Effectiveness of PMI Combined with Common Interest Activity for Elementary School Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Peer-mediated intervention (PMI) includes a range of strategies that are considered a successful aid in social-communication behavior for kids and their peers with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). This study was carried out to improve the social behavior of children with ASD, using peer training through an activity that they have in common. Three ASD students in Greek elementary schools, aged seven to ten years old, two boys and one girl, participated in this study. The peers of ASD students were trained to interact with them during recess in a comprehensive school setting. An ABA reversal design was used on each participant in order to define the effects of the intervention. Through observation probes, the responses and the initiations of all ASD students were noted by trained school staff. The results of the intervention phase showed an increase in both of these two variables. Furthermore, the follow-up phase depicted important results for the academic community, also showing an increase in all ASD students’ responses and initiations. The current study supplements the existing PMI research, which leads to the possible use of this valid tool that could be used in school settings in order to increase the socialization of ASD students

Recruitment, adherence, and retention of endometrial cancer survivors in a behavioural lifestyle programme: the Diet and Exercise in Uterine Cancer Survivors (DEUS) parallel randomised pilot trial

Objective: Healthy eating and physical activity may help endometrial cancer survivors (ECS) improve their quality of life. However, most ECS do not meet the relevant guidelines. This pilot trial aimed to test the study feasibility procedures for a definitive trial of a behavioural lifestyle programme. Design and setting: This 24-week parallel two-arm randomised pilot trial took place in two hospitals in London, UK (April 2015–June 2016). Participants: Sixty disease-free ECS within 3 years of diagnosis. Interventions: Participants were randomised using minimisation to receive the intervention or care as usual. The ‘Shape-Up following cancer treatment’ programme used self-monitoring, goal-setting, self-incentives, problem-solving and group social support for 12 hours over 8 weeks to help survivors improve their eating and physical activity. Outcome measures: The main outcome measures were recruitment, adherence, and retention rates. Further outcomes included barriers to participation and feedback on programme satisfaction. Results: Of the 296 potentially eligible ECS, 20% (n=60) were randomly allocated to the active intervention (n=29) or control group (n=31). Three participants in each arm were deemed ineligible after randomisation and excluded from analysis. Twenty participants (77%; 95% CI 61% to 93%) adhered to the intervention and provided generally favourable feedback. At 24 weeks, 25/26 (96%; 95% CI 89% to 100%) intervention and 24/28 (86%; 95% CI 73% to 99%) control participants completed their assessment. No intervention-related adverse events were reported. Among eligible survivors who declined study participation (n=83), inconvenience (78%; 95% CI 69% to 87%) was the most common barrier. Conclusions: The trial was feasible to deliver based on the a priori feasibility criteria. Enhancing recruitment and adherence in a definitive trial will require designs that promote convenience and consider ECS-reported barriers. Trial registration number: NCT02433080; Pre-results. Trial funding: University College London, St. Bartholomew’s Hospital Nurses League, and NIHR University College London Hospitals Biomedical Research Centre

Comment on low-temperature transport properties of non-stoichiometric La_{0.95-x}Sr_{x}MnO_{3}

In a recent paper (Michalopolou A., Syskakis E. and Papastaikoudis C., 2001 J. Phys.: Cond. Mat. 13, 11615) the authors reported on the measurements of electrical resistivity and specific heat at zero magnetic field carried out on polycrystalline non-stoichiometric La_{0.95-x}Sr_{x}MnO_{3} manganites.In particular, they attributed the low temperature behavior of resistivity (shallow minimum and slight upturn at lowest temperatures) to 3D electron-electron interaction enhanced by disorder, using results of numerical fittings of the dependencies of resistivity on temperature in the interval 4.2 -- 40 K. We argue that such an analysis may be not valid for polycrystalline manganites where relatively strong grain boundary effects might mask weak contribution of quantum effects to low temperature resistivity. The crucial test of applicability of the theory of quantum corrections to conductivity in this case is the resistive measurements under non-zero magnetic field.Comment: pdf, 6 pages, submitted to J. Phys.: Cond. Matte

Translation and validation of an ageism scale for dental students in Switzerland

PURPOSE This study aimed to validate an ageism scale for dental students in Switzerland. METHODS The original scale was first translated to German and then evaluated by 14 experts for relevance; four items were eliminated. Validation of the resulting questionnaire was performed at three Swiss dental schools. Principal component analysis (PCA) was performed; Cronbach's alpha (α) was used to assess the internal consistency reliability, and Pearson's coefficient to identify any correlations with demographic parameters (P < 0.05). RESULTS PCA revealed 11 items among 4 factors (Overall: 11 items, α = 0.63, variance = 56.6%; Factor #1 (F1): items = 3, α = 0.64; Factor #2 (F2): items = 3, α = 0.42; Factor #3 (F3): items = 3, α = 0.35; Factor #4 (F4): items = 2, α = 0.37). F1 and F4 were correlated with clinical experience (F1: P = 0.042; F4: P = 0.006) and participation in a gerodontology course (F1: P = 0.021; F4: P = 0.004). F1 was correlated with experience of dealing with the elderly (P = 0.031), while residence locality was correlated with F3 (P = 0.047) and F4 (P = 0.043). F2 was correlated with the presence of elderly in the family (P = 0.047). CONCLUSION The translated dental ageism questionnaire for Switzerland resulted in an 11-item scale with acceptable reliability

Trans-Dimensional Geoacoustic Inversion of Wind-Driven Ambient Noise

This letter applies trans-dimensional Bayesian geoacoustic inversion to quantify the uncertainty due to model selection when inverting bottom-loss data derived from wind-driven ambient-noise measurements. A partition model is used to represent the seabed, in which the number of layers, their thicknesses, and acoustic parameters are unknowns to be determined from the data. Exploration of the parameter space is implemented using the Metropolis–Hastings algorithm with parallel tempering, whereas jumps between parameterizations are controlled by a reversible-jump Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm. Sediment uncertainty profiles from inversion of simulated and experimental data are presented

Shallow water tomography in a highly variable scenario

In October 2000, SiPLAB and the Instituto Hidrografico (IH - PN) conducted the IN-TIFANTE'00 sea trial in a shallow area off the Peninsula of Troia, approximately 50 km south from Lisbon, in Portugal. The experiment itself and results obtained in most of the data set have been reported at various occasions in the last two years. This paper focuses on the data acquired during Event 2, where the acoustic propagation path was approximately range independent and the source ship was held on station at a constant range of 5.8 km from the vertical line array. Although these conditions were, in general, relatively benign for matched-field tomography, retrieval of water column and bottom parameters over a 14-hour-long recording revealed to be extremely difficult. This paper analysis in detail the characteristics of this data set and determines the causes for the observed inversion difficulties. Is is shown that the causes for the poor performance of the conventional methods are mainly the tide induced spatially correlated noise and the relative source-receiver motion during time averaging. An eigenvalue-based criterion is proposed for detecting optimal averaging time. It is shown that this data selection procedure together with hydrophone normalization and an appropriate objective function provide a better model fit and consistent inversion results and thus a better understanding of the environmental variability