The Effectiveness of Physical Therapy in Children with Autism

The main aim of the work was to evaluate the effectiveness of physical therapy conducted with autistic children from the kindergarten at Krzemienna 42B in Szczecin. The research was conducted in the first halves of 2009 and 2010. The diagnostic tool used in order to evaluate gross motor skills was psycho-educational profile – revised (PEP-R). The research group included 8 boys with medically certified autism spectrum disorder. In 2009, out of 126 tasks given, all the tested students performed 104 tasks evaluated as completed, 16 tasks evaluated as promising and 6 tasks evaluated as uncompleted. Only one boy performed all tasks properly. In 2010 the students performed 120 tasks evaluated as completed, 5 as promising and 1 as uncompleted. Four of the autistic boys performed the tasks they were given perfectly. In 2009 the biological age of most tested children was higher than the developmental age in the scope of gross motor skills. Implementing new, individual therapeutic programs based, among other things, on TEEACH tasks, helped to significantly level out the differences

The Analgesic Efficacy of Kinesiology Taping in Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS)

Aims and scope: Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) develops after intense physical activity and its mechanisms are due to inflammation. Kinesiology Taping (KT) improves microcirculation, supports myofascial functions and relieves the tissue. The aim of this study was to verify whether KT has an analgesic action in the DOMS and whether somatotype is associated with this action. Materials and Methods: There were 20 healthy subjects aged 27.7 ±6.4 years with moderate or high physical activity included into the study. The training with emphasis on eccentric muscle work was performed. Somatotype of respondents was assessed by Heath-Carter method. While DOMS occurred, KT muscle application on one of the limbs was done. For the next five days subjects filled out questionnaires in which they served intensity of pain on the basis of Visual Analogue Scale (VAS). Results and conclusions: In the limb where KT application was used a significant (p < 0.05) reduction in the intensity of DOMS compared to the limb without application was observed. It was found that the somatotype has no effect on the reduction of DOMS (p > 0.05). Conclusions: KT exhibits analgesic properties in DOMS. Somatotype has no relation to the effectiveness of KT analgesic efficacy in DOMS

Intraoperative imaging of hybrid procedure for muscular ventricular septal defects closure with Amplatzer Duct Occluder II

Hybrid approach becomes a promising conception of an alternative treatment for muscular ventricular septal defects (VSD) closure in infants. In this paper we report epicardial echocardiography imaging that enabled successful hybrid procedure performed in premature infant referred for surgical correction of a large perimembraneous VSD with simultaneous perventricular approach for concomitant muscular VSD. Kardiol Pol 2011; 69, 12: 1280–128

Attitudes of Szczecin University students towards physical education

Zeszyty Naukowe Uniwersytetu Szczecińskiego. Nr 631

The differences in results of preliminary selection in team sports as the premise to define a profile of a “young football player”

The aim of the work was to define the differences between boys selected for football training and their peers at the beginning stage of different team sports training, as well as those that do not practice any sports discipline. The research material consisted of 97 schoolboys at the age of 10 selected to practice team sports, including football, and 39 non-training boys. All boys attended Szczecin primary schools. Apart from the basic anthropometric characteristics, the following motor skills were analyzed: kinesthetic differentiation, reaction speed, movement frequency, spatial orientation, static balance, maximal lactic anaerobic power, maximal non-lactic anaerobic power, fast muscle activation, aerobic endurance and absolute muscle strength. Not all test results are expressed in SI units. Data obtained through the applied method served as the grounds for defining a profile of a “young football player” as the premise to improve the process of preliminary selection for football. Candidates selected for soccer training presented higher level of kinesthetic differentiation than all other examined boys. They also presented higher level of movement frequency than volleyball players and higher level of space orientation than the not-trained boys. Soccer players nevertheless presented lover level of time of reaction than the candidates selected for basketball training. Results of all condition abilities tests’ obtained by soccer players were statistically significant better than the one obtained by the untrained boys (p0.001) and the candidates for volleyball training (p0.05, p0.001). The greatest differences were noticed in tests of aerobic endurance and maximal non-lactic and lactic anaerobic power

The Phenomena of Bursts by Opening Low-Voltage Relay

The article deals with the issue of electromagnetic disturbances caused by electromechanical relays. Electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) is important for the reliable work of electrical and electronic devices. Our research focused on the low-voltage relay, which is the source of electrical fast transients (EFT)/burst disturbances. The voltage and current waveforms were tested on the constructed stand while opening the relays’ contacts. We investigated one-circuit topology with varied element parameters in order to observe their influence on the burst phenomenon. The new technologies in the measurement equipment allow us to observe many detailed aspects of the burst phenomenon, which were not reported up to now. In order to analyze the disturbances, they have been fragmented into restoration, ignition and arc times. The number of disturbance cycles differs depending on the value of the circuit capacitance on the load side. The effect of capacity on times of restoration, ignition and burning arc was also observed. The division into cycles allowed us to observe changes in the studied phenomenon along with the increased distance between the relay contacts during its opening. There were also discrepancies between the presentation of the phenomenon in the standard defining the method of measuring the resistance to interference EFT/burst and the measurement results

The Phenomena of Bursts by Opening Low-Voltage Relay

The article deals with the issue of electromagnetic disturbances caused by electromechanical relays. Electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) is important for the reliable work of electrical and electronic devices. Our research focused on the low-voltage relay, which is the source of electrical fast transients (EFT)/burst disturbances. The voltage and current waveforms were tested on the constructed stand while opening the relays’ contacts. We investigated one-circuit topology with varied element parameters in order to observe their influence on the burst phenomenon. The new technologies in the measurement equipment allow us to observe many detailed aspects of the burst phenomenon, which were not reported up to now. In order to analyze the disturbances, they have been fragmented into restoration, ignition and arc times. The number of disturbance cycles differs depending on the value of the circuit capacitance on the load side. The effect of capacity on times of restoration, ignition and burning arc was also observed. The division into cycles allowed us to observe changes in the studied phenomenon along with the increased distance between the relay contacts during its opening. There were also discrepancies between the presentation of the phenomenon in the standard defining the method of measuring the resistance to interference EFT/burst and the measurement results

Miniinvasive hybrid closure of multiple muscular ventricular septal defects in a premature infant with novel use of Amplatzer Duct Occluder II – a case report

Muscular ventricular septal defects (mVSD) appearing together with other septal defects are frequently regarded as “concomitant” pathologies, that nevertheless should be considered while the patient is referred for intervention. We followed a conception of mVSDs’ miniinvasive treatment with a hybrid approach based on perventricular implantation of occluding devices. In this paper we report a hybrid procedure performed in a premature infant referred for surgical correction of a large perimembranous VSD with a simultaneous perventricular approach for concomitant muscular ventricular septal defect. The device of choice, because of the patient’s small size and weight, was the Amplatzer Duct Occluder II. Colour Doppler showed complete closure of all VSDs 8 months after surgery with no complications related to the procedure

Discovering highly potent antimicrobial peptides with deep generative model HydrAMP

Abstract Antimicrobial peptides emerge as compounds that can alleviate the global health hazard of antimicrobial resistance, prompting a need for novel computational approaches to peptide generation. Here, we propose HydrAMP, a conditional variational autoencoder that learns lower-dimensional, continuous representation of peptides and captures their antimicrobial properties. The model disentangles the learnt representation of a peptide from its antimicrobial conditions and leverages parameter-controlled creativity. HydrAMP is the first model that is directly optimized for diverse tasks, including unconstrained and analogue generation and outperforms other approaches in these tasks. An additional preselection procedure based on ranking of generated peptides and molecular dynamics simulations increases experimental validation rate. Wet-lab experiments on five bacterial strains confirm high activity of nine peptides generated as analogues of clinically relevant prototypes, as well as six analogues of an inactive peptide. HydrAMP enables generation of diverse and potent peptides, making a step towards resolving the antimicrobial resistance crisis