A fully decentralized control of an amoeboid robot by exploiting the law of conservation of protoplasmic mass

2008 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Pasadena, CA, USA, May 19-23, 200

Reliability and Validity of the Self-report Quality of Life Questionnaire for Japanese School-aged Children with Asthma (JSCA-QOL v.3)

ABSTRACTBackgroundAsthma is a chronic disease prevalent in children which threatens their quality of life (QOL) through unexpected asthma attacks and/or the burden of daily self-management. As some conditions of chronic illness make it difficult for a child to accomplish normal developmental tasks, there may be fewer opportunities for the child to obtain a sense of achievement. This study investigated the reliability and validity of the Quality of Life Questionnaire for Japanese School-aged Children with Asthma Version 3 (JSCA-QOL v.3). This questionnaire includes 25 items with a 5-point Likert Scale format over five domains:"asthma attack triggers", "change in daily life", "family support", "satisfaction with daily life" and "restriction in participating in daily activities", and one summary scale.MethodsIn the present study, 2,425 children with asthma aged from 10 to 18 years were investigated in Japan. The internal consistency reliability of each domain was investigated with Cronbach's α reliability coefficient, and test-retest reliability with Spearman's correlations coefficient. Factorial validity by factor analysis using maximum-likelihood extraction with promax rotation was performed. Data analysis was performed using SPSS 12.0J.ResultsThe final number of effective replies was 2,097 (the rate of effective data was 86.5%). "Asthma attack triggers", "change in daily life", "family support", "satisfaction with daily life" and "restriction in participating in daily activities" showed a high internal consistency (Cronbach's α = 0.66–0.86) as well as good test-retest reliability (Spearman's rho = 0.60, p < 0.01).The factorial validity was appropriate (KMO value = 0.90), because it was conceivable that the five factors extracted from factor analysis would be the same as in our hypothesis and support constructive validity. In addition, there was good correlation between the summary scale and the total QOL score (Spearman's rho = 0.58, p <0.01).ConclusionsThe present study showed that the JSCA-QOL v.3 is a reliable and valid measurement tool that can be used to appropriately assess QOL in school-aged children with asthma. As the JSCA-QOL v.3 can be easily completed in about 10 minutes, it can contribute as an efficient evaluation tool of the outcome of medical treatment through continual utilization in the outpatient clinic. The JSCA-QOL v.3 allows a health provider to help school-aged children with asthma to achieve their developmental tasks

Measuring motivation for medical treatment: Confirming the factor structure of the Achievement Motivation Index for Medical Treatment (AMI-MeT)

The Erratum to this article has been published in BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 2016 16:28Background: Developments in chemotherapy have led to changes in cancer care in Japan, with the government promoting a transition to outpatient chemotherapy. This requires patients and their families to participate more actively in treatment than in the past. However, it remains unclear how patients' motivation for medical treatment affects clinical consultations with their physicians. To investigate this, we developed a psychological index called the Achievement Motive Index for Medical Treatment (AMI-MeT), which comprises self-derived achievement motivation (AMS) and achievement motivation derived from others (AMO). However, its factor structure has not yet been confirmed in populations other than healthy university students. Thus, the aims of this study were to confirm the factor structure of the AMI-MeT in other groups and to determine the convergent and divergent validity of the AMI-MeT. Methods: The AMI-MeT was administered to university students (n = 414), apparently healthy workers (n = 154), and cancer patients (n = 51). Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis was conducted and the mean scores of the AMI-MeT were compared between the groups. Correlations between the AMI-MeT and the Self-Construal Scale, comprising independent self-construal (IndSC) and interdependent self-construal (InterSC) subscales, were investigated in another group of students (n = 335). Results: The multi-group confirmatory factor analysis supported a two-factor structure of the AMI-MeT: The weak invariance model was the best fit for the data. The mean scores of the AMI-MeT in apparently healthy workers and cancer patients were significantly higher than that in students (P <.01). The correlation analysis revealed that AMS scores were associated with IndSC scores (r =.25, P <.01) and AMO scores with InterSC scores (r =.30, P <.01). Conclusion: The two-factor model of the AMI-MeT was deemed appropriate for all three groups, and the subscales of the AMI-MeT successfully reflected the self and other dimensions. The AMI-MeT appears to be an effective tool for measuring medical treatment motivation, making it useful in participant observational research on medical consultations for Japanese cancer treatment

Development of the Revised Final Version of the Quality of Life of Japanese School Aged Children with Asthma Questionnaire: The Characteristics of the Low QOL Scoring Group and Development of an Evaluation Form

Background: A self-recorded instrument for children with asthma needed to be developed to measure their quality of life (QOL). Therefore, the JSCA-QOL questionnaire was revised into a briefer third version, consisting of 5 domains (25 questions) and a summative scale. The purpose was to examine the possibility of identifying children with poor QOL requiring medical or social support, and to devise a practical form of evaluating a nationwide investigation using this instrument. Methods: Doctors at hospital and clinics throughout Japan distributed the JSCA-QOL to 5308 10- to 18-year-old children with asthma. The questionnaires were returned by mail, after having been filled out by the subjects, who authorized their participation in the investigation by signing the questionnaire. Results: A total of 2097 children with asthma, who fully completed the questionnaire, were included in the study. As a result of analysis, it was clear that the characteristics of the low score group (under the 10th percentile of QOL scores) were noticeably different from those of the other groups, in the following ways: (i) many children had moderate to severe asthma, (ii) the answers showed different distributions from those of the other groups, (iii) the answers in most “feeling level” questions showed a significantly different distribution. A radar chart was developed for efficient evaluation of children's QOL profiles. Conclusions: It was very useful to separate the low score group (LSG) with the 10th percentile of the QOL score to distinguish the children who needed special support. The evaluation of the QOL profile was simplified by using the radar chart concept

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: Conventional Artificial Intelligence and cognitive science have been argueing the emergence of intelligence by completely separating the system from its environment. In this paper, we will intensively investigate and analyze the role of the system-environment interaction through the comparison between the information processing and embodied cognitive approaches. By taking account of this interaction, we will experimentally show some of the hard classification problem suffering from the large input space and the ambiguities due to the perceptual aliasing problem can be greately simplified. To demonstrate this concept, we will apply to a garbage-collecting robot as a practical example. %-!&lt;%o!&lt;%I!&apos;&lt;+N&apos;0\F0%m%\%C%H!<1JL!4D6-$H$NAj8_:nMQ (automonous mobile robot, distiction, classification, interaction with environment) 1 $O$8$a$K &lt;+N&apos;0\F0%m%\%C%H$K$H$C$F!<1JLOM?$($i$l$?%?%9 %/r<B9T9$k$?$a$KI,MWIT2D7g$JG=NO$N0l$D$G"k!% $7$+$7$J$,$i&lt;B4D6-$K$*$$$F$O!$KDBg$J%;%s%5F~NO 6u4V$J$i$S$..