Making every contact count for physical activity : equipping tomorrow's physiotherapists to deliver high quality physical activity interventions.

Aims: To address physical inactivity as a key, modifiable risk factor for morbidity, disease related disability, and early mortality and to highlight the potential contribution of future physiotherapists to this national public health priority. The objectives of the project were threefold; (i) to create high quality teaching resources on physical activity and long term conditions , (ii) to support Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to achieve excellence in their delivery of undergraduate physical activity learning, (iii) to equip student physiotherapists to deliver evidence-based interventions to increase physical activity in people with long term conditions. Methods: In 2014 Exercise Works! developed resources for all UK undergraduate medical degrees on exercise medicine and chronic disease. In September 2015, these resources were made available for all undergraduate nursing, midwifery and allied health professions courses internationally. The teaching resources are a series of approximately 30 presentations that cover topics relevant to physical activity and long term conditions, titles include "Cancer and physical activity" "Obesity and exercise" "Diabetes and exercise" and "Dementia and exercise". The resources are securely housed on the web and are editable to enable HEIs to adapt them to suit their needs. Sheffield Hallam University is an example of one HEI that has integrated the resources into its undergraduate curriculum. A webfolio has been created that houses the resources and approximately 300 physiotherapy students now have secure access. This augments the existing delivery of physical activity and exercise in long term conditions within the undergraduate physiotherapy curriculum. Outcomes: Evaluation of the quality of the resources was funded by Public Health England and carried out by The University of Nottingham. An international panel of experts concluded that the resources rated highly for relevance, evidence-base and for the clarity and relevance of the learning outcomes. The resources are now being used nationally and internationally. Over 400 secure resource downloads from schools of medicine and health have been recorded. The resources have been successfully embedded at Sheffield Hallam University and evaluation of one module shows that 58% of students surveyed had accessed the resources and all felt that it complimented the module. Students gave a mean score of 7/10 for overall quality. Conclusions: Physical inactivity is a national public health priority and promoting physical activity is a key competence in contemporary health care. Next steps include encouraging other HEIs to use the resources and encouraging adoption by other health care profession courses. This innovative project has secured the prominence of physical activity and exercise content in undergraduate curricula. In doing so it has helped to equip tomorrow´s physiotherapists to address non-communicable diseases and physical inactivity. Take home message: This special interest report shows how partnership working can enhance undergraduate curricula. It highlights the need for curricula to reflect contemporary healthcare issues

Morphology of coastal lagoon entrances: waves versus tides

Lagoon inlets and river entrances on sandy coasts are shaped by waves, tides and freshwater outflows interacting subject to geological constraints. In dimensionless terms the relative importance of fresh water discharge Q versus peak tidal discharge Q is quantified simply by Q/Q, where the tidal peak discharge may be taken either as the actual Q = ωaA corresponding to the actual bay tidal amplitude aB or the potential Q = ωaA, which is based on the ocean tide amplitude aO. ω is the tidal angular frequency and A is the bay surface area at mid tide. The quantification of the relative strength of waves versus tides is less obvious and has not previously been clearly resolved. The case is made here for it being quantified by (Equation presented), where tidal dominance resulting in the canonical funnel shaped estuary occurs for (Equation presented) and, at the other end of the spectrum, intermittently open/closed systems (ICOLLS) occur for (Equation presented) denotes the average offshore significant wave height and g is acceleration due to gravity. More comprehensive data may lead to the inclusion of the wave period as well as the wave height in future formulations

Inlet morpho-dynamics during a storm event inferred from tidal records: a case study of the Brunswick River, NSW, Australia

A 24.5h moving window is used to analyse storm effects on the tidal dynamics. Compared to earlier studies using window lengths varying between 2h (for tsunami analysis) to 14 days for tidal inlet analysis, the present method provides good resolution of variations of hydraulic efficiency during storms or floods. The importance of de-trending before carrying out the harmonics analysis has been studied and it was found to be highly important. De-trending involved removing the 24.5h mean before harmonic analysis. The main results are the morphodynamic timescale Tmorph and the varying response functions F1 and F2 of the diurnal and semi-diurnal tidal constituents through a storm event at the Brunswick River, Australia. Tmorph is inferred from time series of primary semi-diurnal gain G2(t) = |F2 | with an exp(-t/Tmorph) curve fit. The results show only insignificant morphological change. Thus, the changes in tidal response for this medium sized catchment are mainly due to hydraulic effects. These include the influence of river flow Qf via the non-linear friction term and increased estuary surface area during the flood. The traces of both F1(t) and F2(t) in the complex plane show an equilibrium before the storm, dynamic change during the storm and relaxation mimicked by exp(-t/Tmorph) after the storm

Effect of obesity on knee joint biomechanics during gait in young adults

This article is MacLean, K. F. E., Callaghan, J. P., & Maly, M. R. (2016). Effect of obesity on knee joint biomechanics during gait in young adults. Cogent Medicine, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/2331205X.2016.1173778While there are many comorbidities associated with obesity, one of the more poorly understood is knee osteoarthritis through obesity. The purpose of this study was to compare the kinematics and kinetics of gait and cumulative knee adductor load, which represents the sum of repetitive exposures to medial knee loading during daily activity, between young obese adults with young, healthy-weight adults. Eight obese and eight healthy-weight young adults participated. Data from a three-dimensional motion capture system and a synchronized floor-mounted force plate were collected during gait trials. Participants wore accelerometers to determine step counts for seven consecutive days. Dependent t-tests were used to identify differences in gait kinematics, kinetics and cumulative knee adductor load between groups. Compared to the healthy-weight participants, obese young adults demonstrated a slower walking speed, greater stance duration, less knee flexion at heel contact, greater knee adduction in early stance and less knee abduction at terminal stance (p < 0.05). The obese young adults had a greater external knee extension moment (p < 0.05) and external rotation moment (p < 0.05) in early stance. The obese group had a greater cumulative knee adductor load. These results provide insight into a potential pathway by which obesity predisposes a healthy young adult for knee osteoarthritis.This research is supported by Canada Research Chairs, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canad

Automated Histological Analysis System for Quantifying Microstructural Damage Accumulation to the Annulus Fibrosus

Ben Daya, I., Noguchi, M., Callaghan, J. P., & Wong, A. (2016). Automated Histological Analysis System for Quantifying Microstructural Damage Accumulation to the Annulus Fibrosus. Journal of Computational Vision and Imaging Systems, 2(1). Retrieved from http://openjournals.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/vsl/article/view/100In this paper, we proposed an automated histological analysis system for quantifying microstructural damage accumulation to the annulus fibrosus. This system takes in a digital histology image and uses Gaussian mixture model based segmentation, followed by connected components analysis to extract and label possible clefts. The image is then refined through spatial and size constraints. Finally, the required statistics for quantifying microstructural damage are calculated.This research was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Canada Research Chairs Program, and the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation

An exploration of predictors of children's nurses' attitudes, knowledge, confidence and clinical behavioural intentions towards children and young people who self-harm

Aims and objectives: To explore the potential predictors of children's nurses? attitudes, knowledge and confidence towards caring for children and young people admitted to hospital with self-harm. Background Admissions to paediatric inpatient settings for individuals who have self-harmed are growing. Limited previous research suggests that nurses have mixed attitudes towards people who have self-harmed and potentially lack the confidence to provide effective care. There is a specific paucity of research in this area for children's nurses. Design: A cross-sectional descriptive survey was used to gather data for exploration of variables associated with attitudes, confidence, knowledge and clinical behavioural intentions of 98 registered children's nurses in a single tertiary children's hospital, colocated in a large acute NHS Trust in the UK. Methods: Data were collected over a 4 weeks in 2015, using an online survey tool. The predictive effect of several demographic variables was tested on the outcomes of attitudes, knowledge, confidence and behavioural intentions, which were collected using relevant, previously used outcome measures. Results: Increased experience was found to be associated with improved attitudes relating to negativity. Previous training in caring for children who had self-harmed was found to be associated with improved attitudes around perceived effectiveness of their care. Higher academic qualifications and having undertaken previous training on self-harm were each found to be associated with increased knowledge of self-harm, and increased age was associated with reduced knowledge of self-harm. Conclusions: This study provides an initial exploration of variables associated with attitudes, knowledge, confidence and behaviour intentions of registered children's nurses in relation to caring for CYP who have self-harmed. Relevance to clinical practice: Targeted training on caring for CYP who have self-harmed should be considered as a component of continuing education for registered children's nurses in the UK to improve the experience and outcomes for this patient group

Dynamic decoherence control of a solid-state nuclear quadrupole qubit

We report on the application of a dynamic decoherence control pulse sequence on a nuclear quadrupole transition in $Pr^{3+}:Y_2SiO_5$ . Process tomography is used to analyse the effect of the pulse sequence. The pulse sequence was found to increase the decoherence time of the transition to over 30 seconds. Although the decoherence time was significantly increased, the population terms were found to rapidly decay on the application of the pulse sequence. The increase of this decay rate is attributed to inhomogeneity in the ensemble. Methods to circumvent this limit are discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figure

The impact of compressive force magnitude on the in vitro neutral zone range and passive stiffness during a flexion–extension range of motion test

Noguchi, M., Gooyers, C. E., Holmes, M. W. R., & Callaghan, J. P. (2015). The impact of compressive force magnitude on the in vitro neutral zone range and passive stiffness during a flexion-extension range of motion test. Cogent Engineering, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/23311916.2015.1014253The objective of this work was to examine the influence of compressive force magnitude on a functional spinal unit’s (FSU) flexion–extension neutral zone measured during pure moment (PM) tests. Each porcine cervical FSU received four repeats of a PM test with 10, 300, 900 and 1,800 N of compressive force, in a randomized order. Increasing the magnitude of compression significantly decreased the neutral zone range (p < 0.001), while increasing passive stiffness (p < 0.001). The flexion limit at 10 N was significantly lower (p < 0.05) than the other loading conditions. Reporting the compressive force magnitude is important when posture is a standardized experimental factor considered in the design of in vitro spine biomechanics studies.The authors acknowledge partial funding from the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). Dr. Jack Callaghan is supported by the Canada Research Chair in Spine Biomechanics and Injury Preventio

Geochemical modeling of magmatic gas scrubbing

The EQ3/6 software package, version 7.2 was successfully used to model scrubbing of magmatic gas by pure water at 0.1 MPa, in the liquid and liquid-plus-gas regions. Some post-calculations were necessary to account for gas separation effects. In these post-calculations, redox potential was considered to be fixed by precipitation of crystalline a-sulfur, a ubiquitous and precocious process. As geochemical modeling is constrained by conservation of enthalpy upon water-gas mixing, the enthalpies of the gas species of interest were reviewed, adopting as reference state the liquid phase at the triple point. Our results confirm that significant emissions of highly acidic gas species (SO2(g), HCl(g), and HF(g)) are prevented by scrubbing, until dry conditions are established, at least locally. Nevertheless important outgassing of HCl(g) can take place from acid, HCl-rich brines. Moreover, these findings support the rule of thumb which is generally used to distinguish SO2-, HCl-, and HF-bearing magmatic gases from SO2-, HCl-, and HF-free hydrothermal gases

Measurement and modeling of the influence of grain size and pressure gradients on swash zone sediment transport

The paper examines the dependency between sediment transport rate, q, and grain size, D, (i.e. q∝Dp) in the swash zone. Experiments were performed using a dam break flow as a proxy for swash overtopping on a mobile sediment beach. The magnitude and nature of the dependency (i.e. p value) is inferred for different flow parameters; the initial dam depth (or initial bore height), do, the integrated depth averaged velocity, ∫u3 dt, and against the predicted transport, qp using the Meyer-Peter Muller (MPM) transport model. Experiments were performed over both upward sloping beds and a horizontal bed. The data show that negative dependencies (p0) are obtained for ∫u3 dt. This indicates that a given do and qp transport less sediment as grain size increases, whereas transport increases with grain size for a given ∫u3 dt. The p value is expected to be narrow ranged, 0.5≤ p≤-0.5. A discernible difference observed between the measured and predicted transport on horizontal and sloping beds suggests different modes of transport. The incorporation of a pressure gradient correction, dp/dx, using the surface water slope (i.e. piezometric head), in the transport calculation greatly improved the transport predictions on the horizontal bed, where dp/dx is positive. On average, the incorporation of a pressure gradient term into the MPM formulation reduces qp in the uprush by 4% (fine sand) to 18% (coarse sand) and increases qp over a horizontal bed by 1% (fine sand) to two orders of magnitude (coarse sand). The measured transport for fine and coarse sand are better predicted using MPM and MPM+dp/dx respectively. Poor predictions are obtained using Nielsen (2002) because the pressure gradient in the uprush is of opposite sign to that inferred from velocity data in that paper. It is suggested that future swash sediment transport models should incorporate the grain size effect, partly through the pressure gradient, although the dp/dx influence is small for fine sands because of the grain size scaling contained in the stress term