Early lateral preferences and mental processing trends in black preschoolers.

A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of PhilosophyThe current study adopts a developmental neuropsychological perspective, an approach which does not imply brain dysfunction but rather the principle of understanding the general relationship hetween brain growth and behavioural changes and the effect of environmental factors in children. A neuropsychology of normal development would seem to be an appropriate initial prerequisite if we are to understand the effects of brain insult or disease in the developing child. A modest aim was to acquire a fundamental understanding of emerging skills in black preschool children, starting with the most basic, the development of lateral preferences. This area was selected (a) as a departure point because of its location within the broad area of cerebrallateralization and (b) the opportunity it provided to explore the children's mental processing skills within the same theoretical perspective. The purpose of the present study was the longitudinal investigation of lateral preferences in a sample of Soweto children at three and five years.and information processing skills in the same sample at five years. Three hundred and thirty-five children, 170 girls and 165 boys, were sampled with the assistance of the Birth to Ten project.a longitudinal study of growth, health and development of children living in the Johannesburg Metropolitan area over a ten year period, 1990 to 2000. The children were assessed prior to starting school in January, 1996. A descriptive approach was adopted in explaining the patterns of handedness, footedness and eyeness. The findings showed that the patterns for handedness reflected the expected rightward direction at both ages although the degree to which preference has oeen established was weaker at five years than that reported in other studies with children of similar ages. Thirty-nine percent of the sample were mixed-handed at five years,only 3% were mixed-footed and 5% showed mixed-eyeness, At five years Simultaneous and Sequential information processing skills were assessed with the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC). Factor analysis revealed a two factor solution broadly supporting the presence of the two processing styles. However the two coding processes were differentially distributed throughout the sample showing significant differences. More specifically.it was found that 34% of the children presented profiles of both processing styles that were below the group mean;31 % showed profiles where one or other coding style was below the group mean;23 % of the children portrayed processing profiles above the group mean. Thirty-nine children (12 %) presented patterns of processing that were above the group mean but were highly developed in one or other processing style. Each of the profiles that emerged were grouped and considered separately. Cognitive tasks involving verbal fluency, naming skills,draw-a person,basic perceptual knowledge,basic literacy.plus lateral preference information such as handedness direction, handedness consistency and handedness skills were appended to all the groups. Low scores in processing styles were found to be associated with poor verbal skills, low mental age,poor perceptual and basic literacy knowledge,poor hand skill performance,and greater (but nonsignificant) numbers of mixed-handers. The lowest scoring group also contained the majority of male left-handers. One of the highest scoring groups showed the strongest lateralizing patterns although the numbers were small (n= 11). Girls with above average sequential skills also scored highly on verbal fluency (p < .05) and hand skills (p < .05). Boys in this group showed the strongest degree of right-handedness (p < .05). In the four lower performance groups,background variables such as type of preschool experience (p <.001),the presence of books in the home (p < .05) and mothers level of education (p <.001) were found to be significant. A regression model which incorporated environmental, epigenetic, cognitive and motoric factors was found to be the most viable in predicting processing skills.Andrew Chakane 201

ANALISIS TINGGI MUKA AIR BANJIR DI MUARA SUNGAI TALAWAAN–BAJO KECAMATAN WORI

Sungai Talawaan-Bajo di Kota Manado pada musim penghujan pernah meluap pada titik yang bermuara ke pantai Talawaan-Bajo. Oleh karena itu dalam mengantisipasi banjir yang mungkin terjadi, dibutuhkan data tinggi muka air banjir di sungai Talawaan–Bajo tanpa pengaruh pasang surut dan dengan pengaruh pasang surut.Analisis frekuensi hujan dilakukan dengan metode Log Pearson III. Parameter HSS SCS dikalibrasi sebelum simulasi debit banjir dengan program HEC-HMS. Hasil kalibrasi menunjukkan nilai Nash Sutchliffe Efficiency yang baik yaitu 0,751. Setelah didapat debit puncak hasil simulasi setiap kala ulang, dengan program HEC-RAS  disimulasikan tinggi muka air pada penampang yang telah diukur tanpa pengaruh pasang surut dan dengan pengaruh pasang surut. Metode yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah metode penelusuran aliran melalui pemodelan aliran permanen (steady flow), untuk Boundary condition sebelah hulu digunakan debit puncak kala ulang 2, 5, 10 dan 25 tahun, sedangkan Boundary condition sebelah hilir adalah tinggi muka air pasang tertinggi.Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa besarnya debit puncak pada kala ulang 5 tahun=175,7 m3/det, kala ulang 10 tahun=231,8 m3/det, kala ulang 25 tahun=307,7 m3/det, kala ulang 50 tahun=367,2 m3/det, dan kala ulang 100 tahun=429,1 m3/det. Dalam kondisi tanpa pengaruh pasang surut untuk kala ulang 5 tahun luapan banjir mulai terjadi pada STA 0+75, untuk kala ulang 10, 25, dan 50 tahun luapan banjir mulai terjadi pada STA 0+25, dan pada kala ulang 100 tahun luapan banjir sudah mulai terjadi pada STA 0+0 . Sedangkan dalam kondisi pengaruh pasang surut untuk kala ulang ulang 5, 10, 25, 50, dan 100 tahun, luapan banjir sudah mulai terjadi pada STA 0+0. Tinggi muka air tertinggi dengan kenaikan muka air banjir (luapan) berkisar 0,01-0,96 meter untuk kondisi dengan pengaruh pasang surut. Kata kunci: Banjir, Tinggi Muka Air, Pasang Surut, HEC-HMS, HEC-RAS

Mental well-being and diversity, equity, and inclusiveness in the veterinary profession: Pathways to a more resilient profession

Mental well-being (MWB) and diversity, equity, and inclusiveness (DEI) continue to be critical within the veterinary profession but there is less information regarding how professional associations around the world tackle these issues. A mixed-method study including an international online survey in English (n = 137 responses via snowball sampling), fourteen interviews, and two webinars was used to identify the availability and impact of MWB and DEI support programs for veterinarians. Survey results showed that more veterinary organizations designated MWB and DEI challenges (54%, n = 43/79 and 58%, n = 45/78, respectively) as a key priority area than veterinary clinics (26%, n = 15/57 and 33%, n = 19/57, respectively). Whereas, MWB support programs were available in a moderate number of mainly English-speaking countries, DEI support programs were available in only a few countries and focused primarily on specific groups, with an unknown impact due to their recent implementation. Universally, survey respondents believed activities for specific groups, such as MWB webinars, training, and awareness campaigns, as well as MWB/DEI helplines and DEI peer-to-peer support programs had a high impact (median 3.5–4/5) yet were underemployed by both veterinary organization and veterinary clinics. Further feedback from respondents during focused interviews indicated that requiring initial and continuing training as well as tailored group activities would be most beneficial to improve MWB/DEI throughout the veterinary professional career. There are many areas of the intersection between MWB and DEI that remain to be elucidated in the future studies. Having a sufficient sample size, improving accessibility, and addressing varying cultural perceptions are the main challenges, as seen in our study. To truly address MWB and DEI disparities, change is also needed in veterinary workplace culture and environment. In conclusion, raising awareness for an inclusive profession, including increasing openness and acceptance to enhance DEI and destigmatizing MWB challenges, is needed to ensure a thriving, modern veterinary profession

Adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference systems (ANFIS) for supervised classification of competence in MIS based on psychomotor skills

INTRODUCTION: Objective assessment of motor skills has become an important challenge in minimally invasive surgery (MIS) training.Currently, there is no gold standard defining and determining the residents' surgical competence.To aid in the decision process, we analyze the validity of a supervised classifier to determine the degree of MIS competence based on assessment of psychomotor skills METHODOLOGY: The ANFIS is trained to classify performance in a box trainer peg transfer task performed by two groups (expert/non expert). There were 42 participants included in the study: the non-expert group consisted of 16 medical students and 8 residents ( 10 MIS procedures performed) and 4 experienced surgeons. Instrument movements were captured by means of the Endoscopic Video Analysis (EVA) tracking system. Nine motion analysis parameters (MAPs) were analyzed, including time, path length, depth, average speed, average acceleration, economy of area, economy of volume, idle time and motion smoothness. Data reduction was performed by means of principal component analysis, and then used to train the ANFIS net. Performance was measured by leave one out cross validation. RESULTS: The ANFIS presented an accuracy of 80.95%, where 13 experts and 21 non-experts were correctly classified. Total root mean square error was 0.88, while the area under the classifiers' ROC curve (AUC) was measured at 0.81. DISCUSSION: We have shown the usefulness of ANFIS for classification of MIS competence in a simple box trainer exercise. The main advantage of using ANFIS resides in its continuous output, which allows fine discrimination of surgical competence. There are, however, challenges that must be taken into account when considering use of ANFIS (e.g. training time, architecture modeling). Despite this, we have shown discriminative power of ANFIS for a low-difficulty box trainer task, regardless of the individual significances between MAPs. Future studies are required to confirm the findings, inclusion of new tasks, conditions and sample population

Ventilator-induced endothelial activation and inflammation in the lung and distal organs

Introduction Results from clinical studies have provided evidence for the importance of leukocyte-endothelial interactions in the pathogenesis of pulmonary diseases such as acute lung injury (ALI) and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), as well as in systemic events like sepsis and multiple organ failure (MOF). The present study was designed to investigate whether alveolar stretch due to mechanical ventilation (MV) may evoke endothelial activation and inflammation in healthy mice, not only in the lung but also in organs distal to the lung. Methods Healthy male C3H/HeN mice were anesthetized, tracheotomized and mechanically ventilated for either 1, 2 or 4 hours. To study the effects of alveolar stretch in vivo, we applied a MV strategy that causes overstretch of pulmonary tissue i.e. 20 cmH(2)O peak inspiratory pressure (PIP) and 0 cmH(2)O positive end expiratory pressure (PEEP). Non-ventilated, shamoperated animals served as a reference group (non-ventilated controls, NVC). Results Alveolar stretch imposed by MV did not only induce de novo synthesis of adhesion molecules in the lung but also in organs distal to the lung, like liver and kidney. No activation was observed in the brain. In addition, we demonstrated elevated cytokine and chemokine expression in pulmonary, hepatic and renal tissue after MV which was accompanied by enhanced recruitment of granulocytes to these organs. Conclusions Our data implicate that MV causes endothelial activation and inflammation in mice without pre-existing pulmonary injury, both in the lung and distal organs

La relevancia de las métricas de movimiento en la evaluación objetiva de habilidades motoras en cirugía laparoscópica

El presente trabajo investiga la relevancia de las métricas de movimiento en la evaluación objetiva de habilidades laparoscópicas, así como su correlación directa a dichas habilidades. Se ha realizado una validación de construcción de tres nuevas tareas para la evaluación de cirujanos. Para registrar los movimientos, se ha empleado el sistema de tracking TrEndo. 42 voluntarios (16 noveles, 22 residentes y 4 expertos) participaron en el experimento. Los resultados muestran que tiempo, camino recorrido y profundidad son métricas de evaluación válidas para un amplio espectro de habilidades. Otras métricas como la brusquedad de movimientos o el tiempo muerto demuestran validez en tareas bi-manuales. Métricas como la brusquedad o la velocidad media muestran un alto grado de independencia con respecto a los objetivos de la tarea a realizar. Se verifica la utilidad de este tipo de métricas, si bien son necesarios nuevos estudios que corroboren los resultados alcanzados