Prosthetic Knee for CURE Kenya

Lower limb amputations are common in sub-Saharan Africa due to the prevalence of disease and infection in communities that lack access to adequate healthcare. Our project, Prosthetic Knee, partners with the CURE International Hospital in Kijabe, Kenya. In the region surrounding our client’s facility, there is a large number of lower-extremity amputations due to various infections and diseases. While many of these amputees only require a through-knee amputation, the lack of an affordable through-knee prosthesis often forces patients to undergo a more invasive transfemoral amputation to enable them to use a cheaper above-knee prosthesis. The goal of our project is to design and manufacture a financially accessible and user-friendly prosthetic knee for knee-disarticulation patients that can be manufactured in Messiah University’s machine shop (and ultimately, at the orthopedic facility in Kijabe). This year, the team’s work has included finalizing the prototype design, conducting finite element analysis in SOLIDWORKS to evaluate the knee’s static and fatigue strength, and beginning the process of physical manufacturing. Additionally, a damping mechanism driven by a spring-loaded system has been developed and integrated into the design after completing motion analysis and SOLIDWORKS modeling. Our future goals include manufacturing a complete metal prototype of the knee, conducting physical strength and fatigue testing on the metal prototype, and continuing iterative prototyping of the damper in preparation for physical implementation.https://mosaic.messiah.edu/engr2021/1014/thumbnail.jp

Bounding Anomalous Gauge-Boson Couplings

In this version we have corrected some minor errors in the tables, corrected typos, and added a reference. We have also updated our comparison with earlier workers. Figures are now included as uuencoded compressed tar files.Comment: 32 page

Extracting W Boson Couplings from the e+e−e^{+}e^{-} Production of Four Leptons

We consider the processes $e^{+}e^{-}\rightarrow \ell^{+} \ell^{\prime -}\nu \bar{\nu}^{\prime}$, including all possible charged lepton combinations, with regard to measuring parameters characterizing the $W$ boson. We calculate at what level these processes can be used to measure anamolous triple-boson vertice coupling parameters for the cases of $e^{+}e^{-}$ colliders at 500 $GeV$ and 1 $TeV$ center of mass energies.Comment: 13 pages,OCIP/C-93-

Prosthetic Knee

Amputations, specifically lower limb amputations, are common in Sub Saharan Africa and across the broader global community largely due to infection and disease. Our project, The Prosthetic Knee Team, partners with the orthopedic workshop at the CURE International Hospital in Kijabe, Kenya to create a prosthetic knee design for a specific type of amputation known as a Knee Disarticulation (also called through-knee). Currently, the orthopedic workshop is only able to provide one very expensive prosthetic knee option for these patients, and they often elect to undergo a second surgery, a trans-femoral amputation, because the cost of the second surgery and trans-femoral prosthesis combined is less than the currently available through-knee prosthetic. The goal of our project is to provide the orthopedic workshop with a manufacturable prosthetic knee design that provides through-knee amputees with a cheaper prosthetic option and removes the need to have a second amputation above the knee. Throughout the past two semesters, our focus was on organizing collected data, researching knee-disarticulations, and communicating with our client to more fully understand the scope of our project. After determining that moving forward our project will be manufacturing the prosthetic knees at Messiah College’s machine shop and shipping them to CURE Kenya to be fit on patients, we began to brainstorm potential design ideas. We are presently working on modifying and improving our chosen design to best meet all of the specifications laid out by our partner. Those specifications include minimized thigh-lengthening, low weight, maximized stability and durability, and aesthetically pleasing.https://mosaic.messiah.edu/engr2020/1017/thumbnail.jp

Low-Energy Brane-World Effective Actions and Partial Supersymmetry Breaking

As part of a programme for the general study of the low-energy implications of supersymmetry breaking in brane-world scenarios, we study the nonlinear realization of supersymmetry which occurs when breaking N=2 to N=1 supergravity. We consider three explicit realizations of this supersymmetry breaking pattern, which correspond to breaking by one brane, by one antibrane or by two (or more) parallel branes. We derive the minimal field content, the effective action and supersymmetry transformation rules for the resulting N=1 theory perturbatively in powers of kappa = 1/M_{Planck}. We show that the way the massive gravitino and spin-1 fields assemble into N=1 multiplets implies the existence of direct brane-brane contact interactions at order O(kappa). This result is contrary to the O(kappa^2) predicted by the sequestering scenario but in agreement with recent work of Anisimov et al. Our low-energy approach is model independent and is a first step towards determining the low-energy implications of more realistic brane models which completely break all supersymmetries.Comment: Latex, 29 Page

Services just for men? Insights from a national study of the well men services pilots.

Men continue to have a lower life expectancy in most countries compared to women. Explanations of this gendered health inequality tend to focus on male risk taking, unhealthy lifestyle choices and resistance to seeking help from health services. In the period 2005-2008 the Scottish Government funded a nationwide community health promotion programme aimed at improving men's health, called Well Men Service Pilots (henceforth WMS)

Resolving the Sources of Plasma Glucose Excursions following a Glucose Tolerance Test in the Rat with Deuterated Water and [U-13C]Glucose

Sources of plasma glucose excursions (PGE) following a glucose tolerance test enriched with [U-13C]glucose and deuterated water were directly resolved by 13C and 2H Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy analysis of plasma glucose and water enrichments in rat. Plasma water 2H-enrichment attained isotopic steady-state within 2–4 minutes following the load. The fraction of PGE derived from endogenous sources was determined from the ratio of plasma glucose position 2 and plasma water 2H-enrichments. The fractional gluconeogenic contributions to PGE were obtained from plasma glucose positions 2 and 5 2H-positional enrichment ratios and load contributions were estimated from plasma [U-13C]glucose enrichments. At 15 minutes, the load contributed 26±5% of PGE while 14±2% originated from gluconeogenesis in healthy control rats. Between 15 and 120 minutes, the load contribution fell whereas the gluconeogenic contribution remained constant. High-fat fed animals had significant higher 120-minute blood glucose (173±6 mg/dL vs. 139±10 mg/dL, p<0.05) and gluconeogenic contributions to PGE (59±5 mg/dL vs. 38±3 mg/dL, p<0.01) relative to standard chow-fed controls. In summary, the endogenous and load components of PGE can be resolved during a glucose tolerance test and these measurements revealed that plasma glucose synthesis via gluconeogenesis remained active during the period immediately following a glucose load. In rats that were placed on high-fat diet, the development of glucose intolerance was associated with a significantly higher gluconeogenic contribution to plasma glucose levels after the load

A Phenomenological Study of the Process e+e−→μ+μ−νlνˉle^+e^-\to\mu^+\mu^-\nu_l\bar\nu_l at High Energy e+e−e^+e^- Colliders and Measurement of the ZWWZWW and γWW\gamma WW Couplings

We perform a detailed study of the process $e^+e^-\to \mu^+\mu^-\nu_l\bar\nu_l$ including all contributions. The contributions other than from real gauge boson production leads to a rich phenomenology. We explore the use of the process as a means of precision measurement of the $ZWW$ and $\gamma WW$ vertices. We concentrate on LEP II energies, $\sqrt{s}=200$ GeV, and energies appropriate to the proposed Next Linear Collider (NLC) high energy $e^+e^-$ collider with center of mass energies $\sqrt{s}=500$ and 1~TeV. At 200 GeV, the process offers, at best, a consistency check of other processes being considered at LEP200. At 500~GeV, the parameters $\kappa_\gamma$, $\lambda_\gamma$, $\kappa_Z$, and $\lambda_Z$ can be measured to about $\pm 0.1$ or better at 95\% C.L. while at 1 TeV, they can be measured to about $\pm 0.01$. At the high luminosities anticipated at high energy linear colliders precision measurements are likely to be limited by systematic rather than statistical errors.Comment: 33 pages, OCIP/C 93-18, UQAM-PHE-930

Silencing alanine transaminase 2 in diabetic liver attenuates hyperglycemia by reducing gluconeogenesis from amino acids

Hepatic gluconeogenesis from amino acids contributes significantly to diabetic hyperglycemia, but the molecular mechanisms involved are incompletely understood. Alanine transaminases (ALT1 and ALT2) catalyze the interconversion of alanine and pyruvate, which is required for gluconeogenesis from alanine. We find that ALT2 is overexpressed in the liver of diet-induced obese and db/db mice and that the expression of the gene encoding ALT2 (GPT2) is downregulated following bariatric surgery in people with obesity. The increased hepatic expression of Gpt2 in db/db liver is mediated by activating transcription factor 4, an endoplasmic reticulum stress-activated transcription factor. Hepatocyte-specific knockout of Gpt2 attenuates incorporation o