Assessment and management of eating and feeding difficulties for older people: a NICHE protocol

Adequate nutritional intake is critical to preserving the health of older people. When an elderly person requires assistance with eating, the most social of all activities of daily living, the assessment of nutritional issues becomes multidimensional and interdisciplinary. Management strategies should involve the professional nurse's attention to dietary needs, as well as the social, cultural, and interactive components of mealtime. Additionally, special strategies need to be developed for people with cognitive and physical disabilities.     

The effects of instructional match and content overlap on generalized reading performance

This study examined the effects of instructional match and content overlap on students' ability to generalize from passage reading instruction. Four students with mild disabilities served as participants. Using a multielement design, students were instructed with passages at two levels of text difficulty (instructionally matched vs. instructionally mismatched), and generalization was assessed with passages at two levels of similarity to those instructed (low vs. high content overlap). Results indicated that students' oral reading accuracy and fluency showed the greatest degree of generalization when instructional materials were matched to the students' skill level and assessment materials were similar to those used during instruction. Moreover, these results were maintained at 1-month follow-up. The implications of these findings for classroom reading instruction and the assessment of students' reading skills are discussed.     

The dental status of asthmatic British school children

Pancreatic cancer is a dismal disease. The 5-year overall survival ranges from 1% to 5%. Surgery is the only curative treatment available for this cancer, but it is indicated only in selected patients with a less than 4 cm tumor. In these patients, survival rate is about 30%. We have considered several aspects: the very difficult early diagnosis, the correct diagnostic flow chart, actual surgical procedures and new trends in biologic and genetic research. It is likely that better results can be achieved by defining an "early pancreatic cancer" and establishing how to detect it. This could be the wrigth one way is to significantly improve the survival of these patients.     

A powerful GABA(B) receptor-mediated inhibition of GABAergic neurons in the arcuate nucleus

We combined histofluorescence with in situ hybridization to identify GABAergic neurons in the arcuate nucleus (ARC) following electrophysiological recordings, using GAD65 as a marker. Intracellular recordings were made in hypothalamic slices prepared from ovariectomized guinea pigs. Over 90% of ARC neurons tested with the GABA(B) receptor agonist baclofen responded with a membrane hyperpolarization or an outward current. The hyperpolarization was dose-dependent, and the GABA(B) receptor antagonist CGP 35,348 produced a rightward shift in the agonist dose-response curve. Agonist potency was lower, and the efficacy greater, in GAD-positive neurons. The use of this novel technique for identifying GABAergic neurons thus reveals differences in the pharmacodynamics of GABA(B) receptor activation GABAergic and non-GABAergic ARC neurons.