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The current study aimed to examine the relationships between item-based tests and a narrative retelling by analyzing concurrent associations, regression coefficients, language progress, and sex differences. Thirty-one kindergarteners with typical language development were assessed at the beginning (Mage = 64.77 months) and the end of the school year. The statistically significant associations and predictive relations between the item-based tests and narrative retelling were scarce and occurred mainly at the same language level (words and sentences). Accordingly, language progression was mirrored differently by the two assessment conditions. Sex was not related to language skills. Overall, the results indicate these two kinds of tools assess different language constructs and should be used complementarily. Additionally, two relatively innovative trends emerged: errors produced in the narrative seem to be a good discriminative metric for this age range, and testing language by units (words and sentences) might be appropriate to assess language development.

Background Involving patients in treatment is becoming increasingly popular in mental health [Sales & Alves: Personalized evaluation of psychological treatments: A review of tools and research designs, submitted]. However, in substance misuse treatment settings, the patient perspective about treatment tends to be overlooked. This has been cited as a key priority by Orford et al. [Addiction, 103: 875-885, 2008] who included patient feedback about treatment as one of ten areas requiring an urgent paradigm shift in addiction research and practice. This project will apply an innovative method to involve substance misuse patients in psychological therapies, by asking them to suggest topics to evaluate their treatment. These topics suggested by patients can be written as a list of personalized items, so-called as patient-generated outcome measures (PGOM). Despite its patient-friendly features, PGOM's have never been used in this population, which is what this project aims to overcome. Methods/design This project is part of an International Exchange Platform on Personalising Addiction Treatment. Data will be collected in two phases (pre-post study and focus groups with patients) to explore the following: 1) How reliable and sensitive to change are PGOM's and standardised measures in substance misuse treatment? 2) Do PGOM's add relevant information to standardised measures? 3) What are the views of substance misuse patients about personalized outcome assessment? 4) Development of guidelines on using PGOM's in this population Discussion This research will potentially demonstrate the diversity of personal problems among patients seeking substance misuse treatment, suggesting the relevance of PGOM as a method to personalise outcome measurement and, ultimately, guiding treatment provision. It is expected that, as in previous studies, PGOM's will be perceived as helpful and patient-friendly tools, where patients may express their own concerns in a semi-structured setting. Similarly to other populations, we also expect PGOM's to be reliable, valid and sensitive to clinical changes in substance misuse treatment, as well as more content informative than their standardized counterparts. If these results are achieved, we might hypothesize that PGOM's are a potentially valid supplement to traditional standardised scales, by providing a closer insight to what motivates patients to participate in substance misuse treatment programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report herein three novel complexes whose design was based on the approach that consists of combining commercially available antibiotics with metals to attain different physicochemical properties and promote antimicrobial activity. Thus, new isostructural three-dimensional (3D) hydrogen bonding frameworks of pipemidic acid with manganese (II), zinc (II) and calcium (II) have been synthesised by mechanochemistry and are stable under shelf conditions. Notably, the antimicrobial activity of the compounds is maintained or even increased; in particular, the activity of the complexes is augmented against Escherichia coli , a representative of Gram-negative bacteria that have emerged as a major concern in drug resistance. Moreover, the synthesised compounds display similar general toxicity ( Artemia salina model) levels to the original antibiotic, pipemidic acid. The increased antibacterial activity of the synthesised compounds, together with their appropriate toxicity levels, are promising outcomes.