Two life-size latex Frenchmen are helping doctors to learn how to identify
small breaks in the supply of blood to the brain that can lead to strokes.
The computer-controlled dummies come equipped with pulsating arteries, and
are linked to a computer that presents doctors with simulated ultrasound
scans, test results and case histories.
The dummies recently began a tour of French hospitals and medical congresses
so that doctors and medical students can learn to diagnose transient ischema
attack. TIA often passes unnoticed by both patient and doctor because it
is extremely brief and is accompanied only by only minor loss of feeling
in part of the body.
The French pharmaceuticals company Sanofi Winthrop produced the dummies.
‘TIA may seem benign, but it can cause major consequences and often precedes
a stroke,’ says Jean-Marc Ansellem of Sanofi.
The dummies resemble a 60-year-old male patient, complete with greying
hair and Gallic moustache. They can simulate four different patients, presenting
different symptoms, under the personae of Bernard, Daniel, Charles or Emile.
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After the trainee has picked a name, a brief film of the attack appears
on the computer screen, performed by actors. The doctor can then question
the patient through the keyboard about his case history, lifestyle and family
medical history.
The dummy’s carotid arteries, which feed blood to the brain, can be
examined by hand and using a special stethoscope. The doctor can request
various scans and clinical or biological tests, and simulated results appear
instantly on screen. A simulated endoscope probe inserted into the arteries,
shows the extent to which the walls of the arteries have thickened.
![Astronomers have long known that understanding how star clusters come to be is key to unlocking other secrets of galactic evolution. Stars form in clusters, created when clouds of gas collapse under gravity. As more and more stars are born in a collapsing cloud, strong stellar winds, harsh ultraviolet radiation and the supernova explosions of massive stars eventually disperse the cloud, and their light can bear down on other star-forming regions in the galaxy. This process is called stellar feedback, and it means that most of the gas in a galaxy never gets used for star formation. Researching how star clusters develop can answer questions about star formation at a galactic scale. Now, the state of the art has been further developed with both Hubble and Webb working together to provide a broad-spectrum view of thousands of young star clusters. An international team of astronomers has pored over images of four nearby galaxies from the FEAST observing programme (#1783), trying to solve this mystery. Their results show that it is the most massive star clusters that clear away their gaseous shroud the fastest, and begin lighting their galaxy the earliest. The team identified nearly 9000 star clusters in the four galaxies in different evolutionary stages: young clusters just starting to emerge from their natal clouds of gas, clusters that had partially dispersed the gas (both from Webb images), and fully unobstructed clusters visible in optical light (found in Hubble images). With Webb???s ability to peer inside the gas clouds, they were able to then estimate the mass and age of each cluster from its light spectrum. This image shows a section of one of the spiral arms of Messier 51 (M51), one of the four galaxies studied in this work, as seen by Webb???s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). The thick clumps of star-forming gas are shown here in red and orange, representing infrared light emitted by ionised gas, dust grains, and complex molecules such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Within these gas complexes, each tens or hundreds of light years across, Webb reveals the dense, extremely bright clusters of massive stars that have just recently formed. The countless stars strewn across the arm of the galaxy, many of which would be invisible to our eyes behind layers of dust, are also laid bare in infrared light. [Image description: A large, long portion of one of the spiral arms in galaxy M51. Red-orange, clumpy filaments of gas and dust that stretch in a chain from left to right comprise the arm. Shining cyan bubbles light up parts of the gas clouds from within, and gaps expose bright star clusters in these bubbles as glowing white dots. The whole image is dotted with small stars. A faint blue glow around the arm colours the otherwise dark background.]](https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/13114322/SEI_296271016.jpg)
