AAHPERD 1986—2009
JOPERD • Volume 80 No. 9 • November/December 2009 A n understanding of the history of AAHPERD is important in that it explains “who” we are and the chronology of events that brought us to this point in time. In his 1828 dictionary, Noah Webster defined “history” as “a narration of events in the order in which they happened, with their causes and effects” (Webster, 1828). Although the English language has changed many times since 1828, the word “history” continues to be defined as a chronological account of past events. In its history, the Alliance has experienced many successes, many challenges, and a few disappointments. Some of these are chronicled in this article. Exciting plans are currently underway for the celebration of AAHPERD’s 125th anniversary at the 2010 National Convention and Exposition in Indianapolis, Indiana. A brief recounting of the past 25 years is given in anticipation of that important milestone.
1958–2008
The AAHPER Youth Fitness Test, the first U.S. national fitness test, was published 50 years ago. The seminal work of Krause and Hirschland influenced the fitness world and continues to do so today. Important youth fitness test initiatives in the last half century are summarized. Key elements leading to continued interest in youth fitness testing at the start of the 21st century include (a) concerns about children and youth fitness levels, (b) AAHPER(D)-led youth fitness battery development, (c) differentiation between performance-related and health-related fitness testing, (d) the numerous youth fitness tests developed, (e) collaborative discussions on development and adoption of a unified national youth fitness battery, (f) computerization of youth fitness test results, (g) differentiation between norm-referenced and criterion-referenced evaluation of student results, and (h) concern about youth fitness levels (again, but with a focus on health). We have come full circle on youth fitness interests. This article summarizes the key youth fitness tests in the second half of the 20th century and projects future considerations.
An automated retinal image quality grading algorithm
This paper introduces an algorithm for the automated assessment of retinal fundus image quality grade. Retinal image quality grading assesses whether the quality of the image is sufficient to allow diagnostic procedures to be applied. Automated quality analysis is an important preprocessing step in algorithmic diagnosis, as it is necessary to ensure that images are sufficiently clear to allow pathologies to be visible. The algorithm is based on standard recommendations for quality analysis by human screeners, examining the clarity of retinal vessels within the macula region. An evaluation against a reference standard data-set is given; it is shown that the algorithm's performance correlates closely with that of clinicians manually grading image quality.