The Effect of Mental Training on Motor Performance of Tennis and Field Hockey Strokes in Novice Players

The aim of this study was to investigate whether the mental training of motor performance can be useful or not in learning tennis and field hockey strokes (forehand, backhand; push pass, hit) Twenty four male tennis-field hockey novice players participated in the study and were divided into experimental group (N = 12) and group for the scientific treatment of the tests (N = 12). Subjects were recruited from Faculty of Physical Education for Men, Alexandria University, Egypt, with ages between 19 to 20 years old. The experimental group attended 16 sessions (8 for tennis, 8 for field hockey) over six weeks (40 minutes each) and used mental training exercises (relaxation, visualization and concentration-attention control) pertinent to the forehand, backhand in tennis and push pass, hit in field hockey. Two waves of measurements were conducted (before and after the completion of the intervention) with the use of motor assessment tests related to the sport of tennis and field hockey. Each student was evaluated regarding to his technique of forehand, backhand in tennis and push pass, hit in field hockey in order to examine the effectiveness of mental training. Questionnaires were also used to measure visualization and concentration-attention control. The results showed a highly significant improvement in learning forehand, backhand in tennis and push pass in field hockey. However, no statistical difference was found for the performance of the hit stroke in field hockey. In addition, the findings showed also a significant difference between the initial and the final measurement regarding to the ability of concentration and visualization by using questionnaires. The results revealed a value of 0.780 which indicates a good reliability of the tool. As a conclusion, a combination of mental and practical training promises the greatest improvement in performance and learning, because it involves all senses

Intraoperative Corneal Thickness Changes during Pulsed Accelerated Corneal Cross-Linking Using Isotonic Riboflavin with HPMC.

Purpose. To evaluate corneal thickness changes during pulsed accelerated corneal cross-linking (CXL) for keratoconus using a new isotonic riboflavin formula. Methods. In this prospective, interventional, clinical study patients with grades 1-2 keratoconus (Amsler-Krumeich classification) underwent pulsed accelerated (30 mW/cm(2)) CXL after application of an isotonic riboflavin solution (0.1%) with HPMC for 10 minutes. Central corneal thickness (CCT) measurements were taken using ultrasound pachymetry before and after epithelial removal, after riboflavin soaking, and immediately after completion of UVA treatment. Results. Twenty eyes of 11 patients (4 males, 7 females) were enrolled. Mean patient age was 26 ± 3 (range from 18 to 30 years). No intraoperative or postoperative complications were observed in any of the patients. Mean CCT was 507 ± 35 μm (range: 559-459 μm) before and 475 ± 40 μm (range: 535-420 μm) after epithelial removal (P < 0.001). After 10 minutes of riboflavin instillation, there was a statistically significant decrease of CCT by 6.2% from 475 ± 40 μm (range: 535-420 μm) to 446 ± 31 μm (range: 508-400) (P < 0.005). There was no other statistically significant change of CCT during UVA irradiation. Conclusions. A significant decrease of corneal thickness was demonstrated during the isotonic riboflavin with HPMC application while there was no significant change during the pulsed accelerated UVA irradiation

New low-stress PECVD poly-SiGe layers for MEMS

Thick poly-SiGe layers, deposited by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD), are very promising structural layers for use in microaccelerometers, microgyroscopes or for thin-film encapsulation, especially for applications where the thermal budget is limited. In this work it is shown for the first time that these layers are an attractive alternative to low-pressure CVD (LPCVD) poly-Si or poly-SiGe because of their high growth rate (100-200 nm/min) and low deposition temperature (520/spl deg/C-590/spl deg/C). The combination of both of these features is impossible to achieve with either LPCVD SiGe (2-30 nm/min growth rate) or LPCVD poly-Si (annealing temperature higher than 900/spl deg/C to achieve structural layer having low tensile stress). Additional advantages are that no nucleation layer is needed (deposition directly on SiO/sub 2/ is possible) and that the as-deposited layers are polycrystalline. No stress or dopant activation anneal of the structural layer is needed since in situ phosphorus doping gives an as-deposited tensile stress down to 20 MPa, and a resistivity of 10 m/spl Omega/-cm to 30 m/spl Omega/-cm. With in situ boron doping, resistivities down to 0.6 m/spl Omega/-cm are possible. The use of these films as an encapsulation layer above an accelerometer is shown

Gender norms and social norms: differences, similarities and why they matter in prevention science.

Two streams of theory and practice on gender equity have begun to elide. The first is work conducted to change social norms, particularly using theory that emerged from studies in social psychology. The second is work done on gender norms, emerging historically from feminist scholars working to counter gender inequality. As these two streams of work intersect, conceptual clarity is needed to understand differences and similarities between these two traditions. Increased clarity will improve efforts to address harmful norms and practices. In this article, we review similarities and differences between social and gender norms, reviewing the history of the concepts and identifying key tension points of contrast. We identified six areas of comparison that might be helpful for practitioners working for the promotion of global health as they make sense of social and gender norms. We then offer a definition of gender norms for practitioners and researchers working at the intersection between these two theories. Our definition draws from the two different streams of thought of how norms influence people's actions, acknowledging the double nature of gender norms: beliefs nested in people's minds and embedded in institutions that profoundly affect health-related behaviours and shape differential access to health services

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Reducing the environmental impact of surgery on a global scale: systematic review and co-prioritization with healthcare workers in 132 countries

Background Healthcare cannot achieve net-zero carbon without addressing operating theatres. The aim of this study was to prioritize feasible interventions to reduce the environmental impact of operating theatres. Methods This study adopted a four-phase Delphi consensus co-prioritization methodology. In phase 1, a systematic review of published interventions and global consultation of perioperative healthcare professionals were used to longlist interventions. In phase 2, iterative thematic analysis consolidated comparable interventions into a shortlist. In phase 3, the shortlist was co-prioritized based on patient and clinician views on acceptability, feasibility, and safety. In phase 4, ranked lists of interventions were presented by their relevance to high-income countries and low–middle-income countries. Results In phase 1, 43 interventions were identified, which had low uptake in practice according to 3042 professionals globally. In phase 2, a shortlist of 15 intervention domains was generated. In phase 3, interventions were deemed acceptable for more than 90 per cent of patients except for reducing general anaesthesia (84 per cent) and re-sterilization of ‘single-use’ consumables (86 per cent). In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for high-income countries were: introducing recycling; reducing use of anaesthetic gases; and appropriate clinical waste processing. In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for low–middle-income countries were: introducing reusable surgical devices; reducing use of consumables; and reducing the use of general anaesthesia. Conclusion This is a step toward environmentally sustainable operating environments with actionable interventions applicable to both high– and low–middle–income countries

The evolving SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in Africa: Insights from rapidly expanding genomic surveillance

INTRODUCTION Investment in Africa over the past year with regard to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) sequencing has led to a massive increase in the number of sequences, which, to date, exceeds 100,000 sequences generated to track the pandemic on the continent. These sequences have profoundly affected how public health officials in Africa have navigated the COVID-19 pandemic. RATIONALE We demonstrate how the first 100,000 SARS-CoV-2 sequences from Africa have helped monitor the epidemic on the continent, how genomic surveillance expanded over the course of the pandemic, and how we adapted our sequencing methods to deal with an evolving virus. Finally, we also examine how viral lineages have spread across the continent in a phylogeographic framework to gain insights into the underlying temporal and spatial transmission dynamics for several variants of concern (VOCs). RESULTS Our results indicate that the number of countries in Africa that can sequence the virus within their own borders is growing and that this is coupled with a shorter turnaround time from the time of sampling to sequence submission. Ongoing evolution necessitated the continual updating of primer sets, and, as a result, eight primer sets were designed in tandem with viral evolution and used to ensure effective sequencing of the virus. The pandemic unfolded through multiple waves of infection that were each driven by distinct genetic lineages, with B.1-like ancestral strains associated with the first pandemic wave of infections in 2020. Successive waves on the continent were fueled by different VOCs, with Alpha and Beta cocirculating in distinct spatial patterns during the second wave and Delta and Omicron affecting the whole continent during the third and fourth waves, respectively. Phylogeographic reconstruction points toward distinct differences in viral importation and exportation patterns associated with the Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Omicron variants and subvariants, when considering both Africa versus the rest of the world and viral dissemination within the continent. Our epidemiological and phylogenetic inferences therefore underscore the heterogeneous nature of the pandemic on the continent and highlight key insights and challenges, for instance, recognizing the limitations of low testing proportions. We also highlight the early warning capacity that genomic surveillance in Africa has had for the rest of the world with the detection of new lineages and variants, the most recent being the characterization of various Omicron subvariants. CONCLUSION Sustained investment for diagnostics and genomic surveillance in Africa is needed as the virus continues to evolve. This is important not only to help combat SARS-CoV-2 on the continent but also because it can be used as a platform to help address the many emerging and reemerging infectious disease threats in Africa. In particular, capacity building for local sequencing within countries or within the continent should be prioritized because this is generally associated with shorter turnaround times, providing the most benefit to local public health authorities tasked with pandemic response and mitigation and allowing for the fastest reaction to localized outbreaks. These investments are crucial for pandemic preparedness and response and will serve the health of the continent well into the 21st century

Revisit to congenital anomalies of the inner ear: The spectrum of aplastic/dysplastic labyrinthine malformations (ADLM). A new concept for classification

AbstractAimThe aim of this work is to establish a new radiological classification system for the congenital anomalies of the inner ear depends on congenital gross morphological changes that occur in the bony labyrinth as seen with today’s multi-slice CT imaging technology.Material and methodsThis study was conducted on 26 congenitally deaf ear showing gross morphological changes of the bony labyrinth as seen with today multi-slice CT machines. The concept of ADLM radiological classification system depend on that both aplastic and dysplastic congenital anomalies of the bony labyrinth are linked. One or more component(s) of the labyrinth may be aplastic and other(s) may be dysplastic.ResultsThe cochlea was the most common component of bony labyrinth prone to aplasia appeared in 7 ears (26.9%) followed by semicircular canals (19.23%). The vestibule was the most common component of the bony labyrinth resistant to aplasia and on the other hand it was the most common labyrinthine component that was prone to dysplasia.ConclusionADLM is a numerical system that gives a total idea to the referring physician about the status of the bony labyrinth in a short simplified way. It could entail these anomalies with high degree of compliance

Variations of the height of the ethmoid roof among Egyptian adult population: MDCT study

Fovea ethmoidalis and lateral lamella of the cribriform plate of ethmoid bone (LLCP) are the most vulnerable parts of the skull base for iatrogenic complication during functional endoscopic sinus surgery. Keros classified the depth of the olfactory fossa into 3 types. According to Keros, the greater the height of LLCP, the higher the risk of its iatrogenic injury. The aim of this study was to evaluate variations of the height of ethmoid roof among Egyptian adults using MDCT. Patients and methods: This study was conducted on 100 Egyptian adult patients referred for MDCT evaluation of PNS. Patients with any pathology involving the ethmoid roof were excluded from the study. MDCT machines were used for evaluation of all patients. Results: The mean age of our patients was 38.34 ± 12.79 years. The right lateral lamella height ranges from 0.50 to 10.0 mm, while the left lateral lamella height ranges from 0.80 to 9.40 mm. Keros type I was seen in 56.5%, type II in 40.5% and type III in 3%. Conclusion: The majority of studied Egyptian adult population showed Keros type I (56.5%) followed by type II (40.5%). Keros type III is seen in only 3% of studied adult Egyptian population