Effectiveness of structured exercises on motor skills, physical fitness and attention in children with ADHD compared to typically developing children-A pilot study.

PURPOSE: Children with ADHD exhibit decrements in fitness levels, motor skill ability and attention. The purpose was to evaluate the benefits of a structured, school-based exercise program on motor skill, physical fitness and attention in children with ADHD. METHOD: Ten 8-12 year old school boys with ADHD and ten typically developing (TD) were recruited. They underwent a six week structured exercise program which included aerobics, resistance exercises, motor skills and attention training. RESULTS: Following the 6 week, school -based exercise program significant improvements in physical fitness, motor skills and attention were observed in ADHD children compared to the TD children. Additionally, the exercise sessions were acceptable and enjoyable to all children. CONCLUSION: It is proposed that an exercise program be incorporated in school physical education curriculum. Exercises should be considered, in addition to other forms of intervention, as an essential treatment for improving problems associated with ADHD in school children.

Detection of pneumonia infection in lungs from chest X-ray images using deep convolutional neural network and content-based image retrieval techniques.

In this research, A Deep Convolutional Neural Network was proposed to detect Pneumonia infection in the lung using Chest X-ray images. The proposed Deep CNN models were trained with a Pneumonia Chest X-ray Dataset containing 12,000 images of infected and not infected chest X-ray images. The dataset was preprocessed and developed from the Chest X-ray8 dataset. The Content-based image retrieval technique was used to annotate the images in the dataset using Metadata and further contents. The data augmentation techniques were used to increase the number of images in each of class. The basic manipulation techniques and Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Network (DCGAN) were used to create the augmented images. The VGG19 network was used to develop the proposed Deep CNN model. The classification accuracy of the proposed Deep CNN model was 99.34 percent in the unseen chest X-ray images. The performance of the proposed deep CNN was compared with state-of-the-art transfer learning techniques such as AlexNet, VGG16Net and InceptionNet. The comparison results show that the classification performance of the proposed Deep CNN model was greater than the other techniques.

Description of interventions is under-reported in physical therapy clinical trials.

BACKGROUND: Amongst several barriers to the application of quality clinical evidence and clinical guidelines into routine daily practice, poor description of interventions reported in clinical trials has received less attention. Although some studies have investigated the completeness of descriptions of non-pharmacological interventions in randomized trials, studies that exclusively analyzed physical therapy interventions reported in published trials are scarce. OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the quality of descriptions of interventions in both experimental and control groups in randomized controlled trials published in four core physical therapy journals. METHODS: We included all randomized controlled trials published from the Physical Therapy Journal, Journal of Physiotherapy, Clinical Rehabilitation, and Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation between June 2012 and December 2013. Each randomized controlled trial (RCT) was analyzed and coded for description of interventions using the checklist developed by Schroter et al. RESULTS: Out of 100 RCTs selected, only 35 RCTs (35%) fully described the interventions in both the intervention and control groups. Control group interventions were poorly described in the remaining RCTs (65%). CONCLUSIONS: Interventions, especially in the control group, are poorly described in the clinical trials published in leading physical therapy journals. A complete description of the intervention in a published report is crucial for physical therapists to be able to use the intervention in clinical practice.

Diatom-based label-free optical biosensor for biomolecules.

Diatoms are unicellular algae, which fabricates ornate biosilica shells called frustules that possess a surface rich in reactive silanol (Si-OH) groups. The intrinsic patterned porous structure of diatom frustules at nanoscale can be exploited in the effective detection of biomolecules. In this study, the frustules of a specific diatom Amphora sp. has been functionalized to detect bovine serum albumin (BSA). The functionalization of the diatom frustule substrate is achieved by using 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APES). The field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) results showed an ornately patterned surface of the frustule valve ordered at nanoscale. The Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectra confirmed the N-H bending and stretching of the amine group after amine functionalization. The emission peaks in the photoluminescence (PL) spectra of the amine-functionalized diatom biosilica selectively enhanced the intensity by a factor of ten when compared to that of a bare diatom biosilica. The result showed a significant quenching of PL intensity of BSA at around 445 nm due to the interaction of amine-functionalized diatom-BSA protein complex. The detection limit was found to be 3 × 10(-5) M of BSA protein. Hence, the study proves that the functionalized frustule of Amphora sp. is an effective quantitative analytical tool for optical label-free biosensing applications.

Antibacterial and antifungal properties of human cerumen.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the antibacterial and antifungal properties of human cerumen by studying its effect on the growth of Staphylococcus aureus, Esherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Candida albicans. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Cerumen samples were collected from 75 normal, healthy subjects aged from seven to 80 years, without ear pathology, who attended the ear, nose and throat out-patient clinic of the University Malaya Medical Center from May 2006 to October 2006. Of these 75 samples, 31 had no growth when cultured on nutrient agar. Inhibition studies on these 31 samples were performed for Staphylococcus aureus (American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) 25923), Esherichia coli (ATCC 25922), Pseudomonas aeruginosa (ATCC 27853) and Candida albicans. Nutrient agar was used to conserve all three bacterial strains and Sabouraud dextrose agar was used for Candida albicans. RESULTS: A decrease in Staphylococcus aureus growth was observed for 27 of the 31 samples. All 31 samples induced decreased growth of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, while 29 induced decreased growth of Candida albicans. However, only four samples induced decreased growth of Escherichia coli. CONCLUSIONS: Cerumen was demonstrated to have potential antimicrobial effects on strains of Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Candida albicans.