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Miglioramento della capacità motorie e funzionali dell'arto superiore di un anziano fragile e istituzionalizzato
Full text linkIntroduction: In elderly people, hand and upper limb function are essential to maintain independence in the activities of daily living. Living in nursing homes, due to 24h nursing assistance, reduces the amount of activities autonomously performed by the residents, hence supports the physiological age-related decline of the upper limb and hand function.
In fact aging has degenerative effects on hand function, both in terms of quantity (with a reduction of finger and hand strength) and quality (with a reduction of the ability to control submaximal pinch force and maintain a steady pinch posture, manual speed and hand sensation).
Benefits of physical activity have been well-documented and are universally accepted; however, to the best of our knowledge, the effect of a structured physical activity on the quality of hand and upper limb function has never been investigated in elderly nursing home residents.
At the moment, no studies assessed the effect of an exercise program, focused on psychomotor skills, on hand movement quality in elderly nursing home residents.
Therefore, our hypothesis is that a structured exercise program focusing on psychomotor skills can positively affect the movement quality of both hand and upper limb, by delaying or limiting the physiological age-related decline.
Method/ Participants: Forty-five elderly volunteers between 63 and 95 years were recruited during years for a first study. Participants were randomly assigned to either an experimental (EG) 25 participants and a control group (CG) 20 participants.
Nineteen elderly volunteers between 75 and 95 years were recruited for the second study; also in this case they were randomly assigned to either an EG 10 participants and a CG 9 participants.
Finally, twenty elderly older than seventy-five years old were recruited for the third and last study. Ten participants in the EG and ten in the CG.
Experimental design: Recruitment, training and testing were performed within a nursing home. EG participants in the first study underwent to a 3-month supervised exercise program focused on the development of psychomotor hand skills, while CG participants were not training and were not modifying their activities and treatments.
EG participants during the second study underwent to a 1-month supervised exercise program focused on the same protocol but having more frequent sessions.
In the third and last study, the same protocol underwent to a 3-month supervised exercise program, in order to verify also improvements in the strength of both the hand and the fingers. Before and after the intervention the subjects of both EG and CG performed several tests aimed to assess hand and finger function.
Testing procedures: Hand dexterity, the finger dexterity and the strength of the hand and the fingers were evaluated in both dominant and non-dominant arm.
Hand dexterity was evaluated by Jebsen-Taylor Hand Functional Test (JTHFT), finger dexterity was assessed by means of Nine-Hole Peg Test (NHPT) and the strength of the hand and the fingers was assessed by Handgrip and Pinch Test, both Jamar.
Results: After the three month interventions (1st study), both manual dexterity and finger dexterity significantly improved in the EG compared to the CG, in both dominant and non-dominant hand.
After one month (2nd study), both manual dexterity and finger dexterity both of us limbs are improved in the EG, unlike the CG that got worse in all tests.
Last study (3rd ) shows that the strength significantly improved in both limbs and was preserved in fingers in the EG, while was preserved in both limbs and worse that of fingers in the CG.
Conclusion: The results suggest that the psychomotor training can improve the quality of the movement and so, the functionality of the upper limb and in particular of the hand in institutionalized older people.
This study justifies and supports the use of similar protocols in these age ranges because it highlights the effectiveness of the protocol but also the physiological decline of these abilities in short time as evidenced in the second study, which protocol was just one month
La percezione fisica di sé negli scolari adolescenti: Ruolo della costituzione fisica e del livello di attività fisica
Full text linkLa percezione di sé è influenzata dalla costituzione corporea, dal sesso, e dall’esercizio fisico. Non è chiaro, però, se gli effetti dell’esercizio derivino dal livello di attività fisica praticata o dal miglioramento delle capacità fisiche che esso determina. Pertanto questo studio ha indagato l’effetto, sia del livello di attività fisica che delle capacità fisiche sulla percezione fisica di sé, in funzione del sesso e della costituzione corporea, in studenti adolescenti. Il livello generale delle capacità fisiche di 188 adolescenti tra i 12 ed i 16 anni è stato valutato tramite una batteria di test motori, il livello di attività fisica è stato misurato con il questionario Physical Activity Questionnaire for Adolescents, mentre la percezione fisica di sé è stata valutata con il questionario Physical Self-Description Questionnaire Short. L’effetto del sesso e della costituzione fisica sono stati indagati tramite analisi della varianza considerando come covariate il livello di attività fisica e le capacità fisiche. I risultati evidenziano che essere in sovrappeso diminuisce la considerazione fisica generale di sé. Inoltre, la percezione di sé dei maschi è generalmente più alta delle femmine anche se questa non corrisponde a più elevate capacità fisiche o ad un maggior livello di attività fisica
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
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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