Questioning Classic Patient Classification Techniques in Gait Rehabilitation: Insights from Wearable Haptic Technology

Classifying stroke survivors based on their walking abilities is an important part of the gait rehabilitation process. It can act as powerful indicator of function and prognosis in both the early days after a stroke and long after a survivor receives rehabilitation. This classification often relies solely on walking speed; a quick and easy measure, with only a stopwatch needed. However, walking speed may not be the most accurate way of judging individual’s walking ability. Advances in technology mean we are now in a position where ubiquitous and wearable technologies can be used to elicit much richer measures to characterise gait. In this paper we present a case study from one of our studies, where within a homogenous group of stroke survivors (based on walking speed classification) important differences in individual results and the way they responded to rhythmic haptic cueing were identified during the piloting of a novel gait rehabilitation technique

Lesión vesical iatrogénica: experiencia de diez años, tratamiento y resultados entre 1999-2009, Kuala Lumpur, Malasia

Introduction: This case series is a retrospective review of iatrogenic bladder injuries treated at our institution Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Medical Centre, over a ten-year period, from 1999 to 2009. Materials and methods: A retrospective review of the operating theater database yielded the names and registration numbers of patients who underwent operative repair of bladder injuries. Patients who sustained bladder injuries due to nonsurgical reasons (such as traumatic bladder injuries due to pelvic fractures, blunt trauma or penetrating injuries to the pelvis) were excluded. Results: There were 12 cases of iatrogenic bladder injury treated during this time. A total of eight injuries occurred during gynaecological surgery. Five injuries occurred during lower segment caesarean section, two injuries during total abdominal hysterectomy and bilateral salpingo-oopherectomy, and a single injury during Burch colposuspension. Four out of the five injuries during caesarian section had a history of previous caesarian section. Of the four remaining non-gynaecological related injuries, two injuries occurred during hernioplasty, one during exploration of an enterocutaneous fistula and the other was during laparoscopic appendicectomy. Conclusion: Iatrogenic bladder injury should be anticipated in patients undergoing caesarean section who have had multiple previous caesarean sections. Iatrogenic injuries should be identified intra-operatively to enable early repair and the best outcome. These injuries were adequately assessed by ascending cystography. Continuous repair with absorbable sutures together with perivesicle drainage and bladder catheterization produces good outcome. Introducción: Esta serie del casos es una revisión retrospectiva de heridas iatrogénicas de vejiga tratadas en la Universidad Nacional de Malasia entre 1999 y 2009. Métodos: Se hizo una revisión retrospectiva de la base de datos de la sala de cirugía del Centro Médico de la Universidad Nacional de Malasia, en individuos a quienes se les realizó cirugía de heridas de vejiga. Se excluyeron los pacientes que presentaron heridas de vejiga sin cirugía como heridas traumáticas debido a fracturas pélvicas, trauma cerrado o heridas penetrantes en la pelvis. Resultados: Se encontraron 12 casos de herida de vejiga iatrogénica tratados entre 1999 y 2009. Ocho heridas ocurrieron durante cirugía ginecológica, 5 durante cesárea segmentaria baja, 2 durante histerectomía abdominal total y salpingo-ooforectomía bilateral y 1 herida durante colposuspensión de Burch. Las 4 heridas restantes no ginecológicas fueron: 2 heridas por iatrogenia ocurrida durante una hernioplastia, una durante exploración de una fístula entero-cutánea y la otra se presentó durante una apendectomía laparoscópica. Conclusión: La herida iatrogénica de la vejiga debe ser anticipada en pacientes que experimentan cesárea que han tenido múltiples cesáreas previas. Las heridas iatrogénicas deben ser identificadas intra-operatoriamente para permitir reparación temprana y obtener el mejor resultado. Obtuvo mejores resultados la reparación continua con suturas absorbibles junto con drenaje vesical mediante catéter. La cistografía ascendente con 300 ml de contraste es la mejor opción para el diagnóstico de herida iatrogénica de vejiga y también para la evaluación de la reparación total

Sensory Electrical Stimulation Improves Foot Placement during Targeted Stepping Post-Stroke

Proper foot placement is vital for maintaining balance during walking, requiring the integration of multiple sensory signals with motor commands. Disruption of brain structures post-stroke likely alters the processing of sensory information by motor centers, interfering with precision control of foot placement and walking function for stroke survivors. In this study, we examined whether somatosensory stimulation, which improves functional movements of the paretic hand, could be used to improve foot placement of the paretic limb. Foot placement was evaluated before, during, and after application of somatosensory electrical stimulation to the paretic foot during a targeted stepping task. Starting from standing, twelve chronic stroke participants initiated movement with the non-paretic limb and stepped to one of five target locations projected onto the floor with distances normalized to the paretic stride length. Targeting error and lower extremity kinematics were used to assess changes in foot placement and limb control due to somatosensory stimulation. Significant reductions in placement error in the medial–lateral direction (p = 0.008) were observed during the stimulation and post-stimulation blocks. Seven participants, presenting with a hip circumduction walking pattern, had reductions (p = 0.008) in the magnitude and duration of hip abduction during swing with somatosensory stimulation. Reductions in circumduction correlated with both functional and clinical measures, with larger improvements observed in participants with greater impairment. The results of this study suggest that somatosensory stimulation of the paretic foot applied during movement can improve the precision control of foot placement

Muscle precursor cells in the developing limbs of two isopods (Crustacea, Peracarida): an immunohistochemical study using a novel monoclonal antibody against myosin heavy chain

In the hot debate on arthropod relationships, Crustaceans and the morphology of their appendages play a pivotal role. To gain new insights into how arthropod appendages evolved, developmental biologists recently have begun to examine the expression and function of Drosophila appendage genes in Crustaceans. However, cellular aspects of Crustacean limb development such as myogenesis are poorly understood in Crustaceans so that the interpretative context in which to analyse gene functions is still fragmentary. The goal of the present project was to analyse muscle development in Crustacean appendages, and to that end, monoclonal antibodies against arthropod muscle proteins were generated. One of these antibodies recognises certain isoforms of myosin heavy chain and strongly binds to muscle precursor cells in malacostracan Crustacea. We used this antibody to study myogenesis in two isopods, Porcellio scaber and Idotea balthica (Crustacea, Malacostraca, Peracarida), by immunohistochemistry. In these animals, muscles in the limbs originate from single muscle precursor cells, which subsequently grow to form multinucleated muscle precursors. The pattern of primordial muscles in the thoracic limbs was mapped, and results compared to muscle development in other Crustaceans and in insects

Activation of Ventral Tegmental Area 5-HT2C Receptors Reduces Incentive Motivation

FUNDING AND DISCLOSURE The research was funded by Wellcome Trust (WT098012) to LKH; and National Institute of Health (DK056731) and the Marilyn H. Vincent Foundation to MGM. The University of Michigan Transgenic Core facility is partially supported by the NIH-funded University of Michigan Center for Gastrointestinal Research (DK034933). The remaining authors declare no conflict of interest. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We thank Dr Celine Cansell, Ms Raffaella Chianese and the staff of the Medical Research Facility for technical assistance. We thank Dr Vladimir Orduña for the scientific advice and technical assistance.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Normalized Lift: An Energy Interpretation of the Lift Coefficient Simplifies Comparisons of the Lifting Ability of Rotating and Flapping Surfaces

For a century, researchers have used the standard lift coefficient CL to evaluate the lift, L, generated by fixed wings over an area S against dynamic pressure, ½ρv2, where v is the effective velocity of the wing. Because the lift coefficient was developed initially for fixed wings in steady flow, its application to other lifting systems requires either simplifying assumptions or complex adjustments as is the case for flapping wings and rotating cylinders

Connectivity of Soft Random Geometric Graphs Over Annuli

Nodes are randomly distributed within an annulus (and then a shell) to form a point pattern of communication terminals which are linked stochastically according to the Rayleigh fading of radio-frequency data signals. We then present analytic formulas for the connection probability of these spatially embedded graphs, describing the connectivity behaviour as a dense-network limit is approached. This extends recent work modelling ad hoc networks in non-convex domains.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figure

Complex exon-intron marking by histone modifications is not determined solely by nucleosome distribution

It has recently been shown that nucleosome distribution, histone modifications and RNA polymerase II (Pol II) occupancy show preferential association with exons (“exon-intron marking”), linking chromatin structure and function to co-transcriptional splicing in a variety of eukaryotes. Previous ChIP-sequencing studies suggested that these marking patterns reflect the nucleosomal landscape. By analyzing ChIP-chip datasets across the human genome in three cell types, we have found that this marking system is far more complex than previously observed. We show here that a range of histone modifications and Pol II are preferentially associated with exons. However, there is noticeable cell-type specificity in the degree of exon marking by histone modifications and, surprisingly, this is also reflected in some histone modifications patterns showing biases towards introns. Exon-intron marking is laid down in the absence of transcription on silent genes, with some marking biases changing or becoming reversed for genes expressed at different levels. Furthermore, the relationship of this marking system with splicing is not simple, with only some histone modifications reflecting exon usage/inclusion, while others mirror patterns of exon exclusion. By examining nucleosomal distributions in all three cell types, we demonstrate that these histone modification patterns cannot solely be accounted for by differences in nucleosome levels between exons and introns. In addition, because of inherent differences between ChIP-chip array and ChIP-sequencing approaches, these platforms report different nucleosome distribution patterns across the human genome. Our findings confound existing views and point to active cellular mechanisms which dynamically regulate histone modification levels and account for exon-intron marking. We believe that these histone modification patterns provide links between chromatin accessibility, Pol II movement and co-transcriptional splicing

Modelling Reveals Kinetic Advantages of Co-Transcriptional Splicing

Messenger RNA splicing is an essential and complex process for the removal of intron sequences. Whereas the composition of the splicing machinery is mostly known, the kinetics of splicing, the catalytic activity of splicing factors and the interdependency of transcription, splicing and mRNA 3′ end formation are less well understood. We propose a stochastic model of splicing kinetics that explains data obtained from high-resolution kinetic analyses of transcription, splicing and 3′ end formation during induction of an intron-containing reporter gene in budding yeast. Modelling reveals co-transcriptional splicing to be the most probable and most efficient splicing pathway for the reporter transcripts, due in part to a positive feedback mechanism for co-transcriptional second step splicing. Model comparison is used to assess the alternative representations of reactions. Modelling also indicates the functional coupling of transcription and splicing, because both the rate of initiation of transcription and the probability that step one of splicing occurs co-transcriptionally are reduced, when the second step of splicing is abolished in a mutant reporter