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Assessing the functional level of children with severe cerebral palsy (CP) requires sensitive tools. In this study, an 'assessment tool' was developed based on the Test of Infant Motor Performance (TIMP) for this population and the reliability and validity evaluated. Five physical therapists administered the 'assessment tool' to six children (3-6 years old with a diagnosis of CP, GMFCS Level V). Subtest I of the Gross Motor Function Measure (GMFM-88) was also administered. Intra- and inter-rater reliability were assessed, and the concurrent validity between the 'assessment tool' and GMFM-88 calculated. The intra-rater reliability, a comparison of the total scores on the 'assessment tool' (live test) and the videotaped rescoring of the same test one month later showed consistency among four of the five therapists (ICC =0.7545 to 0.979). The inter-rater reliability varied on some of the items but the total score on the 'assessment tool' showed good reliability (ICC 0.816). Scores of children with dyskinesia were less stable. The Spearman's rank correlation coefficient was not significant. Therapists provided recommendations for item revisions. Further development of an 'assessment tool' appears justified; a larger study using a version with revised administration guidelines and items should be undertaken to re-verify the psychometrics properties of the 'assessment tool.'

The primary aim was to compare the functional exercise capacity between obese treatment-seeking people with and without binge eating disorder (BED) and non-obese controls. The secondary aim was to identify clinical variables including eating and physical activity behaviour, physical complaints, psychopathology and physical self-perception variables in obese people with BED that could explain the variability in functional exercise capacity.Forty people with BED were compared with 20 age-, gender- and body mass index (BMI)-matched obese persons without BED and 40 age and gender matched non-obese volunteers. A 6-minute walk test (6MWT), the Baecke physical activity questionnaire, the Symptom Checklist-90, the Physical Self-Perception Profile and the Eating Disorder Inventory were administered. Physical complaints before and after the 6MWT were also documented.The distance achieved on the 6MWT was significantly lower in obese participants with BED (512.1 ± 75.8 m versus 682.7 ± 98.4, p 0.05) compared to non-obese controls. No significant differences were found between obese participants with and without BED. Participants with BED reported significantly (p 0.05) more musculoskeletal pain and fatigue after the walk test than obese and non-obese controls. A forward stepwise regression analysis demonstrated that sports participation and perceived physical strength explained 41.7% of the variance on the 6MWT in obese participants with BED.Physical activity participation, physical self-perception and perceived physical discomfort during walking should be considered when developing rehabilitation programs for obese people with BED.Rehabilitation programmes in people with binge eating disorder should incorporate a functional exercise capacity assessment. Clinicians involved in the rehabilitation of people with binge eating disorder should consider depression and lower self-esteem as potential barriers. Clinicians should take into account the frequently observed physical discomfort when developing rehabilitation programmes for people with binge eating disorder.

Since a distorted body experience and a sedentary lifestyle are central in the course of binge eating disorder (BED), physical therapy might be an interesting add-on treatment. The aim of this study was to systematically review randomised controlled trials (RCTs) evaluating physical therapy on binge eating and physical and mental health in BED patients.EMBASE, PsycINFO, PubMed, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, Physiotherapy Evidence Database and Cochrane Library were searched from their inception until 15 August 2012 for relevant RCTs comparing physical therapy with a placebo condition, control intervention or standard care.Three RCTs involving 211 female community patients (age range: 25-63 years) met all selection criteria. Review data demonstrate that aerobic and yoga exercises reduce the number of binges and the body mass index (BMI) of BED patients. Aerobic exercise also reduces depressive symptoms. Only combining cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) with aerobic exercise and not CBT alone reduces BMI. Combining aerobic exercise with CBT is more effective in reducing depressive symptoms than CBT alone.The limited number of available studies and the heterogeneity of the interventions limit overall conclusions and highlight the need for further research.Because of severe co-morbid psychiatric and physical conditions, binge eating disorder is one of the most difficult psychiatric conditions to treat. Both yoga and aerobic exercise have shown promise in reducing binge eating pathology and weight. Combining aerobic exercise with cognitive behavioural therapy seems more effective in reducing depressive symptoms than cognitive behavioural therapy alone.

Disciplinary models of learning such as ethnography (cultural anthropology) and market competition (economics) have received little attention in the burgeoning literature on ‘how teacher thinking shapes education’. To mobilize the pedagogical potential of these disciplinary idioms, the authors draw from the pathbreaking works of Palmer and Rowland, the anthropological literature on teaching as ethnography, and their own experiences as teachers of cultural anthropology and economics to conceptualize a process they term reflexive pedagogy. Reflexive pedagogy – the deliberate cultivation of discipline-specific learning theories – encourages instructors to integrate the intellectual frameworks and identities of their teaching and scholarly lives and thus provides an effective vehicle for faculty dialogue and teacher development.

This paper describes a method to design air quality monitoring networks for nitrogen dioxide and ozone and its application in Granada, a city located in Andalusia, southern Spain. The city has a population of 236,988 inhabitants, and traffic is its main source of air pollution. Sampling campaigns with passive diffusion samplers at 88 sites were carried out to obtain information on the pollution distribution in Granada. The average concentrations found for NO2 and O3 were 36.5 μg/m3 and 51.6 μg/m3, respectively. Maximum values of up to 57.1 μg/m3 NO2 were found in Granada city center and O3 reached 77.2 μg/m3 downwind from the emission source. After spatial interpolation of the obtained values with Geographical Information Systems, a selection of the best locations for the monitoring stations was made, in line with the macro- and microscale siting requirements of the European Directive 2008/50/EC on ambient air quality and cleaner air for Europe. Another sampling campaign with diffusive samplers was carrie...

The unprecedented toxic release in lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001 created one of the worst environmental disasters in US history, followed by a contentious and ongoing battle over the existence, etiology, and legitimation of World Trade Center-related illness. In this paper, I explore the enactment of epistemic authority by a complex array of stakeholders--government officials, scientists, physicians, environmentalists, advocates, journalists, and politicians--who have woven medical-scientific knowledge into their competing agendas and platforms. Despite the scientific validation of environmental dangers, the clinical documentation of illness and the epidemiological substantiation of links between environmental exposure and illness onset, the political-economic interests of federal, state, and local bodies have often been privileged over the protection of public health. 9/11 illness is a "contested illness" enmeshed in politically charged disputes regarding the relationship of environmental toxins to disease.

Cash managers and other investors with excess Japanese yen could choose to invest in dollars and to use zero-cost currency options collars (or risk reversals) to limit fluctuations in the dollar-yen exchange rate (as illustrated by VanderLinden and Gramlich, 2005). However, traders know that there is a market-driven, time-varying cost to risk reversals that can reduce their effectiveness in hedging. This paper evaluates a decision rule to reduce the impact of risk reversal costs. This rule, based on a 30-day moving average of risk reversal costs, appears to minimize risk reversal costs when used with the dollar–yen exchange rate. Whether application of the rule significantly improves risk-adjusted returns is less clear.

In this article, we develop an empirical model of an agro-pastoral system subject to high climatic risk in order to test the impact of rainfall variability on livestock densities, land allocation patterns and herd mobility observed at the community level. Also, because grazing land is a common-pool resource, we determine the impact of cooperation on these decision variables. To capture different abilities of communities to cooperate in managing these externalities, we construct indices comprised of factors considered to affect the costliness of achieving successful cooperation. We then test hypotheses regarding the impact of rainfall variability and cooperation, using data collected in a semi-arid region of Niger. Results indicate that rainfall variability initially leads to higher densities, but the impact becomes negative as variability increases still further. This result indicates that the benefits of accumulating large herds in variable environments are eventually offset by the increasing probability...

Findings from a national study of community college administrative careers, examining issues of position, gender, and race / ethnicity are reported. Career path data also are compared with an earlier national study, showing that paths to the presidency have changed since 1985. Implications for recruitment into senior positions and leadership diversity are discussed.

Simple conditional currency-hedging rules often increase risk-adjusted portfolio returns and are thus of interest to investors. Several researchers have reported successful application of a “forward hedge rule” (FHR) in which one hedges whenever the foreign currency trades at a forward premium. An alternative strategy, a “real-interest-rate hedge rule” (RIR), is based on hedging when the domestic real interest rate exceeds the foreign rate. As an extension, we propose a combination of these rules—a “real forward hedge rule” (RFHR). We evaluate the performance of the rules for various currency, stock, and bond portfolios from the developed countries. In tests of risk-adjusted returns for 1976–1997, the RFHR significantly outperformed standard benchmarks and often beat the FHR and the RIR. Moreover, results of a simple dominance test for rolling 5- and 10-year periods suggest that the RFHR consistently improves portfolio performance for a U.S. investor.

The dimensionalities of the Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES) and the Dissociation Questionnaire (DIS-Q) have been explored by factor analysis by a number of investigators. The general claim is that both scales are multidimensional. However, we argue that, in both cases, this ap parent multidimensionality is a form of range restriction that arises because some symptoms are more common than other symptoms. As a result, the resulting subscales derived from the multifactor solutions are so highly intercorrelated as to be incapable of meaningful discriminant validity. The current findings support a more parsimonious single factor solution for both scales.

A group of 29 obese women with Binge Eating Disorder (OB-BED) and 35 obese subjects without this disorder (OB) were compared on the presence or absence of traumatic experiences and dissociative symptoms with the Dissociation Questionnaire (DIS-Q). OB-BED subjects showed significantly higher scores on two subscales of the DIS-Q (identity confusion and loss of control). They also reported significantly more traumatic experiences than the OB sample. These data further support the assumption that among eating disorder patients, both traumatic experiences and dissociative symptoms are more prevalent when patients show serious binge eating.

The performance of a severe amnesic patient (AC) was explored across two tasks designed to assess his public and personal semantic knowledge before and after the onset of his amnesia. On the Autobiographical Memory Interview (Kopelman, Wilson, & Baddeley, 1990), AC's ability to recollect specific personal episodes was severely impaired for the three time periods explored (childhood, early adulthood, and contemporary life) but his general (semantic) personal knowledge was relatively preserved even for information that was acquired after the brain injury. The patient was also submitted to a famous people identification task. AC showed a relatively preserved ability to retrieve semantic information concerning famous people who came to fame before his accident. More importantly, AC acquired substantial knowledge about personalities who had become famous after the onset of his amnesia. In addition, the amount of knowledge that he acquired about politicians (a domain he knew particularly well before his accident) did not differ from that of control subjects. These data suggest that AC showed an impairment of episodic memory whereas semantic memory was relatively spared. They also confirm that new semantic learning in amnesics is particularly efficient if the to-be-acquired information is consistent with existing concepts.

Hypnotizability, subjective experiences during hypnotizability assessment, and dissociation were studied in 53 eating disorder patients in order to explore the relationship between these phenomena. Dissociation was measured with a newly developed self-reporting Dissociation-Questionnaire (DIS-Q), level of hypnotizability was assessed with the Stanford Hypnotic Clinical Scale (SHCS), subjective experiences during hypnosis with the Dutch Phenomenology of Consciousness Inventory (DPCI), and the Dutch Resistance to Hypnosis Scale (DRHS). Compared with normals, eating disorder patients scored significantly higher on the DIS-Q and SHCS. Compared with restricting anorexics, anorexics of the mixed type as well as bulimics report higher scores on both the DIS-Q and SHCS, but a significant difference was found only for the DIS-Q subscale loss of control. Although positive correlations between the DIS-Q and SHCS were found, the magnitude of the correlations shows that both instruments probably are measuring different constructs. Some implications of these findings are discussed.

The Body Attitude Test (BAT) is a new self-report questionnaire developed for female patients suffering from eating disorders. Its psychometric characteristics have been tested in a large number of patients and control subjects (eating disorders, Weight Watchers, and normal subjects). Repeated analyses yielded a stable four factor structure: negative appreciation of body size, lack of familiarity with one's own body, general body dissatisfaction, and a rest factor. Repeated tests in different subgroups have shown the BAT to be reliable and valid, as well as easy and practical (only 20 items).

Some critical comments are made with regard to the possible relationship between a history of sexual abuse and the development of an eating disorder. In a case of sexual abuse, many factors and variables interacting with one another may play a role in the development of psychiatric sequelae, including eating disorders. The fact that a linear causal link does not exist does not mean that sexual abuse is not a risk factor for eating disorders.

We report the re-education of a brain-damaged patient, LP, who presented a surface dysgraphia. This dysgraphia resulted from impairments of the lexical procedure of writing arising from a deficit located in the orthographic output lexicon. Our hypothesis was that LP had lost the relevant orthographic representations of some words. A two-stage therapeutic programme was carried out. In the first stage, we tried to optimise the relatively spared phonological procedure in writing by re-teaching some graphemic contextual rules. Because of residual surface dyslexia and verbal memory deficits associated with this surface dysgraphia, and because of the structure of the French language, we retaught, in the second stage, the spelling of some irregular and ambiguous words by means of a visual imagery technique. In post-therapy, we observed a selective effect of this imagery strategy by comparison with a classic methodology of repetitive presentation of ambiguous and irregular spellings. The results of our therapy support cognitive-oriented therapeutic approaches and are discussed with regard to recent debates on the subject in neuropsychology.

We report the case of a head-injured patient (AM) with a specific short-term memory impairment. He did not show any deficit in long-term memory and presented no sign of either intellectual or frontal dysfunction. His spans for verbal and nonverbal material were reduced and he showed a lack of recency effect in free recall for visually presented words. We observed word length and phonological similarity effects as well as the abolition with articulatory suppression of the visual and auditory word length effect and of the visual phonological similarity effect, indicating that both the phonological store and the articulatory rehearsal mechanism were functioning. Furthermore, our investigations did not evidence any structural defect in either the control and planning functions of the central executive, or in its storage functions. The deficit AM presented on a verbal and nonverbal Brown-Peterson task, especially when the distractor tasks were more demanding, suggests that AM's central executive disposed of fewer processing resources. This resource reduction seemed to affect only short-term storage but not processing, and was interpreted as the consequence of strategic adaptation by the patient. Finally, the resource reduction did not cause interference on those divided attention tasks not requiring storage. As such, these results call for a more accurate specification of the allocation of resources in dual tasks.

In order to improve the therapeutic index of fluorouracil (5-FU), it has been combined with cisplatin (DDP) as synergistic agent and with allopurinol (HPP) as toxicity modulator. Patients with measurable colorectal carcinoma, previously untreated by chemotherapy, were randomized to receive either 5-FU alone 500 mg/m2 push iv days 1-5 or HPP 3 x 300 mg po, days 1-5, 5-FU 800 mg/m2 push iv, days 3-5 and DDP 50 mg/m2 d6. Treatment was repeated every 4 weeks. Of 104 patients randomized, 82 were evaluable for response and survival. Six partial responses were seen in each treatment group (15%) and the median survival time was 7 months. Hematologic toxicities were comparable in both treatment groups, with a mean nadir white blood cell count of 3500/ vs. 3800/mm3 and a mean nadir platelet count of 148,000/ vs, 203,000/mm3 for HPP-5-FU-DDP and 5-FU, respectively. This study suggests that the addition of both HPP and DDP does not improve the activity of 5-FU., SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published