Impact of a Strategy for Improving Early Management of Acute Pain in the Pediatric Emergency Department.

Objectives: The objective of this study was to measure the impact of an intervention on pain treatment in a pediatric emergency department (ED). The application of interventions to improve pain management in DE has demonstrated diverse effects so far, most of them successful.

Methods: This is a quasi-experimental before-and-after, longitudinal, prospective study.

EEG feature variations under stress situations.

The goal of this study is to identify EEG parameters and electrode positions with the highest significant values to differentiate between tasks and relax periods. Different signals were recorded as 12 subjects are doing arithmetic and memory tasks under stress condition. The test consisted of an initial and final 5-minute relax periods and three 4-minute performance phases with increased stress level.

Envelope filter sequence to delete blinks and overshoots.

Background: Eye movements have been used in control interfaces and as indicators of somnolence, workload and concentration. Different techniques can be used to detect them: we focus on the electrooculogram (EOG) in which two kinds of interference occur: blinks and overshoots. While they both draw bell-shaped waveforms, blinks are caused by the eyelid, whereas overshoots occur due to target localization error and are placed on saccade.

Envelopment filter and K-means for the detection of QRS waveforms in electrocardiogram.

The electrocardiogram (ECG) is a well-established technique for determining the electrical activity of the heart and studying its diseases. One of the most common pieces of information that can be read from the ECG is the heart rate (HR) through the detection of its most prominent feature: the QRS complex. This paper describes an offline version and a real-time implementation of a new algorithm to determine QRS localization in the ECG signal based on its envelopment and K-means clustering algorithm.

Gender differences in cooperation: experimental evidence on high school students.

The emergence of cooperation among unrelated human subjects is a long-standing conundrum that has been amply studied both theoretically and experimentally. Within the question, a less explored issue relates to the gender dependence of cooperation, which can be traced back to Darwin, who stated that "women are less selfish but men are more competitive". Indeed, gender has been shown to be relevant in several game theoretical paradigms of social cooperativeness, including prisoner's dilemma, snowdrift and ultimatum/dictator games, but there is no consensus as to which gender is more cooperative.

Transferring brain-computer interfaces beyond the laboratory: successful application control for motor-disabled users.

Objectives: Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are no longer only used by healthy participants under controlled conditions in laboratory environments, but also by patients and end-users, controlling applications in their homes or clinics, without the BCI experts around. But are the technology and the field mature enough for this? Especially the successful operation of applications - like text entry systems or assistive mobility devices such as tele-presence robots - requires a good level of BCI control. How much training is needed to achieve such a level? Is it possible to train naïve end-users in 10 days to successfully control such applications?

Materials And Methods: In this work, we report our experiences of training 24 motor-disabled participants at rehabilitation clinics or at the end-users' homes, without BCI experts present.

Analysis of fractal electrodes for efficient neural stimulation.

Planar electrodes are increasingly used in therapeutic neural stimulation techniques such as functional electrical stimulation, epidural spinal cord stimulation (ESCS), and cortical stimulation. Recently, optimized electrode geometries have been shown to increase the efficiency of neural stimulation by increasing the variation of current density on the electrode surface. In the present work, a new family of modified fractal electrode geometries is developed to enhance the efficiency of neural stimulation.

A comparative analysis of biomedical research ethics regulation systems in Europe and Latin America with regard to the protection of human subjects.

The European project European and Latin American Systems of Ethics Regulation of Biomedical Research Project (EULABOR) has carried out the first comparative analysis of ethics regulation systems for biomedical research in seven countries in Europe and Latin America, evaluating their roles in the protection of human subjects. We developed a conceptual and methodological framework defining 'ethics regulation system for biomedical research' as a set of actors, institutions, codes and laws involved in overseeing the ethics of biomedical research on humans. This framework allowed us to develop comprehensive national reports by conducting semi-structured interviews to key informants.

A novel amino acid substitution in the para-sodium channel gene in Rhipicephalus microplus (Acari: Ixodidae) associated with knockdown resistance.

Resistance acquired by the tick Rhipicephalus microplus (Canestrini) to different types of ixodicides in Mexico has had a negative impact on national and local livestock, mainly due to the transmission of diseases such as babesiosis and anaplasmosis, among others. The technique used for the diagnosis of resistance was that in the bioassays noted in the Norma Oficial Mexicana (NOM-006-ZOO-1994). The purpose of this investigation was the determination of resistance to pyrethroids through isoleucine-phenylalanine mutation in the gene KDR, in a population of ticks from Montemorelos, NL, Mexico.