Task demand effects on postural control in older adults

The literature shows conflicting results regarding older adults' (OA) postural control performance. Differing task demands amongst scientific studies may contribute to such ambiguous results. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the performance of postural control in older adults and the relationship between visual information and body sway as a function of task demands. Old and young adults (YA) maintained an upright stance on different bases of support (normal, tandem and reduced), both with and without vision, and both with and without room movement. In the more demanding tasks, the older adults displayed greater body sway than the younger adults and older adults were more influenced by the manipulation of the visual information due to the room movement. However, in the normal support condition, the influence of the moving room was similar for the two groups. These results suggest that task demand is an important aspect to consider when examining postural control in older adults. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Effects of saccadic eye movements on postural control in older adults

Saccadic eye movements have been shown to affect posture by decreasing the magnitude of body sway in young adults. However, there is no evidence of how the search for visual information that occurs during eye movements affects postural control in older adults. The purpose of the present study was to determine the influence of saccadic eye movements on postural control in older adults while they stood on 2 different bases of support. Twelve older adults stood upright in 70-s trials under 2 stance conditions (wide and narrow) and 3 gaze conditions (fixation, saccadic eye movements at 0.5 Hz, and saccadic eye movements at 1.1 Hz). Head and trunk sway amplitude and mean sway frequency were measured in both the anterior/posterior (AP) and medial/lateral (ML) directions. The results showed that the amplitude of body sway was reduced during saccades compared with fixation, as previously observed in young adults. However, older adults exhibited similar sway amplitude and frequency in the AP direction under the wide and narrow stance conditions, which is different from observations in young adults, who display larger sway in a narrow stance compared with a wide stance while performing saccades. These results suggest that although older adults are affected by saccadic eye movements by a decrease in the amplitude of body sway, as observed in young adults, they present a more rigid postural control strategy that does not allow larger sway during a more challenging stance condition.

Longitudinal brain volumetric changes during one year in non-elderly healthy adults: a voxel-based morphometry study

Previous cross-sectional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies of healthy aging in young adults have indicated the presence of significant inverse correlations between age and gray matter volumes, although not homogeneously across all brain regions. However, such cross-sectional studies have important limitations and there is a scarcity of detailed longitudinal MRI studies with repeated measures obtained in the same individuals in order to investigate regional gray matter changes during short periods of time in non-elderly healthy adults. In the present study, 52 healthy young adults aged 18 to 50 years (27 males and 25 females) were followed with repeated MRI acquisitions over approximately 15 months. Gray matter volumes were compared between the two times using voxel-based morphometry, with the prediction that volume changes would be detectable in the frontal lobe, temporal neocortex and hippocampus. Voxel-wise analyses showed significant (P < 0.05, family-wise error corrected) relative volume reductions of gray matter in two small foci located in the right orbitofrontal cortex and left hippocampus. Separate comparisons for males and females showed bilateral gray matter relative reductions in the orbitofrontal cortex over time only in males. We conclude that, in non-elderly healthy adults, subtle gray matter volume alterations are detectable after short periods of time. This underscores the dynamic nature of gray matter changes in the brain during adult life, with regional volume reductions being detectable in brain regions that are relevant to cognitive and emotional processes.

"Love you two" di Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli: Tradurre un romanzo Young Adult di un'autrice italo-australiana

Lo scopo di questa Tesi di Laurea è quello di offrire una proposta di traduzione in italiano del romanzo LGBTQ per Young Adults Love You Two, di Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli. Quest'opera esplora temi delicati, come la bisessualità e il poliamore, dal punto di vista di una adolescente che scopre la propria identità e quella della sua famiglia italo-australiana. Questo studio fornisce inoltre una panoramica del contesto socio-culturale e letterario in cui il romanzo è stato pubblicato. Oltre ad esaminare le caratteristiche del libro, come genere letterario e tipologia, intenzionalità dell'autore, tematiche, funzione, stile e pubblico, si offre un'analisi dettagliata della strategia applicata nel processo traduttivo, che tende a conferire al testo un leggero effetto straniante, tale da evidenziarne le specificità culturale. La presente ricerca è stata condotta in parte in Australia presso la University of Melbourne e la Deakin University e si configura come un tentativo di mostrare la necessità e la possibilità di tradurre e pubblicare letteratura LGBT per ragazzi e ragazze in Italia.

Habibi. Proposta di traduzione di un romanzo young adult

This dissertation intends to present and analyse the translation from English into Italian of the first twenty-five chapters of Habibi, a teenager and young adult’s novel written by the Palestinian-American author Naomi Shihab Nye. It has been necessary to present the theoretical approach to the literary translation studies, in order to focus the attention on the translation problems and provide suitable solutions and strategies. The first chapter gives an historical perspective on children’s literature from the end of the Nineteenth century till today, distinguishing the Italian and the American contexts. The description of the evolution process of this literary genre, which developed to satisfy the needs of the educational system, is its central issue. At the end of the chapter, we outline the main traits characterizing children’s literature and the image of the ideal reader. The second chapter provides an overview on Palestinian literature, especially on the features of the contemporary novel and the Diaspora literature. Afterwards, we present the author Naomi Shihab Nye and the book Habibi. In the third chapter we analyze the novel, focusing the attention on the rhythm of the narration, on the linguistic registers and the textual peculiarities found during the reading stage, according to the features of the children’s literature. The fourth chapter consists of the translation of the first twenty-five chapters of the novel. The fifth chapter begins with a section about the translation theory, the literary translation studies, focusing on the translation of children’s literature. Finally, there is the translation analysis. Here we present the strategies and the choices of the translation process, along with some practical examples with reference to theoretical studies. Special attention is paid to culture-specific items, lexicon and syntax.The source text can be found in appendix.

Contextual Information and Memory for Unfamiliar Tunes in Older and Younger Adults

We examined age differences in the effectiveness of multiple repetitions and providing associative facts on tune memory. For both tune and fact recognition, three presentations were beneficial. Age was irrelevant in fact recognition, but older adults were less successful than younger in tune recognition. The associative fact did not affect young adults' performance. Among older people, the neutral association harmed performance; the emotional fact mitigated performance back to baseline. Young adults seemed to rely solely on procedural memory, or repetition, to learn tunes. Older adults benefitted by using emotional associative information to counteract memory burdens imposed by neutral associative information.

Surgical technique: The capsular arthroplasty: a useful but abandoned procedure for young patients with developmental dysplasia of the hip

Codivilla in 1901, Hey Groves in 1926, and Colonna in 1932 described similar capsular arthroplasties--wrapping the capsule around the femoral head and reducing into the true acetabulum--to treat completely dislocated hips in children with dysplastic hips. However, these procedures were associated with relatively high rates of necrosis, joint stiffness, and subsequent revision procedures, and with the introduction of THA, the procedure vanished despite some hips with high functional scores over periods of up to 20 years. Dislocated or subluxated hips nonetheless continue to be seen in adolescents and young adults, and survival curves of THA decrease faster for young patients than for patients older than 60 years. Therefore, joint preservation with capsular arthroplasty may be preferable if function can be restored and complication rates reduced.

Youth and Young Adult Homelessness in Worcester, Massachusetts:

Supporting Worcester’s ongoing effort to understand and address youth and young adult homelessness, the Community Roundtable on Youth Homelessness in conjunction with the Compass Project and Clark University conducted the fourth annual Point-in-Time Survey during October of 2012. Young people were surveyed at city shelters, youth programs, outside of schools, in parks, and on the streets of Worcester. Out of the 753 young people (ages 13to 25) surveyed, 120 (16%) dentified as homeless. We define homeless to include young people in shelters, staying with others temporarily (i.e. couch surfing) or on the streets. In addition to these 120 young people, another 220 youth who were housed reported that they had a friend who was homeless. As in prior years, when compared to their housed counterparts in the study, homeless youth: Have experienced more residential instability and family conflict; Have more precarious income situations; Are more likely to have children; Are more likely to have had involvement with the foster care and/or juvenile justice systems; and Have faced more barriers accessing services.

Hospital use of young children in Switzerland: a nation-wide study based on a complete survey over 4 years

Background Young children are known to be the most frequent hospital users compared to older children and young adults. Therefore, they are an important population from economic and policy perspectives of health care delivery. In Switzerland complete hospitalization discharge records for children [<5 years] of four consecutive years [2002–2005] were evaluated in order to analyze variation in patterns of hospital use. Methods Stationary and outpatient hospitalization rates on aggregated ZIP code level were calculated based on census data provided by the Swiss federal statistical office (BfS). Thirty-seven hospital service areas for children [HSAP] were created with the method of "small area analysis", reflecting user-based health markets. Descriptive statistics and general linear models were applied to analyze the data. Results The mean stationary hospitalization rate over four years was 66.1 discharges per 1000 children. Hospitalizations for respiratory problem are most dominant in young children (25.9%) and highest hospitalization rates are associated with geographical factors of urban areas and specific language regions. Statistical models yielded significant effect estimates for these factors and a significant association between ambulatory/outpatient and stationary hospitalization rates. Conclusion The utilization-based approach, using HSAP as spatial representation of user-based health markets, is a valid instrument and allows assessing the supply and demand of children's health care services. The study provides for the first time estimates for several factors associated with the large variation in the utilization and provision of paediatric health care resources in Switzerland.

Social inequality and smoking in young Swiss men: intergenerational transmission of cultural capital and health orientation

OBJECTIVES Smoking is related to income and education and contributes to social inequality in morbidity and mortality. Socialisation theories focus on one's family of origin as regards acquisition of norms, attitudes and behaviours. Aim of this study is to assess associations of daily smoking with health orientation and academic track in young Swiss men. Further, to assess associations of health orientation and academic track with family healthy lifestyle, parents' cultural capital, and parents' economic capital. METHODS Cross-sectional data were collected during recruitment for compulsory military service in Switzerland during 2010 and 2011. A structural equation model was fitted to a sample of 18- to 25-year-old Swiss men (N = 10,546). RESULTS Smoking in young adults was negatively associated with academic track and health orientation. Smoking was negatively associated with parents' cultural capital through academic track. Smoking was negatively associated with health orientation which in turn was positively associated with a healthy lifestyle in the family of origin. CONCLUSIONS Results suggest two different mechanisms of intergenerational transmissions: first, the family transmission path of health-related dispositions, and secondly, the structural transmission path of educational inequality.

Balancing on a slackline: 8-year-olds vs. adults

Children are less stable than adults during static upright stance. We investigated whether the same holds true for a task that was novel for both children and adults and highly dynamic: single-legged stance on a slackline. We compared 8-year-olds with young adults and assessed the following outcome measures: time on the slackline, stability on the slack-line (calculated from slackline reaction force), gaze movement, head-in-space rotation and translation, trunk-in-space rotation, and head-on-trunk rotation. Eight-year-olds fell off the slackline quicker and were generally less stable on the slackline than adults. Eight-year-olds also showed more head-in-space rotation and translation, and more gaze variability around a visual anchor point they were instructed to fixate. Trunk-in-space and head-on-trunk rotations did not differ between groups. The results imply that the lower postural stability of 8-year-olds compared to adults – as found in simple upright stance – holds true for dynamic, novel tasks in which adults lack the advantage of more practice. They also suggest that the lack of head and gaze stability constitutes an important limiting factor in children’s ability to master such tasks

Does cigarette smoking modify the association between change in body mass index during young adulthood and risk of coronary mortality during middle-age in men? Twenty-five year follow-up results from the Chicago Western Electric Study

Many persons in the U.S. gain weight during young adulthood, and the prevalence of obesity has been increasing among young adults. Although obesity and physical inactivity are generally recognized as risk factors for coronary heart disease (CHD), the magnitude of their effect on risk may have been seriously underestimated due to failure to adequately handle the problem of cigarette smoking. Since cigarette smoking causes weight loss, physically inactive cigarette smokers may remain relatively lean because they smoke cigarettes. We hypothesize cigarette smoking modifies the association between weight gain during young adulthood and risk of coronary heart disease during middle age, and that the true effect of weight gain during young adulthood on risk of CHD can be assessed only in persons who have not smoked cigarettes. Specifically, we hypothesize that weight gain during young adulthood is positively associated with risk of CHD during middle-age in nonsmokers but that the association is much smaller or absent entirely among cigarette smokers. The purpose of this study was to test this hypothesis. The population for analysis was comprised of 1,934 middle-aged, employed men whose average age at the baseline examination was 48.7 years. Information collected at the baseline examinations in 1958 and 1959 included recalled weight at age 20, present weight, height, smoking status, and other CHD risk factors. To decrease the effect of intraindividual variation, the mean values of the 1958 and 1959 baseline examinations were used in analyses. Change in body mass index ($\Delta$BMI) during young adulthood was the primary exposure variable and was measured as BMI at baseline (kg/m$\sp2)$ minus BMI at age 20 (kg/m$\sp2).$ Proportional hazards regression analysis was used to generate relative risks of CHD mortality by category of $\Delta$BMI and cigarette smoking status after adjustment for age, family history of CVD, major organ system disease, BMI at age 20, and number of cigarettes smoked per day. Adjustment was not performed for systolic blood pressure or total serum cholesterol as these were regarded as intervening variables. Vital status was known for all men on the 25th anniversary of their baseline examinations. 705 deaths (including 319 CHD deaths) occurred over 40,136 person-years of experience. $\Delta$BMI was positively associated with risk of CHD mortality in never-smokers, but not in ever-smokers (p for interaction = 0.067). For never-smokers with $\Delta$BMI of stable, low gain, moderate gain, and high gain, adjusted relative risks were 1.00, 1.62, 1.61, and 2.78, respectively (p for trend = 0.010). For ever-smokers, with $\Delta$BMI of stable, low gain, moderate gain, and high gain, adjusted relative risks were 1.00, 0.74, 1.07, and 1.06, respectively (p for trend = 0.422). These results support the research hypothesis that cigarette smoking modifies the association between weight gain and CHD mortality. Current estimates of the magnitude of effect of obesity and physical inactivity on risk of coronary mortality may have been seriously underestimated due to inadequate handling of cigarette smoking. ^

Depression in early adulthood: prevalence and psychosocial correlates among young Swiss men

QUESTION UNDER STUDY Depression in young adults is common, but data from Switzerland are scarce. Our study gives a point prevalence estimate of depression in young Swiss men, and describes the association between depression and education, material and social resources, and job/school satisfaction. METHODS We used data from the cross-sectional Swiss Federal Surveys of Adolescents (ch-x) from 2010 to 2011 comprising 9,066 males aged between 18 and 25 years. Depression was assessed by means of self-reports using the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9). Persons were categorised into three groups: depression, subthreshold depression, and no depression. We assessed the relationship between depression and education, material and social resources, and satisfaction with job/school. Differences according to depression status were tested with chi-square tests for categorical variables and one-way analyses of variance for continuous variables. RESULTS Point prevalence of depression (3.60%) and subthreshold depression (3.62%) was high. Poor mental health was associated with lower education in young adults (p <0.001), and with their parents' education (p = 0.024). Social resources in persons with depression and subthreshold depression were substantially reduced (i.e., social support and satisfaction with social relations; both p <0.001). Young men with depression and subthreshold depression also reported a current lack of satisfaction with job/school (p <0.001). CONCLUSIONS Prevalence of (subthreshold) depression is high in young Swiss men. Depression at this age might result in a bad long-term prognosis owing to its association with low satisfaction with job/school and low self-efficacy. Interventions should especially consider the lower social resources of young men with depression.

Scarring Effects of Early Unemployment among Young Workers with Vocational Credentials in Switzerland

Background Using a unique, longitudinal survey that follows school-to-work transitions of pupils who participated in PISA 2000, this paper investigates adverse consequences, so-called scarring effects, of early unemployment among young adults who acquired vocational credentials in Switzerland. Methods As social, individual and contextual factors influence both early unemployment and later employment outcomes, taking into account endogeneity is of utmost importance when investigating scarring effects. In this regard we make use of nearest-neighbour propensity score matching and set up statistical control groups. Results Our results suggest that young adults who hold vocational credentials are more likely to be neither in employment nor in education, and to earn less and be more dissatisfied with their career progress later in work life than they would be, had they not experienced early unemployment. Conclusions We conclude that unemployment scarring also affects young adults with vocational credentials in a liberal labour market setting that otherwise allows for smooth school-to-work transitions. This finding runs counter to expectations that standardised vocational degrees, a liberal and flexible labour market structure, and predominantly short unemployment spells protect young skilled workers from scarring in case they happen to experience early career instability.

Interferon-gamma release assays for latent tuberculosis infection in child and young adult candidates or recipients of tumor necrosis factor inhibitor therapy

Background. Inhibition of tumor necrosis factor (TNF) is associated with progression of latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) to active disease. LTBI screening prior to starting TNF inhibitor therapy is recommended. Blood tests, collectively known as interferon-gamma release assays (IGRAs), offer a means other than the tuberculin skin test (TST) of screening for LTBI. However, in the setting of immune compromise, anergy may limit the clinical utility of IGRAs. ^ Methods. A cross-sectional study was conducted in children and young adults ≤ 21 years of age who were cared for at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston, TX, during 2011 and who were candidates for, or were receiving, tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-inhibitor therapy. All subjects answered a risk factor questionnaire and were tested for LTBI by two commercially available IGRAs (QuantiFERON-Gold In-Tube assay and the T-SPOT.TB assay), along with the TST. T-cell phenotypes were evaluated through flow cytometry, both at baseline and after antigen stimulation. ^ Results. Twenty-eight subjects were enrolled. All were TST negative and none were IGRA positive. Results were negative for the 27 subjects who were tested with QuantiFERON-Gold In-Tube. However, 26% of subjects demonstrated anergy in the T-SPOT.T. Patients with T-SPOT. TB anergy had lower quantitative IFN-γ responses to mitogen in the QFT assay—the mean IFN-γ level to mitogen in patients without T-SPOT.TB anergy was 9.84 IU/ml compared to 6.91 IU/ml in patients with T-SPOT.TB anergy (P = 0.046). Age and use of TNF inhibitors, corticosteroids, or methotrexate use were not significantly associated with T-SPOT.TB anergy. Antigen stimulation revealed depressed expression of intracellular IFN-γ in subjects with T-SPOT. TB anergy. ^ Conclusions. The frequency of anergy in this population is higher than would be expected from studies in adults. There appears to be inappropriate IFN-γ responses to antigen in subjects with T-SPOT. TB anergy. This immune defect was detected by the T-SPOT. TB assay but not by the QuantiFERON-Gold In-Tube assay. Further data are needed to clarify the utility of IGRAs in this population.^