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A systematic approach is vital for adapting neuropsychological tests developed and validated in western monocultural, educated and English-speaking populations. However, rigorous and uniform methods are often not implemented during adaptation of neuropsychological tests and cognitive screening tools across different languages and cultures. This has serious clinical implications. Our group has adapted the Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination (ACE) III for the Bengali speaking population in India. We have taken a 'culture-specific’ approach to adaptation and illustrate this by describing the process of adapting the ACE III naming sub-test, with a focus on the process of selecting culturally appropriate and psychometrically reliable items
Two studies were conducted in seven phases for adapting the ACE III naming test. Twenty-three items from the naming test in the English and the different Indian ACE-R versions were administered to healthy Bengali speaking literate adults to determine image agreement, naming and familiarity of the items. Eleven items were identified as outliers. We then included 16 culturally appropriate items that were semantically similar to the items in the selected ACE-R versions of which 3 were identified as outliers. The final corpus consisting of 24 items was administered to 30 patients with mild cognitive Impairment, Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia, and 60 healthy controls matched for age and education to determine which items in the corpus best discriminated patients and the controls, and to examine their difficulty levels.
The ACE III Bengali naming test with an internal consistency of .76 included 12 psychometrically reliable, culturally relevant high naming-high familiarity and high naming-low familiarity living and non-living items. Item difficulty ranged from .47 to .88 and had discrimination indices >.44.
A key question for test development/adaptation is whether to aim for culture-broad or culture-specific tests. Either way, a systematic approach to test adaption will increase the likelihood that a test is appropriate for the linguistic/cultural context in which it is intended to be used. Adaptation of neuropsychological tests based on a familiarity driven approach helps to reduce cultural bias at the content level. This coupled with appropriate item selection statistics helps to improve the validity of the adapted tests and ensure cross-cultural comparability of test scores both across and within nations.
Cognitive impairment is strongly linked with persistent disability in people with mood disorders, but the factors that explain cognitive impairment in this population are unclear.
To estimate the total effect of (a) bipolar disorder and (b) major depression on cognitive function, and the magnitude of the effect that is explained by potentially modifiable intermediate factors.
Cross-sectional study using baseline data from the UK Biobank cohort. Participants were categorised as having bipolar disorder (n = 2709), major depression (n = 50 975) or no mood disorder (n = 102 931 and n = 105 284). The outcomes were computerised tests of reasoning, reaction time and memory. The potential mediators were cardiometabolic disease and psychotropic medication. Analyses were informed by graphical methods and controlled for confounding using regression, propensity score-based methods and G-computation.
Group differences of small magnitude were found on a visuospatial memory test. Z-score differences for the bipolar disorder group were in the range −0.23 to −0.17 (95% CI −0.39 to −0.03) across different estimation methods, and for the major depression group they were approximately −0.07 (95% CI −0.10 to −0.03). One-quarter of the effect was mediated via psychotropic medication in the bipolar disorder group (−0.05; 95% CI −0.09 to −0.01). No evidence was found for mediation via cardiometabolic disease.
In a large community-based sample in middle to early old age, bipolar disorder and depression were associated with lower visuospatial memory performance, in part potentially due to psychotropic medication use. Mood disorders and their treatments will have increasing importance for population cognitive health as the proportion of older adults continues to grow.
I.J.D. is a UK Biobank participant. J.P.P. is a member of the UK Biobank Steering Committee.
The relative contribution of demographic, lifestyle and medication factors to the association between affective disorders and cardiometabolic diseases is poorly understood.
To assess the relationship between cardiometabolic disease and features of depresion and bipolar disorder within a large population sample.
Cross-sectional study of 145 991 UK Biobank participants: multivariate analyses of associations between features of depression or bipolar disorder and five cardiometabolic outcomes, adjusting for confounding factors.
There were significant associations between mood disorder features and ‘any cardiovascular disease’ (depression odds ratio (OR) = 1.15, 95% CI 1.12–1.19; bipolar OR = 1.28, 95% CI 1.14–1.43) and with hypertension (depression OR = 1.15, 95% CI 1.13–1.18; bipolar OR = 1.26, 95% CI 1.12–1.42). Individuals with features of mood disorder taking psychotropic medication were significantly more likely than controls not on psychotropics to report myocardial infarction (depression OR = 1.47, 95% CI 1.24–1.73; bipolar OR = 2.23, 95% CI 1.53–3.57) and stroke (depression OR = 2.46, 95% CI 2.10–2.80; bipolar OR = 2.31, 95% CI 1.39–3.85).
Associations between features of depression or bipolar disorder and cardiovascular disease outcomes were statistically independent of demographic, lifestyle and medication confounders. Psychotropic medication may also be a risk factor for cardiometabolic disease in individuals without a clear history of mood disorder.
This study explores the phenomenon of uvularization in the vowel systems of two Heishui County varieties of Qiang, a Sino-Tibetan language of Sichuan Province, China. Ultrasound imaging (one speaker) shows that uvularized vowels have two tongue gestures: a rearward gesture, followed by movement toward the place of articulation of the corresponding plain vowel. Time-aligned acoustic and articulatory data show how movement toward the uvula correlates with changes in the acoustic signal. Acoustic correlates of uvularization (taken from two speakers) are seen most consistently in raising of vowel F1, lowering of F2 and in raising of the difference F3-F2. Imaging data and the formant structure of [l] show that uvular approximation can begin during the initial consonant that precedes a uvularized vowel. Uvularization is reflected phonologically in the phonotactic properties of vowels, while vowel harmony aids in the identification of plain–uvularized vowel pairs. The data reported in this paper argue in favor of a revision of the catalog of secondary articulations recognized by the International Phonetic Alphabet, in order to include uvularization, which can be marked with the symbol [ʶ] in the case of approximation and [χ] for secondary uvular frication.
ZnO nanowire (NW) arrays were examined with Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) in cross-section after preparation by Focused Ion Beam (FIB) milling. This technique revealed that ZnO nanowires grown using a Au catalyzed vapor technique typically have Au particles at the NW tips, and also randomly dispersed across the base crystal growth that joins adjacent NWs. It is shown the adjacent NWs and the combined base growth is one crystal structure which can be used as a back electrical contact making fabrication of vertical array devices possible. However, the base growth displays detrimental features such as embedded Au particles and lattice defects which can affect the electrical output through depletion regions and scattering centers. In an effort to overcome these problems we investigate a growth method that is nucleated through a minor alteration of the a-plane sapphire surface roughness via a weak chemical etch. Observations of various stages of the growth show the growth nucleates as separate nanoislands that grow in c-plane alignment with Sapphire (1-210), and as growth continues these islands meet and form a polycrystalline film. Further growth initiates nanowire growth and the formation of a single crystal base layer and NW structure that can cover several square millimeter’s. This allows high quality arrays that are relatively free from defects to be formed without any metals contamination and ready for further device processing.
We survey HII free-free emission around ∼60 spectroscopically confirmed young stellar objects (YSOs) in the Large Magellanic Cloud using the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) at 3.3 and 5.5 cm. From each YSOs' infrared spectrum, we: a) quantify how embedded/evolved the YSO is through principle component analysis (PCA) of the silicate absorption (Seale et al. 2009); and b) estimate the mass from SED models (Robitaille et al. 2007). We have four main results: (1) Based on mass estimates from SED models and ATCA detection limits, we find that most massive YSOs are in HII regions regardless of age; (2) Older massive YSOs (as indicated by silicate PCA index) are much more likely to be resolved than younger YSOs, indicating evolving HII regions; (3) Resolved (typically older) sources usually have lower densities. Thus, in our survey we see a transition from ultra-compact HII to HII regions; and (4) We find that accretion about the massive YSO is likely non-spherical, resulting in HII regions in the shape of prolate spheroids.
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