OBJECTIVES (1) To examine relationships among changes in physical activity, physical fitness and some psychosocial determinants of activity behavior in a clinical sample of obese children involved in a multi-component program; (2) to investigate the causal relationship over time between physical activity and one of its strongest correlates (i.e. perceived physical ability). METHODS Self-repor...

In recent years, software component technology has been a successful methodology for large-scale commercial software development. Component technology combines a set of frequently used functions in an easily reusable form and makes the implementation transparent to the users or other components. Developers create new software applications by connecting together a group of components. Component ...

BACKGROUND Ankle arthrodesis results in measurable improvements in terms of pain and function in patients with end-stage ankle arthritis. Arthroscopic ankle arthrodesis has gained increasing popularity, with reports of shorter hospital stays, shorter time to solid fusion, and equivalent union rates when compared with open arthrodesis. However, there remains a lack of high-quality prospective da...

background: assessment of quality of life can promote health services. the purpose of this study was evaluation of health related quality of life in lower limbs amputee veterans of iran. methods: in the present cross sectional study, we compared 38 lower limbs amputee veterans with 50 normal healthy subjects with sf36 questioner in face-to-face interview. results: amputees had significantly low...

BACKGROUND Chinese herbal medicines are commonly used to improve general health and well-being despite limited scientific data to support their efficacy. We conducted a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial to determine whether an herbal remedy that is used widely in China was associated with changes in quality of life, energy, memory, sexual function, and qi (the Chinese concept o...

BACKGROUND Many children do not meet physical activity guidelines. Parents and friends are likely to influence children's physical activity but there is a shortage of measures that are able to capture these influences. METHODS A new questionnaire with the following three scales was developed: 1) Parental influence on physical activity; 2) Motives for activity with friends scale; and 3) Physic...

This position paper reviews a paradigm for determining properties of component assemblies based on blackbox component representations. Such a representation does not use subjective measures like a description of its development process, nor does it require access to the source code. However, it is not strictly specification based, because it does use properties of the code, notably results of t...

In this study, statistical data on the national economic and social development, including the year-end actual area of arable land, the crop yield per unit area and 10 factors, were obtained for the period between 1980 and 2010 and used to analyze the factors driving changes in the arable land of the Loess Plateau in northern Shaanxi, China. The following areas of arable land, which represent d...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the social functioning and health related quality of life (HRQoL) in patients with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) in early adulthood. METHODS The patient files of the Rheumatism Foundation Hospital were screened to identify patients born in 1976-1980 diagnosed as having JIA. HRQoL was measured by the RAND 36-item health survey 1.0; spousal relationships and educatio...