MUNCIE, Ind. (AP) - nside an IU Health Ball Memorial Hospital room, hospital staffers trade off performing chest compressions on a man lying in a hospital bed.

Afterward, they gather in the room next door to watch video of their efforts filmed by two cameras mounted overhead and played back on a screen that also displays the patients monitor throughout. An instructor points out mistakes visible in the playback, such as someones arms held at the wrong angle while doing compressions, and a pause of longer than 10 seconds before beginning the next round.

After offering their own critiques and observations, the group files back into the hospital room to gather around the patients bed and try it all again.

Thankfully, the setting isnt actually inside the hospital itself, and the flatlining patient in question is a mannequin and is in no danger; the exercise is part of a class being taught in the Janice B. Fisher Learning Center, a new facility providing simulation technology and mannequins for training new and current IU Health BMH employees. An open house for the public is scheduled for Thursday, The Star Press reported (http://tspne.ws/1reRXdz ).

The space in the basement of the Edmund F. Ball Medical Education Center includes not just offices for the hospitals Education Resources program, plus classrooms and computer labs, but also three simulation rooms built to mimic specific areas of the actual hospital.

Two of them are replicas of rooms in the hospitals South Tower, with a nurses station in the hall providing windows into a patient room on either side, and the same storage, beds and equipment used in the hospital itself.

A third simulation room matches a trauma room in the hospitals Emergency Department, down to the carts filled with supplies and the sink installed where it would be in the ED, even though this one isnt actually hooked up to a water line, noted Joni Casperson-Bates, simulation coordinator for the center.

In addition to learning procedures and skills in a space that exactly mimics what theyll find on the job, students at the learning center also use highly sophisticated mannequins that can be made to breathe, bleed, choke and even answer questions.

The centers high-tech mannequins include a newborn, a toddler, a child and several adults. They can be programmed to have labored breathing, suffer bleeding or even amputated limbs or turn blue around the lips from a lack of oxygen, all while their vital signs are shown on a monitor, as with a regular human patient. They can have tubes put down their throats or IVs hooked up, and can be revived with a working defibrillator; the female mannequin can even give birth.

The sim-patients can even answer the health care providers bedside questions, either with preprogrammed responses or by having an instructor talking for the patient from the next room. Casperson-Bates demonstrated with the child mannequin, known as Junior, using a small tablet to make him cough, moan with pain, answer Yes to a question or make gagging noises.

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Bequest gives hospital new learning center

Cribs-Hotel Room Edition

By: HotelHoppers

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Cribs-Hotel Room Edition - Video

210 10th
Fully updated Cape with Family room addition.

By: Fay Evans

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The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutras community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

For theGlobal Game Jamthis year, our team wanted to make a game that behaved like a personality test. It would try to determine if you liked killing enemies, collecting items, running around wildly, or interacting with the games inhabitants. Once the game had a handle on what you preferred, it would tailor itself to your desires. If you liked killing things, more enemies would be spawned. If you spent a lot of time in rooms opening chests, the next rooms you went to would have more in them to explore. It was immediately apparent that a predesigned level wouldnt work, as we wanted the experience to be dynamic and different for each type of player. So, we needed some sort of procedural room generation, and we needed it fast. I was responsible for that feature, and found it so interesting that I wanted to share how I handled it.

Ive played a lot of roguelikes, so the concept of random room generation wasnt totally foreign to me. However, I hadnt seen any that really impressed me. Especially not compared to the random generators that have been made for tabletop games. Some of the better ones generate traps, monsters, and loot in addition to basic rooms and corridors. In particular, the generators available onDonjonssite are worth a look. Not only are they infinitely configurable, but their source code is (kind of) open! For traditional dungeons, they usually generate X number of rooms, and then connect them up with corridors. Theres generally a certain number of large, medium, and small rooms, but everything is calculated at once. This technique is powerful, and with enough tweaking, you can make some really nice looking maps without a lot of effort. Getting this version up and running in our game wasnt difficult. All we had to do was have a large enough grid, randomly drop the rooms in, and then place cubes where the walls should be.

Fig 1. Randomly placed rooms. I didnt bother writing code to create corridors to connect the rooms, because we had realized this wouldnt work for us.

However, this technique wasnt going to work for our game. Since the whole point of the game was to dynamically adjust to the players play style, a complete map generated at runtime didnt make sense. We needed something that was totally dynamic, where levels could be built incrementally as needed. This gave me an opportunity to fix a problem I have with most dungeon generators. Since they were usually designed to be easy to draw on paper/wet-erase maps, rooms are usually defined in chunks of squares, either 5ft or 1m. This means walls are usually that thick, which is unrealistic (most interior walls are only ~6 thick!), and room dimensions would be defined in those increments. I wanted our rooms to be able to exist outside of a strict grid system, and to not waste a lot of space with walls. So, I built a relatively simple system.

Rather than storing a grid, I tracked two different types of objects: rooms and doors. Doors only stored their position and orientation (latitudinal or longitudinal), and the two rooms they connected. Rooms knew their position, size, and kept a list of doors that were connected to them. I had a geometry generator that could spit out walls, floors, and doors into the world, and could combine those primitives into generating rooms of random sizes. The system was designed so that if a newly generated room shared a wall with an existing room, any doors in that shared wall would automatically link to the new room.

Fig 2. First test of the geometry generator, creating rooms of random sizes.

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Procedural, dynamic room generation

Elizabeth Harrison is a self-professed magazine junkie.

After moving into her Clermont home two years ago, she knew she wanted a garden house and she knew exactly how she wanted it to look.

I wanted something really different and unique, Harrison said. It just came to me. It was the look that I wanted. I wanted it to look like it was old, like it had been here for 100 years just sitting out in the yard.

Inspired by magazine photos, Harrison drew a picture of what she wanted and asked Jones Cottrell, owner of Clearview Construction in Clermont, to build it.

Cottrell said he was excited about the unusual request and was pleased with the end result.

Construction began in spring 2013 and was completed after three months.

Two large, metal arched doors open to reveal an interior decorated with antique furniture and artworks by Gainesville-based artist Jane Taylor. The 22-square-foot octagonal garden house is crowned by a 10-foot-tall copper roof. The foundation was made with antique bricks, weeping mortar makes the year-old structure seem timeless. Seven antique windows lift open while iron window grates below allow air to circulate through the space, making it comfortable year-round.

Cottrell said the shape of the garden house caused a bit of difficulty. He and his crew built the frame of the bell-shaped copper roof in his barn and then placed it on top of the building using a crane.

Harrison recalled how excited she was to see her vision become a reality when she watched the crew hand crimp the copper roof.

Her enthusiasm motivated the crew, Cottrell said.

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Clermont couple designs garden house styled after magazines

Published: Friday, April 18, 2014 at 8:17 p.m. Last Modified: Friday, April 18, 2014 at 8:17 p.m.

ORMOND BEACH The citys police department is eager to show the community it has cleaned up its act two years after an audit uncovered problems in its evidence room and that a janitor had stolen items from the city, leading to a loss of accreditation.

A team of assessors representing the Commission for Florida Law Enforcement Accreditation will be in Ormond Beach this week to determine whether the department will qualify for re-accreditation, Police Chief Henry Osterkamp said.

While the program is voluntary and represents more a point of pride than any effect residents might recognize, the department is looking forward to proving that its professionalism meets the commissions standards, said accreditation manager Brent Hodge.

It sets the standard for the department, he said.

The department was stripped of its accreditation in 2012 after an internal audit found its evidence room in disarray and thefts by a cleaning crew employee, who admitted to taking $3,000 cash and heroin used for training dogs from the evidence room. The audit, which was conducted prior to the re-accreditation assessment, found stockpiled evidence from cases going as far back as the 1970s. The evidence included drugs, guns and biohazardous materials. More than 5 tons of drugs, guns and unclaimed property that should have been purged from the room years before was hauled to an incinerator in Tavares for destruction.

Osterkamp, who was hired as chief in 2010, said the problems had been corrected at the time of the inspection two years ago, but the commission declined to give the department accredited status.

It was their decision based on what happened, he said.

Hodge said some of the changes made within the department in the wake of the internal audit include installing an alarm system for the evidence room. Two new technicians were hired and are the only personnel with access to keys to the evidence room. Janitorial work in the room is done only during daytime hours with a police officer present.

To regain accreditation, the department will have to comply with about 273 standards. Once the assessors complete their report, they will report back to the law enforcement commission, which will make the final determination, Hodge said. In addition to having the status as an accredited agency, the process has helped officials develop uniform policies and procedures for the entire department to follow.

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Department looks to regain accreditation

The new accessory is designed primarily for living room use

Microsoft has announced the latest addition to its in-house accessories range in the form of the All-in-One Media Keyboard. The device is aimed squarely at the living room and features an integrated multi-touch trackpad and a range of entertainment-related features.

In recent years, Microsoft has significantly upped its game when it comes to hardware, the most widely known example being its competent, but somewhat ill-fairing, Surface tablet range. What is perhaps less known is that the company also makes a range of accessories to back-up its popular Windows operating system, including its comfort-orientated Sculpt range and designed-for-tablet Wedge keyboard and mouse.

The companys latest product is designed for those times when youre sat back on the couch looking through photos or watching Xbox Video or Netflix through a connected PC. The keyboard is designed to be "spill resistant" (which were assuming refers to the lack of significant gaps between the keys), is fully wireless up to 30 feet (10 m) and features a laptop-style integrated multi-touch trackpad capable of swiping, dragging and dropping, zooming and of course clicking.

The peripheral also features dedicated volume keys on the left side and three customizable hotkeys above the trackpad, as well as a range of media controls integrated into the F1-12 keys. Design-wise, the new keyboard isn't going to win any awards, but given its US$39.95 price point, the clean and simple looks aren't half bad.

With games consoles and streaming boxes taking care of a lot of your media needs, were not sure how common the living room PC setup is nowadays. That said, were sure the accessory will find its audience, and despite its living room-centric marketing, it would likely be a good all-rounder for anyone who prefers a touchpad to the more traditional desktop mouse. Im sure there are some of you out there somewhere.

The All-in-One Media Keyboard is available now from the Microsoft Store.

Source: Microsoft

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Microsoft launches media-centric All-in-One keyboard

Aired 4/14/14 on KPBS News.

KPBS arts reporter Beth Accomando spoke with Landmark president Ted Mundorff.

Transcript

Landmark Theatres has confirmed that it will cease to run the Ken Cinema at the end of the month. But Barry Green, whose family has owned the theater for decades, said that does not mean the Ken Cinema will close as a movie venue.

The Latest

There seems to be a little of what Strother Martin (in Cool Hand Luke with Paul Newman) described as a failure to communicate surrounding the Ken Cinema.

I have been speaking individually with the three parties involved Landmark Theatres, Torrey Pines Property Management and members of the Berkun Trust that own the building and at times I feel like they all need to sit down in one room to talk.

Heres some new information: Chip Crandall, owner of Torrey Pines Property Management, said in 2009 "the rent was reduced for Landmark to $2,100 a month, thats below a $1-a-square-foot, thats a sweet deal. But between 2009 and 2014, Landmark didnt take any initiative to improve the theater and we want someone who will bring life into theater.

Torrey Pines also manages the two restaurants that share the block with the Ken Cinema, properties that have seen a lot of visible improvements. Both Crandall and Barry Green, one of the Berkun Trust members, noted that they were disappointed that Landmark did not do more to fix up the space.

Its been a slow spiral down under Landmarks care," Green said. "It doesnt look like theyve been keeping it up.

Read more here:
Ken Cinema Closing

MOORHEAD Two of the citys elementary schools will have more room this fall.

The Moorhead School Board voted 7-0 Monday to approve bids on classroom and gymnasium expansions for Robert Asp Elementary and the Probstfield Center for Education.

The combined bids for the projects came in about $97,000 under estimates, interim Assistant Superintendent Jeremy Larson said.

The work at Robert Asp will cost $2,372,611, or about $29,000 more than the $2,343,583 estimate.

Robert Asp will gain 10,889 square feet with the addition of a gymnasium, athletic storage and office, bathrooms, kindergarten room and resource room.

The work at Probstfield will cost $4,678,373, or about $126,000 less than the estimate of $4,804,534.

Probstfield will gain 21,394 square feet of space with the addition of a gymnasium, eight kindergarten rooms, athletic storage and office, two resource rooms and bathrooms. Another 998 square feet will come with the construction of a corridor to tie the addition into the rest of the school.

The work is part of an ambitious set of construction projects to prepare the district to handle nearly 700 more students expected in the next five years.

Work on an 11,000 square-foot addition to S.G. Reinertson Elementary will be bid next year with construction expected to start next spring.

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Moorhead School Board approves bids for additions to Robert Asp, Probstfield

DALLAS (AP) A North Texas woman who prosecutors say stabbed a man 130 times and castrated him at a Dallas hotel room has told jurors at her trial that she was defending herself after being sexually assaulted.

Cristal Paulette Richardson is charged with murder in the April 2012 death of Cedric Lamont Owens.

Authorities say they found Owens' bloody and naked body in the hotel room. In addition to the stab wounds and castration, his throat had been cut. Richardson, who was also naked and covered in blood, was sitting outside in a stairwell, according to police.

Richardson, 29, told jurors Friday that she can't remember everything that happened on the night of the killing, the Dallas Morning News reported (http://bit.ly/1eykZiA ).

"I do know that I didn't chase this man like a dog. I didn't want him to kill me," Richardson said, tearfully. "I'm not a killer. I'm not a murderer. I'm somebody's mother."

Richardson testified that on the night of Owens' death, she had used cocaine, PCP, marijuana and alcohol. She said she blacked out, but testified that she was not high at the time of the slaying

She told jurors that Owens raped her after he believed she had ripped him off during a drug deal.

Richardson said that after the assault, the two began fighting. She told jurors that she grabbed a knife because she was scared and he took it from her. During the fight, she grabbed it back.

"He kept telling me he was going to kill me," she said. "I felt my life was in danger."

Richardson said that she doesn't remember stabbing Owens 130 times or castrating him.

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Woman accused in murder-castration case testifies