The influence of rotator cuff tear type and weight bearing on shoulder biomechanics in an ex vivo simulator experiment

Glenohumeral biomechanics after rotator cuff (RC) tears have not been fully elucidated. This study aimed to investigate the muscle compensatory mechanism in weight-bearing shoulders with RC tears and asses the induced pathomechanics (i.e., glenohumeral translation, joint instability, center of force (CoF), joint reaction force). An experimental, glenohumeral simulator with muscle-mimicking cable system was used to simulate 30° scaption motion. Eight fresh-frozen shoulders were prepared and mounted in the simulator. Specimen-specific scapular anthropometry was used to test six RC tear types, with intact RC serving as the control, and three weight-bearing loads, with the non-weight-bearing condition serving as the control. Glenohumeral translation was calculated using instantaneous helical axis. CoF, muscle forces, and joint reaction forces were measured using force sensors integrated into the simulator. Linear mixed effects models (RC tear type and weight-bearing) with random effects (specimen and sex) were used to assess differences in glenohumeral biomechanics. RC tears did not change the glenohumeral translation (p > 0.05) but shifted the CoF superiorly (p ≤ 0.005). Glenohumeral translation and joint reaction forces increased with increasing weight bearing (p < 0.001). RC and deltoid muscle forces increased with the presence of RC tears (p ≤ 0.046) and increased weight bearing (p ≤ 0.042). The synergistic muscles compensated for the torn RC tendons, and the glenohumeral translation remained comparable to that for the intact RC tendons. However, in RC tears, the more superior CoF was close to where glenoid erosion occurs in RC tear patients with secondary osteoarthritis. These findings underscore the importance of early detection and precise management of RC tears

Fast-exchanging spirocyclic rhodamine probes for aptamer-based super-resolution RNA imaging

Live-cell RNA imaging with high spatial and temporal resolution remains a major challenge. Here we report the development of RhoBAST:SpyRho, a fluorescent light-up aptamer (FLAP) system ideally suited for visualizing RNAs in live or fixed cells with various advanced fluorescence microscopy modalities. Overcoming problems associated with low cell permeability, brightness, fluorogenicity, and signal-to-background ratio of previous fluorophores, we design a novel probe, SpyRho (Spirocyclic Rhodamine), which tightly binds to the RhoBAST aptamer. High brightness and fluorogenicity is achieved by shifting the equilibrium between spirolactam and quinoid. With its high affinity and fast ligand exchange, RhoBAST:SpyRho is a superb system for both super-resolution SMLM and STED imaging. Its excellent performance in SMLM and the first reported super-resolved STED images of specifically labeled RNA in live mammalian cells represent significant advances over other FLAPs. The versatility of RhoBAST:SpyRho is further demonstrated by imaging endogenous chromosomal loci and proteins

Neural Processes Associated with Vocabulary and Vowel-Length Differences in a Dialect: An ERP Study in Pre-literate Children

Although familiarity with a language impacts how phonology and semantics are processed at the neural level, little is known how these processes are affected by familiarity with a dialect. By measuring event-related potentials (ERPs) in kindergarten children we investigated neural processing related to familiarity with dialect-specific pronunciation and lexicality of spoken words before literacy acquisition in school. Children speaking one of two German dialects were presented with spoken word-picture pairings, in which congruity (or the lack thereof) was defined by dialect familiarity with pronunciation or vocabulary. In a dialect-independent control contrast, congruity was defined by audio–visual semantic (mis)match. Congruity effects and congruity-by-dialect group interactions in the ERPs were tested by data-driven topographic analyses of variance (TANOVA) and theory-driven focal analyses. Converging results revealed similar congruity effects in the N400 and late-positive-complex (LPC) in the control contrast for both dialect groups. In the dialect-specific vocabulary contrast, topographies of the N400- and LPC-effects were reversed depending on familiarity with the presented dialect words. In the dialect-specific pronunciation contrast, again a topography reversal was found depending on dialect familiarity, however, only for the LPC. Our data suggest that neural processing of unfamiliar words, but not pronunciation variants, is characterized by semantic processing (increased N400-effect). However, both unfamiliar words and pronunciation variants seem to engage congruity judgment, as indicated by the LPC-effect. Thus, semantic processing of pronunciation in dialect words seems to be rather robust against slight alterations in pronunciation, like changes in vowel duration, while such alterations may still trigger subsequent control processes

EyeNeRF: A Hybrid Representation for Photorealistic Synthesis, Animation and Relighting of Human Eyes

A unique challenge in creating high-quality animatable and relightable 3D avatars of real people is modeling human eyes, particularly in conjunction with the surrounding periocular face region. The challenge of synthesizing eyes is multifold as it requires 1) appropriate representations for the various components of the eye and the periocular region for coherent viewpoint synthesis, capable of representing diffuse, refractive and highly reflective surfaces, 2) disentangling skin and eye appearance from environmental illumination such that it may be rendered under novel lighting conditions, and 3) capturing eyeball motion and the deformation of the surrounding skin to enable re-gazing. These challenges have traditionally necessitated the use of expensive and cumbersome capture setups to obtain high-quality results, and even then, modeling of the full eye region holistically has remained elusive. We present a novel geometry and appearance representation that enables high-fidelity capture and photorealistic animation, view synthesis and relighting of the eye region using only a sparse set of lights and cameras. Our hybrid representation combines an explicit parametric surface model for the eyeball surface with implicit deformable volumetric representations for the periocular region and the interior of the eye. This novel hybrid model has been designed specifically to address the various parts of that exceptionally challenging facial area - the explicit eyeball surface allows modeling refraction and high frequency specular reflection at the cornea, whereas the implicit representation is well suited to model lower frequency skin reflection via spherical harmonics and can represent non-surface structures such as hair (i.e. eyebrows) or highly diffuse volumetric bodies (i.e. sclera), both of which are a challenge for explicit surface models. Tightly integrating the two representations in a joint framework allows controlled photoreal image synthesis and joint optimization of both the geometry parameters of the eyeball and the implicit neural network in continuous 3D space. We show that for high-resolution close-ups of the human eye, our model can synthesize high-fidelity animated gaze from novel views under unseen illumination conditions, allowing to generate visually rich eye imagery.ISSN:0730-0301ISSN:1557-736

Recovery of a 10-year-old girl from methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus sepsis in response to low-dose ceftaroline treatment

A 9-year-old girl was severely injured in a car accident in Afghanistan, in which both her lower legs were badly damaged. She was treated at the Hospital of Ingolstadt (Klinikum Ingolstadt) after she had undergone initial surgery at an Indian hospital. Various bacterial species were isolated from multiple wounds, and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) was one among them. After the amputation of her lower legs, she developed MRSA sepsis, which was successfully treated with a relatively low dosage of ceftaroline (Zinforo®/Teflaro®; 2×9 mg/kg/d), although the bacterial isolate’s minimal inhibitory concentration (1.5–4 mg/L) suggested a decreased susceptibility. In summary, ceftaroline was highly efficient and well tolerated by the patient suffering from MRSA sepsis

Does "Individual Placement and Support" satisfy the users' needs?

This study aims to investigate clients' satisfaction with individual placement and support (IPS) at the University Hospital for Psychiatry Zurich (PUK). Furthermore, this study aims to investigate if clients feel the approach of IPS as a useful approach to fulfill their needs. One hundred twenty-five people were recruited from one of the three IPS services of PUK and were asked to complete a structured questionnaire. The following IPS services were available: (i) randomized controlled trial (RCT) ZHEPP (www.zhepp.ch), (ii) RCT ZInEP (www.zinep.ch), and (iii) us clinical supported employment service of PUK (IPS-PUK). The clients mostly indicated that IPS was generally useful and fitted their needs. Overall satisfaction of the participants with the IPS services of the PUK was very high. Furthermore, client satisfaction and symptom severity are inversely associated. In conclusion, participants of the IPS services received the support they were looking for. This means that the approach of IPS fits the needs of different patient groups and can be used without any modifications. The most important limitation is the unequal group sizes. Therefore, the obtained results need to be strengthened by future research

Active vaccination against interleukin-5 as long-term treatment for insect-bite hypersensitivity in horses

Background Insect‐bite hypersensitivity (IBH) in horses is a chronic allergic dermatitis caused by insect bites. Horses suffer from pruritic skin lesions, caused by type‐I/type‐IV allergic reactions accompanied by prominent eosinophil infiltration into the skin. Interleukin‐5 (IL‐5) is the key cytokine for eosinophils and we have previously shown that targeting IL‐5 by vaccination reduces disease symptoms in horses. Objective Here, we analyzed the potential for long‐term therapy by assessing a second follow‐up year of the previously published study. Methods The vaccine consisted of equine IL‐5 (eIL‐5) covalently linked to a cucumber mosaic virus‐like particle (VLP) containing a universal T cell epitope (CuMVTT) using a semi‐crossover design to follow vaccinated horses during a second treatment season. Thirty Icelandic horses were immunized with 300 μg of eIL‐5‐CuMVTT without adjuvant. Results The vaccine was well tolerated and did not reveal any safety concerns throughout the study. Upon vaccination, all horses developed reversible anti‐eIL‐5 auto‐antibody titers. The mean course of eosinophil levels was reduced compared to placebo treatment leading to significant reduction of clinical lesion scores. Horses in their second vaccination year showed a more pronounced improvement of disease symptoms when compared to first treatment year, most likely due to more stable antibody titers induced by a single booster injection. Hence, responses could be maintained over two seasons and the horses remained protected against disease symptoms. Conclusion Yearly vaccination against IL‐5 may be a long‐term solution for the treatment of IBH and other eosinophil‐mediated diseases in horses and other species including humans

Investigating stable oxygen and carbon isotopic variability in speleothem records over the last millennium using multiple isotope-enabled climate models

The incorporation of water isotopologues into the hydrology of general circulation models (GCMs) facilitates the comparison between modeled and measured proxy data in paleoclimate archives. However, the variability and drivers of measured and modeled water isotopologues, as well as the diversity of their representation in different models, are not well constrained. Improving our understanding of this variability in past and present climates will help to better constrain future climate change projections and decrease their range of uncertainty. Speleothems are a precisely datable terrestrial paleoclimate archives and provide well-preserved (semi-)continuous multivariate isotope time series in the lower latitudes and mid-latitudes and are therefore well suited to assess climate and isotope variability on decadal and longer timescales. However, the relationships of speleothem oxygen and carbon isotopes to climate variables are influenced by site-specific parameters, and their comparison to GCMs is not always straightforward. Here we compare speleothem oxygen and carbon isotopic signatures from the Speleothem Isotopes Synthesis and Analysis database version 2 (SISALv2) to the output of five different water-isotope-enabled GCMs (ECHAM5-wiso, GISS-E2-R, iCESM, iHadCM3, and isoGSM) over the last millennium (850-1850 CE). We systematically evaluate differences and commonalities between the standardized model simulation outputs. The goal is to distinguish climatic drivers of variability for modeled isotopes and compare them to those of measured isotopes. We find strong regional differences in the oxygen isotope signatures between models that can partly be attributed to differences in modeled surface temperature. At low latitudes, precipitation amount is the dominant driver for stable water isotope variability; however, at cave locations the agreement between modeled temperature variability is higher than for precipitation variability. While modeled isotopic signatures at cave locations exhibited extreme events coinciding with changes in volcanic and solar forcing, such fingerprints are not apparent in the speleothem isotopes. This may be attributed to the lower temporal resolution of speleothem records compared to the events that are to be detected. Using spectral analysis, we can show that all models underestimate decadal and longer variability compared to speleothems (albeit to varying extents). We found that no model excels in all analyzed comparisons, although some perform better than the others in either mean or variability. Therefore, we advise a multi-model approach whenever comparing proxy data to modeled data. Considering karst and cave internal processes, e.g., through isotope-enabled karst models, may alter the variability in speleothem isotopes and play an important role in determining the most appropriate model. By exploring new ways of analyzing the relationship between the oxygen and carbon isotopes, their variability, and co-variability across timescales, we provide methods that may serve as a baseline for future studies with different models using, e.g., different isotopes, different climate archives, or different time periods