INTRODUCTION Response rates for the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) have declined in recent years. The response rate in 1993 was approximately 72%; in 2006, the response rate was approximately 51%. To assess the impact of this decline on the quality of BRFSS estimates, we compared selected health and risk factor estimates from BRFSS with similar estimates from the National He...

OBJECTIVE The goal of this research was to identify the fraction of deaths attributable to diabetes in the United States. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS We estimated population attributable fractions (PAF) for cohorts aged 30-84 who were surveyed in the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) between 1997 and 2009 (N = 282,322) and in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES)...

BACKGROUND Little is known regarding the epidemiology of chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) in racial and ethnic minorities in the United States. This study was designed to comprehensively evaluate the current prevalence of CRS across various treatment settings to identify possible disparities in health care access and use between racial and ethnic populations. METHODS The National Health Intervie...

Using the advances in computing power, software and hardware technologies, virtual reality (VR), and gaming applications have the potential to address clinical challenges for a range of disabilities. VR-based games can potentially provide the ability to assess and augment cognitive and motor rehabilitation under a range of stimulus conditions that are not easily controllable and quantifiable in...

In this paper we present the results of a study to determine the effect and efficacy of a Virtual Reality game designed to elicit movements of the upper extremity. The study is part of an on-going research effort to explore the use of Virtual Reality as a means of improving the effectiveness of therapy for children with motor impairments. The current study addresses the following questions: 1. ...

Virtual reality (VR) surgery simulation is an emerging teaching tool to train residents in cataract surgery. The widespread adoption of virtual surgery has been limited, however, by high costs and the absence of standardized curricula and evidence demonstrating the impact of VR training on resident surgical outcomes. We outline a resident virtual cataract surgery course--freely accessible onlin...

Firstly, I will suggest here that although there is now a common practice of associating VR with the theatre as a form of representation with stories, plots and characters, VR actually has more in common with performance (and here I mean performance art or ritual rather than the conventional theatre), music and the visual arts. This is because what we could call the ‘classical’ theatre establis...

Objective. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether short sleepers (<6 hrs) who worked the non-day-shift were at greater likelihood of reporting hypertension and if these associations varied by individuals' ethnicity. Methods. Analysis was based on the 2010 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). A total of 59,199 American adults provided valid data for the present analyses (mean a...

This paper presents an empirical study on two different navigation styles within QuickTime VR panorama scenes. In one style, the users would jump from one position in the scene to the next while maintaining their direction of view. In the second style, the users would jump from one position to the next and reverse their direction of view. The results show that participants preferred the later s...

Computer games have become part of children’s culture. Children and adolescents are quite happy to spend many hours playing a game just for the fun of it. On the other hand educational syllabus may look quite dry to children and adolescents. In this paper, we describe VR-ENGAGE, a virtual reality game that has been constructed for teaching geography to students in a motivating way. Thus the cap...