Using Narrow and Global Measures to Identify Children with LI in a Population Sample

Appropriate identification of children with language impairment (LI) is a persistent clinical issue in the field of communication disorders. Supplemental measures derived from the clinical markers of LI have been evaluated for diagnostic accuracy and clinical utility to improve diagnostic practices. Three of such measures are the percent of grammatical communication units (PGCU), the finite verb morphology composite (FVMC) and errors per communication unit (ECU). Although there is promising initial data to support the use of these supplemental measures, they have only been evaluated by two-gate studies to date, which creates spectrum bias. Spectrum bias is the methodological flaw with the greatest potential to overestimate the diagnostic accuracy of a measure (Dollaghan & Horner, 2011; Lijmer et al., 1999; Rutjes, et al., 2005). Therefore, this one-gate study aims to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy and clinical utility of the supplemental measures in a participant pool that reflects a clinical population. Participants included 141 monolingual children ages four through six recruited from a public school in upstate New York. Findings indicate that PGCU, FVMC, and ECU do not have acceptable diagnostic accuracy to identify LI in children ages four through six. Findings from this study may contribute to recommendations for identification of LI.Communication Sciences and Disorders, Department o

Stakeholder engagement for regional geoscientific surveying: the Tellus Border communications campaign

Visible publicly funded projects are obliged to communicate to taxpayers – at community, constituency, regional or national levels – the issues, benefits and potential risks associated with project operations and findings. As part of the EU INTERREG IVA-funded Tellus Border Project, a comprehensive programme of stakeholder engagement was implemented to support survey operations and to assist the realisation of project benefits. Communications measures were planned appropriate to different stakeholder groups. The successful implementation of these measures ensured that the surveys were completed without major incident and that the value of the work was demonstrated both to taxpayers and to government, thus facilitating funding for subsequent programme

Valuing and realising our natural capital assets : Tellus all about it

The 2011 White Paper ‘The Natural Choice: Securing the Value of Nature’ commits us to be the first generation to leave the natural environment in a better state than it inherited. The Tellus projects - a series of multi-partner environmental survey and research projects carried out in the UK and Ireland - have delivered innovative data and research that have successfully shaped policy and stimulated new investments in mineral, energy and infrastructure resources. On 12 May, at a meeting of the All Party Group on Earth and Environmental Sciences chaired by Martin Caton MP, Andy Howard, Mike Young and Marie Cowan explained how the Tellus Projects are transcending their original goals to contribute to the wider objective of measuring and realizing the value of our natural capital assets, and to help deliver the world-leading research needed to inform decisions and measure success in meeting the White Paper objectives

Adherence treatment factors in hypertensive African American women

Marie N Fongwa1, Lorraines S Evangelista1, Ron D Hays2, David S Martins3, David Elashoff4, Marie J Cowan1, Donald E Morisky51University of California Los Angeles School of Nursing, Los Angeles, CA, USA; 2University of California Los Angeles School of Medicine, Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research, Los Angeles, CA, USA; 3To Help Everyone Clinic Inc. Los Angeles, CA, USA; 4University of California Los Angeles Public Health, Los Angeles, CA, USA; 5University of California Los Angeles School of Public Health, CA, USABackground: Hypertension among African American women is of epidemic proportions. Nonadherence to treatment contributes to uncontrolled blood pressure in this population. Factors associated with adherence to treatment in African American women are unknown. The purpose of this study was to identify factors associated with adherence to hypertension treatment in African American women.Methods: Five audio-taped focus groups were conducted with hypertensive African American women, 35 years and older receiving treatment for hypertension from an inner-city free clinic. All transcripts from the tapes were analyzed for content describing adherence to treatment factors.Findings: Factors associated with adherence to treatment in hypertensive African American women were in three main categories including: beliefs about hypertension, facilitators of adherence to treatment, and barriers to adherence to treatment.Implications: The study supports the need for education on managing hypertension and medication side effects, early screening for depression in hypertensive African Americans, development of culturally sensitive hypertension educational material, and formation of support groups for promoting adherence to treatment among African American women with hypertension.Keywords: adherence, African American, hypertension treatment factor

Site symmetry and crystal symmetry: a spherical tensor analysis

The relation between the properties of a specific crystallographic site and the properties of the full crystal is discussed by using spherical tensors. The concept of spherical tensors is introduced and the way it transforms under the symmetry operations of the site and from site to site is described in detail. The law of spherical tensor coupling is given and illustrated with the example of the electric dipole and quadrupole transitions in x-ray absorption spectroscopy. The main application of the formalism is the reduction of computation time in the calculation of the properties of crystals by band structure methods. The general approach is illustrated by the examples of substitutional chromium in spinel and substitutional vanadium in garnet.Comment: 27 pages, 3 figure

Modelling Tauopathies in Drosophila: Insights from the Fruit Fly

Drosophila melanogaster is an experimentally tractable model organism that has been used successfully to model aspects of many human neurodegenerative diseases. Drosophila models of tauopathy have provided valuable insights into tau-mediated mechanisms of neuronal dysfunction and death. Here we review the findings from Drosophila models of tauopathy reported over the past ten years and discuss how they have furthered our understanding of the pathogenesis of tauopathies. We also discuss the multitude of technical advantages that Drosophila offers, which make it highly attractive as a model for such studies

X-ray Linear Dichroism in cubic compounds: the case of Cr3+ in MgAl2O4

The angular dependence (x-ray linear dichroism) of the Cr K pre-edge in MgAl2O4:Cr3+ spinel is measured by means of x-ray absorption near edge structure spectroscopy (XANES) and compared to calculations based on density functional theory (DFT) and ligand field multiplet theory (LFM). We also present an efficient method, based on symmetry considerations, to compute the dichroism of the cubic crystal starting from the dichroism of a single substitutional site. DFT shows that the electric dipole transitions do not contribute to the features visible in the pre-edge and provides a clear vision of the assignment of the 1s-->3d transitions. However, DFT is unable to reproduce quantitatively the angular dependence of the pre-edge, which is, on the other side, well reproduced by LFM calculations. The most relevant factors determining the dichroism of Cr K pre-edge are identified as the site distortion and 3d-3d electronic repulsion. From this combined DFT, LFM approach is concluded that when the pre-edge features are more intense than 4 % of the edge jump, pure quadrupole transitions cannot explain alone the origin of the pre-edge. Finally, the shape of the dichroic signal is more sensitive than the isotropic spectrum to the trigonal distortion of the substitutional site. This suggests the possibility to obtain quantitative information on site distortion from the x-ray linear dichroism by performing angular dependent measurements on single crystals