Novice Inter-Rater Reliability on the Selective Functional Movement Assessment (SFMA) After a 4-Hour Training Session

Background The Selective Functional Movement Assessment (SFMA) is a whole-body movement classification system that identifies non-optimal movement performance requiring further assessment. There needs to be more evidence specifying the training time required to obtain SFMA reliability for entry-level health care practitioners. Purpose The primary intent of this study was to determine SFMA inter-rater reliability between two third-year physical therapy students following an in-person three-hour training and one-hour follow-up training with a certified SFMA physical therapist. The secondary purpose was to compare rater scores of the composite criterion 50-point checklist and rater categorization using the top-tier movements in real-time assessments of healthy participants. Study Design Inter-rater reliability study. Methods Two novice raters received training on assessing movement using the SFMA. Participants included non-pregnant healthy adults screened for general exercise, participants were excluded for history of orthopedic surgery within the prior six months. Three independent raters, including two novice and one SFMA-certified rater, individually assessed the top-tier movements in separate rooms in real-time. Participants were randomly assigned a start location, and raters were blinded to each other’s criterion 50-point checklist and categorical scoring. Statistical analysis included a paired t-test, a repeated measures ANOVA, and a two-way, mixed absolute agreement ICC. Results Twenty-five participants (23.4 years ± 1.9; 72% female) completed the SFMA top-tier movements. Significant differences were identified with novice raters identifying fewer non-optimal movement patterns than the certified clinician. The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC2,1) was moderate (0.60, p Conclusion Third year physical therapy students were able to demonstrate moderate inter-rater reliability assessing healthy individuals using the 50-point criterion checklist. Variation between novice raters may reflect the amount of previous exposure assessing movement and suggests that some may require more time learning and practicing in order to identify non-optimal movement patterns that may require further assessment. Level of Evidence 3

The Role of Pre-Season Health Characteristics as Injury Risk Factors in Female Adolescent Soccer Players

[Purpose] Determine if female adolescent soccer players with a history of concussion, impaired K-D scores, and pre-season subjective complaints of neck pain, dizziness, and headache were predisposed to additional risk of musculoskeletal or concussive injury during 10-weeks of competitive play. [Participants and Methods] Twenty-three female high school soccer athletes provided concussion history and reported pre-season subjective complaints. K-D testing was performed pre and postseason. During the 10-week season, all injuries, preventing participation in practice or game, were recorded. [Results] Six reported a history of concussion. Of those six, three injuries were reported, including two concussions and a hamstring strain. Baseline K-D scores were worse in athletes that had two or more pre-season subjective factors compared to those that did not have any. Moderate positive correlations were found between a history of concussion and the number of injuries and a history of concussion and K-D post-test scores. [Conclusion] Findings indicate that pre-season subjective factors of neck pain, dizziness and headache, history of concussion, and K-D potentially increased injury risk. Combining pre-season metrics both at baseline and during the course of the season may assist in better injury risk screening in-season or indicate suboptimal function due to cumulative effects

Soccer Heading Drills and Concussion-Related Deficits in High School Female Athletes

Repetitive head impacts from soccer heading may result in concussions in female athletes. Problem Statement: Concussion assessments exist with efforts to limit headers. Heading drills performed in different environments have conflicting results regarding influences on assessments. Approach: To evaluate, within an ecological realsetting environment with unpredictable conditions reflective of game situations, a heading drill’s effect on the King-Devick (K-D) and Biodex Biosway Balance Assessment (CTSIB-M). Preseason and post-heading metrics were taken for eleven female high school varsity soccer players (16 ± 1.4 years old) using K-D and CTSIB-M. K-D and CTSIB-M tests were repeated following a heading drill (HD). The number of headers and acceleration data during HD was recorded by Triax Smart Impact Monitor-G (SIM-G). Results: Each participant had an average of six headers (± 2.9 SD) with acceleration (minimum to maximum 27.5 ± 3.4 g to 57.4 ± 9.9 g) recorded by Triax SIM-G. K-D score time (42.9 ± 6.8 se conds compared to 41.6 ± 4.9 seconds, p = 0.37) and CTSIB-M sway index (0.79 ± 0.13 compared to 0.83 ± 0.13 cm, p = 0.17) pre- and post-test scores lacked statistical significance. Conclusion: It failed to show a correlation with head acceleration data (e.g., linear and rotational accelerations). A single soccer heading drill may not affect performance on the K-D and CTSIB-M. Regularly monitoring different metrics (e.g., K-D or CTSIB-M) for teams who practice more aggressive heading drills may inform training such skills while identifying potentially detrimental effects from repetitive soccer heading impacts during a competitive season

Feasibility Assessment of the Reebok CHECKLIGHT™ and King-Devick tests as Screening tools in Youth Football

Background: Concussions are one of the foremost issues in sport, with football having one of the highest incidence rate of injury. Moreover, there is a need to monitor sub-concussive head impacts because they do not initiate further assessment which may increase an athlete’s risk of suffering a brain injury. The purpose of this article is to discuss the viability of use for the Reebok CHECKLIGHT™ system and its correlation to concussive events screening in two levels of football: youth recreation league football (ages 11-13) and high school football (ages 13-18). Results: The Reebok CHECKLIGHT™ system activation did not correlate with the King-Devick score (r=-0.08, p=0.7). There was no difference between the two levels of football in the number of times the lights came on, 1.77 ± 2.05 vs. 1.42 ± 0.79, p=0.57.Limitation: The viability of CHECKLIGHT™ system was limited by threshold issues with the light alert system, light usefulness, set-up, and implementation. Conclusion: The Reebok CHECKLIGHT™ system may be beneficial to individual athletes below the high school level; however, it appears to have limited usefulness for entire teams and/or high school athletes

Feasibility Assessment of the Reebok CHECKLIGHT™ and King-Devick tests as Screening tools in Youth Football

Background: Concussions are one of the foremost issues in sport, with football having one of the highest incidence rate of injury. Moreover, there is a need to monitor sub-concussive head impacts because they do not initiate further assessment which may increase an athlete’s risk of suffering a brain injury. The purpose of this article is to discuss the viability of use for the Reebok CHECKLIGHT™ system and its correlation to concussive events screening in two levels of football: youth recreation league football (ages 11-13) and high school football (ages 13-18). Results: The Reebok CHECKLIGHT™ system activation did not correlate with the King-Devick score (r=-0.08, p=0.7). There was no difference between the two levels of football in the number of times the lights came on, 1.77 ± 2.05 vs. 1.42 ± 0.79, p=0.57.Limitation: The viability of CHECKLIGHT™ system was limited by threshold issues with the light alert system, light usefulness, set-up, and implementation. Conclusion: The Reebok CHECKLIGHT™ system may be beneficial to individual athletes below the high school level; however, it appears to have limited usefulness for entire teams and/or high school athletes

Your Publication, Your Choice: Choosing the Right Open Access Journal

An increasing number of research funders require free public access to the outcomes of funded research. To comply with the requirement, some researchers choose to publish their findings in open access journals. Given that there are so many choices, what should researchers consider when choosing an open access journal to publish? To celebrate Open Access Week (October 20-26, 2014), the University of Kentucky Libraries hosted a workshop that aimed to help you answer the above question. Information about open access is available from the University of Kentucky Libraries open access research guide

Novice Inter-Rater Reliability on the Selective Functional Movement Assessment (SFMA) After a 4-Hour Training Session

# Background The Selective Functional Movement Assessment (SFMA) is a whole-body movement classification system that identifies non-optimal movement performance requiring further assessment. There needs to be more evidence specifying the training time required to obtain SFMA reliability for entry-level health care practitioners. # Purpose The primary intent of this study was to determine SFMA inter-rater reliability between two third-year physical therapy students following an in-person three-hour training and one-hour follow-up training with a certified SFMA physical therapist. The secondary purpose was to compare rater scores of the composite criterion 50-point checklist and rater categorization using the top-tier movements in real-time assessments of healthy participants. # Study Design Inter-rater reliability study. # Methods Two novice raters received training on assessing movement using the SFMA. Participants included non-pregnant healthy adults screened for general exercise, participants were excluded for history of orthopedic surgery within the prior six months. Three independent raters, including two novice and one SFMA-certified rater, individually assessed the top-tier movements in separate rooms in real-time. Participants were randomly assigned a start location, and raters were blinded to each other's criterion 50-point checklist and categorical scoring. Statistical analysis included a paired *t*-test, a repeated measures ANOVA, and a two-way, mixed absolute agreement ICC. # Results Twenty-five participants (23.4 years ± 1.9; 72% female) completed the SFMA top-tier movements. Significant differences were identified with novice raters identifying fewer non-optimal movement patterns than the certified clinician. The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC~2,1~) was moderate (0.60, *p*\<0.001) for all three raters on the 50-point criterion checklist scoring. # Conclusion Third year physical therapy students were able to demonstrate moderate inter-rater reliability assessing healthy individuals using the 50-point criterion checklist. Variation between novice raters may reflect the amount of previous exposure assessing movement and suggests that some may require more time learning and practicing in order to identify non-optimal movement patterns that may require further assessment. # Level of Evidence 3b ©The Author(s

Towards GPU Utilization Prediction for Cloud Deep Learning

Understanding the GPU utilization of Deep Learning (DL) workloads is important for enhancing resource-efficiency and cost-benefit decision making for DL frameworks in the cloud. Current approaches to determine DL workload GPU utilization rely on online profiling within isolated GPU devices, and must be performed for every unique DL workload submission resulting in resource under-utilization and reduced service availability. In this paper, we propose a prediction engine to proactively determine the GPU utilization of heterogeneous DL workloads without the need for in-depth or isolated online profiling. We demonstrate that it is possible to predict DL workload GPU utilization via extracting information from its model computation graph. Our experiments show that the prediction engine achieves an RMSLE of 0.154, and can be exploited by DL schedulers to achieve up to 61.5% improvement to GPU cluster utilization

Universal localization-delocalization transition in chirally-symmetric Floquet drives

Periodically driven systems often exhibit behavior distinct from static systems. In single-particle, static systems, any amount of disorder generically localizes all eigenstates in one dimension. In contrast, we show that in topologically non-trivial, single-particle Floquet loop drives with chiral symmetry in one dimension, a localization-delocalization transition occurs as the time $t$ is varied within the driving period ($0 \le t \le T_\text{drive}$). We find that the time-dependent localization length $L_\text{loc}(t)$ diverges with a universal exponent as $t$ approaches the midpoint of the drive: $L_\text{loc}(t) \sim (t - T_\text{drive}/2)^{-\nu}$ with $\nu=2$. We provide analytical and numerical evidence for the universality of this exponent within the AIII symmetry class.Comment: 17 + 5 pages, 7 figure