Evaluation of Confidence Using Motivational Interviewing Skills Before and After In-Person Training Workshop

Motivational interviewing (MI) is a skill used to help individuals make positive behavior changes and may be beneficial for those who work with undergraduate students. A new training, comprised of online content followed by an in-person workshop, was created and offered to staff members working directly with students at Iowa State University. The aim of this study was to evaluate confidence for using MI-related components pre and post an in-person workshop. To do so, participants completed a survey regarding their confidence in using MI-related skills before and after the workshop. From the survey results, a paired t-test was conducted to examine differences, and effect size was calculated to examine the magnitude of this difference. A significant difference was found pre to post with a small-to-moderate effect size, suggesting the in-person workshop was an important component for building self-efficacy to implement principles of MI in future conversations with students

Peer Health Coach Training Practicum: Evidence from a Flipped Classroom

Health coaching is a popular and effective method to assist individuals in gaining motivation to engage in healthy lifestyle behavior changes. The utility has led to an increased demand for trained individuals within the health care field. A new flipped classroom practicum course was developed to offer undergraduate students the opportunity to learn a foundational skill called motivational interviewing (MI) commonly used in health coaching. The 16-week, 2-credit course (led by three trained, graduate student health coaches) consists of online video lectures, in-class activities, experiential training, and supervised practicum experiences in health coaching. The aim of this study is to evaluate the process, impact, and outcomes of this new health coaching practicum. Measures consisted of surveys to assess participant satisfaction and course impact using 6-point Likert scales and were analyzed descriptively (mean ± SD), along with obtaining recorded MI conversations to evaluate fidelity of the training. These preliminary results support the utility of a flipped classroom practicum course designed to teach undergraduate students the skills of MI; however, extended practice with the use of MI may be needed for students to meet all proficiency levels

Amoeba Techniques for Shape and Texture Analysis

Morphological amoebas are image-adaptive structuring elements for morphological and other local image filters introduced by Lerallut et al. Their construction is based on combining spatial distance with contrast information into an image-dependent metric. Amoeba filters show interesting parallels to image filtering methods based on partial differential equations (PDEs), which can be confirmed by asymptotic equivalence results. In computing amoebas, graph structures are generated that hold information about local image texture. This paper reviews and summarises the work of the author and his coauthors on morphological amoebas, particularly their relations to PDE filters and texture analysis. It presents some extensions and points out directions for future investigation on the subject.Comment: 38 pages, 19 figures v2: minor corrections and rephrasing, Section 5 (pre-smoothing) extende

Treatment of Candida albicans biofilms with low-temperature plasma induced by dielectric barrier discharge and atmospheric pressure plasma jet

Because of some disadvantages of chemical disinfection in dental practice (especially denture cleaning), we investigated the effects of physical methods on Candida albicans biofilms. For this purpose, the antifungal efficacy of three different low-temperature plasma devices (an atmospheric pressure plasma jet and two different dielectric barrier discharges (DBDs)) on Candida albicans biofilms grown on titanium discs in vitro was investigated. As positive treatment controls, we used 0.1% Chlorhexidine digluconate (CHX) and 0.6% sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl). The corresponding gas streams without plasma ignition served as negative treatment controls. The efficacy of the plasma treatment was determined evaluating the number of colony-forming units (CFU) recovered from titanium discs. The plasma treatment reduced the CFU significantly compared to chemical disinfectants. While 10 min CHX or NaOCl exposure led to a CFU log 10 reduction factor of 1.5, the log10 reduction factor of DBD plasma was up to 5. In conclusion, the use of low-temperature plasma is a promising physical alternative to chemical antiseptics for dental practice. © IOP Publishing Ltd and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft

A calibration protocol for population-specific accelerometer cut-points in children

PurposeTo test a field-based protocol using intermittent activities representative of children\u27s physical activity behaviours, to generate behaviourally valid, population-specific accelerometer cut-points for sedentary behaviour, moderate, and vigorous physical activity.MethodsTwenty-eight children (46% boys) aged 10&ndash;11 years wore a hip-mounted uniaxial GT1M ActiGraph and engaged in 6 activities representative of children\u27s play. A validated direct observation protocol was used as the criterion measure of physical activity. Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) curve analyses were conducted with four semi-structured activities to determine the accelerometer cut-points. To examine classification differences, cut-points were cross-validated with free-play and DVD viewing activities.ResultsCut-points of &le;372, &gt;2160 and &gt;4806 counts&bull;min&minus;1 representing sedentary, moderate and vigorous intensity thresholds, respectively, provided the optimal balance between the related needs for sensitivity (accurately detecting activity) and specificity (limiting misclassification of the activity). Cross-validation data demonstrated that these values yielded the best overall kappa scores (0.97; 0.71; 0.62), and a high classification agreement (98.6%; 89.0%; 87.2%), respectively. Specificity values of 96&ndash;97% showed that the developed cut-points accurately detected physical activity, and sensitivity values (89&ndash;99%) indicated that minutes of activity were seldom incorrectly classified as inactivity.ConclusionThe development of an inexpensive and replicable field-based protocol to generate behaviourally valid and population-specific accelerometer cut-points may improve the classification of physical activity levels in children, which could enhance subsequent intervention and observational studies.<br /

Assessing free-living physical activity using accelerometry : practical issues for researchers and practitioners

Physical activity is an integral component of a healthy lifestyle, with relationships documented between physical activity, chronic diseases, and disease risk factors. There is increasing concern that many people are not sufficiently active to benefit their health. Consequently, there is a need to determine the prevalence of physical activity engagement, identify active and inactive segments of the population, and evaluate the effectiveness of interventions. The aim of the present study was to identify and explain a number of methodological and decision-making processes associated with accelerometry, which is the most commonly used objective measure of physical activity in child and adult research.Specifically, this review addresses:(a) pre-data collection decisions,(b) data collection procedures,(c) processing of accelerometer data, and(d) outcome variables in relation to the research questions posed.An appraisal of the literature is provided to help researchers and practitioners begin field-based research, with recommendations offered for best practice. In addition, issues that require further investigation are identified and discussed to inform researchers and practitioners of the surrounding debates.Overall, the review is intended as a starting point for field-based physical activity research using accelerometers and as an introduction to key issues that should be considered and are likely to be encountered at this time.<br /

Development of a novel classification system for anatomical variants of the puboprostatic ligaments with expert validation

Introduction: We propose a novel classification system with a validation study to help clinicians identify and typify commonly seen variants of the puboprostatic ligaments (PPL). Methods: A preliminary dissection of 6 male cadavers and a prospective dataset of over 300 robotic-assisted laparoscopic radical prostatectomies (RARP) recorded on video were used to identify 4 distinct ligament types. Then the prospectively collected database of surgical videos was used to isolate images of the PPL from RARP. Over 300 surgical videos were reviewed and classified with 1 to 5 pictures saved for reference of the type of PPL. To validate the new classification system, we selected 5 independent, blinded expert robotic surgeons to classify 100 ligaments based on morphology into a 4-type system: parallel, V-shaped, inverted V-shape, and fused. One week later, a subset of 25 photographs was sent to the same experts and classified. Statistical analyses were performed to determine both the intra-rater and inter-rater reliability of the proposed system. Results: Inverted V-shaped ligaments were noted most frequently (29.97%), parallel and V-shaped ligaments were found at 19.19% and 11.11%, respectively and fused ligaments were noted less frequently (6.06%). There was good intra-rater agreement (ê = 0.66) and inter-rater agreement (ê = 0.67) for the classification system. Conclusions: This classification system provided standardized descriptions of ligament variations that could be adopted universally to help clinicians categorize the variants. The system, validated by several blinded expert surgeons, demonstrated that surgeons were able to learn and correctly classify the variants. The system may be useful in helping to predict peri- and postoperative outcomes; however, this will require further study

Consequence and Resilience Modeling for Chemical Supply Chains

The U.S. chemical sector produces more than 70,000 chemicals that are essential material inputs to critical infrastructure systems, such as the energy, public health, and food and agriculture sectors. Disruptions to the chemical sector can potentially cascade to other dependent sectors, resulting in serious national consequences. To address this concern, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) tasked Sandia National Laboratories to develop a predictive consequence modeling and simulation capability for global chemical supply chains. This paper describes that capability , which includes a dynamic supply chain simulation platform called N_ABLE(tm). The paper also presents results from a case study that simulates the consequences of a Gulf Coast hurricane on selected segments of the U.S. chemical sector. The case study identified consequences that include impacted chemical facilities, cascading impacts to other parts of the chemical sector. and estimates of the lengths of chemical shortages and recovery . Overall. these simulation results can DHS prepare for and respond to actual disruptions

Noncommutative Spheres and Instantons

We report on some recent work on deformation of spaces, notably deformation of spheres, describing two classes of examples. The first class of examples consists of noncommutative manifolds associated with the so called $\theta$-deformations which were introduced out of a simple analysis in terms of cycles in the $(b,B)$-complex of cyclic homology. These examples have non-trivial global features and can be endowed with a structure of noncommutative manifolds, in terms of a spectral triple (\ca, \ch, D). In particular, noncommutative spheres $S^{N}_{\theta}$ are isospectral deformations of usual spherical geometries. For the corresponding spectral triple (\cinf(S^{N}_\theta), \ch, D), both the Hilbert space of spinors \ch= L^2(S^{N},\cs) and the Dirac operator $D$ are the usual ones on the commutative $N$-dimensional sphere $S^{N}$ and only the algebra and its action on $\ch$ are deformed. The second class of examples is made of the so called quantum spheres $S^{N}_q$ which are homogeneous spaces of quantum orthogonal and quantum unitary groups. For these spheres, there is a complete description of $K$-theory, in terms of nontrivial self-adjoint idempotents (projections) and unitaries, and of the $K$-homology, in term of nontrivial Fredholm modules, as well as of the corresponding Chern characters in cyclic homology and cohomology.Comment: Minor changes, list of references expanded and updated. These notes are based on invited lectures given at the ``International Workshop on Quantum Field Theory and Noncommutative Geometry'', November 26-30 2002, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan. To be published in the workshop proceedings by Springer-Verlag as Lecture Notes in Physic

Validity and reliability of a modified english version of the physical activity questionnaire for adolescents

BACKGROUND: Adaptation of physical activity self-report questionnaires is sometimes required to reflect the activity behaviours of diverse populations. The processes used to modify self-report questionnaires though are typically underreported. This two-phased study used a formative approach to investigate the validity and reliability of the Physical Activity Questionnaire for Adolescents (PAQ-A) in English youth. Phase one examined test content and response process validity and subsequently informed a modified version of the PAQ-A. Phase two assessed the validity and reliability of the modified PAQ-A. METHODS: In phase one, focus groups (n = 5) were conducted with adolescents (n = 20) to investigate test content and response processes of the original PAQ-A. Based on evidence gathered in phase one, a modified version of the questionnaire was administered to participants (n = 169, 14.5 ± 1.7 years) in phase two. Internal consistency and test-retest reliability were assessed using Cronbach’s alpha and intra-class correlations, respectively. Spearman correlations were used to assess associations between modified PAQ-A scores and accelerometer-derived physical activity, self-reported fitness and physical activity self-efficacy. RESULTS: Phase one revealed that the original PAQ-A was unrepresentative for English youth and that item comprehension varied. Contextual and population/cultural-specific modifications were made to the PAQ-A for use in the subsequent phase. In phase two, modified PAQ-A scores had acceptable internal consistency (α = 0.72) and test-retest reliability (ICC = 0.78). Modified PAQ-A scores were significantly associated with objectively assessed moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (r = 0.39), total physical activity (r = 0.42), self-reported fitness (r = 0.35), and physical activity self-efficacy (r = 0.32) (p ≤ 0.01). CONCLUSIONS: The modified PAQ-A had acceptable internal consistency and test-retest reliability. Modified PAQ-A scores displayed weak-to-moderate correlations with objectively measured physical activity, self-reported fitness, and self-efficacy providing evidence of satisfactory criterion and construct validity, respectively. Further testing with more diverse English samples is recommended to provide a more complete assessment of the tool. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13690-016-0115-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users