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Because children with visual impairments tend to be inactive, they are 1.5 times more likely to be considered overweight or obese than are their sighted peers. Although some barriers to physical activity have been identified (for example, lack of opportunity and transportation issues); little has been done to empirically identify predictors of physical activity among this population. Given the importance of perceptions of motor competence during the early years of childhood, since it predicts physical activity and motor competence during adolescence, it is critical that perceptions of motor competence for young children with visual impairments are understood. Therefore, the purpose of this preliminary study was to examine the developmental trajectory of perceptions of motor competence of children ages 3 to 13 years, with and without visual impairments.

The relationship between physical fitness and health in adults is well established, yet until recently, empirical support for the impact of physical fitness levels on health markers in children has not been thoroughly documented. The aim of this review was to provide a summary of current literature that has examined the linkage between measures of health-related physical fitness (ie, cardiorespiratory fitness, musculoskeletal fitness, flexibility, and body composition) and health markers in youth. Specifically, this review focused on the findings from the recent 2012 Institutes of Medicine report on Fitness Measures in Youth as well as other subsequent review articles related to the topic. In addition, recommendations for health-related fitness assessments in youth populations are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We compared the performance characteristics of the Simplexa universal direct (Focus Diagnostics, Cypress, CA) and BD GeneOhm (BD Diagnostics/GeneOhm Sciences, San Diego, CA) tests for detection of toxigenic Clostridium difficile in 459 stool samples (9.4% positive). The observed agreement for the results of the two tests with 452 samples with valid test results was 98.2% (kappa, 0.9; P value of 0.73 by the McNemar test). When samples with discordant or invalid results were retested, the agreement increased to 100%.