9,548 research outputs found
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
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
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
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
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
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,
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 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
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