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Confucianism refers to a complete ideological system of Chinese philosophy and ethic. It was created by Confucius and developed further by his faithful followers. It is considered to be the most influential ideology in the history of China and has greatly contributed to Chinese special education. This paper focuses on four Confucian ideas, namely, commonwealth of Great Unity, providing education for all people without discrimination, teaching students in accordance with their characteristics, and the ethic thought of Ren . The impacts of these thoughts on the theory and practice of special education in China are further presented.

Background: In response to global epidemiological trends in the 21st century, participants of the First Physical Therapy Summit on Global Health have formed a vision of practice, which focuses on physical therapy (PT) education and research. This article aimed to describe the vision of Israeli PT national directors concerning the development of the profession. Methods: This study employed the qualitative approach and relied on personal in-depth interviews. Results: A content analysis uncovered nine major categories of such vision, including the following: improving service, position of the profession within the health care system, promoting research, extending roles, expanding the authority of physical therapists (PTs), arranging for mandatory continued professional development, constructing PT specialty programs, improving the service from an administrative perspective, and expanding PTs’ public involvement and activities. Conclusions: The vision of Israeli PT directors deals mainly with improving the level of services from a professional and administrative perspective as well as correctly positioning the profession within the healthcare system. Similar to the vision stated at the PT summit, it too deals with the extension of roles, the expansion of PTs’ authority, and the establishment of evidence-based practice. The position of PT in Israel differs from that of PT in leading Western countries, and this may explain differences in vision priorities and emphases.

The aim of this study was to develop a gesture-driven facial model with speech synthesis capability. A two-dimensional facial Model was developed and animated based on the Facial Action Coding System. Such emotions as “happy”, “sad”, “anger”, and “fear” were simulated and visualized through the combination of eight action units. A speech synthesizer for the Tamil language was built using a syllable-based concatenation approach. The results indicated that the synthetic speech had an average accuracy rate ranging from 85% to 90% as natural as the human speech. Moreover, 75%–85% of the words were articulated well and identified by the children correctly. The ultimate goal of the system is to assist children with vocal and hearing disabilities in their language learning process.

Background: Restless Legs Syndrome is the urge to move one’s legs, which often coexists with an uncomfortable sensation deep within one’s legs, but is usually not painful. Movement of one’s legs provides immediate relief and continued movement provides ongoing relief. Previous studies have not exhaustively explored the prevalence and diagnosis of Restless Legs Syndrome in an Indian adolescent population. Methods : Using stratified random sampling the schools in Belgaum city were divided into three strata (Government, Aided, and Unaided), and from these strata using the simple randomization technique schools were selected to collect the data. A total of 100 children were recruited from the selected schools using the simple randomization technique. These children were then given the ‘Screening Questionnaire for Restless Legs Syndrome’ to be filled out in their school. Results: Results suggest that 46.5% of adolescents are at a risk of Probable Restless Legs Syndrome, and of these around 14.14% of adolescents have Probable Restless Legs Syndrome. No gender difference was observed in the study. Conclusions: The results of the present study conclude that Restless Legs Syndrome is prevalent in adolescent school children.

Background: Vitamin D deficiency is common in young cystic fibrosis (CF), and is due to the impaired absorption of fat-soluble vitamins, decreased sun exposure, and suboptimal intake of vitamins-containing foods and/or supplements. Given that childhood is a critical period for the accrual of bone mass, with 90% peak bone mass laid in the first two decades of life, it is essential that optimal vitamin D levels are achieved in this time frame. Methods: We conducted a retrospective review from January 1, 2012 to January 1, 2013, through which we reviewed levels of vitamin D and correlated with bone profile, liver function tests, lung function, genotype, age, dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry scan and body mass index z score. Results: Of the 95 children with CF, 6 were excluded due to incomplete data, bringing our study population to a total of 89 children. Results showed 77.5% vitamin D deficiency (mean 59.42 nmol/L). No significant statistical correlation was found between vitamin D and the parameters described. Protocol supplementation did not raise vitamin D to therapeutic level in 63.2% of the study population. Those with genotype delta 508 (homozygous/heterozygous) had 92% vitamin D deficiency. Conclusions: We attribute the non-responder group to vitamin D to poor compliance. Compliance level could not be addressed because our study is a retrospective review. Thus, further research is needed to define implications of pulmonary exacerbations on vitamin D and vice versa. Doing so can help assess the implication of genotype influence on vitamin D.

Background: This study analyzed the positioning of the head, trunk, and upper extremities during gait in children with visual impairment. Methods: A total of 11 children participated in this study: 6 with blindness and 5 with low vision. The kinematics of the positioning of the head, trunk, shoulders, and elbows in each participant was analyzed during the four phases of the gait cycle: foot strike, support, toe-off, and swing. Results: There were significant differences between children with blindness and low vision in the positioning of the trunk in the sagittal plane during the foot strike, support, and swing phases. Conclusions: The analysis identified postural alterations of the head, trunk, shoulder, and elbow during the children’s gait, highlighting the relevance of appropriate stimulation at an early age in orientation and mobility programs, as well as the essential presence of professionals who work with movement.

Background: This qualitative study responds to recent calls for innovation in domestic violence research in a review, which concluded that the field is dominated by studies that are quantitative and do not take a strong client and social work perspective. It examines Australian child and family support practitioners’ perceptions of cultural translation of an activity-based play intervention for small children exposed to domestic and family violence. Methods: The participants consisted of 335 practitioners, 178 of whom worked with culturally diverse and/or indigenous client groups. Analysis of response sheets involved elements of configurational case-based analysis, computational textual analysis, and critical discourse analysis. Results: Language associated with cultural or indigenous concepts occurred with 3% and 5% frequencies, respectively, in 8494 instances of 39 concepts found in practitioner responses. Conclusions: The “order of discourse” in this practitioner language offers theoretical understandings of in-practice challenges of cultural translation of interventions. Findings are discussed in terms of their implications for research methods, theory, and practice in domestic and family violence intervention.

Background: Studies have shown that most parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) face more stress and have a poorer quality of life (QoL) than other parents. Nonetheless, there are still some parents of children with ASD who are able to maintain or even improve their QoL. This study is aimed to explore the relationship between SoC and WHOQoL among parents of children with ASD. Method: A total of 96 parents of children with ASD were invited to participate using a purposive sampling method. Results: The results suggested that participants in the high SoC group had better QoL in the four domains than those in the low SoC group. More importantly, not all types of SoC were relevant to QoL. Comprehensibility was relevant to all the four QoL domains and manageability was relevant to physical and psychological health, while meaningfulness was not relevant to any of the QoL domains. Conclusions: NGOs may improve the QoL of these parents by providing trainings to improve their SOC, especially in comprehensibility and manageability.

Phonological contributions to stuttering have been discussed with increased attention in the recent years. The present study is aimed to analyze the effect of phonological environment during the instances of stuttering. The study included 10 monolingual children with stuttering (CWS) in the age range of 6–8 years, who spoke Kannada (south Indian language) as their mother tongue. Conversation, topic narration, story narration, and picture description tasks were carried out in Kannada language. The relative difficulty of individual syllables for each participant was determined. Further, the effect of phonetic environment (succeeding syllable) during the instances of stuttering was calculated. The results revealed a rank order of relative occurrence of succeeding consonantal contexts. Most of the time, the phonetic environment included voiceless consonants, nasals, and plosives compared to others. This indicated that CWS may have difficulties in the transition of articulatory movement from oral to nasal and from voiced to voiceless consonants during speech production. Findings also revealed variability in the occurrence of phonetic context within and between CWS, which supports the disturbances occurring across various time domains. It is hoped that the findings of the current study will support theorists, researchers, and clinicians in arriving at a more comprehensive understanding of stuttering and phonetic behavior in CWS.

Background: The goal of the study was to identify developmental disabilities in internationally adopted children and evaluate the utility of pre-adoption screening. Methods: Parents of 191 adopted children (80.93%) completed the Parents’ Evaluation of Developmental Status (PEDS) questionnaire. Responses were analyzed for the reported presence of developmental dysfunction in the children. Results: For 137 children, parental response rates ranged from 55% to 74.4% at different junctures. The cumulative incidence of reported concerns over developmental and behavioral disabilities at 12 years post-adoption was 79%. Children adopted after 1-year-old had more behavioral problems than those adopted earlier (relative risk=4.62; 95% confidence interval: 0.97–22.07). Conclusions: Parents perceive international adoption as being associated with a substantial risk for developmental problems. Even meticulous pre-adoption screening cannot preclude developmental problems that may appear in later childhood.

Background: The post-mastectomy changes to the locomotor system are related to the scar and adhesion or to the lymphatic edema after amputation which, in turn, lead to local and global distraction of the work of the muscles. These changes lead to body statics disturbance that changes the projection of the center of gravity and worsens motor response due to changing of the muscle sensitivity. Objective: The aim of the study was to evaluate the static balance of women after undergoing mastectomy. Methods: The study included 150 women, including 75 who underwent mastectomy (mean age: 60±7.6) years, mean body mass index (BMI): 26 (±3.6) kg/m 2 ) and 75 who were placed in the control group with matched age and BMI. The study was conducted using a tensometric platform. Results: Statistically significant differences were found for almost all parameters between the post-mastectomy group and group of healthy women, regarding center of foot pressure (COP) path length in the Y and X axes and the mean amplitude of COP. Conclusions: First, the findings revealed that balance in post-mastectomy women is significantly better than in the control group. Second, physiotherapeutic treatment of post-mastectomy women may have improved their posture stability compared with their peers.

Background: Children with developmental coordination disorders (DCD) express fine and gross motor problems, reduced fitness, and low self-efficacy. Yet, the relationship between these characteristics as expressed in daily environments including school, is not well understood. The aim of this study is to examine the relationships between sports activity performance as reported by the sports teacher, gross and fine motor abilities, and self-efficacy among school aged children. Methods: This study included 61 children, aged 6.10–9 years, divided into two groups: 37 children with DCD, and 24 children with typical development and adequate motor performance. The sports teacher of each child filled the Teacher Estimation of Activity Form (TEAF). Each child performed the Movement Assessment Battery for Children (M-ABC) and then completed the Perceived Efficacy and Goal Setting System (PEGS). Results: Based on teachers’ reports, the study group showed significantly lower sports performance than the controls. Significant differences between the groups were also found in fine and gross motor abilities as manifested in the M-ABC. Among children with DCD, sports performance significantly correlated with M-ABC and PEGS scores. The teacher’s report regarding the child’s sports performance significantly predicted children’s motor abilities and self-efficacy. Conclusions: The study highlights that sports teachers may contribute to the screening of children with DCD and emphasize motor aspects that reduce a child’s self-efficacy. Consideration of these outcomes in intervention may minimize the negative impacts of DCD on a child’s development and well-being.

The combination of ectrodactyly, ectodermal dysplasia, and cleft lip/palate is known as EEC syndrome. This disorder is characterized by deformities of fingers and toes (ectrodactyly), anomalies of hair, teeth, nails, nasolacrimal ducts, sweat glands, etc. (ectodermal dysplasia), and cleft lip/palate. Other less common findings include abnormalities of eyes and genitourinary anomalies, etc. In the patient, having ectrodactyly hand function depends on the type and severity of deformities. The function can be improved to a variable extent by surgery or assistive devices, aids, or appliances. We present a case of a 17-year-old with EEC that had familial presentation as the mother of the patient was also affected. The boy had hand function, which was enough for routine work, however, he wanted improvement in his hands to do fine work. His mother had almost normal hand function. The hand function of the boy improved with aids.