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At least 415 records · Page 23Linked to original sources

PubMed2003

Spontaneous vocal differentiation of coo-calls for tools and food in Japanese monkeys.

Vocal production and its usage in nonhuman primates may share common features with primitive human language. We trained two Japanese monkeys to use a rake-shaped tool to retrieve distant food. After the training, the monkeys spontaneously began vocalizing coo-calls in the tool-using context. We then trained one of the monkeys to vocalize to request food or the tool. Three independent acoustic parameters were measured and each parameter was independently analyzed across conditions using a multiple comparison test. We found that the monkey spontaneously differentiated their coo-calls to ask for either food or tool during the course of this training. This process might involve a change from emotional vocalizations into intentionally controlled ones by associating them with consciously planned tool use. We thus established a novel hypothesis about the origin of voluntary vocal control that could be approached from neurophysiological procedures.

Animals↗

PubMed2002

A simple, spreadsheet-based, food safety risk assessment tool.

The development and use of a simple tool for food safety risk assessment is described. The tool is in spreadsheet software format and embodies established principles of food safety risk assessment, i.e., the combination of probability of exposure to a food-borne hazard, the magnitude of hazard in a food when present, and the probability and severity of outcomes that might arise from that level and frequency of exposure. The tool requires the user to select from qualitative statements and/or to provide quantitative data concerning factors that that will affect the food safety risk to a specific population, arising from a specific food product and specific hazard, during the steps from harvest to consumption. The spreadsheet converts the qualitative inputs into numerical values and combines them with the quantitative inputs in a series of mathematical and logical steps using standard spreadsheet functions. Those calculations are used to generate indices of the public health risk. Shortcomings of the approach are discussed, including the simplifications and assumptions inherent in the mathematical model, the inadequacy of data currently available, and the lack of consideration of variability and uncertainty in the inputs and outputs of the model. Possible improvements are suggested. The model underpinning the tool is a simplification of the harvest to consumption pathway, but the tool offers a quick and simple means of comparing food-borne risks from diverse products, and has utility for ranking and prioritising risks from diverse sources. It can be used to screen food-borne risks and identify those requiring more rigorous assessment. It also serves as an aid to structured problem solving and can help to focus attention on those factors in food production, processing, distribution and meal preparation that most affect food safety risk, and that may be the most appropriate targets for risk management strategies.

Food Contamination↗

PubMed2003

Family history of diabetes as a potential public health tool.

Given the substantial morbidity and mortality associated with type 2 diabetes, it is important that public health seek ways to delay or prevent the onset of this condition. Risk factors for type 2 diabetes are well established and include underlying genetic susceptibility. Despite this knowledge, as well as significant advances in understanding the human genome, the prevalence of type 2 diabetes continues to rise at an alarming rate. Because type 2 diabetes is a complex condition involving a combination of genetic and environmental factors, DNA testing for susceptibility genes is not yet warranted. However, because family history reflects genetic susceptibility in addition to other factors, it may be a useful public health tool for disease prevention. When evaluating family history as a public health tool, several important issues need to be considered, including the analytic and clinical validity and the clinical utility of using family history as a screening tool. These issues as well as a review of the epidemiologic evidence evaluating family history as a risk factor will be reviewed.Overall, a family history approach appears to be a promising new public health tool to fight the growing epidemic of diabetes in the United States. Adequate levels of funding to further evaluate this approach and to develop appropriate tools should be made available for research activities focused on this important area.

Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2↗

PubMed2004

[Development of a tool for the identification of socially vulnerable hospital patients].

OBJECTIVE: To develop and assess the metrological properties of a simple to use tool to identify socially vulnerable outpatients. METHODS: A multidisciplinary group of professionals selected five characteristics identifying social vulnerability, integrated in a self-reported questionnaire, from which 5 criteria identify the socially vulnerable outpatients consulting the hospital. The metrological performance of the tool was assessed on a sample of randomly selected outpatients admitted to the emergency department and the results referred to the independent assessment of two social workers. The sensitivity and specificity of the tool were determined and ROC curves drawn. RESULTS: 222 patients were included, aged from 15 to 93 Years (mean: 53 Years), 59% of whom were men. 78% filled out the questionnaire on their own, while 22% required help, usually for physical or material reasons and 87% answered the five questions without any difficulty. The kappa coefficient of agreement between the two social workers was estimated at 0.94 (CI: 0.89-0.98). The sensitivity of the self reported questionnaire was of 70% (CI: 64-76) and its specificity of 77% (CI: 71-82). The ROC curves showed that the modified tool had a sensitivity of 80% (Sp: 67%). With only 2 characteristics, this sensitivity was of 76% (Sp: 73%). CONCLUSION: This tool, which is based on the advice of various experts, is valid and presents acceptable metrological properties. Once some simplifications have been made, the questionnaire could be used in routine in any patient consulting the hospital because it is acceptable, simple to use and can be rapidly filled-in.

Academic Medical Centers↗

PubMed2004

Online annotation tool for digital mammography.

RATIONALE AND OBJECTIVES: To develop a software tool for radiologists to annotate mammograms online. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The tool is web-based with a Java development environment and composed of a Digital Image and Communication in Medicine (DICOM) image viewer, a clinical information collector, and a database. The use of the tool with a sample case is demonstrated in this article. RESULTS: An online tool for the annotation of digital mammograms for teaching and research purposes has been developed. CONCLUSION: This annotation tool can be used to provide an annotated-case library on mammography education for residents and fellows.

Education, Medical, Continuing↗

PubMed2006

The Inner-City Asthma Intervention tool kit: best practices and lessons learned.

BACKGROUND: Asthma is a major public health problem of increasing concern in the United States. Low-income populations, minorities, and children living in inner cities experience disproportionately higher morbidity and mortality due to asthma. In 1991, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease at the National Institutes of Health funded the National Cooperative Inner-City Asthma Study (NCICAS), the foundation for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)-funded Inner-City Asthma Intervention (ICAI) on which the tool kit discussed in this article is based. OBJECTIVE: To summarize the purpose and content of a tool kit for health care organizations that wish to enhance their asthma management efforts and to improve the quality of life of children with asthma and their families. METHODS: The ICAI was tailored to the individual child and family through a combination of group and individual activities (core) and follow-up. Information contained in the tool kit is based on project reports, tracking and data collection reports, program oversight activity, and general subject matter knowledge. RESULTS: Although the NCICAS proved successful, moving from a research design to the real world of implementation was difficult. The tool kit draws on the experience of implementation and provides strategies, options, and considerations for health care organizations to use in tailoring project activities. CONCLUSION: The ICAI demonstrated that committed health care organizations, with trained and experienced individuals, could help empower children and families to manage childhood asthma. The tool kit was designed to share the best practices and lessons learned from the ICAI implementation of the NCICAS protocol at the community level.

Asthma↗

PubMed2005

[The human body and the computer as pedagogic tools for anatomy: review of the literature].

Since the first dissections, the human body has been the main tool for the teaching of anatomy in medical courses. For the last 30 years, university anatomy laboratory dissection has been brought into question and the total hours of anatomy teaching have decreased. In parallel, new technologies have progressed and become more competitive and more attractive than dissection. The aim of this review of the literature was to evaluate the use of the human body as a pedagogic tool compared to today's computer tools. Twenty comparative studies were reviewed. Their analysis showed that the human body remains the main tool in anatomy teaching even if anatomic demonstration (prosection) can replace dissection, and that the computer tools were complementary but not a substitute to dissection.

Anatomy↗

PubMed2006

A trigger tool to identify adverse events in the intensive care unit.

BACKGROUND: The Institute for Healthcare Improvement has tested and taught use of a variety of trigger tools, including those for adverse medication events, neonatal intensive care events, and a global trigger tool for measuring all event categories in a hospital. The trigger tools have evolved as a complimentary adjunct to voluntary reporting. The Trigger Tool technique was used to identify the rate of occurrence of adverse events in the intensive care unit (ICU), and a subset of ICUs described those events in detail. METHODS: Sixty-two ICUs in 54 hospitals (both academic and community) engaged in IHI critical care collaboratives between 2001 and late 2004. Charts were selected using a random sampling technique and reviewed using a two-stage process. RESULTS: The prevalence of adverse events observed on 12,074 ICU admissions was 11.3 adverse events/100 patient days. For a subset of 1,294 charts from 13 ICUs which were reviewed in detail, 1,450 adverse events were identified, for a prevalence of 16.4 events/100 ICU days. Fifty-five percent of the charts in this subset contained at least one adverse event. DISCUSSION: The Trigger Tool methodology is a practical approach to enhance detection of adverse events in ICU patients. Evaluation of these adverse events can be used to direct resource use for improvement work. The measurement of these sampled chart reviews can also be used to follow the impact of the change strategies on the occurrence of adverse events within a local ICU.

Critical Care↗

PubMed2004

Gross Motor Function Classification System and outcome tools for assessing ambulatory cerebral palsy: a multicenter study.

The relationships between different levels of severity of ambulatory cerebral palsy, defined by the Gross Motor Function Classification System (GMFCS), and several pediatric outcome instruments were examined. Data from the Gross Motor Function Measure (GMFM), Pediatric Orthopaedic Data Collection Instrument (PODCI), temporal-spatial gait parameters, and oxygen cost were collected from six sites. The sample size for each assessment tool ranged from 226 to 1047 participants. There were significant differences among GMFCS levels I, II, and III for many of the outcome tools assessed in this study. Strong correlations were seen between GMFCS level and each of the GMFM sections D and E scores, the PODCI measures of Transfer and Mobility, and Sports and Physical Function, Gait Velocity, and Oxygen Cost. Correlations among tools demonstrated that the GMFM sections D and E scores correlated with the largest number of other tools. Logistic regression showed GMFM section E score to be a significant predictor of GMFCS level. GMFM section E score can be used to predict GMFCS level relatively accurately (76.6%). Study data indicate that the assessed outcome tools can distinguish between children with different GMFCS levels. This study establishes justification for using the GMFCS as a classification system in clinical studies.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2005

Health needs assessment tools: progress and potential.

OBJECTIVES: Health needs has attracted the interest of policy-makers, health economists, and health professionals as modern health services try to satisfy individual and population health needs to optimize resource utilization. Health needs can be assessed by administering various types of survey or interview-based instruments. If health needs are to be satisfied in changing health agendas in developed and developing countries, it is essential to employ valid and reliable tools. Despite the importance of needs assessment, no comprehensive review of tools is currently available. We carried out a literature search to define and categorize existing health needs assessment tools. METHODS: We reviewed medical and social search engines for items containing specific health needs-related words to identify needs tools across a range of specialties. Papers were reviewed in terms of design, subject matter, psychometric features, and method of administration method. RESULTS: Thirty-one employed in 52 studies including cancer, mental health, palliative care, multiple sclerosis, and cardiovascular disease tools were identified. CONCLUSIONS: This report summarizes available health needs instruments in a range of diseases to assist researchers in accessing health needs resources more easily and to encourage further research in this field.

Community Participation↗

PubMed2006

Software tools for analysis of mass spectrometric lipidome data.

New software tools for quantitative analysis of mass spectrometric lipidome data have been developed. The LIMSA tool finds and integrates peaks in a mass spectrum, matches the peaks with a user-supplied list of expected lipids, corrects for overlap in their isotopic patterns, and quantifies the identified lipid species according to internal standards. Three different algorithms for isotopic correction (deconvolution) were implemented and compared. LIMSA has a convenient user interface and can be applied on any type of MS spectrum. Typically, analysis of one spectrum takes only a few seconds. The SECD tool, designed for analysis of LC-MS data sets, provides an intuitive and informative display of MS chromatograms as two-dimensional "maps" for visual inspection of the data and allows the user to extract mass spectra, to be further analyzed with LIMSA, from arbitrary regions of these maps. More reliable analysis of complex lipidome data with improved signal-to-noise ratio is obtained when compared to standard time-range averaged spectra. The functionality of these tools is demonstrated by analysis of standard mixtures as well as complex biological samples. The tools described here make accurate, high-throughput analysis of extensive sample sets feasible and are made available to the scientific community free of charge.

Computational Biology↗

PubMedDate not supplied

A software tool to assist business-process decision-making in the biopharmaceutical industry.

Conventionally, software tools for the design of bioprocesses have provided only limited business-related information for decision-making. There is an industrial need to investigate manufacturing options and to gauge the impact of various decisions from economic as well as process perspectives. This paper describes the development and use of a tool to provide an assessment of whole flowsheets by capturing both process and business aspects. The tool is demonstrated by considering the issues concerned when making decisions between two potential flowsheets for a common product. A case study approach is used to compare the process and business benefits of a conventional process route employing packed chromatography beds and an alternative that uses expanded bed adsorption (EBA). The tool allows direct evaluation of the benefits of capital cost reduction and increased yield offered by EBA against penalties of using potentially more expensive EBA matrix with lower lifetimes. Furthermore, the tool provides the ability to gauge the process robustness of each flowsheet option.

Adsorption↗

PubMed2000

A classification tree approach to the development of actuarial violence risk assessment tools.

Since the 1970s, a wide body of research has suggested that the accuracy of clinical risk assessments of violence might be increased if clinicians used actuarial tools. Despite considerable progress in recent years in the development of such tools for violence risk assessment, they remain primarily research instruments, largely ignored in daily clinical practice. We argue that because most existing actuarial tools are based on a main effects regression approach, they do not adequately reflect the contingent nature of the clinical assessment processes. To enhance the use of actuarial violence risk assessment tools, we propose a classification tree rather than a main effects regression approach. In addition, we suggest that by employing two decision thresholds for identifying high- and low-risk cases--instead of the standard single threshold--the use of actuarial tools to make dichotomous risk classification decisions may be further enhanced. These claims are supported with empirical data from the MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study.

Actuarial Analysis↗

PubMed2001

Gene expression profiling in osteoblast biology: bioinformatic tools.

This review focuses on using microarray data on a clonal osteoblast cell model to demonstrate how various current and future bioinformatic tools can be used to understand, at a more global or comprehensible level, how cells grow and differentiate. In this example, BMP2 was used to stimulate growth and differentiation of osteoblast to a mineralized matrix. A discussion is included on various methods for clustering gene expression data, statistical evaluation of data, and various new tools that can be used to derive deeper insight into a particular biological problem. How these tools can be obtained is also discussed. New tools for the biologists to compare their datasets with others, as well as examples of future bioinformatic tools that can be used for developing gene networks and pathways for a given set of data are included and discussed.

Animals↗

PubMed2004

Microfabricated quill-type surface patterning tools for the creation of biological micro/nano arrays.

Novel quill-type cantilever-based surface patterning tools (SPTs) were designed and constructed for use in controlled placement of femtoliter volumes of biological molecules on surfaces for biological applications. These tools were fabricated from silicon dioxide using microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) techniques. They featured a 1 microm split gap, fluidic transport microchannels and self-replenishing reservoirs. Experimental trials were performed using these tools on NanoArrayer molecular deposition instrumentation. Cy3-streptavidin was loaded as a biological sample and patterned on an amine-reactive dithiobis-succinimidyl undecanoate (DSU) monolayer on gold. Results showed these tools were capable of generating high quality biological arrays with routine spot sizes of 2-3 microm. The spot size could potentially achieve sub-micron dimensions if these SPT designs are reduced in size by more precise microfabrication techniques. The geometric designs of these tools facilitated sample replenishment from the local reservoir on the cantilever which allowed printing of large numbers of spots without sample reloading.

Adsorption↗

PubMed1989

Social influences on the acquisition of tool-using behaviors in tufted capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella).

To identify behaviors related to acquisition of tool-use in tufted capuchins (Cebus apella), we presented two tool-using tasks to two groups, extending findings by Westergaard and Fragaszy (1987) and Visalberghi (in press). Five Ss learned to use the tools in each task. The primary predictor of success was level of interest in the task. Observation of others at the apparatus did not facilitate exploratory behaviors or contact with the tools in the observers. Most animals performed exploratory behaviors more often when they were at the apparatus alone than when with another, whether or not the other was using a tool. Observers were quick to learn the relationship between another's activities and the appearance of food. We conclude that capuchins do not readily learn about instrumental relations by observation of others or imitate other's acts. Imitation probably plays no role in the spread of novel instrumental behaviors among monkeys.

Animals↗

PubMed1993

Processes of social learning in the tool use of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and human children (Homo sapiens).

Common chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and 2-year-old human children (Homo sapiens) were presented with a rakelike tool and a desirable but out-of-reach object. One group of subjects observed a human demonstrator use the tool in one way, and another group observed a demonstrator use the tool in another way. Children in both cases did what the model did. Chimpanzee subjects, however, behaved identically in the 2 model conditions. Both groups performed better than subjects who saw no demonstration. This pattern of results suggest that the chimpanzees were paying attention to the general functional relations in the task and to the results obtained by the demonstrator but not to the actual methods of tool use demonstrated. Human children were focused on the demonstrator's actual methods of tool use (her behavior). The different social learning processes used by the 2 species have implications for their different forms of social organization.

Animals↗

PubMed2002

Mapping the public health workforce I: a tool for classifying the public health workforce.

We aimed to develop a tool to identify members of the public health workforce and classify them using categories developed for the Chief Medical Officer's project to strengthen the public health function. The tool was developed to gain a picture of London's public health workforce, and needed to be reliable and easy to use in many settings inside and outside the health service. We needed to be able to classify posts from brief information without interrogation of postholders, so that the entire workforces of large organisations could be classified from information provided by only a few key informants. Key questions and decision rules were defined by presenting interviewees in public health with brief information on nine jobs and discussing with them the process by which they determined whether each post was in the public health workforce, and if so, in which category. The questions and decision rules were refined into a classification tool which was presented as a flow diagram and a questionnaire. Application of the tool revealed that it was understood by key informants and resulted in classifications which were accepted by the researchers. The tool has now been applied extensively in London and yielded useful results. Many other applications in public health workforce planning and development are anticipated.

Humans↗