Researching the lives of disabled children and young people

Why a Special Issue of Children & Society dedicated to disabled children and young people? The simple answer to that question is ‘because disabled children are children first and foremost’. The vast majority of disabled children and young people in the western world live at home with their families, most attending mainstream schools, and disabled children and young people worldwide have rights to inclusion and equal treatment enshrined in national legislation and international conventions. Yet they often remain left out – from generic children’s research, from policy-making about children’s services and, in their everyday lives, from inclusion in friendship groups and social and sporting activities

Cellular Therapy for Wounds: Applications of Mesenchymal Stem Cells in Wound Healing

Despite progress in wound treatment including gene therapy, biological dresses and engineered skin equivalents, present treatment options for chronic wounds are restricted and not always effective. For example, inability to get consistent product from the introduced gene, biological covers may give rise to hypoxic conditions and engineered skin models are limited by their construction from substances which are hard to be degraded, and do not always result in complete replication into normal uninjured skin. A growing body of evidence suggests mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), and their secreted growth factors and microvesicles, may potentiate the wound‐healing process and as such their addition to novel wound‐healing treatments may improve the efficacy of current therapeutic strategies. Recent studies report the ability of bone marrow‐derived MSCs (BM‐MSCs) to migrate and differentiate into skin cells in vivo

Analysing Fish Behaviours Using Three-Dimensional Qualitative Trajectory Calculus 2016

Fish swim freely in water and their 3D spatial interactions may carry important information for biological study. The two-dimensional Qualitative Trajectory Calculus (QTC2D), a spatiotemporal calculus, is a method for representing and reasoning about movements of objects in a qualitative framework. This emerging technique encodes the spatial geometric relationships between distinct objects, such as machines, humans or animals. This paper presents a method for generalising QTC2D into 3D space, called 3DQTC, as a work-in-progress. The 3DQTC method is based on a geometrical analysis method of estimating the 3D orientation of �fish. Initial results indicate the potential of representing and analysing the �fish behaviours in 3D space. 3DQTC is also demonstrated as a means of extracting useful information (e.g. follow and non-follow behaviours)which cannot be achieved by QTC2D. We conclude by discussing further work and development

Pair-Activity Analysis from Video Using Qualitative Trajectory Calculus

The automated analysis of interacting objects or people from video has many uses, including the recognition of activities, and identification of prototypical or unusual behaviors. Existing techniques generally use temporal sequences of quantifiable real-valued features, such as object position or orientation; however, more recently, qualitative representations have been proposed. In this paper we present a novel and robust qualitative method which can be used both for classification and clustering of pair-activities. We use Qualitative Trajectory Calculus (QTC) to represent the relative motion between two objects, and encodes their interactions as a trajectory of QTC states. A key element is a general and robust means of determining the sequence similarity, which we term Normalized Weighted Sequence Alignment; we show that this is an effective metric for both recognition and clustering problems. We have evaluated our method across three different datasets, and shown that it out-performs state of the art quantitative methods, achieving an error rate of no more than 4.1% for recognition, and cluster purities higher than 90%. Our motivation originates from an interest in automated analysis of animal behaviors, and we present a comprehensive video dataset of fish behaviors (Gasterosteus aculeatus), collected from lab-based experiment

A qualitative study of the views of patients with long-term conditions on family doctors in Hong Kong

<b>Background</b> Primary care based management of long-term conditions (LTCs) is high on the international healthcare agenda, including the Asia-Pacific region. Hong Kong has a 'mixed economy' healthcare system with both public and private sectors with a range of types of primary care doctors. Recent Hong Kong Government policy aims to enhance the management of LTCs in primary care possibly based on a 'family doctor' model. Patients' views on this are not well documented and the aim of the present study was to explore the views of patients with LTCs on family doctors in Hong Kong.<p></p> <b>Methods</b> The views of patients (with a variety of LTCs) on family doctors in Hong Kong were explored. Two groups of participants were interviewed; a) those who considered themselves as having a family doctor, b) those who considered themselves as not having a family doctor (either with a regular primary care doctor but not a family doctor or with no regular primary care doctor). In-depth individual semi-structured interviews were carried out with 28 participants (10 with a family doctor, 10 with a regular doctor, and 8 with no regular doctor) and analysed using the constant comparative method.<p></p> <b>Results</b> Participants who did not have a family doctor were familiar with the concept but regarded it as a 'luxury item' for the rich within the private healthcare system. Those with a regular family doctor (all private) regarded having one as important to their and their family's health. Participants in both groups felt that as well as the more usual family medicine specialist or general practitioner, traditional Chinese medicine practitioners also had the potential to be family doctors. However most participants attended the public healthcare system for management of their LTCs whether they had a family doctor or not. Cost, perceived need, quality, trust, and choice were all barriers to the use of family doctors for the management of their LTCs.<p></p> <b>Conclusions</b> Important barriers to the adoption of a 'family doctor' model of management of LTCs exist in Hong Kong. Effective policy implementation seems unlikely unless these complex barriers are addressed

Differential cartilaginous tissue formation by human synovial membrane, fat pad, meniscus cells and articular chondrocytes

Objective: To identify an appropriate cell source for the generation of meniscus substitutes, among those which would be available by arthroscopy of injured knee joints. Methods: Human inner meniscus cells, fat pad cells (FPC), synovial membrane cells (SMC) and articular chondrocytes (AC) were expanded with or without specific growth factors (Transforming growth factor-betal, Fibroblast growth factor-2 and Plate let-derived growth factor bb, TFP) and then induced to form three-dimensional cartilaginous tissues in pellet cultures, or using a hyaluronan-based scaffold (Hyaff(R)-11), in culture or in nude mice. Human native menisci were assessed as reference. Results: Cell expansion with TFP enhanced glycosaminoglycan (GAG) deposition by all cell types (up to 4.1-fold) and messenger RNA expression of collagen type II by FPC and SMC (up to 472-fold) following pellet culture. In all models, tissues generated by AC contained the highest fractions of GAG (up to 1.9 were positively stained for collagen type II (specific of the inner avascular region of meniscus), type IV (mainly present in the outer vascularized region of meniscus) and types I, III and VI (common to both meniscus regions). Instead, inner meniscus, FPC and SMC developed tissues containing negligible GAG and no detectable collagen type II protein. Tissues generated by AC remained biochemically and phenotypically stable upon ectopic implantation. Conclusions: Under our experimental conditions, only AC generated tissues containing relevant amounts of GAG and with cell phenotypes compatible with those of the inner and outer meniscus regions. Instead, the other investigated cell sources formed tissues resembling only the outer region of meniscus. It remains to be determined whether grafts based on AC will have the ability to reach the complex structural and functional organization typical of meniscus tissue. (C) 2006 Osteoarthritis Research Society International. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights rese

Characterization and Generation of Male Courtship Song in Cotesia congregata (Hymenoptera: Braconidae)

Background Male parasitic wasps attract females with a courtship song produced by rapid wing fanning. Songs have been described for several parasitic wasp species; however, beyond association with wing fanning, the mechanism of sound generation has not been examined. We characterized the male courtship song of Cotesia congregata (Hymenoptera: Braconidae) and investigated the biomechanics of sound production. Methods and Principal Findings Courtship songs were recorded using high-speed videography (2,000 fps) and audio recordings. The song consists of a long duration amplitude-modulated “buzz” followed by a series of pulsatile higher amplitude “boings,” each decaying into a terminal buzz followed by a short inter-boing pause while wings are stationary. Boings have higher amplitude and lower frequency than buzz components. The lower frequency of the boing sound is due to greater wing displacement. The power spectrum is a harmonic series dominated by wing repetition rate ~220 Hz, but the sound waveform indicates a higher frequency resonance ~5 kHz. Sound is not generated by the wings contacting each other, the substrate, or the abdomen. The abdomen is elevated during the first several wing cycles of the boing, but its position is unrelated to sound amplitude. Unlike most sounds generated by volume velocity, the boing is generated at the termination of the wing down stroke when displacement is maximal and wing velocity is zero. Calculation indicates a low Reynolds number of ~1000. Conclusions and Significance Acoustic pressure is proportional to velocity for typical sound sources. Our finding that the boing sound was generated at maximal wing displacement coincident with cessation of wing motion indicates that it is caused by acceleration of the wing tips, consistent with a dipole source. The low Reynolds number requires a high wing flap rate for flight and predisposes wings of small insects for sound production