Obesity and sedentary behaviour in children and their implications in adulthood

The problem of childhood overweight and obesity are becoming more prevalent. Sedentary behaviours and the lack of physical activity are considered as independent health risk factors. The commoner chronic illnesses in adults such as obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, and cancer are aggravated by a sedentary life. The evidence strongly suggests that sedentary behaviour is correlated to obesity in childhood and can negatively affect health in early adulthood. A literature review about the problem of childhood obesity and sedentary behaviour in children and their implications in adulthood is discussed. Efforts should be made to introduce specific interventions to increase physical activity among children and decrease sedentary behaviour such as television viewing and using electronic media. Campaigns and training programmes for parents should be implemented.peer-reviewe

What general practitioners need to know about patent foramen ovale

A patent foramen ovale (PFO) consists of a hole between the right and left atriums of the heart that did not close the way it should after birth. Twenty five percent of the population have a PFO, but this usually does not cause problems, because the opening is functionally closed by the difference in pressure between the heart and the chest. This study is a literature review about the clinical significance of PFO and its management in three clinical situations: cryptogenic strokes, migraine with aura and scuba divers who sustained a decompression sickness. PFOs had been linked with various medical conditions such as strokes, migraine, and with certain types of decompression sickness (DCS). In general, this association is not very well established. Young patients who sustain a cardiovascular event without a known cause (cryptogenic stroke) have resulted in the tendency to screen these patents becoming the norm and more PFOs are being closed using standard methods and devices. The association of PFOs and migraine attacks is less clear. In the case of scuba divers the risk of suffering from a decompression accident is increased if one has a PFO. The management of these patients remains difficult.peer-reviewe

Fingerprint Identification - New Directions

In most of the algorithms that have been suggested in this report, the fingerprint image is reduced to a relatively short sequence of integers. This reduces the memory size required by the database. Each algorithm is intended to exploit specific properties and features of the fingerprint that vary from finger to finger, and that can be localized relatively fast using digital techniques, thus also reducing the computational time requirements to a minimum. In each case, the sensitivity of the algorithm to small variations in the image was also discussed, with the aim of reducing the False Rejection Rate, and of increasing the general robustness of the algorithm

A strange way of loving : the Brontean sadistic heart of Jacques Rivette's Hurlevent

This essay analyses Jacques Rivette's Hurlevent, the French film adaptation of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, in terms of the adaptor's reworking of the novel's major themes and characters in predominantly visual images. The analysis seeks to determine whether the changes created by the film-maker affect the faithfulness and aesthetic worth of Hurlevent as an adaptation of Bronte's text. In the light of various notions of adaptation, such as Battestin's and Armour's theory of analogical autonomy, this analysis also seeks to demonstrate whether this film has succeeded in unveiling the roots of the novel's sadistic traits and the soil from which they stem; the agony of love denied.peer-reviewe

The conservation project and archaeological excavation of the old Parish Church at Siggiewi - an intermediate report

Until December 2007 the old parish church of Siggiewi, dating back to the late medieval period, and occupying a central location within the village core, had been in a neglected and dilapidated state for a very long time, so much so that the remaining ruins were almost totally covered with debris and thick vegetation (Plates 2; 9A; 9D; colour plate 2A; Fig. 4 and colour plate 3). While passing by the walled up and highly degraded site, the inhabitants of Siggiewi barely knew that beneath the soil and vegetation were the remains of their first parish church and the cemetery where most of their ancestors had been buried.peer-reviewe

Malta’s mental health reform

In Malta as in many other countries, psychiatry has for years been the Cinderella of the Health Services with a tradition of not only being under-resourced but also of being an unpopular career choice amongst health care professionals. In this article the author describes the scope and the aims of the proposed Mental Health Reform.peer-reviewe

SOIL PRODUCTIVITY AND FARMERS' EROSION CONTROL INCENTIVES--A DYNAMIC MODELING APPROACH

Important linkages between farm management variables, soil loss, crop yields, and incentives to practice soil conservation have often been omitted from previous empirical studies, due to regional data limitations and incomplete knowledge of soil loss/crop yiled relationships. An optimal control model is developed with explicit attention to interactions between management choices, soil loss, and long-term farmland productivity. Analysis of the optimality conditions generates a number of hypotheses related to farmers' productivity-linked conservation incentives, which can be tested empirically without precise knowledge of specific erosion-productivity relationships.Environmental Economics and Policy, Farm Management, Land Economics/Use,

A review of neuroleptic malignant syndrome : incidence and features in Malta

This paper describes Malta’s first sample of Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome (NMS) and reviews the current literature. A retrospective sample of all diagnosed cases of NMS was reviewed using Pope’s (1986) criteria. Twelve cases were identified yielding an incidence of 0.67%. The range of associated risk factors and complications agreed with other reports. There were also two cases of uncontrolled diabetes. Treatments commonly used were Bromocriptine and Levodopa. There were no deaths due to NMS and no recurrence on re-exposure. The sample is too small to draw any statistically significant conclusions, however, the results are mostly in line with those obtained from larger samples. Malta’s incidence is towards the lower end of the reported range of 0.02% to 3.23%, but higher than that reported in centres trying to recognise NMS early and reduce risk factors. This suggests that Malta could benefit from trying to adopt such measures. Given Malta’s small size, it would be relatively easy to disseminate such information. This study, despite its comprehensive sample, failed to reveal any other reported cases. Nor has it been demonstrated that diabetics were at higher risk of developing NMS or its complications. It would be important to explore these possibilities further in future studies.peer-reviewe

Superfluid-insulator transition of two-dimensional disordered Bose gases

We study the two-dimensional weakly repulsive Bose gas at zero temperature in the presence of correlated disorder. Using large-scale simulations, we show that the low-energy Bogoliubov cumulative density of states remains quadratic up to a critical disorder strength, beyond which a power law with disorder-dependent exponent $\beta<2$ sets in. We associate this threshold behavior with the transition from superfluid to Bose glass, and compare the resulting mean-field phase diagram with scaling laws and the Thomas-Fermi percolation threshold of the mean-field density profile.Comment: Published version, 5 pages, 4 figure

Finite element analysis of footwear and ground interaction

Military boots are designed to prevent the soft tissue and skeletal structure of the feet from damage under heavy usage. Good slip-resistant tread patterns of the outer-sole are vital to minimise the risk or severity of slipping under demanding conditions, most likely to result in accidents. However, boot design should also offer the customer flexibility, comfort, and shock absorption, be lightweight and be able to operate regardless of the ground surface texture and various weather conditions. The issue of footwear and ground interaction investigated in this study can be classified as a traditional stability problem. Solutions to these problems are often obtained using the theory of perfect plasticity. Therefore, elastic–perfectly plastic theory was adopted in this study and the Drucker-Prager (DP) material model was chosen to model the soil properties. Literature survey showed that little studies exist on the subject of interaction between foot and soft ground, in particular, using numerical modelling methods. However, there are numerous research works on some relevant domains, such as soil–tillage tool interaction, soil–wheel interaction and soil–structure interaction, etc. A three-dimensional finite-element (FE) analysis of a subsoiler cutting with pressurised air injection was performed by employing a DP harden material model without consideration of friction force by Araya and Gao [1]. Saliba [2] undertook elastic–viscoplastic FE modelling for tire/soil interaction and Mouazen and Nemenyi [3, 4] adopted a DP model for analysing soil–tillage tool interaction