Effects of low intensity pulsed ultrasound with and without increased cortical porosity on structural bone allograft incorporation

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Though used for over a century, structural bone allografts suffer from a high rate of mechanical failure due to limited graft revitalization even after extended periods <it>in vivo</it>. Novel strategies that aim to improve graft incorporation are lacking but necessary to improve the long-term clinical outcome of patients receiving bone allografts. The current study evaluated the effect of low-intensity pulsed ultrasound (LIPUS), a potent exogenous biophysical stimulus used clinically to accelerate the course of fresh fracture healing, and longitudinal allograft perforations (LAP) as non-invasive therapies to improve revitalization of intercalary allografts in a sheep model.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Fifteen skeletally-mature ewes were assigned to five experimental groups based on allograft type and treatment: +CTL, -CTL, LIPUS, LAP, LIPUS+LAP. The +CTL animals (n = 3) received a tibial ostectomy with immediate replacement of the resected autologous graft. The -CTL group (n = 3) received fresh frozen ovine tibial allografts. The +CTL and -CTL groups did not receive LAP or LIPUS treatments. The LIPUS treatment group (n = 3), following grafting with fresh frozen ovine tibial allografts, received ultrasound stimulation for 20 minutes/day, 5 days/week, for the duration of the healing period. The LAP treatment group (n = 3) received fresh frozen ovine allografts with 500 μm longitudinal perforations that extended 10 mm into the graft. The LIPUS+LAP treatment group (n = 3) received both LIPUS and LAP interventions. All animals were humanely euthanized four months following graft transplantation for biomechanical and histological analysis.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>After four months of healing, daily LIPUS stimulation of the host-allograft junctions, alone or in combination with LAP, resulted in 30% increases in reconstruction stiffness, paralleled by significant increases (p < 0.001) in callus maturity and periosteal bridging across the host/allograft interfaces. Longitudinal perforations extending 10 mm into the proximal and distal endplates filled to varying degrees with new appositional bone and significantly accelerated revitalization of the allografts compared to controls.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The current study has demonstrated in a large animal model the potential of both LIPUS and LAP therapy to improve the degree of allograft incorporation. LAP may provide an option for increasing porosity, and thus potential <it>in vivo </it>osseous apposition and revitalization, without adversely affecting the structural integrity of the graft.</p

Writing Aileen Palmer back into memory. Review of Sylvia Martin's biography, Ink in her veins: The troubled life of Aileen Palmer

Brien, DL ORCiD: 0000-0002-9005-3645AILEEN Palmer was a poet and author in a wide range of other genres. She was also a linguist with an advanced grasp of a number of languages—putting this to good use in sensitive translations. A political activist, she lived and worked in Australia and overseas and both her work and her name deserve to be better known. Sylvia Martin’s beautifully written and carefully researched biography of Aileen certainly makes a major contribution to that task. The title of Martin’s biography suggests that, as the eldest daughter of two important Australian writers, Nettie Palmer and Vance Palmer, its subject was born into a writing life. This other main theme of this biography is suggested in its subtitle as not only did Aileen Palmer have “ink in her veins”, she also had a “troubled life.” These dual concerns—with her various writings and the turmoil and distresses she experienced—make for a finely balanced and nuanced life study

Inside story: Humanising a cold case victim – writing the life and brutal death of Mollie Dean

Brien, DL ORCiD: 0000-0002-9005-3645This essay focuses on two Australian books about a murder, the non-fiction A Scandal in Bohemia: The Life and Death of Mollie​ Dean by Gideon Haigh, and a novel, The Portrait of Molly Dean by Katherine Kovacic; both published this year. Both books recount the main facts of the life and brutal killing of Mary Winifred ‘Mollie’/’Molly’ Dean, but in very different ways. In late November 1930, Molly/Mollie was murdered in the Melbourne suburb of Elwood, only doors away from her home, at a time when a number of other young women were raped and strangled in that otherwise infamously sedate city. The story was covered in sensationalist detail in newspaper articles, and then retold, thinly veiled, in a number of fictional works in the ensuing decades, including George Johnson’s My Brother Jack. In thinking about Haigh and Kovac’s books almost nine decades after Mollie/Molly’s death, it is notable how various commonly-used literary definitions and genre descriptions – of fiction and non-fiction, truth and invention, biography and true crime, for instance – are not very useful. Discussing these books in terms of the context of the burgeoning popular interest in true crime stories – whether related in books, podcasts or television cold case investigations, reveals the extent to which writers can relay biographical, historical and criminological information in popular formats, and the means they use to do so

Food in the Singaporean graphic memoir

Brien, DL ORCiD: 0000-0002-9005-3645This chapter traces the history of the graphic memoir Singapore, with a focus on representations of food and other culinary aspects, including cookery. Works in English are surveyed, and literature from Singapore and other Asian scholarship is drawn upon

Object biography: Writing the lives of objects, artefacts and things

Brien, DL ORCiD: 0000-0002-9005-3645This chapter outlines and reviews the object biography as a form of creative writing

Modeling the good death in memoir

Brien, DL ORCiD: 0000-0002-9005-3645This chapter outlines the idea of the good death and how it is described in a series of memoirs

Object biography and its potential in creative writing

Brien, DL ORCiD: 0000-0002-9005-3645While biographies are generally understood to narrate the lives of people, the biographical form can also be used to write the life histories of objects of material culture. This article investigates the object biography (sometimes referred to as the ‘artefact biography’) and proposes that this is a form with rich potential for creative writing practitioners and researchers. As well as defining the object biography and its use in various disciplinary contexts, the article also profiles how this form of life writing has been utilised by creative writers, in order to consider its capacity to contribute to practice and research in the discipline of creative writing. Contemporary writers discussed include Edmund de Waal, Bambi Ward and Marele Day, with reference also made to the work of Hans Christian Andersen, Charlotte Brontë, Eliza Cook, Elizabeth Gaskell and Anna Sewell

Writing about food : significance, opportunities and professional identities

Brien, DL ORCiD: 0000-0002-9005-3645Food writing, including for cookbooks and in travel and food memoirs, makes up a significant, and increasing, proportion of the books written, published, sold and read each year in Australia and other parts of the English speaking world. Food writing also comprises a similarly significant, and also growing, proportion of the magazine, newspaper and journal articles, Internet weblogs and other non-fiction texts written, published, sold and read in English. Furthermore, food writers currently are producing much of the concept design, content and spin-off product that is driving the expansion of the already popular and profitable food-related television programming sector. Despite this high visibility in the marketplace, and while food and other culinary-related scholarship are simultaneously growing in reputation and respectability in the academy, this considerable part of the contemporary writing and publishing industry has, to date, attracted little serious study. Moreover, internationally, the emergent subject area of food writing is more often located either in Food History and Gastronomy programs or as a component of practical culinary skills courses than in Writing or Publishing programs. This paper will, therefore, investigate the potential of food writing as a viable component of Writing courses. This will include a preliminary investigation of the field and current trends in food writing and publishing, as well as the various academic, vocational and professional opportunities and pathways such study opens up for both the students and teachers of such courses

Researching creative writing [review]

Brien, DL ORCiD: 0000-0002-9005-3645Book review of Jen Webb, Researching Creative Writing, Creative Writing Studies/Frontinus, Newmarket, UK 201