The effect of maturity status ‘bio-banding’ on the technical and tactical responses of talented adolescent soccer players during small-sided games

The aims of this thesis were to examine the effects of bio-banding on academy soccer player technical and tactical characteristics during small-sided game match-play and investigate if different methods of estimating maturation effected player performance. Male (n = 92), academy soccer players, aged 11 to 16 years old were selected from three UK soccer academies. Player maturation was estimated using percentage of adult stature attainment (EASA) and maturity offset somatic equations. Using thresholds (>92.0% post-PHV, 87.0 - 92.0% circa-PHV and 0.0 pre-PHV) for the Fransen et al. (2017) equation, players were organised into bio- bands (pre-PHV, circa-PHV and post-PHV) then competed in a series of maturity (miss)matched bio-banded small-sided games during which players were assessed using the game technical scor- ing chart (GTSC). Results showed large differences (P = 0.001) in anthropometrical measurements when bio-bands were mis-matched. Apart from pitch possession, no differences (P > 0.05) were found in match performance when bio-bands were matched or mis-matched. There were no dif- ferences (P = 1.000) found in GTSC total points awarded but there were in GTSC points scored (P = 0.001). Finally, there were very few differences in match performance between the different methods of identifying biological age and organising bio-bands. The findings of this research sug- gest that bio-banding is unable to provide useful insight into match performance, therefore, is lim- ited in enabling the monitoring player development and talent identification. However, a number of limitations were present within this thesis therefore preventing accurate conclusions from being made

Qualitative analysis of occupational therapists’ reflective notes on practicing their skills in building and maintaining therapeutic relationships

Previous research has shown that occupational therapists have increased their self-efficacy for using self intentionally in therapeutic encounters. However, experiences related to such changes have not yet been explored. The authors developed a therapeutic use-of-self training workshop to support the confidence and competence of practicing occupational therapists in using the Intentional Relationship Model and possibly enhancing their self-efficacy for therapeutic use-of-self. The purpose of the study was to explore the experiences of practicing occupational therapists in transferring learning from a training workshop focused on the therapeutic use-of-self into real world practice. Thirteen occupational therapists participated in the workshop and subsequently completed between one and four reflection notes. These notes were subjected to qualitative thematic analysis. The findings were organized into four themes: therapeutic relationship reasoning, engrained previous learning, reflection on/in action, and level of skills in conducting reflection. Reflection skills seemed to be essential for establishing and developing therapeutic relationships; practicing such skills needs to be facilitated by the work environment through emphasis on reflective practice and mentoring.publishedVersio

Qualitative analysis of occupational therapists’ reflective notes on practicing their skills in building and maintaining therapeutic relationships

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.Abstract Previous research has shown that occupational therapists have increased their self-efficacy for using self intentionally in therapeutic encounters. However, experiences related to such changes have not yet been explored. The authors developed a therapeutic use-of-self training workshop to support the confidence and competence of practicing occupational therapists in using the Intentional Relationship Model and possibly enhancing their self-efficacy for therapeutic use-of-self. The purpose of the study was to explore the experiences of practicing occupational therapists in transferring learning from a training workshop focused on the therapeutic use-of-self into real world practice. Thirteen occupational therapists participated in the workshop and subsequently completed between one and four reflection notes. These notes were subjected to qualitative thematic analysis. The findings were organized into four themes: therapeutic relationship reasoning, engrained previous learning, reflection on/in action, and level of skills in conducting reflection. Reflection skills seemed to be essential for establishing and developing therapeutic relationships; practicing such skills needs to be facilitated by the work environment through emphasis on reflective practice and mentoring.publishedVersio

A tool for rating chronic disease prevention and public health interventions

Bridging the gap between research and practice requires more than evaluating the effectiveness of interventions in controlled studies. To bridge this gap, evidence needs to be defined in different ways, and opportunities need to be provided for practice-based evidence to be replicated and disseminated. Community-based interventions are often not conducted or evaluated in controlled settings, yet they provide more real-world context and have the potential to have a greater effect on population health than findings from controlled studies that are limited in generalizability. The purpose of this article is to describe an approach to identify community-based programs and interventions that have the potential for replication and dissemination. In our study, such interventions met criteria in 3 primary domains: innovativeness, effectiveness, and sustainability. The criteria and tool developed were applied to 2 obesity-prevention programs to demonstrate the usefulness of the tool for identifying potential programs for replication and dissemination, contributing to practice-based evidence. Funders, practitioners, and researchers can apply these criteria to identify programs, environmental changes, or policies that may be replicated and disseminated

Evaluation Report, Holiday Activities & Food Programme for Northamptonshire Sport, Full Report

According to the Department for Education, there are 1.63 million children eligible for Free School Meals (FSM). Within Northamptonshire there are 184,308 children and young people, aged 0-19 years old, of which 14% are eligible for FSM. As FSM eligibility is a proxy for socioeconomic disadvantage, these statistics highlight that a significant proportion of children in Northamptonshire are from disadvantaged backgrounds. Due to increased costs and reduced income, children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to experience a gap in learning and have ‘unhealthy holidays’ during the school holiday period. To bridge this ‘gap’, the Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) Programme was created by central Government. This report evaluates the HAF Programme that was delivered in Northamptonshire during the June to August 2021 Summer Holidays. 2,490 children and young people attended the HAF Programme (15.12% of FSM eligible children), from areas across Northamptonshire, with a catchment area of approximately 2,335 km2 and 215 schools

Evaluation Report, Holiday Activities & Food Programme for Northamptonshire Sport, Executive Summary & Key Findings

According to the Department for Education, there are 1.63 million children eligible for Free School Meals (FSM). Within Northamptonshire there are 184,308 children and young people, aged 0-19 years old, of which 14% are eligible for FSM. As FSM eligibility is a proxy for socioeconomic disadvantage, these statistics highlight that a significant proportion of children in Northamptonshire are from disadvantaged backgrounds. Due to increased costs and reduced income, children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to experience a gap in learning and have ‘unhealthy holidays’ during the school holiday period. To bridge this ‘gap’, the Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) Programme was created by central Government. This report evaluates the HAF Programme that was delivered in Northamptonshire during the June to August 2021 Summer Holidays. 2,490 children and young people attended the HAF Programme (15.12% of FSM eligible children), from areas across Northamptonshire, with a catchment area of approximately 2,335 km2 and 215 schools

Measuring the prevalence of sleep disturbances in people with dementia living in care homes: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Sleep disturbances are a feature in people living with dementia, including getting up during the night, difficulty falling asleep, and excessive daytime sleepiness and may precipitate a person with dementia moving into residential care. There are varying estimates of the frequency of sleep disturbances, and it is unknown whether they are a problem for the individual. We conducted the first systematic review and meta-analysis on the prevalence and associated factors of sleep disturbances in the care home population with dementia

Effect of Pembrolizumab Plus Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy on Pathologic Complete Response in Women With Early-Stage Breast Cancer: An Analysis of the Ongoing Phase 2 Adaptively Randomized I-SPY2 Trial.

Importance: Approximately 25% of patients with early-stage breast cancer who receive (neo)adjuvant chemotherapy experience a recurrence within 5 years. Improvements in therapy are greatly needed. Objective: To determine if pembrolizumab plus neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NACT) in early-stage breast cancer is likely to be successful in a 300-patient, confirmatory randomized phase 3 neoadjuvant clinical trial. Design, Setting, and Participants: The I-SPY2 study is an ongoing open-label, multicenter, adaptively randomized phase 2 platform trial for high-risk, stage II/III breast cancer, evaluating multiple investigational arms in parallel. Standard NACT serves as the common control arm; investigational agent(s) are added to this backbone. Patients with ERBB2 (formerly HER2)-negative breast cancer were eligible for randomization to pembrolizumab between November 2015 and November 2016. Interventions: Participants were randomized to receive taxane- and anthracycline-based NACT with or without pembrolizumab, followed by definitive surgery. Main Outcomes and Measures: The primary end point was pathologic complete response (pCR). Secondary end points were residual cancer burden (RCB) and 3-year event-free and distant recurrence-free survival. Investigational arms graduated when demonstrating an 85% predictive probability of success in a hypothetical confirmatory phase 3 trial. Results: Of the 250 women included in the final analysis, 181 were randomized to the standard NACT control group (median [range] age, 47 [24.77] years). Sixty-nine women (median [range] age, 50 [27-71] years) were randomized to 4 cycles of pembrolizumab in combination with weekly paclitaxel followed by AC; 40 hormone receptor (HR)-positive and 29 triple-negative. Pembrolizumab graduated in all 3 biomarker signatures studied. Final estimated pCR rates, evaluated in March 2017, were 44% vs 17%, 30% vs 13%, and 60% vs 22% for pembrolizumab vs control in the ERBB2-negative, HR-positive/ERBB2-negative, and triple-negative cohorts, respectively. Pembrolizumab shifted the RCB distribution to a lower disease burden for each cohort evaluated. Adverse events included immune-related endocrinopathies, notably thyroid abnormalities (13.0%) and adrenal insufficiency (8.7%). Achieving a pCR appeared predictive of long-term outcome, where patients with pCR following pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy had high event-free survival rates (93% at 3 years with 2.8 years\u27 median follow-up). Conclusions and Relevance: When added to standard neoadjuvant chemotherapy, pembrolizumab more than doubled the estimated pCR rates for both HR-positive/ERBB2-negative and triple-negative breast cancer, indicating that checkpoint blockade in women with early-stage, high-risk, ERBB2-negative breast cancer is highly likely to succeed in a phase 3 trial. Pembrolizumab was the first of 10 agents to graduate in the HR-positive/ERBB2-negative signature. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT01042379

Multiomics Characterization of Preterm Birth in Low- and Middle-Income Countries.

Importance: Worldwide, preterm birth (PTB) is the single largest cause of deaths in the perinatal and neonatal period and is associated with increased morbidity in young children. The cause of PTB is multifactorial, and the development of generalizable biological models may enable early detection and guide therapeutic studies. Objective: To investigate the ability of transcriptomics and proteomics profiling of plasma and metabolomics analysis of urine to identify early biological measurements associated with PTB. Design, Setting, and Participants: This diagnostic/prognostic study analyzed plasma and urine samples collected from May 2014 to June 2017 from pregnant women in 5 biorepository cohorts in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs; ie, Matlab, Bangladesh; Lusaka, Zambia; Sylhet, Bangladesh; Karachi, Pakistan; and Pemba, Tanzania). These cohorts were established to study maternal and fetal outcomes and were supported by the Alliance for Maternal and Newborn Health Improvement and the Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth biorepositories. Data were analyzed from December 2018 to July 2019. Exposures: Blood and urine specimens that were collected early during pregnancy (median sampling time of 13.6 weeks of gestation, according to ultrasonography) were processed, stored, and shipped to the laboratories under uniform protocols. Plasma samples were assayed for targeted measurement of proteins and untargeted cell-free ribonucleic acid profiling; urine samples were assayed for metabolites. Main Outcomes and Measures: The PTB phenotype was defined as the delivery of a live infant before completing 37 weeks of gestation. Results: Of the 81 pregnant women included in this study, 39 had PTBs (48.1%) and 42 had term pregnancies (51.9%) (mean [SD] age of 24.8 [5.3] years). Univariate analysis demonstrated functional biological differences across the 5 cohorts. A cohort-adjusted machine learning algorithm was applied to each biological data set, and then a higher-level machine learning modeling combined the results into a final integrative model. The integrated model was more accurate, with an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) of 0.83 (95% CI, 0.72-0.91) compared with the models derived for each independent biological modality (transcriptomics AUROC, 0.73 [95% CI, 0.61-0.83]; metabolomics AUROC, 0.59 [95% CI, 0.47-0.72]; and proteomics AUROC, 0.75 [95% CI, 0.64-0.85]). Primary features associated with PTB included an inflammatory module as well as a metabolomic module measured in urine associated with the glutamine and glutamate metabolism and valine, leucine, and isoleucine biosynthesis pathways. Conclusions and Relevance: This study found that, in LMICs and high PTB settings, major biological adaptations during term pregnancy follow a generalizable model and the predictive accuracy for PTB was augmented by combining various omics data sets, suggesting that PTB is a condition that manifests within multiple biological systems. These data sets, with machine learning partnerships, may be a key step in developing valuable predictive tests and intervention candidates for preventing PTB

A Glial Variant of the Vesicular Monoamine Transporter Is Required To Store Histamine in the Drosophila Visual System

Unlike other monoamine neurotransmitters, the mechanism by which the brain's histamine content is regulated remains unclear. In mammals, vesicular monoamine transporters (VMATs) are expressed exclusively in neurons and mediate the storage of histamine and other monoamines. We have studied the visual system of Drosophila melanogaster in which histamine is the primary neurotransmitter released from photoreceptor cells. We report here that a novel mRNA splice variant of Drosophila VMAT (DVMAT-B) is expressed not in neurons but rather in a small subset of glia in the lamina of the fly's optic lobe. Histamine contents are reduced by mutation of dVMAT, but can be partially restored by specifically expressing DVMAT-B in glia. Our results suggest a novel role for a monoamine transporter in glia that may be relevant to histamine homeostasis in other systems