1,721,009 research outputs found
The impact of physical activity on the quality of life of a sample of Italian people with physical disability
No full textPhysical activity promotes psychophysical health; however, to date, only few studies have investigated the association between regular physical activity and the quality-of-life perception and satisfaction in disabled persons. Our aim was to compare the quality and satisfaction for life, self-efficacy, and personal wellbeing of two samples of Italian people with physical disability (amputation, spinal cord dysfunction, neurological disability): one group with people who practiced regular physical activity (active group, n = 33) and the other group consisting of sedentary individuals (inactive group, n = 26). We compared the mean scores of the groups in the World Health Organization Quality of Life Questionnaire (WHOQoL-BRIEF), the Personal Wellbeing Index, and the Satisfaction With Life and General Self-Efficacy scales. We also compared the impact of rehabilitation, sport, family support, income, job/school, and raising a family on social life and life quality by means of separate MANOVAs. Results of the WHOQoL showed better quality of life in the active than in the inactive group (overall QOL, 4.09 ± 0.7 vs. 3.50 ± 0.9; psychological domain, 72.09 ± 12.7 vs. 62 ± 21.6; social relationships domain, 76.54 ± 16.4 vs. 59.52 ± 24.2). No difference was found for satisfaction with health and life, personal wellbeing, and self-efficacy. The impact of sport on social life and quality of life was greater in active than in inactive individuals. Findings suggest positive effects of physical activity on the perception of quality of life in disabled people. However, they do not allow disentangling whether physical activity is practiced by patients with good quality of life or whether physical activity is responsible for better quality of life
Time as a factor during endoscopic assessment of swallowing: relevance in defining the score and severity of swallowing disorders
No full textResidue and clearing time: preliminary considerations in defining dysphagia severity in daily practice
No full textIntroduction and aim: In the consideration of swallowing, ‘time’ is a parameter of great interest. The pooling score (p-score), which considers the number of dry swallows needed to clear residue in the pharynx/larynx, can be made more complete by quantifying this parameter, attempting to give a more appropriate and functional criterion of the severity of an impaired swallow. The p-score, enhanced by the inclusion of the time needed to clear residue (timed p-score, tp-score) is put forward for use in clinical practice.
Matherial and methods: Two experienced raters blindly evaluated 35 short video clips of 5 cc pureed, 5 cc liquid and 1/4 cracker bolus transits, recorded during the endoscopic evaluations of 16 patients with dysphagia of different aetiologies. For each patient, the time needed to complete the clearing of the boluses (maximum 5 swallows, total time – TT), was determined together with the FOIS and DOSS scales.
Results: The average time necessary to clear residue for pureed, solid and liquid boluses was 22.5 s, 30.7 s and 16.6 s respectively. The inter-rater agreement between the 2 raters in applying the p-score was good (ICC > 0.800) for every consistency. A linear regression model documented a statistically significant correlation of the p-score total, the TT and the consistencies with the FOIS and the DOSS, respectively.
Discussion and conclusion: The p-score total and the TT are correlated with the severity of dysphagia and the functional activities of the patients, so the pt-score can be useful in clinical practice to define the severity of dysphagia
Correlazione tra Fees ed evoluzione clinica della sclerosi laterale amiotrofica, (SLA), in un gruppo di 202 pazienti
No full textGeoscience knowledge in Italy at the end of high School
No full textA survey aimed at an assessment of geoscience understanding of Italian students at the end of high school has been carried out from 2015 to 2018 by means of the IMES (Individuation of Misconceptions in Earth Sciences) questionnaire. The survey, conducted on freshmen of several courses at the University of Pisa, has revealed the persistence of alternative conceptions about different geoscience topics. In this paper, the psychometric validation and the latest results of IMES are presented, together with an analysis of textbooks used in Italian high school, aimed at investigating if, besides other factors, the way geoscience concepts are presented in textbooks may contribute to the birth or confirmation of concepts alternative to those agreed upon by the scientific community
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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