Home-Based Monitoring and Assessment of Parkinson's Disease

As a clinically complex neurodegenerative disease, Parkinson's disease (PD) requires regular assessment and close monitoring. In our current study, we have developed a home-based tool designed to monitor and assess peripheral motor symptoms. An evaluation of the tool was carried out over a period of ten weeks on ten people with idiopathic PD. Participants were asked to use the tool twice daily over four days, once when their medication was working at its best (

Qualifications, examinations and assessment: views and perspectives of students in the 14–19 phase on policy and practice

This paper brings to the forefront students’ views on one of the most significant aspects of education in the 14-19 phase, specifically the qualifications, examinations and assessment they experience. In this respect the paper foregrounds students as ‘policy actors’, they are significant players in the mediation of national qualification systems rather than just subjects in their implementation. Data from a national dataset of focus groups with 243 students from the 14-19 phase is presented. Key themes are highlighted relating to young people’s experiences of qualifications, examinations and assessment at this stage of education in a context of continuous initiatives and change as well as the impact of students being on the receiving end of qualification reform in situ which can be confusing, unsettling and ultimately detrimental to future success.

Specific Newborn Individualized Developmental Care and Assessment Program movements are associated with acute pain in preterm infants in the neonatal intensive care unit

The Newborn Individualized Developmental Care and Assessment Program (NIDCAP) is widely used in neonatal intensive care units and comprises 85 discrete infant behaviors, some of which may communicate infant distress. The objective of this study was to identify developmentally relevant movements indicative of pain in preterm infants.

THE CUE-RESPONSIVITY PHENOMENON IN DEPENDENT DRINKERS - PERSONALITY VULNERABILITY AND ANXIETY AS INTERVENING VARIABLES

The cue-responsivity phenomenon to alcohol-associated stimuli in dependent drinkers was examined. In accordance with previous research, significant differences on both physiological and subjective cue-responsivity variables, between dependent and non-dependent drinkers were found. The unique contribution of this paper is two-fold. Firstly, evidence is presented which suggests that the Eysenckian personality traits of introversion and neuroticism are more predictive of cue-responsivity variance in the dependent drinkers than either severity of dependence or number of years' drinking. Secondly, within this dependent group, the relationship between cue-responsivity and 'craving' was seen to be less straightforward than traditionally thought. Specifically, it suggested that it was the extent to which autonomic cue-responsivity elicited increases in self-reported anxiety, which predicted most of the variance on the 'craving' variable. Taken together, these results raise the interesting possibility that a personality disposition akin to trait anxiety, and the degree to which cue exposure elicits state anxiety, mediated the relationship between cue-responsivity and 'craving' in dependent drinkers.