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At least 433 records · Page 24Linked to original sources

PubMed2001

The needs of informal carers: a proposed assessment tool for use by public health nurses.

AIM: To develop an assessment tool for the collection of information on carers' needs and to pilot test same. BACKGROUND: No formal assessment of the needs of carers is undertaken by Public Health Nurses (PHNs) in the West of Ireland. METHOD: An assessment tool which took the form of a questionnaire was designed based on an earlier needs analysis, a literature review and qualitative data obtained with carers at two focus groups. Sixty carers were involved in the pilot study of the tool. FINDINGS: Carers found this model made them feel valued, created awareness about the effects of caring and provided them with information. They recommended its introduction. CONCLUSION: The carers and PHNs found the assessment tool to be useful and comprehensive in its approach. However, it requires modification, with specific attention being paid to the validity and reliability of the tool.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

A simple nutrition screening tool for hemodialysis nurses.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the reliability of a nurse-performed nutrition screening tool (NST) for hemodialysis (HD) patients to identify nutritionally at-risk patients. DESIGN: Tool reliability assessment. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: The setting was nine non-hospital private (n = 3) and public (n = 6) HD units in Australia (two rural and seven metropolitan). Participants were 112 HD patients. RESULTS: A total of 112 HD patients (male = 65, female = 47) from 9 non-hospital HD units in Australia (seven metropolitan and two rural) were screened with the NST and the outcome of dietitian referral compared with Standard Dietitians Assessment. The mean age of patients was 57.6 years. Overall, the NST showed a sensitivity of 0.84 (range, 0.71 to 0.94; P < .05) and a specificity of 0.9 (range, 0.82 to 0.98; P < .05). The NST was more sensitive (sensitivity, 0.93 [range, 0.87 to 0.99; P < .05]) and was more specific for men (specificity, 0.92 [range, 0.85 to 0.99; P < .05]). Specificity was very strong in metropolitan patients (specificity, 0.94 [range, 0.87 to 1.01; P < .05]). CONCLUSIONS: The tool was more sensitive and specific than the NST previously reported by the same investigators. The tool is particularly specific in that it screens those patients not requiring dietitian intervention. The use of this tool may benefit HD units that do not have on-site or regular dietetic support to prioritize patients needing dietitian intervention.

Appetite↗

PubMed2004

Evaluation of a computer-based nutrition education tool.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the efficacy and feasibility of using a computer-based teaching tool (http://www.coolfoodplanet.org) for nutrition and lifestyle education developed for primary school children. DESIGN: This was a 2-week school-based intervention in third and fourth grades. The study design was multi-factorial with repeated measures of nutrition knowledge, at three points in time, of dependent samples from control and intervention groups. Control schools (n=7) used 'traditional' nutrition education materials and intervention schools (n=8) additionally used the computer-based educational tool. Qualitative information was collected in focus group discussions with student teachers and pupils, and by observing the nutrition lessons. SETTING/SUBJECTS: Pupils aged 8-11 years (n=271) from participating schools in Vienna, Austria. RESULTS: Nutrition knowledge increased significantly in both intervention and control schools, irrespective of the teaching tool used (P<0.001). The significant effect was maintained at 3 months' follow-up. There was no detectable difference in nutrition knowledge post intervention or at follow-up between the two study groups. In intervention schools, younger pupils (8-9 years) had better nutrition knowledge than older pupils (10-11 years) (P=0.011). CONCLUSION: This computer-based tool increases the possibilities of school-based nutrition education. If the tool's weaknesses identified during the formative evaluation are eliminated, it has the potential to make learning about nutrition more enjoyable, exciting and effective. This is of great importance considering that 'healthy' nutrition is not necessarily a topic that easily attracts pupils' attention and in view of the potential long-term health benefits of early and effective nutrition education.

Age Distribution↗

PubMed1977

Ergonomic principles basic to hand tool design.

A survey of those features of hand tools relevant to the physical interaction between the implement and the human operator. Concepts basics to the optimization of forces are mentioned, followed by a description of some of the more common physiological problems and musculoskeletal complaints associated with improper hand tool and design and usage. An account of the distribution of contact pressures and possible consequences, if these are excessive, is followed by a description of the role of working gloves as related to ergonomic problems and their possible relationships to occupational diseases of the hand and wrist. Some aspects of anatomy and anthropometry pertinent to the optimization of posture, motion patterns and tool size precede a list of desirable features for power tools. A glossary is included as an aid to the reader. The concepts and situations described are applicable to the design and use of the vast majority of hand tools.

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome↗

PubMed1996

Tools to incorporate some psychological and organizational issues during the development of computer-based systems.

The organization, findings and outcomes of a joint industrial/academic project are described. The principal goal of the project was to develop and test some tools through which people involved in system development can incorporate explicit consideration of certain key psychological and organizational issues. Five tools developed for this purpose are outlined. These are concerned with the design of work organization, job design, the allocation of tasks between humans and computers, usability and task analysis. The use of the tools is described in a 'live' system development project in a large company. The authors briefly review the extent to which these tools meet a set of pre-specified requirements, compare their approach with those of Mumford (1986) and Lim et al. (1992), and make explicit what claims they are making of these tools.

Computer Systems↗

PubMed1999

Muscle responses to simulated torque reactions of hand-held power tools.

The aim of this work was to investigate physiological responses to torque reaction forces produced by hand-held power tools used to tighten threaded fasteners. Such tools are used repetitively by workers in many industries and are often associated with upper limb musculoskeletal complaints. The tools considered for stimulation in this study had straight handles and required from 100 to 400 ms to tighten fasteners to a peak torque of 1.0 to 2.5 Nm and from 50 to 150 ms for the torque to decay to zero. A tool stimulator was constructed to apply a programmed torque profile to a handle similar to that of a straight in-line power screwdriver. Wrist flexor and extensor surface EMGs and handle position were recorded as subjects held handles subjected to controlled torque loads that tended to flex the wrist. It was found that: (1) very high EMG values occurred even though torques were of short duration (50 to 600 ms) and the peak torques were low (7-28% of maximum strength); (2) high EMGs in anticipation of torque are directly related to torque build-up rate and peak torque; (3) high peak flexor and extensor EMGs during and following torque onset are related to torque build-up rate and peak torque; (4) minimum time of peak EMGs of 72-87 ms following the onset of torques with 50 ms build-up suggests the contribution of an extensor muscle stretch reflex component; delayed peak for longer build-ups suggests a central control of muscle force in response to torque; (5) angular excursions of handles increase with decreasing torque build-up time and increasing torque magnitude causes increasing eccentric work; (6) the results show that the slow torque build-up times (450 ms) correspond to minimum peak EMGs; and (7) accumulated EMGs increase with increasing torque and torque build-up times. Further studies are needed to evaluate fatigue and musculoskeletal injuries associated with prolonged periods of tool use.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Test-retest reliability, internal item consistency, and concurrent validity of the wheelchair seating discomfort assessment tool.

Discomfort is a common problem for wheelchair users. Few researchers have investigated discomfort among wheelchair users or potential solutions for this problem. One of the impediments to quantitative research on wheelchair seating discomfort has been the lack of a reliable method for quantifying seat discomfort. The purpose of this study was to establish the test-retest reliability, internal item consistency, and concurrent validity of a newly developed Wheelchair Seating Discomfort Assessment Tool (WcS-DAT). Thirty full-time, active wheelchair users with intact sensation were asked to use this and other tools in order to rate their levels of discomfort in a test-retest reliability study format. Data from these measures were analyzed in SPSS using an intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) model (2,k) to measure the test-retest reliability. Cronbach's alpha was used to examine the internal consistency of the items within the WcS-DAT. Concurrent validity with similar measures was analyzed using Pearson product-moment correlations. ICC scores for all analyses were above the established lower bound of .80, indicating a highly stable and reliable tool. In addition, alpha scores indicated good consistency of all items without redundancy. Finally, correlations with similar tools, such as the Chair Evaluation Checklist and the Short Form of the McGill Pain Questionnaire, were significant at the .05 level, and many were significant at the .001 level. These results support the use of the WcS-DAT as a reliable and stable tool for quantifying wheelchair seating discomfort. Its application will enhance the ability to assess and to research this important problem and will provide a means to validate the outcomes of specialized seating interventions for the study population of wheelchairs users.

Persons with Disabilities↗

PubMed2001

A practical method for ergonomic and usability evaluation of hand tools: a comparison of three random orbital sander configurations.

Tool and equipment purchasing decisions are constantly made by companies and workers, often with little objective information beyond word of mouth and marketing information. This study presents a pilot investigation of random orbital sanders using ergonomic and usability assessment techniques which can easily be applied in any industry. Three subjects performed a sanding task using three different tool configurations: 1) the current model sander, 2) current model with hose-swivel attachment, and 3) the new "ergonomically designed" model. Physical measurements were taken of muscle activity and wrist motion to complement think-aloud testing and a usability questionnaire. No significant differences were found in physical measurements between the three configurations. Participants strongly preferred the current model over the new model, reporting less perceived discomfort and vibration, despite what appeared to be improvements in the new design. Workplace changes intended to reduce the risk of injury sometimes may have no effect after significant capital investment, or in some cases even increase the risk of injury. Practical assessment of new tools or modifications can quickly determine whether the outcome is indeed an improvement. The results of this tool assessment highlight the need for objective information in tool and equipment design decisions.

Adult↗

PubMed1993

Effect of tool shape and work location on perceived exertion for work on horizontal surfaces.

Thirty subjects drove screws into perforated sheet metal mounted on a horizontal surface using three air-powered tools that varied in shape (right-angle, in-line, and pistol-shaped). The four horizontal work locations ranged from 13-88 cm in front of the body and were placed at 25 cm intervals. The vertical placement of the horizontal beam was at midthigh, elbow, and midchest height. Subjects drove 25 screws at each tool/work location combination before rating that condition using the Borg 10-point ratio rating scale. The ratings of perceived exertion increased with increasing horizontal distance from the body. When tool shape was not considered, the perceived exertion was virtually equal for driving screws at midthigh or elbow height. The ratings at midchest height were significantly higher than elbow and midthigh height. When tool shape was taken into account, subjects perceived less exertion driving screws with the pistol-shaped tool at midthigh height. The in-line and right-angle tools had the lowest ratings of perceived exertion for driving screws at elbow and midchest height.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2001

Solving the forward problem in electrical impedance tomography for the human head using IDEAS (integrated design engineering analysis software), a finite element modelling tool.

If electrical impedance tomography is to be used as a clinical tool, the image reconstruction algorithms must yield accurate images of impedance changes. One of the keys to producing an accurate reconstructed image is the inclusion of prior information regarding the physical geometry of the object. To achieve this, many researchers have created tools for solving the forward problem by means of finite element methods (FEMs). These tools are limited, allowing only a set number of meshes to be produced from the geometric information of the object. There is a clear need for geometrical accurate FEM models to improve the quality of the reconstructed images. We present a commercial tool called IDEAS, which can be used to create FEM meshes for these models. The application of this tool is demonstrated by using segmented data from the human head to model impedance changes inside the head.

Algorithms↗

PubMed2001

Concise screening questions for clinical assessments of terminal care: the needs near the end-of-life care screening tool.

End-of-life care has benefited from the recognition that multiple dimensions exist to patient care needs. However, well-designed clinical tools to evaluate these multiple dimensions are few. Such tools are available for evaluations of pain and other specific areas, but clinicians need a sensitive and reliable set of bedside questions to assess and screen individual patients' overall care. We set out to develop a practical tool that we called the Needs at the End-of-Life Screening Tool (NEST). As part of a larger study, we conducted a series of focus groups and interviews with patients, family caregivers, and professionals followed by a survey of a nationally representative sample of 988 patients with a terminal diagnosis. From the former we derived a frame-work with a full range of identified dimensions that are important in end-of-life care. Dimensions were empirically tested using factor analysis of the patients' survey responses. We developed criteria for selecting questions within the dimensions. Modifications were made to the questions to suit the clinical context. Finally, to assist in their ready use at the bedside, we assigned questions to four core themes of palliative care. Thirteen questions resulted and were assigned themes corresponding, for mnemonic purposes, to each letter of NEST: for Needs (social), for Existential matters, for Symptoms and for Therapeutic matters. NEST is the first data-driven, comprehensive tool designed from an empirically validated framework and tested survey questions for clinical use in end-of-life care. Evaluation of its performance in another population is needed to complete NEST's fuller evaluation.

Attitude to Death↗

PubMed2003

Evaluation of a data collection tool (TELEform) for palliative care research.

INTRODUCTION: The Alberta Cancer Board Palliative Care Research Initiative (ACBPCRI) encourages province-wide collaboration on palliative care research projects. Because of geographic differences in information system infrastructure, it is necessary to evaluate and adopt a data collection tool that will span the variability in system hardware and software. We assessed TELEform (Cardiff Sofware Inc., Vista CA), an optical recognition-based technology that scans data collection paper forms and exports data to a computer database. We examined work place suitability, data quality, and effective resource utilization (time and cost) during the data collection tool evaluation. METHODS: Two hospices and two hospitals from the cities of Edmonton and Calgary participated in the revised Edmonton Staging System (rESS) project that used TELEform as its data collection tool. The evaluation was conducted over a period of 7 months. Data source such as e-mail and summary notes collected primarily through meetings and discussions with management, caregivers, researchers, and clerical staff was used to assess work practice and resource utilization. Descriptive statistics was employed to examine data quality and resource utilization. RESULTS: One hundred seventy eight patients were recruited during the 7-month trial. The costs and time involved in staff training, logistic support, and equipment startup were found to be reasonable. Data error and missing data were 0.4% and 0.6%, respectively. We initially encountered several problems with TELEform. The optical recognition tool could not easily pick up handwritten data. Furthermore, it was unforgiving in the sense that an error was not correctable by an eraser on the paper form. Data collectors found TELEform usage to be easy and simple because it retained the familiarity of paper-based recording. CONCLUSION: It is important to develop an information infrastructure to support research project data collection for different health settings across health regions. The TELEform based on optical recognition was able to respond to the need for current information processing. We believe that TELEform is a useful tool in terms of work practice, data quality, and resource utilization.

Data Collection↗

PubMed2005

OEDIPE: a personalized dosimetric tool associating voxel-based models with MCNPX.

AIM: A new tool, named OEDIPE (a French acronym that stands for "Tool for Personalized Internal Dose Assessment") was developed to carry out personalized internal dosimetry calculations for nuclear medicine (for both therapeutic and diagnostic procedures) and for radiation safety (in the case of internal contamination). It was developed under the PV-Wave visual data analysis system by the Institute of Radioprotection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN) in collaboration with the French Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM). This software creates anthropomorphic voxel-based phantoms from computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) patient images through the use of a friendly graphical user interface (GUI). Several tools have been built-in to allow for image segmentation. Source data, including VOI localization and cumulated activities, are assessed by single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) images, and the source may be specified in any number of organs either as a point source or a homogeneously distributed source. It is also possible to choose the dosimetric parameters required for the study (mean organ dose or a dose distribution). Phantom, source, and dosimetric parameters are automatically written into a file. That file is then processed by the Monte Carlo code MCNPX (LANL) to perform the actual dose calculation. RESULTS: OEDIPE can compute either the absorbed dose in each organ (in a few minutes), or the absorbed dose in each voxel of the phantom (i.e. the spatial dose distribution at a tissue level) in a few hours or more. OEDIPE automatically reads the MCNPX output file and processes results to give a list of absorbed doses in each organ or a plot of isodose curves superimposed onto the phantom. Because of the long calculation times required to compute an absorbed dose within an entire whole-body phantom at a spatial resolution of a few millimeters, modifications were made to reduce computational times to reasonable values. To illustrate this tool, results of a dosimetric study of technetium-99m labeling of a bone-scanning agent are presented. CONCLUSION: OEDIPE is a tool that can be used for patient-specific dosimetry--for example, in targeted radiotherapy--by taking into account the individual patient anatomy, including tumors.

Humans↗

PubMed1998

Tools, information sources, and methods used in deciding on drug availability in HMOs.

The use and importance of specific decision-making tools, information sources, and drug-use management methods in determining drug availability and use in HMOs were studied. A questionnaire was sent to 303 randomly selected HMOs. Respondents were asked to rate their use of each of four formal decision-making tools and its relative importance, as well as the use and importance of eight information sources and 11 methods for managing drug availability and use, on a 5-point scale. The survey response rate was 28%. Approximately half of the respondents reported that their HMOs used decision analysis or multiattribute analysis in deciding on drug availability. If used, these tools were rated as very important. There were significant differences in levels of use by HMO type, membership size, and age. Journal articles and reference books were reported most often as information sources. Retrospective drug-use review was used very often and perceived to be very important in managing drug use. Other management methods were used only occasionally, but the importance placed on these tools when used ranged from moderately to very important. Older organizations used most of the management methods more often than did other HMOs. Decision analysis and multiattribute analysis were the most commonly used tools for deciding on which drugs to make available to HMO members, and reference books and journal articles were the most commonly used information sources. Retrospective and prospective drug-use reviews were the most commonly applied methods for managing HMO members' access to drugs.

Data Collection↗

PubMed2005

Online tools to support literature-based discovery in the life sciences.

In biomedical research, the amount of experimental data and published scientific information is overwhelming and ever increasing, which may inhibit rather than stimulate scientific progress. Not only are text-mining and information extraction tools needed to render the biomedical literature accessible but the results of these tools can also assist researchers in the formulation and evaluation of novel hypotheses. This requires an additional set of technological approaches that are defined here as literature-based discovery (LBD) tools. Recently, several LBD tools have been developed for this purpose and a few well-motivated, specific and directly testable hypotheses have been published, some of which have even been validated experimentally. This paper presents an overview of recent LBD research and discusses methodology, results and online tools that are available to the scientific community.

Abstracting and Indexing↗

PubMed2026

ChromBERT-tools: a versatile toolkit for context-specific regulatory representations of transcription regulators across different cell types.

SUMMARY: Representations that encode the genome-wide regulatory behavior of transcription regulators provide a foundation for flexible transcription modeling and in silico regulatory analysis. Existing regulator representations are commonly derived from gene co-expression, motif annotations, or static protein features, which capture useful but limited aspects of regulator identity but do not directly model how regulators participate in region-specific regulatory programs across the genome. ChromBERT addresses this gap by learning context-aware regulatory representations from large-scale ChIP-seq data. However, routine bioinformatics applications require lightweight, accessible, and modular tools for generating, adapting, and interpreting these representations in user-defined biological contexts. Here, we present ChromBERT-tools, a user-oriented toolkit built upon ChromBERT that converts its regulatory representation framework into practical workflows for customizable analysis across cellular contexts. ChromBERT-tools provides command-line interfaces and Python APIs organized into three functional layers: representation generation, predictive modeling, and regulatory interpretation. The representation generation layer produces representations of genomic regions and transcription regulators. The predictive modeling layer fine-tunes ChromBERT for genome-wide regulatory activity prediction through classification or regression tasks, with optimized implementation to reduce running time and computational resource requirements. The regulatory interpretation layer supports inference of the context-specific roles of cis-regulatory elements and transcription regulators. These modules can be used independently or integrated into end-to-end workflows, enabling flexible analyses across diverse datasets. ChromBERT-tools lowers the barrier to applying context-specific regulatory representations in routine genomic analyses. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: ChromBERT-tools is freely available at https://github.com/TongjiZhanglab/ChromBERT-tools, with documentation at https://chrombert-tools.readthedocs.io/en/latest/. A frozen archival snapshot is available on Zenodo under DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20094206.

Software↗

PubMed2004

Data exploration tools for the Gene Ontology database.

MOTIVATION: To improve the ability of biologists (both researchers and students) to ask biologically interesting questions of the Gene Ontology (GO) database and to explore the ontologies by seeing large portions of the ontology graphs in context, along with details of individual terms in the ontologies. RESULTS: GoGet and GoView are two new tools built as part of an extensible web application system based on Java 2 Enterprise Edition technology. GoGet has a user interface that enables users to ask biologically interesting questions, such as (1) What are the DNA binding proteins involved in DNA repair, but not in DNA replication? and (2) Of the terms containing the word triphosphatase, which have associated gene products from mouse, but not fruit fly? The results of such queries can be viewed in a collapsed tabular format that eases the burden of getting through large tables of data. GoView enables users to explore the large directed acyclic graph structure of the ontologies in the GO database. The two tools are coordinated, so that results from queries in GoGet can be visualized in GoView in the ontology in which they appear, and explorations started from GoView can request details of gene product associations to appear in a result table in GoGet. AVAILABILITY: Free access to the GoGet query tool and free download of the GoView ontology viewer are provided to all users at http://db.math.macalester.edu/goproject. In addition, source code for the GoView tool is also available from this site, along with a user manual for both tools.

Algorithms↗

PubMed2003

Mapping by sequencing the Pneumocystis genome using the ordering DNA sequences V3 tool.

A bioinformatics tool called ODS3 has been created for mapping by sequencing. The tool allows the creation of integrated genomic maps from genetic, physical mapping, and sequencing data and permits an integrated genome map to be stored, retrieved, viewed, and queried in a stand-alone capacity, in a client/server relationship with the Fungal Genome Database (FGDB), and as a web-browsing tool for the FGDB. In that ODS3 is programmed in Java, the tool promotes platform independence and supports export of integrated genome-mapping data in the extensible markup language (XML) for data interchange with other genome information systems. The tool ODS3 is used to create an initial integrated genome map of the AIDS-related fungal pathogen, Pneumocystis carinii. Contig dynamics would indicate that this physical map is approximately 50% complete with approximately 200 contigs. A total of 10 putative multigene families were found. Two of these putative families were previously characterized in P. carinii, namely the major surface glycoproteins (MSGs) and HSP70 proteins; three of these putative families (not previously characterized in P. carinii) were found to be similar to families encoding the HSP60 in Schizosaccharomyces pombe, the heat-shock psi protein in S. pombe, and the RNA synthetase family (i.e., MES1) in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Physical mapping data are consistent with the 16S, 5.8S, and 26S rDNA genes being single copy in P. carinii. No other fungus outside this genus is known to have the rDNA genes in single copy.

Computational Biology↗