Children vary greatly in their vocabulary development during preschool years. Importantly, the pace of this early vocabulary growth predicts vocabulary size at school entrance. Despite its importance for later academic success, not much is known about the relation between individual differences in early vocabulary development and later brain structure and function. Here we examined the associat...

Pedometers are used in many studies because physical activities can be simply assessed using them. In addition to the spring-levered type, piezo-electric pedometers have recently been used. However, their accuracy in children has not been investigated in previous studies. In this study, we investigated the accuracy of spring-levered pedometer and piezo-electric pedometer step counts in comparis...

Walking requires adapting to meet task constraints. Between 5- and 7-years old, children's walking approximates adult walking without constraints. To examine how children and adults adapt to meet timing constraints, 57 5- to 7-year olds and 20 adults walked to slow and fast audio metronome paces. Both children and adults modified their walking. However, at the slow pace, children had more troub...

The conversion of lignocellulosic biomass into fine chemicals and polymers has been gaining attention recently. Regenerated lignocellulose beads (RLBs) were prepared by an emulsification/precipitation technique, using wheat straw as a raw material and [Bmim]Cl as a solvent. The morphology and properties of the obtained beads were characterized. The RLBs were perfectly spherical, with a porous m...

OBJECTIVES Menu labels displaying food energy in physical activity calorie equivalents (PACE) is a possible strategy to encourage ordering meals with fewer calories and promoting physical activity. Potential effects of such labeling for children have never been examined. METHODS We conducted a national survey of 1000 parents randomized to 1 of 4 fast food menus: no labels, calories only, calo...

Children vary widely in the rate at which they acquire words--some start slow and speed up, others start fast and continue at a steady pace. Do early developmental variations of this sort help predict vocabulary skill just prior to kindergarten entry? This longitudinal study starts by examining important predictors (socioeconomic status [SES], parent input, child gesture) of vocabulary growth b...

Information is the value that is now of critical importance in building competitive advantage. However, the amount and variety of data becomes a challenge for business and IT. Both possess a large amount of information, its accelerating growth and expectations of more effective management of these data still give birth to new technical problems and system. When BI proved to be insufficient to p...