The aim of the present study was to evaluate the safety of methylphenidate administered during inpatient rehabilitation following traumatic brain injury.
Forty inpatients with moderate-severe ...traumatic brain injury (mean 68.4 days post-injury) participated in a randomized, cross-over, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of methylphenidate administered at a dose of 0.3 mg/kg body weight twice daily.
Methylphenidate administration resulted in a statistically significant increase in pulse of 12.3 beats/min (95% confidence interval (CI) 9.25-15.36), diastolic blood pressure of 4.1 mmHg (95% CI 2.11-6.10), and mean arterial pressure of 3.75 mmHg (95% CI 1.79-5.72). These changes did not, however, appear to be symptomatic, as no participants were withdrawn due to adverse events, and there was no significant self-report of increased heart rate with methylphenidate. Blinding was successful. Significantly greater reporting of irritability of 0.14 points (95% CI 0.02-0.26), difficulty sleeping of 0.17 points (95% CI 0.02-0.31) and total side-effects of 0.68 points (95% CI 0.06-1.30) was associated with methylphenidate compared with placebo.
Methylphenidate given at 0.3 mg/kg body weight appears to be safe in the inpatient rehabilitation phase. This trial is registered with the Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (12607000503426).
Museum records indiscriminately use the term 'strouds' for all kinds of woollen trade cloth used in Native American artefacts. The term is frequently encountered in fur trade journals and literature ...of all kinds. Yet, in histories of the British woollen industry there seems to be little knowledge that this type of cloth was produced in England and specifically designed for Native American markets. This article outlines the importance and roles of strouds in Great Lakes Native people's fur trade fashions and develops a precise profile for its physical characteristics. It also examines the British coarse broadcloth industry in relation to the extant records of major fur trade companies. Insofar as possible, the article thereby traces the trajectories of strouds from their points of manufacture to their ultimate destinations in Native North America.
This study investigated the relations between age at injury (AAI) and attentional functioning, and intellectual and academic achievement following pediatric head injury. The theoretical framework of ...attention proposed by Mirsky, Anthony, Duncan, Ahern, and Kellam (1991) provided the basis for this analysis, and the profile of attention found in uninjured children was evaluated for this sample. Thirty-three moderately head-injured individuals were recruited, with AAI ranging from 1 to 12 years. First, the development of attentional skills in this closed head injury (CHI) sample was found to be comparable to that of Mirsky et al.'s model. Second, AAI did not predict outcome and appeared not to be associated with the finding of mildly delayed acquisition of spelling and arithmetic skills. Also, AAI did not predict the behavioral symptoms of inattention present in this sample as indicated by parental report. It may be that AAI only influences development following severe CHI in which there is permanent cerebral pathology.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Primary objective : Many studies investigating self-awareness following traumatic brain injury (TBI) have been conducted more than 2 years post-injury, thereby providing limited information regarding ...the implications of insight for rehabilitation. The present study aimed to investigate awareness of deficits in a group of patients who were less than 2 years post-injury and still involved in rehabilitation. Research design : Thirty patients with a history of moderate or severe TBI and their significant other (SO) were studied in a cross-sectional analysis. A sub-group also participated in an interdisciplinary Memory Group at the Bethesda Rehabilitation Centre. Methods and procedures : Level of insight was measured by the degree of agreement between self and significant other (SO) report on the Awareness of Deficit questionnaire (ADQ), assessing various domains of daily functioning. Results : There was substantial agreement between patients and their SO, although the patients with TBI were less likely to acknowledge executive problems. Interestingly, both groups reported only low-to-moderate levels of difficulty. Conclusions : The data indicate that SO's awareness may also be limited in the early recovery stages. A sub-group of the patients obtained benefit from participation in the Memory Group in a rehabilitation setting.
Quantitative approaches to the evaluation of model performance were recently examined by Fox (1981). His recommendations are briefly reviewed and a revised set of performance statistics is proposed. ...It is suggested that the correlation between model-predicted and observed data, commonly described by Pearson's product-moment correlation coefficient, is an insufficient and often misleading measure of accuracy. A complement of difference and summary univariate indices is presented as the nucleus of a more informative, albeit fundamentally descriptive, approach to model evaluation. Two models that estimate monthly evapotranspiration are comparatively evaluated in order to illustrate how the recommended method(s) can be applied.
We have implemented and evaluated a positron emission tomography (PET) demonstrator using two monolithic detector blocks operating in coincidence with dedicated application-specific integrated ...circuit (ASIC) readout. Each detector is composed of a monolithic lutetium yttrium orthosilicate (LYSO) scintillator coupled to a pair of Hamamatsu S8550-02 APD arrays. The front-end electronics of this demonstrator is based on the VATA240 ASIC readout, which sums the charge provided by each row and column of the APD array. The ASIC has been characterized obtaining a noise per row or column less than 2000 electrons rms with the APD at its inputs and a good linear response in the range from 5 fC to 30 fC. We have acquired energy spectra of 22 Na and 137 Cs radioactive sources, achieving energy resolutions between 13.2% and 14.1% full width at half maximum (FWHM) at 511 keV. We have estimated the interaction position over the surface of the monolithic blocks using Neural Networks (NN) position determining algorithms, obtaining spatial resolutions at the detector level down to 2.1 mm FWHM. By using this detector technology and electronics we have achieved images of point sources with spatial resolutions as good as 2.1 mm FWHM for filtered back projection (FBP) reconstructions methods with single slice rebinning (SSRB). Based on the results obtained with this demonstrator, we are developing a PET insert for existing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) equipment, to be installed in a collaborating hospital and used for clinical PET-MRI of the human brain.
We are developing a positron emission tomography (PET) insert for existing magnetic resonance (MR) equipment, aiming at hybrid MRaPET imaging. Our detector block design is based on trapezoid-shaped ...LYSO:Ce monolithic scintillators coupled to magnetically compatible Hamamatsu S8550-02 silicon avalanche photodiode (APD) matrices with a dedicated ASIC front-end readout from GammaMedica-Ideas (Fornebu, Norway). The detectors are position sensitive, capable of determining the incidence point of 511 keV gammas with an intrinsic spatial resolution on the order of 2 mm by means of supervised learning neural-network (NN) algorithms. These algorithms, apart from providing continuous coordinates, are also intrinsically corrected for depth of interaction effects and thus parallax-free. Recently we have implemented an advanced prototype featuring two heads with four detector blocks each and final front-end and readout electronics, improving the spatial resolution of reconstructed point source images down to 1.7 mm full width at half maximum (FWHM). Presently we are carrying out operational tests of components and systems under magnetic fields using a 3 T MR scanner. In this paper we present a description of our project, a summary of the results obtained with laboratory prototypes, and the strategy to build and install the complete system at the nuclear medicine department of a collaborating hospital.
We characterized 131 summer, diurnal bed sites of 26 elk (11 bulls and 15 cows) in Custer State Park, South Dakota, from 5 June–30 August 1994, 1995 and 1996. Overstory canopy closure, number and ...basal area of trees, percent litter and bare ground were greater (P < 0.05) at bed sites than at random plots. North aspects were selected (P < 0.05). Microsite air temperature and percent of grass were lower (P < 0.05) at bed sites than at random plots. Hiding cover, wind speed, percent of forbs, shrubs, rocks, and wood, slope percent, average tree dbh, elevation, distance to roads, distance to trails, and distance to water were not different between bed sites and random plots (P > 0.05). Trees were present at 128/131 (97.7%) of bed sites (0.01 ha square plot), but occurred on only 41.2% (54/131) of random plots. An average summer, diurnal elk bed site had basal area >12.4 m2/ha, >110 trees/ha, >54% canopy closure on N aspects. Overstory canopy closure, tree basal area and microsite temperature correctly classified 86.2% of the observations, suggesting thermoregulatory factors influenced CSP elk use of summer, diurnal bed sites. Although elk are successful in some unforested areas despite the lack of suitable thermal cover, our data suggest that elk in the Black Hills prefer relief sites that provide thermal bed sites when available during the summer diurnal period. Management of appropriate thermal cover should be maintained in areas in which it exists.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NMLJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
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