How many Californians? A review of population projections for the state.
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Ethics and professional conduct are vital to civil engineering undergraduate curricula. Many programs struggle to ensure that students are given an adequate exposure to and appreciation of ethical and professional conduct issues. This paper describes a two-part ethics/professionalism project used in a senior-level course taught at the University of Arkansas. Initially, students scrutinize ethical canons and standards of professional conduct published by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE), and prepare an essay concerning the applicability of these standards. The second part of the project builds on the first: based on the opinion(s) generated in Part 1, students are asked to develop a set of canons or standards targeted specifically to the undergraduate student, and suggest processes for implementing those standards within the department. Project objectives include: (1) exposure to nationally-recognized ethical canons and standards of professional conduct; (2) personal formulation of ethical and professional standards; (3) skill enhancement for non-technical written communications. Feedback by students prior to and after the project indicates success in meeting all objectives. The feedback also indicates that for some students, definitions and applications of ethics and professionalism are being broadened to include more than academic honesty issues.
In 1989, the Faculty of Health Science at Central Queensland University (CQU) committed itself to a major instructional development project for its nursing education program. Partially supported by a National Priority (Reserve) Fund (NPRF) grant, the Faculty undertook a multi-year project to develop computer-based learning materials. The success of that project was mixed. However, by 1993 staff and students within the Faculty were using computers regularly, many of the staff were involved in developing computer-based instructional materials, and some staff were using available computer-based tools to extend the scope of the standard Health Science materials developed under the project. As well, the Faculty was committed to using Faculty funds for technical support staff to maintain its computer infrastructure and to assist both staff and students in using that infrastructure. The authors review the original NPRF project, then explore the Faculty's continued development and use of computer-based learning materials through an examination of student and staff evaluations, personal recollections, and subsequent projects. This paper demonstrates that the NPRF project spawned a number of other computer-based developments, including the offering of health informatics degree programs at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels, the development of the Faculty's current Internet site and a CD-ROM based interactive multimedia project for diabetes education. It also demonstrates that moderate levels of funding can maintain a computer-literate Faculty which views computers as essential tools for learning.
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A Finnish PACS project has been set up with the participation and financing of 13 university and central hospitals, the Medical Board of Finland, the Hospital League of Finland, the Post and Teleoffice of Finland and the Helsinki Telephone Company with the Medical Engineering Laboratory of the Technical Research Centre of Finland as the principal investigator. The project started in December 1988 and ended in December 1990. The project focused on the functional needs for PACS. The image production, archive sizes, network capacity and workstation requirements have been studied in a big university hospital. The results show that without compression the image archive size needs to be at least 10 TB. The network capacity requirement depends very much on the interactivity requirements. In normal situations less than 1 Mbit/s is needed, if the network is configured in an efficient way. In some cases, however, the speed requirement can be of the order of 100 Mbit/s. A proposal for a hospital-wide PACS network was made. Simple calculation rules to estimate the needed capacities were also developed.
Members of the public are becoming increasingly interested in understanding risks associated with their exposure to radionuclides and chemicals in the environment. They also want to be more involved in decision making about future exposures to risks. This paper reviews one community's involvement in decisions about technical methods to calculate soil cleanup criteria for the Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site near Denver, Colorado. The public anticipated that much of the site would be available for their use following cleanup. Final decisions regarding the future use of the site have yet to be made; however, the soil action levels were developed for this eventuality. When the public expressed considerable concern about cleanup standards for the site in 1996, a community group met to focus efforts on reviewing the cleanup standards. Later, the U.S. Department of Energy officially established the community panel to oversee an independent calculation of radionuclide soil action levels that would be used as the basis for cleanup at Rocky Flats. The primary radionuclide of concern was 239+240Pu. The Radionuclide Soil Action Level Oversight Panel (Panel) was substantively involved in all aspects of the work, from selecting the contractor, approving the computer code that formed the basis of the calculation, and assisting in developing the exposure scenarios, to selecting the values for the numerous input parameters. Communicating the uncertainties to the public, which was a major component of the analysis of soil action levels, presented a unique challenge. Over the course of the 18-mo project, the Panel and interested members of the public gained an understanding of the technical elements of the calculation and the sensitivities of the different parameters. This project serves as an excellent model of the effectiveness of public involvement in science and decision making for the future. It also illustrates the public expectations, difficulties, and time commitments encountered when making scientific decisions in a public forum. Although the process was time consuming for the scientists responsible for the calculations, a more technically defensible as well as publicly acceptable soil action level emerged. The technical approach developed during the project has been recommended for use as a decision-making tool for cleanup of the site.
The Austrian radon mitigation joint research project SARAH (supported by the Austrian Ministry of Economy and the Government of Upper Austria), a 2-year follow-up study of the Austrian National Radon Project (ONRAP), was started in 1996. The objectives of the research project were to find simple, cost-effective experimental methods for the characterisation of the radon situation in dwellings and to evaluate technically and economically the implementation of state of the art remedial actions for Austrian house types. After an intercomparison exercise of the assigned radon measuring instruments and detectors five houses were closely examined in regions with elevated radon levels in the federal state of Upper Austria. In this research work for the first time an extended Blower-Door method (which is conventionally used for determining the tightness of buildings) was successfully applied to radon diagnosis of buildings. In this paper the methods used for the radon diagnosis, the applied mitigation measures and the related technical and economical aspects are discussed. In conclusion of the results of this project a common strategy for solving the radon problem in Austria in the future is presented briefly.
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BACKGROUND: West Virginia, the second most rural state in the nation, has a higher than average prevalence of chronic diseases, especially those related to physical inactivity and obesity. Innovative educational approaches are needed to increase physical activity among adults and youth in rural areas and reduce rural health disparities. This paper describes West Virginia's Health Sciences and Technology Academy (HSTA) Education and Outreach on Healthy Weight and Physical Activity. The project involved teachers and underserved high school students in social science research aimed at increasing physical activity among student and community participants. CONTEXT: The HSTA is an ongoing initiative of university-school-community partnerships in West Virginia that offers academic enrichment to high-school students in after-school clubs. For this project, six HSTA clubs were awarded grants to conduct research on physical activity promotion during the 2003-2004 school year. The project was funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. METHODS: Focus groups, workshops, and targeted technical assistance were used to assist teachers and students with developing, implementing, and evaluating their research projects. Each club completed one project, and students reported on their research at the annual HSTA symposium held in the spring. Teachers documented their experience with the projects in process journals before and during implementation. CONSEQUENCES: Data from the teachers' process journals revealed that they believed this research experience increased their students' interest in health and health science careers and increased their students' understanding of social science research methods. Challenges included lack of time after school to complete all activities, competing student activities, limited social science research experience of both teachers and students, and delays that resulted from a lengthy human subjects approval process. INTERPRETATION: The entire process was too ambitious to be achieved in one school year. Recommendations for future implementation include offering training modules on social science research methods for both teachers and students. These modules could be offered as a graduate course for teachers and as an in-school elective within the curriculum or as a summer institute for students. This preparatory training might alleviate some of the time management issues experienced by all the projects and could result in more skilled teacher and student researchers.
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BACKGROUND: Quantitative gene expression analysis by real-time PCR is important in several diagnostic areas, such as the detection of minimum residual disease in leukemia and the prognostic assessment of cancer patients. To address quality assurance in this technically challenging area, the European Union (EU) has funded the EQUAL project to develop methodologic external quality assessment (EQA) relevant to diagnostic and research laboratories among the EU member states. We report here the results of the EQUAL-quant program, which assesses standards in the use of TaqMan probes, one of the most widely used assays in the implementation of real-time PCR. METHODS: The EQUAL-quant reagent set was developed to assess the technical execution of a standard TaqMan assay, including RNA extraction, reverse transcription, and real-time PCR quantification of target DNA copy number. RESULTS: The multidisciplinary EQA scheme included 137 participating laboratories from 29 countries. We demonstrated significant differences in performance among laboratories, with 20% of laboratories reporting at least one result lacking in precision and/or accuracy according to the statistical procedures described. No differences in performance were observed for the >10 different testing platforms used by the study participants. CONCLUSIONS: This EQA scheme demonstrated both the requirement and demand for external assessment of technical standards in real-time PCR. The reagent design and the statistical tools developed within this project will provide a benchmark for defining acceptable working standards in this emerging technology.
Objective of the present study is to provide a current overview of the present state of research in abdominal ultrasound in the gastroenterological departments of university hospitals in Germany. We conducted a survey assessing the number of research projects in progress, sources of financial support, sponsorship by the private sector and publications generated. Reports from 28 of 35 gastroenterological departments responding to the survey indicated that a total of 124 research projects were in progress during the survey period, for an average of 3.5 projects per department. Clinical issues were addressed in 78 studies, technical questions in 33 studies and other questions in 13 studies. Of the 117 publications generated, 50 appeared in German-language journals and 67 in English-language journals. At present, neither the German Research Association (DFG) or the European Union (EU) is financially underwriting an ultrasound research project in the gastroenterological department of any German university hospital. Ultrasound remains the most frequently applied diagnostic imaging technique in gastroenterology. In order to convert the enormous technological progress into improved diagnostic capabilities, there must be a significant expansion in research support for gastrointestinal ultrasound.
This paper describes the technical approach in the TUFFA (Technology Procurement for Disabled in Working Life) project and a model for cooperating areas of competence based on a holistic view of the individual's abilities, the environmental conditions at the work site, and technical solutions.
Clinical software can have a major impact on the delivery of care. It is imperative that clinical software undergo regular quality review, to evaluate the clinical correctness of the specification, the technical correctness of the software, problems that have arisen, and maintenance of the software as conditions change. We have developed a process using existing hospital review groups to perform clinical review, and using a project specification form and analysis of likely problem areas to effect technical review.
"This article will review the quality of the national long-term population scenarios [for the EEA and Switzerland] compiled by Eurostat in Spring 1991 (former European Community) and Spring 1993 (former European Free Trade Association). By means of a limited number of figures it will be shown how close these projections were for the period 1990-1994. Each item will be briefly explained."
The professional and technical staff of the Atlanta Cardiovascular Research Institute preclinical laboratory facility are aggressively pursuing basic and applied research to aid in the understanding of cardiovascular disease and develop new therapeutic approaches. We are optimistic that our intense and broad-ranging research efforts will contribute to important advances in the care of cardiovascular disease patients in the near future and for years to come.
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