ObjectiveThe present study intends to observe the cleaning effect of different detection methods in cleaning silicone tubes used in phacoemulsification.MethodsA total of 100 silicone tubes were selected randomly after surgery. The silicone tubes were retained for ≤2 hours after surgery, and then washed with a high-pressure water gun at a flow rate of 12~14 ml/s. Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) detection and quantitation of residual protein were performed on the samples before cleaning and after washing for 30 s, 40 s, and 50 s, respectively, including the sample surface and the water after cleaning.ResultsAccording to the results before and after cleaning the silicone tube, there are significant differences in three methods of quantitation of residual protein, ATP detection in water sample, and ATP detection in sample surface (c2=8.6, P<0.05), while having no difference between the three methods after washing for 30 s, 40 s and 50 s, respectively (c2=4.918 and 5.571, P>0.05). A comparison of the means of ATP detection in water samples showed significant differences between rinses 30 s/40 s and 30 s/50 s. (Z=-7.45 and -0.08, P<0.05); pairwise contrast of ATP detection in sample surface for rinsing 30 s/40 s, 40 s/50 s, and 30 s/50 s showed significant differences (Z=3.64, 14.92, and 25.86, P<0.05). The quantitation of residual protein in silicone tubes showed pass rates of 84%, 100%, and 100% for 30 s, 40 s, and 50 s, respectively.ConclusionQuantitation of residual protein, ATP detection in water sample, and ATP detection in sample surface are available for monitoring the cleaning quality of silicone tube. The tube should be cleaned at a 12~14 ml/s flow rate and a washing time of ≥50 s.
John L Grace, Meghan E Hancock, Madison L Malone, Bahman Adlou, Jerad J Kosek, Hannah R Houde, Christopher M Wilburn, Wendi H Weimar School of Kinesiology, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, USACorrespondence: John L Grace, School of Kinesiology, Auburn University, 301 Wire Road, Auburn, AL, 36849, USA, Tel +1 (334) 844-1468, Fax +1 (334) 844-1469, Email jlg0068@auburn.eduIntroduction: The National Football League (NFL) combine tests the athleticism of prospects competing for the draft. The vertical jump is included to test lower extremity power, yet the components which lead to the greatest performance remain elusive. Therefore, this study aimed to utilize a sample of elite athletes to analyze vertical jump components associated with increased performance and the relationship between vertical jump performance and rookie-year success.Methods: Videos of 50 NFL prospects performing the vertical jump task were analyzed for various countermovement jump components. Regression analyses examined the components in relation to normalized jump height and rookie Approximate Value (AV) using an alpha level of 0.05.Results: After analysis, only the overall model for normalized jump height was statistically significant (R^2^ = 0.69, p = 0.002).Discussion: While no single variable predicted jump height, distinct strategies were evident between the top and bottom 25% performers based on component correlations. The regression model approached significance in predicting rookie AV (R^2^ = 0.94, p = 0.052), with notable components like heel pauses for skilled positions and greater knee flexion for linemen. By creating models that can predict jump height or AV, variables can be identified that can be used to improve one’s jump height or, in the case of AV, that can be used to predict which draft prospects will perform better in the NFL.Keywords: athletes, technique, biomechanics, sport, video analysis
Breiffni Leavy, Elisabet Åkesson, Johan Lökk
et al.
Abstract Background Knowledge of health care utilization at the end of life in Parkinson’s disease (PD) is sparse. This study aims to investigate end of life health care utilization, characterized by emergency room (ER) visits, receipt of specialized palliative care (SPC), and acute hospital deaths in a Swedish population-based PD cohort. Methods We conducted a retrospective cohort study on deceased patients (≥ 18 years) with a PD diagnosis during their last year of life (n = 922), based on health care-provider data from Region Stockholm´s data warehouse, for the study period 2015–2021. Univariable and multivariable logistic regression analyses tested associations and adjusted Odds ratios (aORs) were calculated. Results During the last month of life, approx. half of the cohort had emergency room (ER) visits and risk of frailty (measured by Hospital Frailty Risk Score) significantly predicted these visits (aOR, 3.90 (2.75–5.55)). In total, 120 people (13%) received SPC during their last three months of life, which positively associated with risk for frailty, (aOR, 2.65 (1.43–4.94, p = 0.002). In total, 284 people (31%) died in acute hospital settings. Among community-dwellers, male gender and frailty were strongly associated with acute hospital deaths (aOR, 1.90 (1.15–3.13, p = 0.01) and 3.70 (1.96–6.98, p < 0.0001)). Conclusions Rates of ER visits at end of life and hospital deaths were relatively high in this population-based cohort. Considering a high disease burden, referral to SPC at end of life was relatively low. Sex-specific disparities in health care utilization are apparent. Identifying people with high risk for frailty could assist the planning of optimal end-of-life care for people with PD.
In this paper we study the optimal control of a parabolic initial-boundary value problem of viscous Cahn-Hilliard type with zero Neumann boundary conditions. Phase field systems of this type govern the evolution of diffusive phase transition processes with conserved order parameter. It is assumed that the nonlinear functions driving the physical processes within the spatial domain are double-well potentials of logarithmic type whose derivatives become singular at the boundary of their respective domains of definition. For such systems, optimal control problems have been studied in the past. We focus here on the situation when the cost functional of the optimal control problem contains a nondifferentiable term like the L1-norm, which leads to sparsity of optimal controls. For such cases, we establish first-order necessary and second-order sufficient optimality conditions for locally optimal controls. In the approach to second-order sufficient conditions, the main novelty of this paper, we adapt a technique introduced by E. Casas, C. Ryll and F. Tröltzsch in the paper [SIAM J. Control Optim. 53 (2015), 2168-2202]. In this paper, we show that this method can also be successfully applied to systems of viscous Cahn-Hilliard type with logarithmic nonlinearity. Since the Cahn-Hilliard system corresponds to a fourth-order partial differential equation in contrast to the second-order systems investigated before, additional technical difficulties have to be overcome.
Áron Horváth, Eszter Ferentzi, Kristóf Schwartz
et al.
Background: Proprioceptive accuracy refers to the individual's ability to perceive proprioceptive information, that is, the information referring to the actual state of the locomotor system, which originates from mechanoreceptors located in various parts of the locomotor system and from tactile receptors located in the skin. Proprioceptive accuracy appears to be an important aspect in the evaluation of sensorimotor functioning; however, no widely accepted standard assessment exists. In this systematic review, our goal was to identify and categorize different methods that are used to assess different aspects of proprioceptive accuracy. Methods: A literature search was conducted in 5 different databases (PubMed, SPORTDiscus, PsycINFO, ScienceDirect, and SpringerLink). Results: Overall, 1139 scientific papers reporting 1346 methods were included in this review. The methods assess 8 different aspects of proprioception: (a) the perception of joint position, (b) movement and movement extent, (c) trajectory, (d) velocity, and the sense of (e) force, (f) muscle tension, (g) weight, and (h) size. They apply various paradigms of psychophysics (i.e., the method of adjustment, constant stimuli, and limits). Conclusion: As the outcomes of different tasks with respect to various body parts show no associations (i.e., proprioceptive accuracy is characterized by site-specificity and method-specificity), the appropriate measurement method for the task needs to be chosen based on theoretical considerations and/or ecological validity.
We present some conditions for social preference transitivity under the majority rule when the individual preferences include cycles. First, our concern is with the restriction on the preference orderings of individuals except those (called cycle members) whose preferences constitute the cycles, but the considered transitivity is, of course, of the society as a whole. In our discussion, the individual preferences are assumed concerned and the cycle members' preferences are assumed as strict orderings. Particularly, for an alternative triple when one cycle is involved and the society is sufficient large (at least 5 individuals in the society), we present a sufficient condition for social transitivity; when two antagonistic cycles are involved and the society has at least 9 individuals, necessary and sufficient conditions are presented which are merely restricted on the preferences of those individuals except the cycle members. Based on the work due to Slutsky (1977) and Gaertner \& Heinecke (1978), we then outline a conceptual $\hat{O}\mbox{-}\hat{I}$ framework of social transitivity in an axiomatic manner. Connections between some already identified conditions and the $\hat{O}\mbox{-}\hat{I}$ framework is examined.
Abstract Transmission System Operators provide forecasts of electricity demand to the electricity system. The producers and sellers use this information to establish the next day production units planning and prices. The results obtained are very accurate. However, they have a great deal with special events forecasting. Special events produce anomalous load conditions, and the models used to provide predictions must react properly against these situations. In this article, a new forecasting method based on multiple seasonal Holt-Winters modelling including discrete-interval moving seasonalities is applied to the Spanish hourly electricity demand to predict holidays with a 24-h prediction horizon. It allows the model to integrate the anomalous load within the model. The main results show how the new proposal outperforms regular methods and reduces the forecasting error from 9.5% to under 5% during holidays.
Objective Ketamine is an anaesthetic agent with a unique dissociative profile and pharmacological effects ranging from the induction and maintenance of anaesthesia to analgesia and sedation, depending on the dose. This article provides information for the clinical use of ketamine in anaesthesia, in both conventional and special circumstances. Methods This is a non-systematic review of the literature, through a PubMed search up to February 2021. Results With a favourable pharmacokinetic profile, ketamine is used in hospital and prehospital settings for emergency situations. It is suitable for patients with many heart conditions and, unlike other anaesthetics, its potential for cardiorespiratory depression is low. Furthermore, it may be used when venous access is difficult as it may be administered through various routes. Ketamine is the anaesthetic of choice for patients with bronchospasm thanks to its bronchodilatory and anti-inflammatory properties. Conclusion With a favourable pharmacokinetic profile, ketamine is used in hospital and prehospital settings for emergency situations and is suitable for patients with many cardiac and respiratory conditions.
This article addresses the almost surely exponential (ASE) stabilization problem of continuous-time jump systems realized by a stochastic scheduled controller. In this study, a stochastic scheduled controller based on the anytime algorithm is proposed. It is able to cope with the situation where no controller is added to subsystems during some time slices. Sufficient conditions for the existence of such a controller are established by applying novel techniques to its stochastic transfer matrix, and they are all presented with solvable forms. Particularly, both dwell times of the jump signal and distribution properties of stochastic scheduling are considered and proved to have played positive roles in obtaining better performance and applications. Two special situations about no jump systems with constant and varied dwell times are further studied, respectively. A practical example is offered so as to verify the effectiveness and superiority of the methods proposed in this study.
For a prime $p>2$ and a smooth proper $p$-adic formal scheme $X$ over $\mathcal{O}_K$ where $K$ is a $p$-adic field, we study a series of conditions ($\mathrm{Cr}_s$), $s\geq 0$ that partially control the $G_K$-action on the image of the associated Breuil-Kisin prismatic cohomology $\mathrm{R}Γ_Δ(X/\mathfrak{S})$ inside the $A_{\mathrm{inf}}$-prismatic cohomology $\mathrm{R}Γ_Δ(X_{A_{\mathrm{inf}}}/A_{\mathrm{inf}})$. The condition ($\mathrm{Cr}_0$) is a criterion for a Breuil-Kisin-Fargues $G_K$-module to induce a crystalline representation used by Gee and Liu, and thus leads to a proof of crystallinity of $\mathrm{H}^i_{\text{ét}}(X_{\overlineη}, \mathbb{Q}_p)$ that avoids the crystalline comparison. The higher conditions ($\mathrm{Cr}_s$) are used to adapt the strategy of Caruso and Liu in order to establish ramification bounds for the mod $p$ representations $\mathrm{H}^{i}_{\text{ét}}(X_{\overlineη}, \mathbb{Z}/p\mathbb{Z}),$ for arbitrary $e$ and $i$, which extend or improve existing bounds in various situations.
We show that the elasticity Hilbert complex with mixed boundary conditions on bounded strong Lipschitz domains is closed and compact. The crucial results are compact embeddings which follow by abstract arguments using functional analysis together with particular regular decompositions. Higher Sobolev order results are proved as well. This paper extends recent results on the de Rham Hilbert complex with mixed boundary conditions from [11] and recent results on the elasticity Hilbert complex with empty or full boundary conditions from [15].
The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of functional mobility analyse and body stability on service performance among veteran tennis players. 25 veteran (senior) players (X̄age: 40.79±4.2) who are active licenced, have participated in the study voluntarily. The analyse of body stability of participant group has been done by using 4 core endurance tests; plank test (PT), lateral bridge test (LBTdom./non-dom.), flexor endurance test (FET) and extensor endurance test (EET). The evaluation of the participant’s mobility ability has been done with Functional Movement Screening test (FMS). Service performance scale has been conducted with Sports Radar Speed Gun SR3600. Participants have been asked for serving 8 times at maximal speed, the shots would be aimed at the cross service box with the dominant hand, accordingly with the tennis rules, balls which are hung to the net and out of service court (out) have been invalidated. Spearman Rank Order correlation analyse has been done on the gathered data by considering normality distribution at SPSS for windows 20.0 programme. In conclusion; a relationship couldn’t be found between the FMS and service performance speed rates of veteran (senior) tennis players. While it has been seen that there is a relationship between service performance speed and from the body stability core endurance tests; LBT (dominant), (p lt;0,05; r=0,550) FET (p lt;0,05; r=0,426) and EET (p lt;0,05; r=0,460), a relationship between PT and LBT(non-dom.) and service performance and between FMS and body stability core endurance tests hasn’t been encountered. A healthy psychical structure with a wide range of mobility can contribute to the performance of a variety of sport branches including tennis. When the role of service performance in a tennis match has been taken into account, it has been considered as one of the most important part of a play. For the studies that can be done in the future, with increasing the number of subjects, also using video analyse system can be recommended.
Mariana Bogoni Budib, Mateus Masayuki Hashiguchi, Silvio Assis de Oliveira-Junior
et al.
Resumo Objetivo: Avaliar, por meio de revisão sistemática, a influência do tratamento fisioterapêutico sobre a funcionalidade, amplitude de movimento articular e força muscular em pacientes submetidos à artroplastia total de quadril devido à osteoartrite. Métodos: A busca sistemática de ensaios clínicos randomizados e não randomizados foi conduzida utilizando os bancos de dados eletrônicos PubMed, Web of Science, PEDro, Cochrane, Clinical Trials e SciELO, com base nas estratégias de pesquisa recomendadas pelos itens de relatórios preferenciais para análises sistemáticas e metanálises (PRISMA). Resultados: Em geral, protocolos supervisionados por fisioterapeutas associados à realização de exercícios ativos da musculatura periarticular do quadril e de extensores de joelho têm propiciado importante prognóstico físico e funcional. Exercícios resistidos (dinâmicos e isométricos) de alta intensidade são mais eficazes para a funcionalidade. Para a força muscular e Amplitude de movimento (ADM), exercícios dinâmicos com 3 a 5 séries de 8 a 12 repetições com baixa e alta intensidade promoveram ganhos mais expressivos em relação a outras modalidades terapêuticas. Conclusões: As técnicas e os protocolos utilizados pela fisioterapia para o tratamento da ATQ são variados e possuem importante eficácia clínica comprovada na literatura.
We introduce Grounded Situation Recognition (GSR), a task that requires producing structured semantic summaries of images describing: the primary activity, entities engaged in the activity with their roles (e.g. agent, tool), and bounding-box groundings of entities. GSR presents important technical challenges: identifying semantic saliency, categorizing and localizing a large and diverse set of entities, overcoming semantic sparsity, and disambiguating roles. Moreover, unlike in captioning, GSR is straightforward to evaluate. To study this new task we create the Situations With Groundings (SWiG) dataset which adds 278,336 bounding-box groundings to the 11,538 entity classes in the imsitu dataset. We propose a Joint Situation Localizer and find that jointly predicting situations and groundings with end-to-end training handily outperforms independent training on the entire grounding metric suite with relative gains between 8% and 32%. Finally, we show initial findings on three exciting future directions enabled by our models: conditional querying, visual chaining, and grounded semantic aware image retrieval. Code and data available at https://prior.allenai.org/projects/gsr.
This is a historical review covering the last 30 years of the observational study of lenticular galaxies at the 6m telescope BTA of the Special Astrophysical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The development of spectroscopic techniques at the BTA has allowed to get comprehensive information about this class of stellar systems, starting from the study of their nuclei in the late 80th towards quite exclusive results obtained in the last years on the outermost parts of their large-scale stellar disks.
The Han Nguyen, Thi Huyen Nguyen, Van Minh Nguyen
et al.
Objective: To investigate antidiabetic and antioxidant activities of the extract and fractions from Vietnamese red seaweed Laurencia dendroidea.
Methods: The seaweed Laurencia dendroidea was extracted by using microwave-assisted extraction method in 80% methanol. The seaweed extract was then fractionated using different solvents (n-hexane, chloroform, ethyl acetate, butanol and water). These obtained fractions were evaluated for α -glucosidase inhibitory and antioxidant activities. Antioxidant activities were tested using DPPH, nitric oxide radical scavenging and metal chelating assays. The enzyme inhibition mode was determined using Lineweaver-Burk plot. For acidic and thermal stabilities, the ethyl acetate fraction was treated at pH 2.0 and 100 °C, respectively. The residual inhibitory activity of the fraction was calculated based on the initial inhibitory activity. For in vivo antidiabetic activity, mice were divided into four groups, including normal control, diabetic control, diabetic mice treated with ethyl acetate fraction and diabetic mice treated with gliclazide. Blood glucose level of treated mice during acute and prolonged treatments was measured. To evaluate the toxicity of the ethyl acetate fraction, the body weight changes and activities of liver function enzymes (aspartate transaminase, alanine transaminase and gamma-glutamyl transferase) were carried out.
Results: The extract of Laurencia dendroidea showed strong α-glucosidase inhibitory and DPPH radical scavenging activities. Methanolic concentrations affected both α-glucosidase inhibitory and antioxidant activities. A 80% aqueous methanol was the suitable solvent for extraction of enzyme inhibitors and antioxidants. Among solvent fractions, ethyl acetate fraction had the highest inhibitory activities against α -glucosidase with a mixed type of inhibition and the strongest antioxidant activities, and was stable under acidic and thermal conditions. The ethyl acetate fraction treated diabetic mice significantly reduced blood glucose level compared with the diabetic control group (13.16 mmol/L vs. 22.75 mmol/L after 3 hours of treatment). Oral administration of ethyl acetate fraction did not exhibit toxicity at a dose of 100 mg/kg body weight as determined by body weight changes and liver biochemical parameters.
Conclusions: Laurencia dendroidea could be a potential source for production of antidiabetic and antioxidative agents.
Joel L N Barratt, Meredith Lane, Emir Talundzic
et al.
Strongyloidiasis is a neglected tropical disease caused by the human infective nematodes Strongyloides stercoralis, Strongyloides fuelleborni fuelleborni and Strongyloides fuelleborni kellyi. Previous large-scale studies exploring the genetic diversity of this important genus have focused on Southeast Asia, with a small number of isolates from the USA, Switzerland, Australia and several African countries having been genotyped. Consequently, little is known about the global distribution of geographic sub-variants of these nematodes and the genetic diversity that exists within the genus Strongyloides generally. We extracted DNA from human, dog and primate feces containing Strongyloides, collected from several countries representing all inhabited continents. Using a genotyping assay adapted for deep amplicon sequencing on the Illumina MiSeq platform, we sequenced the hyper-variable I and hyper-variable IV regions of the Strongyloides 18S rRNA gene and a fragment of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 (cox1) gene from these specimens. We report several novel findings including unique S. stercoralis and S. fuelleborni genotypes, and the first identifications of a previously unknown S. fuelleborni infecting humans within Australia. We expand on an existing Strongyloides genotyping scheme to accommodate S. fuelleborni and these novel genotypes. In doing so, we compare our data to all 18S and cox1 sequences of S. fuelleborni and S. stercoralis available in GenBank (to our knowledge), that overlap with the sequences generated using our approach. As this analysis represents more than 1,000 sequences collected from diverse hosts and locations, representing all inhabited continents, it allows a truly global understanding of the population genetic structure of the Strongyloides species infecting humans, non-human primates, and domestic dogs.
Arctic medicine. Tropical medicine, Public aspects of medicine