as Editor in order to concentrate on some new professional commitments. Chuck has been a prominent member of the artificial life community ever since he participated in Chris Langton’s first Artificial Life workshop at Los Alamos in 1987. He helped Chris create this journal as a founding Associate Editor, and in the middle of volume 3 he joined Chris as one of the journal’s editors. Chuck’s sound and thoughtful judgment, his decisive action, and his vision for future opportunities provided the consistent creative energy that helped the journal to grow into a mature scientific periodical over the next four years. Not least among his important contributions were his pioneering efforts to create a professional organization that would provide a stable, democratic, and genuinely international foundation for the journal’s future. I know that journal’s readers will want to join me in thanking Chuck for his years of service as our Editor, and I want to express my personal appreciation for the opportunity to work alongside him as Co-Editors-inChief for the past year. The journal’s editorial structure will continue to evolve for a while as the International Society for Artificial Life grows into its new role as the journal’s governing body. Some of these changes also occur in this issue. David Stork is stepping down as the journal’s Book and Software Review Editor, and I want to warmly thank him for filling this role admirably right from the journal’s inception. I am pleased to announce that those responsibilities will now be shouldered by Inman Harvey of Sussex University, who has been an active and influential member of the artificial life community for many years. Readers are invited to suggest books that we might review to Inman by email (inmanh@cogs.susx.ac.uk). I am also pleased to announce that Philip Husbands, also of Sussex University, has agreed to join the journal’s Editorial Board, thus further strengthening the journal’s representation in Europe and its expertise in both theoretical and applied aspects of genetic algorithms and evolutionary robotics. The articles and reports published in this issue nicely reflect the interdisciplinary breadth of contemporary artificial life. In “Mutualism promotes diversity and stability in a simple artificial ecosystem” Elizaveta Pachepsky, Tim Taylor, and Stephen Jones address how ecological interactions among organisms affect the dynamics of a spatially explicit agent-based artificial ecosystem. While theoretical ecologists have given the issue of ecosystem stability much insightful analysis over the past generation (e.g., [4]), the primary aim of Pachepsky et al. is complementary: to understand how evolutionary dynamics can sometimes introduce drives for ongoing evolution rather than stasis. The artificial life community has increasingly included efforts to apply agent-based evolutionary algorithms to a variety of issues concerning the self-organization and evolution of social and cultural systems. An illustration from linguistics is Henry Brighton’s paper in this issue, “Compositional syntax from cultural transmission.” Traditional explanations of the origin and structure of language appeal to the biological evolution of an innate language acquisition device. But this does not account for how language as a cultural phenomenon can evolve in the absence of biological evolution. Brighton argues that compositional structure—one of the syntactic hallmarks of human language—can be explained by the dynamics of cultural evolution. This work

Barcelona Update

Dr. Ramon Vila-Rovira, our Spanish host and the recently elected First President of the Spanish Society of Hair Restoration Surgeons has finalized details for the live workshops at the Barcelona Meeting in October. We will have seven surgeries, covering most aspects of hair restoration (micrografts

Report On the 7Th Annual Slice of Life Workshop, Copenhagen, Denmark, June 1996

Report On the 7Th Annual Slice of Life Workshop, Copenhagen, Denmark, June 1996

A different hair restoration meeting: The WAHRS Live Surgery Workshop and Symposium

A different hair restoration meeting: The WAHRS Live Surgery Workshop and Symposium

A Community Conducts Its First Family Life Workshop

A Community Conducts Its First Family Life Workshop