Game sense online - utilising the web for the professional development of physical and health education teachers

In 2005, a new Personal Development, Health and Physical Education (PDHPE) Years 7–10 Syllabus will replace the current syllabus and be implemented with Year 7 and Year 9 students in NSW secondary schools. Informed by contemporary research, the new syllabus represents changes to both the content and the teaching strategies traditionally utilised by teachers. One area that has undergone major changes within the syllabus has been that of the teaching of games, with the move towards a Game Sense framework. It is expected that the implementation of the new syllabus will also be accompanied by a variety of traditional professional development opportunities for teachers. What is also now possible given the affordances of information and communication technologies is online delivery that has the potential to increase teachers’ level of confidence and readiness for implementing a Game Sense approach. This paper discusses the planning and development of a Game Sense online resource within the ActiveHealth framework (www.activehealth.uow.edu.au), a new Physical and Health Education Web resource for teachers. Principles for guiding the development of online teaching resources for practicing and pre-service teachers will also be discussed. The results of a small pilot study designed to investigate teachers perceptions of the effectiveness of such a resource indicate that it is of benefit to teachers in developing a deep understanding of Game Sense, however greater consideration will need to be given to the quality of the learning resources and learning support structures should no face to face opportunities exist

Weight Changes Post-Phentermine Use

Purpose: Evaluate weight maintenance in subjects who lost weight while taking phentermine (PTM). Methods: This study was conducted by utilizing a validated survey to collect self-reported data about weight changes post-PTM use. The survey was sent to 19,986 email addresses of current and former patients of a PTM-based outpatient clinic, located in Chicago, IL; 546 participants completed the survey. Results were analyzed using a variety of techniques. Results: At the time of the survey, 42% of responders maintained all the weight lost while on PTM, and 25.2% had maintained a weight loss of at least 10% of their body weight. The average weight lost and maintained at the time of the survey was 3.75% ± 13.8% of body weight or 8.74 lbs ± 27.45 lbs. Nineteen responders had no net weight change. Fifty-nine responders reported a net weight gain, ranging from 2 to 70 lbs with a mean net weight gain of 16.07 lbs ± 13.87 lbs. The duration of time since discontinuing PTM use had a significant correlation with weight maintenance: r = 0.340, p value = .000. There was no significant correlation between duration of time using PTM and weight maintenance. No correlations were identified between education, income, or ethnicity and weight maintenance. A correlation was identified between weight maintenance and current exercise level: r = 0.218, p value = .000. Conclusions: Although more research is needed, with the results of this study, the investigators suggest that post-PTM use, weight regain is not significantly higher than weight regain through other weight loss programs. In order to achieve long-term weight loss maintenance, it may behoove patients to receive professional guidance about behavior modifications to maintain weight lost, particularly related to exercise and dietary changes. The investigators of this study suggest greater emphasis on behavior modification in patients taking PTM is indicated

The Uninsured in Georgia - 2008

A report on the health insurance status of Georgian

HDArray: Parallel Array Interface for Distributed Heterogeneous Devices

Heterogeneous clusters with nodes containing one or more accelerators, such as GPUs, have become common. While MPI provides a mechanism and management of interaddress space communication, and OpenCL provides a way to manage computation and communication within a process with access to heterogeneous computational resources, programmers are forced to write hybrid programs that manage the interaction of both of these systems. This paper describes an array programming interface that provides users with automatic or manual distributions of data and work. Using the distribution and information about what data is used and defined by kernels, communication among processes and among devices in a process is performed automatically. The interface provides a unified programming model to the user, thus simplifying program development

Pseudo-monoamniotic Pregnancy: Case Report and Review of Etiologic Considerations

Pseudomonoamniotic gestations are increasingly recognized through sonographic surveillance of monochorionic twins, though etiologic factors remain undefined. We present a case of spontaneous pseudomonoamniotic twins and propose umbilical cord insertion proximity as a sonographic marker. Systematic review of the literature was performed and additional cases with similar findings were noted. Approximately 75% of reported cases (28/37) were deemed spontaneous and several included short inter-cord distances. Shunting of blood away from the membranes in the region between the cord insertions may be responsible for membrane rupture. Further investigation is needed into short inter-cord distance as a marker for monochorionic twins at risk to become a pseudomonoamniotic gestation

Groundwater study of the Bencubbin townsite

A groundwater study of the townsite of Bencubbin. It aimed to accelerate the implementation of effective salinity management options. The study consisted of drilling investation and installation of a piezometer network, groundwater flow modelling and a flood risk analysis

Intersectionality: Social Marginalisation and Self-Reported Health Status in Young People.

BACKGROUND:The aim of this study was to measure young people's health status and explore associations between health status and belonging to one or more socio-culturally marginalised group. METHODS:part of the Access 3 project, this cross-sectional survey of young people aged 12-24 years living in New South Wales, Australia, oversampled young people from one or more of the following groups: Aboriginal and or Torres Strait Islander; living in rural and remote areas; homeless; refugee; and/or, sexuality and/or gender diverse. This paper reports on findings pertaining to health status, presence of chronic health conditions, psychological distress, and wellbeing measures. RESULTS:1416 participants completed the survey; 897 (63.3%) belonged to at least one marginalised group; 574 (40.5%) to one, 281 (19.8%) to two and 42 (3.0%) to three or four groups. Belonging to more marginalised groups was significantly associated with having more chronic health conditions (p = 0.001), a greater likelihood of high psychological distress (p = 0.001) and of illness or injury related absence from school or work (p < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS:increasing marginalisation is associated with decreasing health status. Using an intersectional lens can to be a useful way to understand disadvantage for young people belonging to multiple marginalised groups

Захист від недобросовісної конкуренції у медичній сфері: проблеми правововго регулювання

Кожна людина має право на здорові умови життя, але напевно ще жодному не вдавалось уникнути звернень до лікарень, аптек, та інших організацій медичної сфери. Метою даної статті є дослідження захисту від недобросовісної конкуренції у медичній сфері в Україні та інших країнах та розроблення наукових рекомендацій щодо вдосконалення українського законодавства щодо врегулювання відносин щодо здійснення господарювання в медичній сфері

Three dimensional numerical relativity: the evolution of black holes

We report on a new 3D numerical code designed to solve the Einstein equations for general vacuum spacetimes. This code is based on the standard 3+1 approach using cartesian coordinates. We discuss the numerical techniques used in developing this code, and its performance on massively parallel and vector supercomputers. As a test case, we present evolutions for the first 3D black hole spacetimes. We identify a number of difficulties in evolving 3D black holes and suggest approaches to overcome them. We show how special treatment of the conformal factor can lead to more accurate evolution, and discuss techniques we developed to handle black hole spacetimes in the absence of symmetries. Many different slicing conditions are tested, including geodesic, maximal, and various algebraic conditions on the lapse. With current resolutions, limited by computer memory sizes, we show that with certain lapse conditions we can evolve the black hole to about $t=50M$, where $M$ is the black hole mass. Comparisons are made with results obtained by evolving spherical initial black hole data sets with a 1D spherically symmetric code. We also demonstrate that an ``apparent horizon locking shift'' can be used to prevent the development of large gradients in the metric functions that result from singularity avoiding time slicings. We compute the mass of the apparent horizon in these spacetimes, and find that in many cases it can be conserved to within about 5\% throughout the evolution with our techniques and current resolution.Comment: 35 pages, LaTeX with RevTeX 3.0 macros. 27 postscript figures taking 7 MB of space, uuencoded and gz-compressed into a 2MB uufile. Also available at http://jean-luc.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Papers/ and mpeg simulations at http://jean-luc.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Movies/ Submitted to Physical Review

Consequences of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade on medicinal plant selection: plant use for cultural boud syndromes affecting children in Suriname and Western Africa.

Folk perceptions of health and illness include cultural bound syndromes (CBS), ailments generally confined to certain cultural groups or geographic regions and often treated with medicinal plants. Our aim was to compare definitions and plant use for CBS regarding child health in the context of the largest migration in recent human history: the trans-Atlantic slave trade. We compared definitions of four CBS (walk early, evil eye, atita and fontanels) and associated plant use among three Afro-Surinamese populations and their African ancestor groups in Ghana, Bénin and Gabon. We expected plant use to be similar on species level, and assumed the majority to be weedy or domesticated species, as these occur on both continents and were probably recognized by enslaved Africans. Data were obtained by identifying plants mentioned during interviews with local women from the six different populations. To analyse differences and similarities in plant use we used Detrended Component Analysis (DCA) and a Wald Chi-square test. Definitions of the four cultural bound syndromes were roughly the same on both continents. In total, 324 plant species were used. There was little overlap between Suriname and Africa: 15 species were used on two continents, of which seven species were used for the same CBS. Correspondence on family level was much higher. Surinamese populations used significantly more weedy species than Africans, but equal percentages of domesticated plants. Our data indicate that Afro-Surinamers have searched for similar plants to treat their CBS as they remembered from Africa. In some cases, they have found the same species, but they had to reinvent the largest part of their herbal pharmacopeia to treat their CBS using known plant families or trying out new species. Ideas on health and illness appear to be more resilient than the use of plants to treat them