“Tears in My Eyes ’Cause Somebody Finally Understood”: Client Perceptions of Practitioners Following Brain Injury

Objective: The purpose of this study was to identify practitioner qualities and traits that clients with brain injury see as important. Method: An opportunistic sample of 51 participants with brain injury was interviewed about perceptions of service access and effectiveness. An interview guide was used to gather data for this phenomenological qualitative study. Four interviewers individually conducted audiotaped interviews, which were then transcribed. Coding and theme development were completed using HyperRESEARCH™ software. Results: Three themes regarding practitioner qualities emerged from the data: (a) roles of the provider, (b) perceived helpfulness of services, and (c) personal characteristics of the providers. Beneficial provider roles included advocate, friend, mentor, and team member. Perceptions of helpfulness of the services included relevance, meaningfulness, practical application, skill development potential, and whether periodic feedback on progress was provided. Personal characteristics of the provider valued by the participants were clear and honest communicator, supportive, respectful, good listener, and understanding. Conclusions: Practitioners need to pay increased attention to the perceptions of care and services of clients with brain injury. The current study closely supports previous research related to quality of care in the medical and community arenas and offers some additional suggestions to professionals who work with persons with brain injury, including learning how to time giving information to clients and how to understand client concerns without being prescriptive. Future research in this area needs to focus on and describe providers who demonstrate an ability—through their willingness to don a variety of roles, their helpful services, and their personal characteristics—to meet the unique needs of clients with brain injury

RELIABILITY OF JUMP AND PERFORMANCE MEASURES IN RUGBY UNION PLAYERS

The current study examined the reliability of countermovement (CMJ), squat (SJ), and rebound jumps (RBJ) to sprint and estimated 1RM back squat (SQ) of sub-elite Rugby Union players drawn from two teams of similar competitive level. Comparisons of mean performance on all tests were made via Student t-tests. The three trial reliability of jump height for the SJ, CMJ, RBJ, contact time (CT) and Reactive Strength Index for the RBJ, T-Test agility run (TA-Test), 30 and 36.58 m (40 yd) sprint times were estimated via ICC and ReANOVA. All variables displayed Average measures ICC ≥ .900; and except for the TA-Test, the three trials did not differ from each other. The performance of the two teams was found to be similar on all tests except the 30 m and 40 yd sprint tests. All the studied performance measures could be reliably assessed with one trial, except the TA-test

Advancing the Entry-Level Practitioner: A Curricular Model of the Professional Occupational Therapy Doctoral Degree

The recent growth of entry-level occupational therapy doctoral (EL-OTD) programs has been met with mixed opinions from both occupational therapy educators and practitioners. These opinions occasionally have been accompanied by uncertainty about the specific curricular components that differentiate the EL-OTD from the entry-level master’s degree. In an effort to address this uncertainty, the purpose of this article is to present one example of an EL-OTD curricular model and describe its distinct educational components. This curricular model integrates recommendations for doctoral education originally proposed by Case-Smith et al. (2014) and is characterized by the following three components: 1) Advanced Coursework; 2) the Doctoral Capstone Project; and 3) the Doctoral Capstone Experience. We share the lessons learned after matriculating three cohorts of EL-OTD students and describe influences from the field of implementation science that have informed the development of our curriculum

Survey on Visual Impairment and Refractive Errors on Ta’u Island, American Samoa

Purpose: To assess the prevalence of presenting visual impairment and refractive errors on the isolated island of Ta′u, American Samoa. Methods: Presenting visual acuity and refractive errors of 124 adults over 40 years of age (55 male and 69 female) were measured using the Snellen chart and an autorefractometer. This sample represented over 50% of the island′s eligible population. Results: In this survey, all presenting visual acuity (VA) was uncorrected. Of the included sample, 10.5% presented with visual impairment (visual acuity lower than 6/18, but equal to or better than 3/60 in the better eye) and 4.8% presented with VA worse than 6/60 in the better eye. Overall, 4.0% of subjects presented with hyperopia (+3 D or more), 3.2% were myopic (‑1 D or less), and 0.8% presented with high myopia (‑5 D or less). There was no significant difference between genders in terms of visual impairment or refractive errors. Conclusion: This study represents the first population-based survey on presenting visual acuity and refractive errors in American Samoa. In addition to providing baseline data on vision and refractive errors, we found that the prevalence of myopia and hyperopia was much lower than expected

Finding iteration patterns in dynamic Web page authoring

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/11431879_10Revised Selected Papers of the Joint Working Conferences EHCI-DSVIS 2004, Hamburg, Germany, July 11-13, 2004Most of the current WWW is made up of dynamic pages. The development of dynamic pages is a difficult and costly endeavour, out-of-reach for most users, experts, and content producers. We have developed a set of techniques to support the edition of dynamic web pages in a WYSIWYG environment. In this paper we focus on specific techniques for inferring changes to page generation procedures from users actions on examples of the pages generated by these procedures. More specifically, we propose techniques for detecting iteration patterns in users’ behavior in web page editing tasks involving page structures like lists, tables and other iterative HTML constructs. Such patterns are used in our authoring tool, DESK, where a specialized assistant, DESK-A, detects iteration patterns and generates, using Programming by Example, a programmatic representation of the user’s actions. Iteration patterns help obtain a more detailed characterization of users’ intent, based on user monitoring techniques, that is put in relation to application knowledge automatically extracted by our system from HTML pages. DESK-A relieves end-users from having to learn programming and specification languages for editing dynamic-generated web pages.The work reported in this paper is being supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology (MCyT), project number TIC2002-194

Male Competition Reverses Female Preference For Male Chemical Cues

Females must choose among potential mates with different phenotypes in a variety of social contexts. Many male traits are inherent and unchanging, but others are labile to social context. Competition, for example, can cause physiological changes that reflect recent wins and losses that fluctuate throughout time. We may expect females to respond differently to males depending on the outcome of their most recent fight. In Bolitotherus cornutus (forked fungus beetles), males compete for access to females, but copulation requires female cooperation. In this study, we use behavioral trials to determine whether females use chemical cues to differentiate between males and whether the outcome of recent male competition alters female preference. We measured female association time with chemical cues of two size‐matched males both before and after male–male competition. Females in our study preferred to associate with future losers before males interacted, but changed their preference for realized winners following male competitive interactions. Our study provides the first evidence of change in female preference based solely on the outcome of male–male competition

Development of a Bead-Based Multiplex Assay for the Analysis of the Serological Response against the Six Pathogens HAV, HBV, HCV, CMV, T. gondii, and H. pylori

The spread of infectious diseases and vaccination history are common subjects of epidemiological and immunological research studies. Multiplexed serological assays are useful tools for assessing both current and previous infections as well as vaccination efficacy. We developed a serological multi-pathogen assay for hepatitis A, B and C virus, cytomegalovirus (CMV), Toxoplasma gondii, and Helicobacter pylori using a bead-based multiplex assay format. The multi-pathogen assay consisting of 15 antigens was utilized for the analysis of the serological response in elderly individuals of an influenza vaccination study (n = 34). The technical assay validation revealed a mean intra-assay precision of coefficient of variation (CV) = 3.2 ± 1.5% and a mean inter-assay precision of CV = 8.2 ± 5.3% across all 15 antigens and all tested samples, indicating a robust test system. Furthermore, the assay shows high sensitivities (ranging between 94% and 100%) and specificities (ranging between 93% and 100%) for the different pathogens. The highest seroprevalence rates in our cohort were observed for hepatitis A virus (HAV; 73.5%), followed by CMV (70.6%), T. gondii (67.6%) and H. pylori (32.4%). Seroprevalences for hepatitis B virus (HBV, 8.8%) and hepatitis C virus (HCV, 0%) were low. The seroprevalences observed in our study were similar to those from other population-based studies in Germany. In summary, we conclude that our multiplex serological assay represents a suitable tool for epidemiological studies

Potential of a cyclone prototype spacer to improve in vitro dry powder delivery

Copyright The Author(s) 2013. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are creditedPurpose: Low inspiratory force in patients with lung disease is associated with poor deagglomeration and high throat deposition when using dry powder inhalers (DPIs). The potential of two reverse flow cyclone prototypes as spacers for commercial carrierbased DPIs was investigated. Methods: Cyclohaler®, Accuhaler® and Easyhaler® were tested with and without the spacers between 30-60 Lmin-1. Deposition of particles in the next generation impactor and within the devices was determined by high performance liquid chromatography. Results: Reduced induction port deposition of the emitted particles from the cyclones was observed due to the high retention of the drug within the spacers (e.g. salbutamol sulphate (SS): 67.89 ± 6.51 % at 30 Lmin-1 in Cheng 1). Fine particle fractions of aerosol as emitted from the cyclones were substantially higher than the DPIs alone. Moreover, the aerodynamic diameters of particles emitted from the cyclones were halved compared to the DPIs alone (e.g. SS from the Cyclohaler® at 4 kPa: 1.08 ± 0.05 μm vs. 3.00 ± 0.12 μm, with and without Cheng 2, respectively) and unaltered with increased flow rates. Conclusion: This work has shown the potential of employing a cyclone spacer for commercial carrier-based DPIs to improve inhaled drug delivery.Peer reviewe

Deconvolution of the Response to Bacillus Calmette–Guérin Reveals NF-κB-Induced Cytokines As Autocrine Mediators of Innate Immunity

Bacillus Calmette–Guérin (BCG) is used as a vaccine and diagnostic test for tuberculosis, as well as immunotherapy in the treatment of bladder cancer. While clinically useful, the response to mycobacterial stimulation is complex and the induced protein signature remains poorly defined. We characterized the cell types directly engaged by BCG, as well as the induced cytokine loops that transmit signal(s) to bystander cells. Standardized whole-blood stimulations and mechanistic studies on single and purified cell populations identified distinct patterns of activation in monocytes as compared to neutrophils and invariant lymphocyte populations. Deconvoluting the role of Toll-like receptor 2/4 and Dectin-1/2 in the inflammatory response to BCG, we revealed Dectin-1/2 as dominant in neutrophils as compared to monocytes, which equally engaged both pathways. Furthermore, we quantified the role of NF-κB and NADPH/reactive oxygen species (ROS)-dependent cytokines, which triggered a JAK1/2-dependent amplification loop and accounted for 40–50% of the induced response to BCG. In sum, this study provides new insight into the molecular and cellular pathways involved in the response to BCG, establishing the basis for a new generation of immunodiagnostic tools