Assessment of motor functioning in the preschool period

The assessment of motor functioning in young children has become increasingly important in recent years with the acknowledgement that motor impairment is linked with cognitive, language, social and emotional difficulties. However, there is no one gold standard assessment tool to investigate motor ability in children. The aim of the current paper was to discuss the issues related to the assessment of motor ability in young pre-school children and to provide guidelines on the best approach for motor assessment. The paper discusses the maturational changes in brain development at the preschool level in relation to motor ability. Other issues include sex differences in motor ability at this young age, and evidence for this in relation to sociological versus biological influences. From the previous literature it is unclear what needs to be assessed in relation to motor functioning. Should the focus be underlying motor processes or movement skill assessment? Several key assessment tools are discussed that produce a general measure of motor performance followed by a description of tools that assess specific skills, such as fine and gross motor, ball and graphomotor skills. The paper concludes with recommendations on the best approach in assessing motor function in pre-school children

Reliability of the modified child and adolescent physical activity and nutrition survey, physical activity (CAPANS-PA) questionnaire among chinese-australian youth

Background : Evidence suggests that differences exist in physical activity (PA) participation among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) children and adolescents. It is possible that these differences could be influenced by variations in measurement technique and instrument reliability. However, culturally sensitive instruments for examining PA behaviour among CALD populations are lacking. This study tested the reliability of the Child and Adolescent Physical Activity and Nutrition Survey (CAPANS-PA) recall questionnaire among a sample of Chinese-Australian youth.Methods : The psychometric property of the CAPANS-PA questionnaire was examined among a sample of 77 Chinese-Australian youth (aged 11 - 14 y) who completed the questionnaire twice within 7 days. Test-retest reliability of individual items and scales within the CAPANS-PA questionnaire was determined using Kappa statistics for categorical variables and intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) for continuous variables.Results : The CAPANS-PA questionnaire demonstrated acceptable test-retest reliability for frequency and duration of time spent in weekly Moderate to Vigorous Physical Activity (MVPA) (ICC &ge; 0.70) for all participants. Test-retest reliability for time spent in weekly sedentary activities was acceptable for females (ICC = 0.82) and males (ICC = 0.72).Conclusions : The results suggest the CAPANS-PA questionnaire provides reliable estimates for type, frequency and duration of MVPA participation among Chinese-Australian youth. Further investigation into the reliability of the sedentary items within the CAPANS-PA is required before these items can be used with confidence. This study is novel in that the reliability of instruments among CALD groups nationally and internationally remains sparse and this study contributes to the wider body of available psychometrically tested instruments. In addition, this study is the first to our knowledge to successfully engage and investigate the basic health enhancing behaviours of Chinese-Australian adolescents.<br /

Consensus on circulatory shock and hemodynamic monitoring. Task force of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine.

OBJECTIVE: Circulatory shock is a life-threatening syndrome resulting in multiorgan failure and a high mortality rate. The aim of this consensus is to provide support to the bedside clinician regarding the diagnosis, management and monitoring of shock. METHODS: The European Society of Intensive Care Medicine invited 12 experts to form a Task Force to update a previous consensus (Antonelli et al.: Intensive Care Med 33:575-590, 2007). The same five questions addressed in the earlier consensus were used as the outline for the literature search and review, with the aim of the Task Force to produce statements based on the available literature and evidence. These questions were: (1) What are the epidemiologic and pathophysiologic features of shock in the intensive care unit ? (2) Should we monitor preload and fluid responsiveness in shock ? (3) How and when should we monitor stroke volume or cardiac output in shock ? (4) What markers of the regional and microcirculation can be monitored, and how can cellular function be assessed in shock ? (5) What is the evidence for using hemodynamic monitoring to direct therapy in shock ? Four types of statements were used: definition, recommendation, best practice and statement of fact. RESULTS: Forty-four statements were made. The main new statements include: (1) statements on individualizing blood pressure targets; (2) statements on the assessment and prediction of fluid responsiveness; (3) statements on the use of echocardiography and hemodynamic monitoring. CONCLUSIONS: This consensus provides 44 statements that can be used at the bedside to diagnose, treat and monitor patients with shock

Brain tumour differentiation: rapid stratified serum diagnostics via attenuated total reflection Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy

The ability to diagnose cancer rapidly with high sensitivity and specificity is essential to exploit advances in new treatments to lead significant reductions in mortality and morbidity. Current cancer diagnostic tests observing tissue architecture and specific protein expression for specific cancers suffer from inter-observer variability, poor detection rates and occur when the patient is symptomatic. A new method for the detection of cancer using 1 μl of human serum, attenuated total reflection - Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and pattern recognition algorithms is reported using a 433 patient dataset (3897 spectra). To the best of our knowledge, we present the largest study on serum mid-infrared spectroscopy for cancer research. We achieve optimum sensitivities and specificities using a Radial Basis Function Support Vector Machine of between 80.0 and 100% for all strata and identify the major spectral features, hence biochemical components, responsible for the discrimination within each stratum. We assess feature fed-SVM analysis for our cancer versus non-cancer model and achieve 91.5 and 83.0% sensitivity and specificity respectively. We demonstrate the use of infrared light to provide a spectral signature from human serum to detect, for the first time, cancer versus non-cancer, metastatic cancer versus organ confined, brain cancer severity and the organ of origin of metastatic disease from the same sample enabling stratified diagnostics depending upon the clinical question asked. © 2016, The Author(s)

Calculation of the vibrational frequencies of carbon clusters and fullerenes with empirical potentials

Vibrational frequencies for carbon clusters, fullerenes and nanotubes evaluated using empirical carbon-carbon potentials are presented. For linear and cyclic clusters, frequencies evaluated with the reactive empirical bond order (REBO) potential provide the closest agreement with experiment. The mean absolute deviation (MAD) between experiment and the calculated harmonic frequencies is 79 cm−1 for the bending modes and 76 cm−1 for the stretching modes. The effects of anharmonicity are included via second order vibrational perturbation theory and tend to increase the frequency of the bending modes while the stretching modes have negative shifts in the region of 20 - 60 cm−1, with larger shifts for the higher frequency modes. This results in MADs for the bending and stretching modes of 84 cm−1 and 58 cm−1, respectively. For the fullerene molecule C60, the high frequency modes are predicted to have harmonic frequencies that are significantly higher than experiment, and this is not corrected by accounting for anharmonicity. This overestimation of experimental observed frequencies is also evident in the calculated frequencies of the G band in nanotubes. This suggests that the REBO potential is not optimal for these larger systems and it is shown that adjustment of the parameters within the potential leads to closer agreement with experiment, particularly if higher and lower frequency modes are considered separately

Development of high-throughput ATR-FTIR technology for rapid triage of brain cancer

Non-specific symptoms, as well as the lack of a cost-effective test to triage patients in primary care, has resulted in increased time-to-diagnosis and a poor prognosis for brain cancer patients. A rapid, cost-effective, triage test could significantly improve this patient pathway. A blood test using attenuated total reflection (ATR)-Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy for the detection of brain cancer, alongside machine learning technology, is advancing towards clinical translation. However, whilst the methodology is simple and does not require extensive sample preparation, the throughput of such an approach is limited. Here we describe the development of instrumentation for the analysis of serum that is able to differentiate cancer and control patients at a sensitivity and specificity of 93.2% and 92.8%. Furthermore, preliminary data from the first prospective clinical validation study of its kind are presented, demonstrating how this innovative technology can triage patients and allow rapid access to imaging

Hybrid video quality prediction: reviewing video quality measurement for widening application scope

A tremendous number of objective video quality measurement algorithms have been developed during the last two decades. Most of them either measure a very limited aspect of the perceived video quality or they measure broad ranges of quality with limited prediction accuracy. This paper lists several perceptual artifacts that may be computationally measured in an isolated algorithm and some of the modeling approaches that have been proposed to predict the resulting quality from those algorithms. These algorithms usually have a very limited application scope but have been verified carefully. The paper continues with a review of some standardized and well-known video quality measurement algorithms that are meant for a wide range of applications, thus have a larger scope. Their individual artifacts prediction accuracy is usually lower but some of them were validated to perform sufficiently well for standardization. Several difficulties and shortcomings in developing a general purpose model with high prediction performance are identified such as a common objective quality scale or the behavior of individual indicators when confronted with stimuli that are out of their prediction scope. The paper concludes with a systematic framework approach to tackle the development of a hybrid video quality measurement in a joint research collaboration.Polish National Centre for Research and Development (NCRD) SP/I/1/77065/10, Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems (Vinnova

Screen-based media use clusters are related to other activity behaviours and health indicators in adolescents

Background: Screen-based media (SBM) occupy a considerable portion of young peoples’ discretionary leisure time. The aim of this paper was to investigate whether distinct clusters of SBM use exist, and if so, to examine the relationship of any identified clusters with other activity/sedentary behaviours and physical and mental health indicators.Methods: The data for this study come from 643 adolescents, aged 14 years, who were participating in the longitudinal Western Australian Pregnancy Cohort (Raine) Study through May 2003 to June 2006. Time spent on SBM, phone use and reading was assessed using the Multimedia Activity Recall for Children and Adults. Height, weight, muscle strength were measured at a clinic visit and the adolescents also completed questionnaires on their physical activity and psychosocial health. Latent class analysis (LCA) was used to analyse groupings of SBM use.Results: Three clusters of SBM use were found; C1 ‘instrumental computer users’ (high email use, general computer use), C2 ‘multi-modal e-gamers’ (both high console and computer game use) and C3 ‘computer e-gamers’ (high computer game use only). Television viewing was moderately high amongst all the clusters. C2 males took fewer steps than their male peers in C1 and C3 (-13,787/week, 95% CI: -4619 to -22957, p = 0.003 and -14,806, 95% CI: -5,306 to -24,305, p = 0.002) and recorded less MVPA than the C1 males (-3.5 h, 95% CI: -1.0 to -5.9, p = 0.005). There was no difference in activity levels between females in clusters C1 and C3.Conclusion: SBM use by adolescents did cluster and these clusters related differently to activity/sedentary behaviours and both physical and psychosocial health indicators. It is clear that SBM use is not a single construct and future research needs to take consideration of this if it intends to understand the impact SBM has on health