Therapeutic Massage Combined with Mirror Therapy for Phantom Limb Pain: Two Experimental Cases

poster abstractPhantom limb pain (PLP) is a common and difficult to treat issue for individuals with amputations. Current PLP treatments (primarily pharmaceutical) are only modestly effective and often have negative side-effects. Massage has been self-reported as beneficial for PLP but no research has examined massage specifically for PLP. Mirror therapy’s evidence base for PLP is building. Combining massage (which alone may impact PLP via Pfleger’s law of symmetry) with mirror therapy may allow practitioners to apply massage for a painful area that cannot actually be touched. The current quasi-experimental A-B-A withdrawal case series sought to descriptively examine outcomes of therapeutic massage combined with mirror therapy (TMwMT) for individuals with persistent lower limb PLP and establish feasibility of intervention delivery. Each study phase was four weeks long with bi-weekly, individualized 20-25 minute TMwMT sessions during the treatment (B) phase. TMwMT sessions were developed and applied to address the specific participant PLP experience as if the pain were experienced by the intact limb. During masked TMwMT sessions, participants viewed a real-time mirror image of their intact leg receiving massage in the place of their missing limb. Measures: bi-weekly PLP severity via VAS; PLP intensity and interference collected at beginning/end of each phase via Brief Pain Inventory. Two men completed the study protocol. PLP severity decreased during treatment for both participants with effects beginning to diminish by week two of the withdrawal phase. By the study’s conclusion, PLP severity had not elevated back to average levels of initial phase A. Pain intensity for both participants improved during phase B but results were mixed for pain interference. These individuals had not responded to previous treatments for their PLP; our experimental, non-pharmacological and targeted TMwMT treatment was beneficial in the short-term. Our intervention is theoretically sound, reflects aspects of real-world massage delivery, and needs further investigation

Heliophysics Event Knowledgebase for the Solar Dynamics Observatory and Beyond

The immense volume of data generated by the suite of instruments on SDO requires new tools for efficient identifying and accessing data that is most relevant to research investigations. We have developed the Heliophysics Events Knowledgebase (HEK) to fill this need. The HEK system combines automated data mining using feature-detection methods and high-performance visualization systems for data markup. In addition, web services and clients are provided for searching the resulting metadata, reviewing results, and efficiently accessing the data. We review these components and present examples of their use with SDO data.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figure

Tuning Fermilab Heavy Quarks in 2+1 Flavor Lattice QCD with Application to Hyperfine Splittings

We report the non-perturbative tuning of parameters--- kappa_c, kappa_b, and kappa_crit ---that determine the heavy-quark mass in the Fermilab action. This requires the computation of the masses of Ds^(*) and Bs^(*) mesons comprised of a Fermilab heavy quark and a staggered light quark. Additionally, we report the hyperfine splittings for Ds and Bs mesons as a cross-check of our simulation and analysis methods. We find a splitting of 145 +/- 15 MeV for the Ds system and 40 +/- 9 MeV for the Bs system. These are in good agreement with the Particle Data Group average values of 143.9 +/- 0.4 MeV and 46.1 +/- 1.5 MeV, respectively. The calculations are carried out with the MILC 2+1 flavor gauge configurations at three lattice spacings $a$ approximately 0.15, 0.12, and 0.09 fm.Comment: 34 pages, 8 figures, 26 tables; some sections rearranged for clarity; conclusions unchanged; version accepted by Phys. Rev.

Heavy-Quark Masses from the Fermilab Method in Three-Flavor Lattice QCD

We report on heavy quark mass calculations using Fermilab heavy quarks. Lattice calculations of heavy-strange meson masses are combined with one-loop (automated) lattice perturbation theory to arrive at the quark mass. Mesons are constructed from Fermilab heavy quarks and staggered light quarks. We use the MILC ensembles at three lattice spacings and sea quark mass ratios of $m_{\rm u,d} / m_{\rm s} = 0.1$ to 0.4. Preliminary results for the bottom quark are given in the potential subtracted scheme

Hole distribution for (Sr,Ca,Y,La)_14 Cu_24 O_41 ladder compounds studied by x-ray absorption spectroscopy

The unoccupied electronic structure for the Sr_14Cu_24O_41 family of two-leg ladder compounds was investigated for different partial substitutions of Sr^2+ by Ca^2+, leaving the nominal hole count constant, and by Y^3+ or La^3+, reducing the nominal hole count from its full value of 6 per formula unit. Using polarization-dependent x-ray absorption spectroscopy on single crystals, hole states on both the chain and ladder sites could be studied. While for intermediate hole counts all holes reside on O sites of the chains, a partial hole occupation on the ladder sites in orbitals oriented along the legs is observed for the fully doped compound Sr_14Cu_24O_41. On substitution of Ca for Sr orbitals within the ladder planes but perpendicular to the legs receive some hole occupation as well.Comment: 10 pages RevTeX style with 7 embedded figures + 1 table; accepted by Phys. Rev.

Suppressed Magnetization at the Surfaces and Interfaces of Ferromagnetic Metallic Manganites

What happens to ferromagnetism at the surfaces and interfaces of manganites? With the competition between charge, spin, and orbital degrees of freedom, it is not surprising that the surface behavior may be profoundly different than that of the bulk. Using a powerful combination of two surface probes, tunneling and polarized x-ray interactions, this paper reviews our work on the nature of the electronic and magnetic states at manganite surfaces and interfaces. The general observation is that ferromagnetism is not the lowest energy state at the surface or interface, which results in a suppression or even loss of ferromagnetic order at the surface. Two cases will be discussed ranging from the surface of the quasi-2D bilayer manganite (La$_{2-2x}$Sr$_{1+2x}$Mn$_2$O$_7$) to the 3D Perovskite (La$_{2/3}$Sr$_{1/3}$MnO$_3$)/SrTiO$_3$ interface. For the bilayer manganite, that is, ferromagnetic and conducting in the bulk, these probes present clear evidence for an intrinsic insulating non-ferromagnetic surface layer atop adjacent subsurface layers that display the full bulk magnetization. This abrupt intrinsic magnetic interface is attributed to the weak inter-bilayer coupling native to these quasi-two-dimensional materials. This is in marked contrast to the non-layered manganite system (La$_{2/3}$Sr$_{1/3}$MnO$_3$/SrTiO$_3$), whose magnetization near the interface is less than half the bulk value at low temperatures and decreases with increasing temperature at a faster rate than the bulk.Comment: 15 pages, 13 figure