OBJECTIVE Brief, well-validated instruments are needed to facilitate screening for early childhood behavioral and emotional problems (BEPs). The objectives of this study were to empirically reduce the length of the Early Childhood Screening Assessment (ECSA) and to assess the validity and reliability of this shorter tool. METHODS Using caregiver ECSA responses for 2467 children aged 36 to 60 ...

The best approximation problem in a hyperconvex metric space consists of finding conditions for given set-valued mappings F andG and a setX such that there is a point x0 ∈ X satisfying d G x0 , F x0 ≤ d x, F x0 for x ∈ X. When G I, the identity mapping, and when the set X is compact, best approximation theorems for mappings in hyperconvex metric spaces are given for the single-valued case in 1–...

Primary care physicians who work with children must deal with a great variety of behavioral and emotional problems. The system described in this article provides low-cost, standardized assessment and documentation of such problems and requires little effort by the physician. Primary care physicians are under increasing pressure to obtain standardized documentation for the conditions they encoun...

Many algorithms have to deal with multiple representations of the same object. The process of aligning these representations is called registration. In this paper we present a new approach for the registration of free-form surfaces which is not based on finding closest points. Instead, our algorithm takes advantage of the graphics hardware and uses the depth buffer for determining the distance ...

The Test of Emotional Intelligence (TIE) is a new ability scale based on a theoretical model that defines emotional intelligence as a set of skills responsible for the processing of emotion-relevant information. Participants are provided with descriptions of emotional problems, and asked to indicate which emotion is most probable in a given situation, or to suggest the most appropriate action. ...

In a prospective longitudinal study the authors examined the associations between parent locus of control of reinforcement (LOCR), measured before the birth of a child, and behavioral-emotional outcomes in that child at age 7 years. A total of 307 couples completed questionnaires regarding their emotional status and LOCR at their first prenatal care appointment. When their children turned 7 yea...

Evidence-based practices to improve outcomes for children with severe behavioral and emotional problems have received a great deal of attention in children's mental health. Therapeutic Foster Care (TFC), a residential intervention for youth with emotional or behavioral problems, is one of the few community-based programs that is considered to be evidence-based. However, as for most treatment ap...

This paper presents a software platform for the distributed solution of complex optimization problems. For such problems there are often no outstanding approaches which always perform well. That is why we propose to use diierent solution methods simultaneously. They can communicate and thus prootate from each other. Some general paradigms are applicable to a wide class of problems. Our platform...

The present study used a prospective, longitudinal design to investigate genetic and environmental influences on the association between earlier conduct problems and the initiation and progression of marijuana use during adolescence. Parent- and teacher-reported conduct problems assessed at Time 1 (1996) and self-reported marijuana use assessed at Time 2 (2004) were available for 1088 adolescen...

BACKGROUND Chronic low-back pain is a widespread condition whose significance is overlooked. Previous studies have analyzed and evaluated the medical costs and physical symptoms of chronic low-back pain; however, few have looked beyond these factors. The purpose of this study was to analyze and evaluate the personal and psychosocial costs of chronic low-back pain. METHODS To measure the vario...