Neck muscle vibration can improve sensorimotor function in patients with neck pain

Background: context People with neck pain display a diminished joint position sense and disturbed postural control, which is thought to be a result of impaired somatosensory afferent activity and/or integration. Afferent processing can be artificially manipulated by vibration and was shown to reduce motor performance in healthy subjects. However, the effect of vibration on sensorimotor function in neck pain patients is scarcely investigated.Purpose: To assess the effect of neck muscle vibration on joint position sense and postural control in neck pain subjects and healthy controls.Study design: Case control study.Patient sample: Thirteen neck pain patients and 10 healthy controls participated in the present study.Outcome measurements: Cervical joint position sense and dynamic and static postural stability.Methods: Short-term, targeted neck muscle vibration with 100 Hz was applied after baseline measurement.Results: Vibration had opposite effects in patients and healthy subjects. Patients showed improved joint position sense (p<.01) and reduced dynamic postural sway (p<.05) after vibration, whereas vibration resulted in reduced joint position sense acuity (p<.05) and a nonsignificant increase in postural sway in healthy controls.Conclusions: This is the first study showing an improved motor performance after neck muscle vibration in patients with neck pain. Thus, vibration may be used to counteract sensorimotor impairment of the cervical spine. Potential underlying mechanisms are discussed

The Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance Green City Program: Assisting Cities and Municipalities to Engage Customers and Develop Effective Energy Efficiency Programs

The Southeastern region of the United States is at a critical turning point in its development. With twice the population growth of the country overall, the demand for energy is projected to increase by 30% in the next 20 years, with much of the electricity load growth to be met by new baseload plants. This presentation describes the work of a competitive City model for energy efficiency programs in the Southeast.Southeast Energy Efficiency Allianc

Erratum: The Non-Coding RNA Journal Club: Highlights on Recent Papers-4. Non-Coding RNA 2016, 2, 9.

Please note that in the published editorial [1], affiliations 1, and 8 contained errors.[...]

Audits and inspections of pharmacovigilance systems in Russia

The implementation of pharmacovigilance activities is impossible in isolation from compliance with the quality requirements of medicines and the activities of pharmaceutical and medical organizations throughout the pharmaceutical practice, as well as without access to sales plans, sales results and full relevance of information on drug conditions in all markets and in all cases of application. Properly conducted audit or inspection evaluation of the pharmacovigilance system makes it possible to identify and prevent drug safety problems at all stages of its life cycle.The aim. Development of a risk-based strategy for planning and passing audits and inspections of the pharmacovigilance system for the subsequent creation of effective programs for assessing the pharmacovigilance system on its basis.Material and methods. The study used structurallogical, empirical methods, general logical methods of scientific knowledge, methods of generalization and extrapolation.Results. The plans and results of audits and inspections of pharmacovigilance systems of Russian and foreign pharmaceutical organizations and their pharmacovigilance vendors were analyzed. A risk-based strategy and a checklist for planning internal and external audits of pharmacovigilance systems of Russian pharmaceutical organizations and their vendors for pharmacovigilance have been developed and recommendations for training internal auditors of pharmacovigilance systems and audit teams have been developed for them.Conclusion. Risk assessment indicators adapted for Russia have been developed, according to which Russian pharmaceutical organizations and their pharmacovigilance vendors can assess the likelihood of the risk of priority inclusion in the plan of Russian inspections of pharmacovigilance systems for compliance with the requirements of the good pharmacovigilance practice of the Eurasian Economic Union. Recommendations were prepared for the executive management and pharmacovigilance specialists of Russian pharmaceutical organizations in terms of assessing regulatory risks for the quality system of the pharmacovigilance system, planning and conducting audits; evaluating the relationship of pharmacovigilance with other good practices and with information from the plans and results of the organization as a whole. The indicators adapted for Russia for assessing the compliance of the pharmacovigilance system with the rules of the NPF EAEU are given

Hippocampal Place Cell Instability after Lesions of the Head Direction Cell Network

The occurrence of cells that encode spatial location (place cells) or head direction (HD cells) in the rat limbic system suggests that these cell types are important for spatial navigation. We sought to determine whether place fields of hippocampal CA1 place cells would be altered in animals receiving lesions of brain areas containing HD cells. Rats received bilateral lesions of anterodorsal thalamic nuclei (ADN), postsubiculum (PoS), or sham lesions, before place cell recording. Although place cells from lesioned animals did not differ from controls on many place-field characteristics, such as place-field size and infield firing rate, the signal was significantly degraded with respect to measures of outfield firing rate, spatial coherence, and information content. Surprisingly, place cells from lesioned animals were more likely modulated by the directional heading of the animal. Rotation of the landmark cue showed that place fields from PoS-lesioned animals were not controlled by the cue and shifted unpredictably between sessions. Although fields from ADN-lesioned animals tended to have less landmark control than fields from control animals, this impairment was mild compared with cells recorded from PoS-lesioned animals. Removal of the prominent visual cue also led to instability of place-field representations in PoS-lesioned, but not ADN-lesioned, animals. Together, these findings suggest that an intact HD system is not necessary for the maintenance of place fields, but lesions of brain areas that convey the HD signal can degrade this signal, and lesions of the PoS might lead to perceptual or mnemonic deficits, leading to place-field instability between sessions

The non-coding rna journal club: Highlights on recent papers-8

We are glad to share with you our eighth Journal Club and to highlight some of the most interesting papers published recently [...

Numerical analysis of the flexible roll forming of an automotive component from high strength steel

Conventional roll forming is limited to components with uniform cross-section; the recently developed flexible roll forming (FRF) process can be used to form components which vary in both width and depth. It has been suggested that this process can be used to manufacture automotive components from Ultra High Strength Steel (UHSS) which has limited tensile elongation. In the flexible roll forming process, the pre-cut blank is fed through a set of rolls; some rolls are computer-numerically controlled (CNC) to follow the 3D contours of the part and hence parts with a variable cross-section can be produced. This paper introduces a new flexible roll forming technique which can be used to form a complex shape with the minimum tooling requirements. In this method, the pre-cut blank is held between two dies and the whole system moves back and forth past CNC forming rolls. The forming roll changes its angle and position in each pass to incrementally form the part. In this work, the process is simulated using the commercial software package Copra FEA. The distribution of total strain and final part quality are investigated as well as related shape defects observed in the process. Different tooling concepts are used to improve the strain distribution and hence the part quality