EFFECTS OF BASE OF SUPPORT AND VISUAL FEEDBACK ON STANDING BALANCE IN SUBJECTS WITH ANKLE SPRAIN

INTRODUCTION: Ankle sprain is arguably one of the most common injures in sport and can lead to significant impairment characterized by functional instability of the ankle. Base of support and visual feedback are two of the most important factors influencing the standing balance. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of base of support and visual feedback on standing balance in subjects with and without ankle sprain

Endoscopic Retrograde Cholangiopancreatography in Elderly Patients

SUMMARYEndoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) is effective in the investigation and treatment of pan-creatic and biliary disease. As the prevalence of bile duct stones and malignant disease and the risk of surgery rise with age, studies on the therapeutic success of ERCP in the elderly become more popular. There have been publications documenting the safety of ERCP in elderly patients from the age of 65 to 85 years. Recent studies have also shown that ERCP is safe and effective in those aged 90 years and older. Outcomes of ERCP in terms of success and complication rates are similar to those in younger patients. Therefore, the decision to undergo ERCP should be determined by clinical need, and age alone should not be a contraindication to endoscopic intervention. Here, we review the indications, pre-procedure preparation, sedation and analgesia, monitoring/procedural care, complications, and outcomes of diagnostic and therapeutic ERCP in the elderly

EFFECT OF KNEE TAPING ON THE KNEE KINEMATICS DURING LEVEL WALKING

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of knee taping on the knee kinematics during level walking. Fifteen healthy subjects participated in this study. Vicon Nexus motion analysis system was used. Reflective markers were placed on anatomical landmarks to compute the kinematics during level walking. Knee joint angle and range of motion were analyzed. Paired t test was used to compare the differences between no taping and knee taping. The results showed that the knee taping would increase the external rotation and decrease the internal rotation of the knee joint during level walking. Knee taping would decrease the adduction angle and the range of motion in the frontal plane during level walking compared to no taping. It is suggested that knee taping can be used for the people with ACL insufficiency to enhance the knee stability

AtPAN: an integrated system for reconstructing transcriptional regulatory networks in Arabidopsis thaliana

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Construction of transcriptional regulatory networks (TRNs) is of priority concern in systems biology. Numerous high-throughput approaches, including microarray and next-generation sequencing, are extensively adopted to examine transcriptional expression patterns on the whole-genome scale; those data are helpful in reconstructing TRNs. Identifying transcription factor binding sites (TFBSs) in a gene promoter is the initial step in elucidating the transcriptional regulation mechanism. Since transcription factors usually co-regulate a common group of genes by forming regulatory modules with similar TFBSs. Therefore, the combinatorial interactions of transcription factors must be modeled to reconstruct the gene regulatory networks.</p> <p>Description For systems biology applications, this work develops a novel database called <it>Arabidopsis thaliana </it>Promoter Analysis Net (AtPAN), capable of detecting TFBSs and their corresponding transcription factors (TFs) in a promoter or a set of promoters in <it>Arabidopsis</it>. For further analysis, according to the microarray expression data and literature, the co-expressed TFs and their target genes can be retrieved from AtPAN. Additionally, proteins interacting with the co-expressed TFs are also incorporated to reconstruct co-expressed TRNs. Moreover, combinatorial TFs can be detected by the frequency of TFBSs co-occurrence in a group of gene promoters. In addition, TFBSs in the conserved regions between the two input sequences or homologous genes in <it>Arabidopsis </it>and rice are also provided in AtPAN. The output results also suggest conducting wet experiments in the future.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The AtPAN, which has a user-friendly input/output interface and provide graphical view of the TRNs. This novel and creative resource is freely available online at <url>http://AtPAN.itps.ncku.edu.tw/</url>.</p

Broadband enhancement of light harvesting in luminescent solar concentrator

Luminescent solar concentrator (LSC) can absorb large-area incident sunlight, then emit luminescence with high quantum efficiency, which finally be collected by a small photovoltaic (PV) system. The light-harvesting area of the PV system is much smaller than that of the LSC system, potentially improving the efficiency and reducing the cost of solar cells. Here, based on Fermi-golden rule, we present a theoretical description of the luminescent process in nanoscale LSCs where the conventional ray-optics model is no longer applicable. As an example calculated with this new model, we demonstrate that a slot waveguide consisting of a nanometer-sized low-index slot region sandwiched by two high-index regions provides a broadband enhancement of light harvesting by the luminescent centers in the slot region. This is because the slot waveguide can (1) greatly enhance the spontaneous emission due to the Purcell effect, (2) dramatically increase the effective absorption cross-section of luminescent centers, and (3) strongly improve the quantum efficiency of luminescent centers. It is found that about 80% solar photons can be ultimately converted to waveguide-coupled luminescent photons even for a low luminescent quantum efficiency of 0.5. This LSC is potential to construct a tandem structure which can absorb nearly full-spectrum solar photons, and also may be of special interest for building integrated nano-PV applications

Fractional Quantum Hall Effect in Topological Flat Bands with Chern Number Two

Recent theoretical works have demonstrated various robust Abelian and non-Abelian fractional topological phases in lattice models with topological flat bands carrying Chern number C=1. Here we study hard-core bosons and interacting fermions in a three-band triangular-lattice model with the lowest topological flat band of Chern number C=2. We find convincing numerical evidence of bosonic fractional quantum Hall effect at the $\nu=1/3$ filling characterized by three-fold quasi-degeneracy of ground states on a torus, a fractional Chern number for each ground state, a robust spectrum gap, and a gap in quasihole excitation spectrum. We also observe numerical evidence of a robust fermionic fractional quantum Hall effect for spinless fermions at the $\nu=1/5$ filling with short-range interactions.Comment: 5 pages, 7 figures, with Supplementary Materia