Objective: To develop a valid and reliable spinal cord injury (SCI) specific physical functioning (PF) scale for the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) version of the 36-Item Short-Form Health Survey.
Design: A mixed qualitative and quantitative research design was used. In phase 1, a pool of SCI-specific PF items was generated based on focus groups with patients and health care providers. In phase 2, the psychometric properties of the SCI-specific PF scale were established.
Setting: A VHA SCI center.
Participants: The sample consisted of valid responses from 359 veterans with traumatic SCI who were seen at a VHA SCI center during the prior year (2002).
Interventions: Not applicable.
Main Outcome Measure: Physical functioning in people with SCI.
Results: Exploratory factor analysis was conducted separately on respondents with lower neurologic-level injuries (paraplegia, 53% [n=190]) and those with higher neurologic-level injuries (tetraplegia, 45% [n=163]) and identified 9 items loading on 1 factor in both groups. These 9 items were included in separate item response theory (IRT) model analyses for each subgroup. Based on the IRT analysis, 1 item was eliminated, resulting in an 8-item, SCI-specific PF scale.
Conclusions: Although several of the items in the SCI-specific PF scale showed floor effects, particularly in people with tetraplegia, we found excellent reliability and strong support of convergent and divergent validity of the scale.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apmr.2006.05.010 | DOI Listing |
Physiother Theory Pract
January 2025
Department of Orthopaedics, School of Medicine, Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran.
Introduction: Standing balance is essential for physical functioning. Therefore, improving balance control is a key priority in the management of knee osteoarthritis (OA), underscoring the importance of accurately assessing standing balance.
Purpose: To assess reliability, construct validity and responsiveness of common clinical balance tests, including Step Test, Single-Leg Stance Test, and Functional Reach Test, in patients with knee OA.
J Chem Theory Comput
January 2025
Department of Chemistry, Rice University, Houston, Texas 77005-1892, United States.
Generalized Hartree-Fock (GHF) is a long-established electronic structure method that can lower the energy (compared to spin-restricted variants) by breaking physical wave function symmetries, namely and . After an exposition of GHF theory, we assess the use of GHF trial wave functions in phaseless auxiliary field quantum Monte Carlo (ph-AFQMC-G) calculations of strongly correlated molecular systems including symmetrically stretched hydrogen rings, carbon dioxide, and dioxygen. Imaginary time propagation is able to restore symmetry and yields energies of comparable or better accuracy than CCSD(T) with unrestricted HF and GHF references, and consistently smooth dissociation curves─a remarkable result given the relative scalability of ph-AFQMC-G to larger system sizes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLangmuir
January 2025
School of Physics, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai 200237, China.
Black phosphorus (BP), a promising two-dimensional material, faces significant challenges for its applications due to its instability in air and water. Herein, molecular dynamics simulations reveal that a self-assembled ferrocene (FeCp) molecular layer can form on BP surfaces and remain stable in aqueous environments, predicting its effectiveness for passivation. This theoretical finding is corroborated by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, and optical microscopy observations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCell Adh Migr
December 2025
Department of Stomatology, The First Medical Center, Chinese PLA General Hospital, Beijing, China.
Peripheral nerve injury repair has always been a research concern of scientists. At the tissue level, axonal regeneration has become a research spotlight in peripheral nerve repair. Through transplantation of autologous nerve grafts or other emerging biomaterials functional recovery after facial nerve injury is not ideal in clinical scenarios.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMater Horiz
January 2025
Institute of Physics and Astronomy, University of Potsdam, Karl-Liebknecht-Straße 24/25, 14476, Germany.
Two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides (2D TMDCs) can be combined with organic semiconductors to form hybrid van der Waals heterostructures. Specially, non-fullerene acceptors (NFAs) stand out due to their excellent absorption and exciton diffusion properties. Here, we couple monolayer tungsten diselenide (ML-WSe) with two well performing NFAs, ITIC, and IT-4F (fluorinated ITIC) to achieve hybrid architectures.
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