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Background: Knowledge of the benefits of incorporating medical simulation into healthcare curricula is rapidly increasing. Though impeded by the high cost of complicated technology, medical simulation devices offer the ability to provide safe and controlled training environments, exposure to rare clinical scenarios, as well as unlimited training opportunities. Methods: This report describes a novel, inexpensive method of broadcasting normal and abnormal auscultatory findings to a relatively normal appearing stethoscope for use in training of healthcare professionals. Results: Using wireless transmitter broadcasting to a stethoscope fitted with a receiver apparatus, the student is able to perform a typical medical exam with auscultation of an unlimited variety of clinical sounds from anatomically appropriate sources while being observed from another room. Conclusions: Implications of this low-cost device include limitless training possibilities worldwide and across disciplines. The simplicity and portability of this device increases potential for use in rapid training of recognition of clinical signs associated with chemical/biological warfare agents, mass casualty incidents and field military applications. This is the first device to simulate clinically relevant sounds in a realistic manner on standardized patients and mannequins. The benefits of such simulation in medical education ultimately serve to increase trainee confidence and consequently, improve patient care and safety.

Abstract. This article presents a spatio-temporal web application dedicated to the co-exploitation of heterogeneous data spatialized in a common 3D environment, providing several paradigms for supporting their co-visualization and interactions within the 3D environment and across time. The relevance of this tool is demonstrated here with two use cases involving historians and sociologists with the common objective of better understanding the formation of the Parisian metropolis. The study focuses on the evolution of the city of Nanterre (Paris area), which underwent many changes in the 1950s, and in particular on shantytown areas. Through census as statistical data and aerial imagery as visual data, a group of historians and sociologists experimented the relevance of the joint exploitation of those heterogeneous data within the proposed spatio-temporal web application.