Village Park Mystery offers some unique features to help students in their investigation.
Patient Case Files
Students begin their investigation by examining a single patient’s case file. Students can select an individual to study and view the individual’s case file. They can take notes about the case file using the journal. Students can print the case file and their notes if they want
Real Medical Data
Students explore why the heart could malfunction by investigating what the heart does and what heart cells need to function properly. Students view and compare the function of healthy and diseased hearts by watching MRIs.
Electronic Journal
Students can access and take notes on evidence that they uncover using the other tools through the electronic journal.
Virtual Cell Laboratory
Students use the Virtual Laboratory to investigate the effect of different factors on heart cell function. The simulation presents students with a virtual piece of heart tissue comprised of many visible cells. Students can control a number of parameters that relate to tissue function and see the effect of these parameters on the cells in the tissue. Within the simulation, cell function occurs through animation, and problems with individual cells can be identified visually and through the use of various “virtual sensors” that monitor specific cell characteristics.
Epidemiological Study
Students use the epidemiology tools to conduct searches of the overall population database to explore the prevalence of heart disease within different subsets of the population. Students can determine the relative risk of different factors by filtering the database to show only those with a particular factor (e.g. smokers) and then calculating the relative incidence of heart disease within that subset of the population.
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Village Park Mystery’s Technical Requirements
The minimum system requirements needed to run the SEPA application:
Windows
Windows 98, 2000, Me, NT, or XP.
At least 32M of RAM available for the application.
At least a 200MHz Pentium processor.
800 x 600 x thousands of colors screen resolution or better.
Either a CD-ROM drive (to run the program from CD) or 700M of available hard drive space.
Macintosh
Mac OS 8.6 or newer (including Mac OS X).
At least 32M of RAM available for the application.
At least a 200MHz PowerPC processor.
800 x 600 x thousands of colors screen resolution or better.
Either a CD-ROM drive (to run the program from CD) or 700M of available hard drive space.
