The effectiveness of mental practice as a complement to traditional therapy in rehabilitation outcomes of patients status-post total knee arthroplasty

Therapists are challenged daily with establishing care plans and structuring functional activities that will best assist their patients to decrease pain, recover motion and strength, and return to functional, high quality lifestyles. All of this must be accomplished in the most cost efficient manner. This research was designed to investigate the effects of mental practice (MP), when used in conjunction with traditional therapy for patients post-knee replacement surgery, on functional recovery and hospital length of stay. Twenty-three individuals, post-total knee arthroplasty (TKA), meeting inclusion criteria while in a rehabilitation hospital participated in the study. Participants were randomly assigned, with gender matching, to motivational control and MP (experimental) groups. In addition to their regular therapy programs, members of the control group listened to an audio-tape with progressive relaxation while those of the experimental group participated in an audio-taped guided relaxation followed by MP. The participants\u27 knee range of motion (ROM), knee strength, quality of gait via the Tinetti Gait Assessment, and functional ability via the Functional Independence Measure, were assessed pre- and post- intervention. Hospital length of stay was also measured through chart review. Post-intervention results revealed significant differences between groups, with the experimental group demonstrating greater improvements than controls in ROM, knee flexion strength, gait quality, and functional ability in stair climbing (p \u3c 0.05). Remarkably, the improvements made by the experimental group were made in a significantly shorter hospital length of stay than those of the controls (p \u3c 0.05). The main hypothesis of the study was supported; Patients with osteoarthritis, status-post TKA, who received a complement of MP with traditional therapy had enhanced rehabilitation outcomes as compared to a control group of patients who received traditional therapy alone. These results are consistent with those found for other non-therapeutic populations (e.g., Blair, Hall & Leyshon, 1993; Hall, Schmidt, Durand & BuckoIz, 1994). Thus, it is recommended that, in this era of healthcare reform and cost containment, MP should be considered as a potential complement to conventional physical therapy

Analysis of motion parameter variations for rotorcraft flight simulators

No standard guidelines currently exist for tuning rotorcraft flight simulation motion platforms. This often leads to systems that are poorly utilized. This paper presents results from a study to determine the influence of parameter variations in two rotorcraft research simulators. Investigations were conducted using three Mission Task Elements (MTEs), and both subjective and objective analysis is used to determine the suitability of motion settings. Motion settings are compared with recommended Objective Motion Cueing Test (OMCT) boundaries for fixed-wing aircraft. Results show differences in the fidelity of motion settings, and recommendations specifically for rotorcraft simulation are presented

Construction of Parseval wavelets from redundant filter systems

We consider wavelets in L^2(R^d) which have generalized multiresolutions. This means that the initial resolution subspace V_0 in L^2(R^d) is not singly generated. As a result, the representation of the integer lattice Z^d restricted to V_0 has a nontrivial multiplicity function. We show how the corresponding analysis and synthesis for these wavelets can be understood in terms of unitary-matrix-valued functions on a torus acting on a certain vector bundle. Specifically, we show how the wavelet functions on R^d can be constructed directly from the generalized wavelet filters.Comment: 34 pages, AMS-LaTeX ("amsproc" document class) v2 changes minor typos in Sections 1 and 4, v3 adds a number of references on GMRA theory and wavelet multiplicity analysis; v4 adds material on pages 2, 3, 5 and 10, and two more reference

Handling Qualities Assessment of a Pilot Cueing System for Autorotation Maneuvers

This paper details the design and limited flight testing of a preliminary system for visual pilot cueing during autorotation maneuvers. The cueing system is based on a fully-autonomous, multi-phase autorotation control law that has been shown to successfully achieve autonomous autorotation landing in unmanned helicopters. To transition this control law to manned systems, it is employed within a cockpit display to drive visual markers which indicate desired collective pitch and longitudinal cyclic positions throughout the entire maneuver, from autorotation entry to touchdown. A series of simulator flight experiments performed at University of Liverpool’s HELIFLIGHT-R simulator are documented, in which pilots attempt autorotation with and without the pilot cueing system in both good and degraded visual environments. Performance of the pilot cueing system is evaluated based on both subjective pilot feedback and objective measurements of landing survivability metrics, demonstrating suitable preliminary performance of the system

Language processing within the human medial temporal lobe

Although the hippocampal formation is essential for verbal memory, it is not fully understood how it contributes to language comprehension. We recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) directly from two substructures of the medial temporal lobe (MTL), the rhinal cortex and the hippocampus proper, while epilepsy patients listened to sentences that either were correct or contained semantic or syntactic violations. Semantic violations elicited a large negative ERP response peaking at approximately 400 ms in the rhinal cortex. In contrast, syntactically incorrect sentences elicited a negative deflection of 500-800 ms in the hippocampus proper. The results suggest that functionally distinct aspects of integration in language comprehension are supported by different MTL structures: the rhinal cortex is involved in semantic integration, whereas the hippocampus proper subserves processes of syntactic integration. An analysis of phase synchronization within the gamma band between rhinal and hippocampal recording sites showed that both of the above-mentioned ERP components were preceded by an increase of phase synchronization. In contrast to these short phasic increases of phase synchronization in both violation conditions, correct sentences were associated with a long-lasting synchronization in a late time window, possibly reflecting the integration of semantic and syntactic information as required for normal comprehension

Dislocations in laser-doped silicon detected by micro-photoluminescence spectroscopy

We report the detection of laser-induced damage in laser-doped layers at the surface of crystalline silicon wafers, via micron-scale photoluminescence spectroscopy. The properties of the sub-band-gap emission from the induced defects are found to match the emission characteristics of dislocations. Courtesy of the high spatial resolution of the micro-photoluminescence spectroscopy technique, micron-scale variations in the extent of damage at the edge of the laser-doped region can be detected, providing a powerful tool to study and optimize laser-doping processes for silicon photovoltaics.This work has been supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) through Research Grant No. RND009

Aspects of noncommutative Lorentzian geometry for globally hyperbolic spacetimes

Connes' functional formula of the Riemannian distance is generalized to the Lorentzian case using the so-called Lorentzian distance, the d'Alembert operator and the causal functions of a globally hyperbolic spacetime. As a step of the presented machinery, a proof of the almost-everywhere smoothness of the Lorentzian distance considered as a function of one of the two arguments is given. Afterwards, using a $C^*$-algebra approach, the spacetime causal structure and the Lorentzian distance are generalized into noncommutative structures giving rise to a Lorentzian version of part of Connes' noncommutative geometry. The generalized noncommutative spacetime consists of a direct set of Hilbert spaces and a related class of $C^*$-algebras of operators. In each algebra a convex cone made of self-adjoint elements is selected which generalizes the class of causal functions. The generalized events, called {\em loci}, are realized as the elements of the inductive limit of the spaces of the algebraic states on the $C^*$-algebras. A partial-ordering relation between pairs of loci generalizes the causal order relation in spacetime. A generalized Lorentz distance of loci is defined by means of a class of densely-defined operators which play the r\^ole of a Lorentzian metric. Specializing back the formalism to the usual globally hyperbolic spacetime, it is found that compactly-supported probability measures give rise to a non-pointwise extension of the concept of events.Comment: 43 pages, structure of the paper changed and presentation strongly improved, references added, minor typos corrected, title changed, accepted for publication in Reviews in Mathematical Physic

Natural Memory Beyond the Storage Model: Repression, Trauma, and the Construction of a Personal Past

Naturally occurring memory processes show features which are difficult to investigate by conventional cognitive neuroscience paradigms. Distortions of memory for problematic contents are described both by psychoanalysis (internal conflicts) and research on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD; external traumata). Typically, declarative memory for these contents is impaired – possibly due to repression in the case of internal conflicts or due to dissociation in the case of external traumata – but they continue to exert an unconscious pathological influence: neurotic symptoms or psychosomatic disorders after repression or flashbacks and intrusions in PTSD after dissociation. Several experimental paradigms aim at investigating repression in healthy control subjects. We argue that these paradigms do not adequately operationalize the clinical process of repression, because they rely on an intentional inhibition of random stimuli (suppression). Furthermore, these paradigms ignore that memory distortions due to repression or dissociation are most accurately characterized by a lack of self-referential processing, resulting in an impaired integration of these contents into the self. This aspect of repression and dissociation cannot be captured by the concept of memory as a storage device which is usually employed in the cognitive neurosciences. It can only be assessed within the framework of a constructivist memory concept, according to which successful memory involves a reconstruction of experiences such that they fit into a representation of the self. We suggest several experimental paradigms that allow for the investigation of the neural correlates of repressed memories and trauma-induced memory distortions based on a constructivist memory concept