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Engagement in leisure activity is a complex and subjective concept. It may be difficult for older adults who currently have physical and/or sensory disabilities to continue participation in home-based leisure choices they formerly...
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Engagement in leisure activity is a complex and subjective concept. It may be difficult for older adults who currently have physical and/or sensory disabilities to continue participation in home-based leisure choices they formerly enjoyed. Disability and social isolation may negatively impact on their pattern of leisure participation in the home. The purpose of this study was to examine the use of assistive devices to increase participation in valued home-based leisure activities by older adults who have physical and/or sensory disabilities. The study considered the need for custom made, or specifically adapted devices, to accomplish valued leisure activities by this target population. A random sample of 25 participants was drawn from the Consumer Assessment Study (CAS) at the University at Buffalo Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Aging (RERC-Aging). Participants were seen in their homes for an interview regarding current living arrangement, work history, regard for inclusion of leisure as valued activity, past and current patterns of leisure activity engagement, and temporal use of leisure in their present daily routine. For 17 of the 25 participants, a target leisure activity was identified for intervention using assistive devices. The investigator analyzed the activity and searched for assistive devices to address the need. Assistive devices included commercially available products, devices from vendors who cater to special needs populations, custom adaptations and/or custom designed devices. Participants were supplied with devices and trained to use them. A subsequent contact at their home and/or phone interview was conducted to ascertain the participant's pattern of device use and current satisfaction with the target leisure activity. Twenty devices were supplied to 17 participants. The three custom made devices and one custom adapted device were used with maximum satisfaction by participants. Of the eight commercial devices targeted for persons with disabilities, five participants were very satisfied and three were satisfied with device use. Of the eight general commercial devices supplied, four participants were very satisfied, one was satisfied, and three were not satisfied. Considering the reported combined satisfaction with commercially available, leisure related devices being at 100% publicly accessed devices, it is questionable whether it is necessary to provide customized or custom-adapted devices for most people. In fact, given the findings of this study, it seems more practical to provide commercially available devices except in situations when another device cannot be found or when a person's needs fluctuate drastically enough to demand that a very sensitive solution be tried.
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Context: Adult age-at-death is presented in a number of different ways by anthropologists. Ordinal categories predominate in osteoarchaeology, but do not reflect individual variation in ageing, with too many adults being classifie...
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Context: Adult age-at-death is presented in a number of different ways by anthropologists. Ordinal categories predominate in osteoarchaeology, but do not reflect individual variation in ageing, with too many adults being classified as "middle adults". In addition, mean ages (derived from reference samples) are overly-relied upon when developing and testing methods. In both cases, age mimicry is not adequately accounted for.
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Objective:Successful aging (SA) refers to maintaining well-being in old age. Several definitions or models of SA exist (biomedical, psychosocial, and mixed). We examined the longitudinal association between various SA models and s...
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Objective:Successful aging (SA) refers to maintaining well-being in old age. Several definitions or models of SA exist (biomedical, psychosocial, and mixed). We examined the longitudinal association between various SA models and sociodemographic factors, and analyzed the patterns of change within these models. Method: This was a nationally representative follow-up in Spain including 3,625 individuals aged 50 years. Some 1,970 individuals were interviewed after 3 years. Linear regression models were used to analyze the survey data. Results: Age, sex, and occupation predicted SA in the biomedical model, while marital status, educational level, and urbanicity predicted SA in the psychosocial model. The remaining models included different sets of these predictors as significant. In the psychosocial model, individuals tended to improve over time but this was not the case in the biomedical model. Conclusion: The biomedical and psychosocial components of SA need to be addressed specifically to achieve the best aging trajectories.
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At a recent symposium on aging biology, a debate was held as to whether or not we know what biological aging is. Most of the participants were struck not only by the lack of consensus on this core question, but also on many basic ...
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At a recent symposium on aging biology, a debate was held as to whether or not we know what biological aging is. Most of the participants were struck not only by the lack of consensus on this core question, but also on many basic tenets of the field. Accordingly, we undertook a systematic survey of our 71 participants on key questions that were raised during the debate and symposium, eliciting 37 responses. The results confirmed the impression from the symposium: there is marked disagreement on the most fundamental questions in the field, and little consensus on anything other than the heterogeneous nature of aging processes. Areas of major disagreement included what participants viewed as the essence of aging, when it begins, whether aging is programmed or not, whether we currently have a good understanding of aging mechanisms, whether aging is or will be quantifiable, whether aging will be treatable, and whether many non-aging species exist. These disagreements lay bare the urgent need for a more unified and cross-disciplinary paradigm in the biology of aging that will clarify both areas of agreement and disagreement, allowing research to proceed more efficiently. We suggest directions to encourage the emergence of such a paradigm.
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Objectives: Despite successful antiretroviral therapy, people living with HIV (PLWH) may show signs of premature/accentuated aging. We compared established biomarkers of aging in PLWH, appropriately chosen HIV-negative individuals...
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Objectives: Despite successful antiretroviral therapy, people living with HIV (PLWH) may show signs of premature/accentuated aging. We compared established biomarkers of aging in PLWH, appropriately chosen HIV-negative individuals, and blood donors, and explored factors associated with biological age advancement.
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Facial aging is an important problem of face recognition in missing children and automatic template update. As aging is a temporal process, it alters the facial appearance of the individuals. The sources of variations in facial ap...
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Facial aging is an important problem of face recognition in missing children and automatic template update. As aging is a temporal process, it alters the facial appearance of the individuals. The sources of variations in facial appearance are caused by wrinkles (under eyes, forehead, around lips, and jawline), facial growth (cranial size and skull), and skin tone. The other factors such as health, lifestyle, and gender also impose variations in the aging process. Therefore, predicting facial aging with considering all those factors is a very difficult task. We present our 3D gender-specific aging model which automatically produces simulated images at age y by taking only one input image at age x irrespective of the pose and lighting conditions. The gender-specific aging model is constructed by various datasets (FG-NET, PCSO, Celebrities, BROWNS, Private), and its quality is evaluated with respect to various combinations of the datasets. We further fine-tune the aging model by changing the length of shape and texture eigenvectors and examine how these parameters affect the simulation results. Comparisons of the simulation results with state-of-the-art approaches as well as ground truth images demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods. The subjective and objective evaluations are also carried out which emphasize the potential of our proposed gender-specific 3D aging model.
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Human age, as an important personal trait, can be directly inferred by distinct patterns emerging from the facial appearance. Derived from rapid advances in computer graphics and machine vision, computer-based age synthesis and es...
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Human age, as an important personal trait, can be directly inferred by distinct patterns emerging from the facial appearance. Derived from rapid advances in computer graphics and machine vision, computer-based age synthesis and estimation via faces have become particularly prevalent topics recently because of their explosively emerging real-world applications, such as forensic art, electronic customer relationship management, security control and surveillance monitoring, biometrics, entertainment, and cosmetology. Age synthesis is defined to rerender a face image aesthetically with natural aging and rejuvenating effects on the individual face. Age estimation is defined to label a face image automatically with the exact age (year) or the age group (year range) of the individual face. Because of their particularity and complexity, both problems are attractive yet challenging to computer-based application system designers. Large efforts from both academia and industry have been devoted in the last a few decades. In this paper, we survey the complete state-of-the-art techniques in the face image-based age synthesis and estimation topics. Existing models, popular algorithms, system performances, technical difficulties, popular face aging databases, evaluation protocols, and promising future directions are also provided with systematic discussions.
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We would like to make a few comments on the results reported in a recent paper in this journal by Tsuneda, J. Comput. Chem, 2019, 40, 206. The structures of some pure silver clusters were not correctly assigned. (c) 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
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Background: Continuous population aging has raised international policy interest in promoting active aging (AA). AA theoretical models have been defined from a biomedical or a psychosocial perspective. These models may be expanded...
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Background: Continuous population aging has raised international policy interest in promoting active aging (AA). AA theoretical models have been defined from a biomedical or a psychosocial perspective. These models may be expanded including components suggested by lay individuals. This paper aims to study the correlates of AA in three European countries, namely, Spain, Poland, and Finland using four different definitions of AA. Methods: The EU COURAGE in Europe project was a cross-sectional general adult population survey conducted in a representative sample of the noninstitutionalized population of Finland, Poland, and Spain. Participants (10,800) lived in the community. This analysis focuses on individuals aged 50 years old and over (7,987). Four definitions (two biomedical, one psychosocial, and a complete definition including biomedical, psychosocial, and external variables) of AA were analyzed. Results: Differences in AA were found for country, age, education, and occupation. Finland scored consistently the highest in AA followed by Spain and Poland. Younger age was associated with higher AA. Higher education and occupation was associated with AA. Being married or cohabiting was associated with better AA compared to being widowed or separated in most definitions. Gender and urbanicity were not associated with AA, with few exceptions. Men scored higher in AA only in Spain, whereas there was no gender association in the other two countries. Being widowed was only associated with lower AA in Poland and not being married was associated with lower AA in Poland and Finland but not Spain. Conclusions: Associations with education, marital status, and occupation suggest that these factors are the most important components of AA. These association patterns, however, seem to vary across the three countries. Actions to promote AA in these countries may be addressed at reducing inequalities in occupation and education or directly tackling the components of AA lacking in each country.
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PURPOSE: To study the incidence, characteristics, and results of retinal detachment (RD) after cataract surgery with a capsule complication. SETTING: Ten ophthalmic surgery departments in Sweden. METHODS: In this case-control stud...
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PURPOSE: To study the incidence, characteristics, and results of retinal detachment (RD) after cataract surgery with a capsule complication. SETTING: Ten ophthalmic surgery departments in Sweden. METHODS: In this case-control study, data on cataract surgery cases with a capsule complication (study group) or with no complication (control group) in 2003 were extracted from the Swedish National Cataract Register. Patients with RD during a 3-year follow-up were identified. RESULTS: The study group comprised 324 patients and the control group, 331 patients. Retinal detachment occurred in 13 study group patients, for a 3-year incidence of 4.0%. In the control group, 1 patient (0.3%) had RD. Multivariate analysis showed an adjusted odds ratio (OR) of 14.8 for RD after capsule complication (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.9-114; P = .01). Subgroup analysis of the study group using a binary logistic regression model showed that male sex (OR, 8.5; 95% CI, 1.7-43.8; P = .001) and lens remnants in the vitreous (OR, 14.4; 95% CI 2.6-78.8; P = .002) were additional risk factors. Axial myopia was significantly associated with an increased risk as a single factor but not as a multiple factor. In general, the final visual outcome for RD after a capsule complication was poor; 3 eyes had a visual acuity of 0.50 or better. Eight eyes (62%) had a final visual acuity worse than 0.10 and 6 eyes, 0.02 or worse. CONCLUSIONS: The risk for RD after cataract surgery increased significantly when a capsule complication occurred, leading to poor final visual acuity in most cases.
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