ADHD and the QbTest: diagnostic validity of QbTest

Objective: We assess the diagnostic accuracy of the QbTest, which measures the cardinal symptoms of ADHD. Method: The study group comprised 182 children (mean age about 10 years), of whom 124 had ADHD and 58 had other clinical diagnosis of which 81% had ASD. Results: Only QbTest parameters for inattention and hyperactivity differentiated between ADHD and other clinical diagnoses at the p ≤ .01 level, not for measures of impulsivity. Sensitivity ranged from 47% to 67% and specificity from 72% to 84%. Positive predictive value ranged from 41% to 86%, and negative predictive value from 43% to 86%. Area under the curve varied from .70 to .80. Conclusion: The ability of the individual QbTest parameters to identify ADHD was moderate. The test’s ability to discriminate between ADHD subtypes was unsatisfactory

Anxiety and depression in adolescents with ADHD and autism spectrum disorders; correlation between parent- and self-reports and with attention and adaptive functioning

Background: Adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactive disorder (ADHD) or autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are at high risk of anxiety and depression. This is important to identify in the clinical assessment to understand its impact. Aims: The aim of this study is to investigate the correlation between parent- and self-reports of anxiety and depression in adolescents with ADHD or ASD, as well as the correlation with adaptive functioning and performance on an attention test. Method: A total of 65 adolescents with an ADHD diagnosis (n = 24) or an ASD diagnosis (n = 41) filled out Beck Youth Inventories of Emotional and Social Impairment (BYI) to assess depression and anxiety and completed a Continuous Performance Test (QbTest) measuring ADHD symptoms. Parents of the participants completed the internalizing domain in the Five to Fifteen questionnaire (FTF), measuring symptoms of anxiety and depression, and the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales (VABS) about the adolescent’s adaptive functioning. Results: Approximately a third of the study group self-reported substantial internalizing mental symptoms not always recognized by parents, and not always obvious in adaptive function or performance at ADHD test. Correlations between BYI and FTF were low. The BYI depression inventory correlated negatively with VABS and positively with activity level in a subgroup medicated for ADHD. There was a stronger correlation between girls BYI and FTF results as compared with boys. Conclusions: The results highlight the need for identification of anxiety and depression, using both self- and parent report. Present anxiety and depression symptoms do not seem to affect the clinical assessment of ASD and ADHD

The Design, Implementation, and Performance Evaluation of Secure Socket SCTP 2.0

The Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) is acomparatively new transport protocol that presents some advanced features compared to other standardized transport protocols. However, there are currently no standardized end-to-end security solutions suited for SCTP. One proposal for end-to-end encryption is the Secure Socket SCTP (S2-SCTP) protocol, developed by researchers at Karlstad University.  The security solution for SCTP described in this report uses key agreement for obtaining keys to be able to provide data confidentiality by encryption. The protocol is based on the S2-SCTP protocol, with smaller changes, and an overlaying management protocol has been designed and implemented. The management protocolis used to enable encryption and TLS authentication, to give a secure communication library over existing Berkeley Sockets. The performance evaluation of S2-SCTP compared to the already standardized end-to-endsecurity solutions, i.e., TLS over SCTP and DTLS over SCTP, shows that S2-SCTP achieves a higher throughput while still maintaining most of the advantages of SCTP.DVAE08 Engineering Projec