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Biomedical subjects

L Wright

Publications and source records attributed to L Wright.

177 records · Page 10Linked to original sources
PubMedDate not supplied

Adult age differences in the storage of information in working memory.

The performance of 97 young and 91 old persons were compared to determine if a deficiency in working memory resources for processing, storage, or allocation could be detected. Persons simultaneously performed a storage and one of two processing tasks while instructed to allocate resources to processing, storage, or both tasks. The storage task involved remembering the names of one, three, or five persons. Processing tasks involved solving addition problems presented on flashcards or answering common knowledge questions. Results showed increased age differences on the storage task as demands for resources increased but no differences on processing tasks. Individuals seemed unable to allocate resources as instructed. A comparison of young-old and old-old groups showed the same results as those obtained comparing young and old groups and support the hypothesis of a deficiency of storage, but not processing, resources in working memory for old, especially old-old, adults.

Adolescent↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Nurses' role in preventing birth defects in offspring of women with phenylketonuria.

Most women who began nutrition support as neonates for a diagnosis of phenylketonuria, an inherited defect in phenylalanine metabolism, are of normal intelligence, no longer require a restricted diet, and wish to have children of their own. Phenylketonuria that is untreated when a woman conceives and during gestation results in poor reproductive outcomes. Treatment with and careful monitoring of a phenylalanine-restricted diet can improve reproductive outcome. Nurses have the primary responsibility in locating women of childbearing age with phenylketonuria; developing strategies to improve palatability of the diet, thereby enhancing compliance; providing ongoing monitoring and support of the mother-child dyad; and counseling couples at risk.

Congenital Abnormalities↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Prenatal diagnosis in the 1990s.

Prenatal diagnosis has become widely available and detects an increasing variety of birth defects and potentially harmful medical conditions. Many of the studies are complex and must be performed within a specific time period. Most prenatal diagnostic sampling techniques have some degree of risk for the mother or the fetus, and all produce at least transient anxiety. Nurses are involved in identifying families at risk, preparing women for the procedures, providing support, and counseling patients after the results are known; because of this role, nurses need updated information. This review describes current methods for early identification of a potential problem, discusses a variety of prenatal diagnostic procedures, reviews the most common types of laboratory studies, and introduces future trends in the field of prenatal diagnosis.

Female↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Lessons learned from a pilot implementation of the UMLS information sources map.

OBJECTIVE: To explore the software design issues involved in implementing an operational information sources map (ISM) knowledge base (KB) and system of navigational tools that can help medical users access network-based information sources relevant to a biomedical question. DESIGN: A pilot biomedical ISM KB and associated client-server software (ISM/Explorer) have been developed to help students, clinicians, researchers, and staff access network-based information sources, as part of the National Library of Medicine's (NLM) multi-institutional Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) project. The system allows the user to specify and constrain a search for a biomedical question of interest. The system then returns a list of sources matching the search. At this point the user may request 1) further information about a source, 2) that the list of sources be regrouped by different criteria to allow the user to get a better overall appreciation of the set of retrieved sources as a whole, or 3) automatic connection to a source. RESULTS: The pilot system operates in client-server mode and currently contains coded information for 121 sources. It is in routine use from approximately 40 workstations at the Yale School of Medicine. The lessons that have been learned are that: 1) it is important to make access to different versions of a source as seamless as possible, 2) achieving seamless, cross-platform access to heterogeneous sources is difficult, 3) significant differences exist between coding the subject content of an electronic information resource versus that of an article or a book, 4) customizing the ISM to multiple institutions entails significant complexities, and 5) there are many design trade-offs between specifying searches and viewing sets of retrieved sources that must be taken into consideration. CONCLUSION: An ISM KB and navigational tools have been constructed. In the process, much has been learned about the complexities of development and evaluation in this new environment, which are different from those for Gopher, wide area information servers (WAIS), World-Wide-Web (WWW), and MOSAIC resources.

Abstracting and Indexing↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Portability issues for a structured clinical vocabulary: mapping from Yale to the Columbia medical entities dictionary.

OBJECTIVE: To examine the issues involved in mapping an existing structured controlled vocabulary, the Medical Entities Dictionary (MED) developed at Columbia University, to an institutional vocabulary, the laboratory and pharmacy vocabularies of the Yale New Haven Medical Center. DESIGN: 200 Yale pharmacy terms and 200 Yale laboratory terms were randomly selected from database files containing all of the Yale laboratory and pharmacy terms. These 400 terms were then mapped to the MED in three phases: mapping terms, mapping relationships between terms, and mapping attributes that modify terms. RESULTS: 73% of the Yale pharmacy terms mapped to MED terms. 49% of the Yale laboratory terms mapped to MED terms. After certain obsolete and otherwise inappropriate laboratory terms were eliminated, the latter rate improved to 59%. 23% of the unmatched Yale laboratory terms failed to match because of differences in granularity with MED terms. The Yale and MED pharmacy terms share 12 of 30 distinct attributes. The Yale and MED laboratory terms share 14 of 23 distinct attributes. CONCLUSION: The mapping of an institutional vocabulary to a structured controlled vocabulary requires that the mapping be performed at the level of terms, relationships, and attributes. The mapping process revealed the importance of standardization of local vocabulary subsets, standardization of attribute representation, and term granularity.

Clinical Laboratory Information Systems↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Analysis of locus heterogeneity in Waardenburg syndrome types 1 and 2 using highly informative microsatellite markers.

We performed linkage and locus heterogeneity analyses of Waardenburg syndrome (WS) types 1 and 2 using 9 DNA markers from 2q35-q37, including two highly polymorphic microsatellites very closely linked to the PAX3 candidate gene. None of 5 WS type 2 (WS2) families showed linkage to the PAX3 candidate region. We localized the marker D2S102 to less than 1 cM from PAX3 (lod = 33.7, theta = 0), but a complete absence of crossovers prevented determining whether it maps distal or proximal to PAX3. Study of 14 WS type 1 (WS1) families yielded a maximum lod score of 27.81 at PAX3, theta f = 0.010, theta = 0.007 assuming homogeneity. However, we found significant evidence of locus heterogeneity, with one family initially classified as WS1 unlinked to the PAX3 region. Reevaluation of the clinical features of this family revealed atypical morphology of inner canthi. This produced the appearance of dystopia canthorum and high W-index scores. While our one unlinked WS1 family exhibits atypical canthal morphology, our type 1 families with classic dystopia appear to be homogeneously linked to PAX3. These and other findings identify precautions that need to be addressed before using PAX3-linked markers for diagnostic purposes.

Chromosome Mapping↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Bathing by towel.

Explore the source record for details and available documents.

Baths↗
PubMedDate not supplied

International file: the finer points of working in England's ORs.

The fundamental philosophy behind quality patient care is international; the specialised area of OR nursing should be less susceptible to international differences. Yet, the experience of moving to a different country reveals the extent of the actual cultural and professional variations available. The subtle, yet real, practical differences observed by a Canadian OR nurse, after working in England for two years, are examined.

Canada↗