Muscle Hypertrophy in Prepubescent Tennis Players: A Segmentation MRI Study

PURPOSE: To asses if tennis at prepubertal age elicits the hypertrophy of dominant arm muscles. METHODS: The volume of the muscles of both arms was determined using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in 7 male prepubertal tennis players (TP) and 7 non-active control subjects (CG) (mean age 11.0 ± 0.8 years, Tanner 1-2). RESULTS: TP had 13% greater total muscle volume in the dominant than in the contralateral arm. The magnitude of inter-arm asymmetry was greater in TP than in CG (13 vs 3%, P<0.001). The dominant arm of TP was 16% greater than the dominant arm of CG (P<0.01), whilst non-dominant arms had similar total muscle volumes in both groups (P = 0.25), after accounting for height as covariate. In TP, dominant deltoid (11%), forearm supinator (55%) and forearm flexors (21%) and extensors (25%) were hypertrophied compared to the contralateral arm (P<0.05). In CG, the dominant supinator muscle was bigger than its contralateral homonimous (63%, P<0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Tennis at prepubertal age is associated with marked hypertrophy of the dominant arm, leading to a marked level of asymmetry (+13%), much greater than observed in non-active controls (+3%). Therefore, tennis particpation at prepubertal age is associated with increased muscle volumes in dominant compared to the non-dominant arm, likely due to selectively hypertrophy of the loaded muscles

Phonological representations in children wih SLI

It has been hypothesized that children with specific language impairment (SLI) have difficulty processing sound-based information, including storing and accessing phonological representations in the lexicon. Tasks are emerging in the literature that provide a measure of the quality of stored phonological representations, without requiring a verbal response. This article describes the performance of children with specific language impairment (SLI) (n = 21), typically developing children matched for age (n = 21), and typically developing children matched for language (n = 21) on two measures of phonological representations – the Quality of Phonological Representations (QPR) and the Silent Deletion of Phonemes (SDOP) – and a measure of phonological awareness, the Sutherland Phonological Awareness Test: Revised (SPAT-R). As predicted the age-matched (AM) group demonstrated significantly better performance on all tasks than the SLI group. The AM group performed significantly better than the language-matched (LM) group on the SDOP and SPAT tasks, but not significantly differently on the QPR task. The SLI group performed significantly better than the LM group on both the SDOP and SPAT, but their performance on the QPR was significantly weaker than the LM group. The findings of this study provide support for the notion of lower quality phonological representations in children with SLI thus placing them at increased risk of ongoing language and literacy difficulties

Habilidades em consciência silábica e fonêmica de crianças com fala desviante com e sem intervenção fonoaudiológica Syllabic and phonemic awareness abilities in children with speech disorder with and without speech therapy intervention

OBJETIVO: Comparar o desempenho de crianças com desvio fonológico evolutivo (DFE) que receberam intervenção fonoaudiológica com enfoque fonológico e de crianças com DFE que não receberam esta em habilidades de consciência fonológica (CF). MÉTODOS: Foram avaliados 23 sujeitos com diagnóstico de DFE, sendo que 14 crianças fizeram parte do Grupo de Estudo 1 (GE1), que recebeu terapia fonoaudiológica, e as outras nove fizeram parte do Grupo de Estudo 2 (GE2), que ainda não havia recebido fonoterapia. Todos os sujeitos foram submetidos à avaliação fonoaudiológica e da consciência fonológica. RESULTADOS: Das 26 sub-tarefas de CF aplicadas nos grupos de estudo, houve diferença estatisticamente significativa somente na tarefa T7-dissílabas (reversão silábica), confirmando o pior desempenho do GE2 (p<0,05). Porém, na análise das médias houve tendência a um melhor desempenho do GE1 em comparação ao GE2. Apesar desses resultados, mesmo os sujeitos que receberam intervenção fonoaudiológica tiveram desempenhos muito baixos. CONCLUSÕES: Houve diferença estatisticamente significante somente na sub-tarefa T7-dissílabas (reversão silábica) entre crianças com DFE que receberam intervenção fonoaudiológica e crianças com DFE que não receberam fonoterapia. Porém, notou-se uma tendência do grupo que recebeu terapia de ter um melhor desempenho nas tarefas de CF do que o grupo que não recebeu.<br>PURPOSE: To compare the performances of children with evolutive phonological disorder (EPD) that had phonologically-focused speech therapy and children with EPD who did not undergo therapy in phonological awareness (PA) abilities. METHODS: Twenty three subjects with EPD diagnosis were evaluated. The 14 children that composed Study Group 1 (SG1) received speech therapy, while the other nine who were part of Study Group 2 (SG2) had not yet received speech therapy. All subjects underwent speech and language pathology evaluation and PA assessment. RESULTS: From the 26 sub-tasks of PA applied, only one showed statistically significant difference, confirming worse performance of the SG2 (p<0.05). However, analysis of the means showed that SG1 tended to present a better performance overall than SG2. Despite these results, even subjects who received speech therapy intervention presented low performances on the tasks. CONCLUSION: Statistically significant difference was observed only in the sub-test T7-two syllables (syllabic reversion) among children with EPD who received speech intervention and children with EPD without speech therapy. However, the group who did attend speech therapy showed a tendency to achieve better performance in the PA tasks

Impact of soil moisture initialization on boreal summer subseasonal forecasts: mid-latitude surface air temperature and heat wave events

This study uses a global land-atmosphere coupled model, the land-atmosphere component of the Global Seasonal Forecast System version 5, to quantify the degree to which soil moisture initialization could potentially enhance boreal summer surface air temperature forecast skill. Two sets of hindcast experiments are performed by prescribing the observed sea surface temperature as the boundary condition for a 15-year period (1996-2010). In one set of the hindcast experiments (noINIT), the initial soil moisture conditions are randomly taken from a long-term simulation. In the other set (INIT), the initial soil moisture conditions are taken from an observation-driven offline Land Surface Model (LSM) simulation. The soil moisture conditions from the offline LSM simulation are calibrated using the forecast model statistics to minimize the inconsistency between the LSM and the land-atmosphere coupled model in their mean and variability. Results show a higher boreal summer surface air temperature prediction skill in INIT than in noINIT, demonstrating the potential benefit from an accurate soil moisture initialization. The forecast skill enhancement appears especially in the areas in which the evaporative fraction&amp;#8212;the ratio of surface latent heat flux to net surface incoming radiation&amp;#8212;is sensitive to soil moisture amount. These areas lie in the transitional regime between humid and arid climates. Examination of the extreme 2003 European and 2010 Russian heat wave events reveal that the regionally anomalous soil moisture conditions during the events played an important role in maintaining the stationary circulation anomalies, especially those near the surface