Impact of foot progression angle modification on plantar loading in individuals with diabetes mellitus and peripheral neuropathy

AIMS: To determine if participants can reduce foot progression angle (FPA), and if FPA reduction decreases regional plantar stresses and forces in individuals with diabetes. METHODS: DESIGN: Three-group cross-sectional design with repeated measures. SUBJECTS: twenty-eight participants either with diabetes mellitus (DM), diabetes and peripheral neuropathy with (DMPN+NPU) or without a prior history of ulceration (DMPN−NPU) were studied. INTERVENTION: Participants were first instructed to walk over a 3.6 m walkway at their preferred FPA, and then to walk with their foot aligned parallel with the line of gait progression at their self-selected speed. Dynamic plantar kinetics in six masked regions were collected using an EMED-st-P-2 pedobarograph. MAIN MEASURES: Primary outcome measures were FPA, peak plantar pressure (PPP), and force-time integral (FTI). A repeated measures ANOVA was conducted to determine group differences in FPA for both walking conditions. Regional differences in PPPs and FTIs between preferred and corrected walking conditions were analyzed using repeated measures ANCOVA. RESULTS: Participants showed a reduction in FPA magnitude on the ‘Involved’ foot between the preferred and corrected walking conditions (p<0.01). There were no differences in PPPs or FTIs in any mask between walking conditions (p>0.05). CONCLUSION: Results from this investigation offer important evidence that people with diabetes can modify their FPA with a simple intervention of visual and verbal cueing. Future research should examine if gait retraining strategies in regular footwear more effectively offload areas of elevated regional plantar stresses and forces in adults with diabetes mellitus and peripheral neuropathy

Attitude Determination from Single-Antenna Carrier-Phase Measurements

A model of carrier phase measurement (as carried out by a satellite navigation receiver) is formulated based on electromagnetic theory. The model shows that the phase of the open-circuit voltage induced in the receiver antenna with respect to a local oscillator (in the receiver) depends on the relative orientation of the receiving and transmitting antennas. The model shows that using a {\it single} receiving antenna, and making carrier phase measurements to seven satellites, the 3-axis attitude of a user platform (in addition to its position and time) can be computed relative to an initial point. This measurement model can also be used to create high-fidelity satellite signal simulators that take into account the effect of platform rotation as well as translation.Comment: 12 pages, and one figure. Published in J. Appl. Phys. vol. 91, No. 7, April 1, 200

Cdk1-dependent phosphoinhibition of a formin-F-BAR interaction opposes cytokinetic contractile ring formation

© 2018 Willet et al. In Schizosaccharomyces pombe, cytokinesis requires the assembly and constriction of an actomyosin-based contractile ring (CR). A single essential formin, Cdc12, localizes to the cell middle upon mitotic onset and nucleates the F-actin of the CR. Cdc12 medial recruitment is mediated in part by its direct binding to the F-BAR scaffold Cdc15. Given that Cdc12 is hyperphosphorylated in M phase, we explored whether Cdc12 phosphoregulation impacts its association with Cdc15 during mitosis. We found that Cdk1, a major mitotic kinase, phosphorylates Cdc12 on six N-terminal residues near the Cdc15-binding site, and phosphorylation on these sites inhibits its interaction with the Cdc15 F-BAR domain. Consistent with this finding, a cdc12 mutant with all six Cdk1 sites changed to phosphomimetic residues (cdc12-6D) displays phenotypes similar to cdc12-P31A, in which the Cdc15-binding motif is disrupted; both show reduced Cdc12 at the CR and delayed CR formation. Together, these results indicate that Cdk1 phosphorylation of formin Cdc12 antagonizes its interaction with Cdc15 and thereby opposes Cdc12\u27s CR localization. These results are consistent with a general role of Cdk1 in inhibiting cytokinesis until chromosome segregation is complete

Optimum Detection Location-Based Cooperative Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radio

Cognitive radio arises as a hot research issue in wireless communications recently, attributed to its capability of enhancing spectral efficiency and catering for the growing demand for bandwidth. As a good embodiment of cognitive radio’s unique feature, i.e. making use of every bit spectral resource, spectrum sensing plays a vital role in the implementation of cognitive radio. To alleviate negative effect on cooperative spectrum sensing brought by bit errors, we introduce a novel concept, i.e. Optimum Detection Location (ODL) and present two algorithms of different computational complexity for locating ODL, together with an ODL-Based cooperative spectrum sensing scheme, with the motivation to exploit the gain derived from geographic advantages and multiuser diversity. Numerical and simulation results both demonstrate that our proposed spectrum sensing scheme can significantly improve the sensing performance in the case of reporting channel with bit errors

Determination of Real-Time Efflux Phenotypes in Escherichia coli AcrB Binding Pocket Phenylalanine Mutants Using a 1,2′-Dinaphthylamine Efflux Assay

To evaluate the importance of phenylalanine residues for substrate transport in the Escherichia coli efflux pump protein AcrB, we subjected Phe-to-Ala binding pocket mutants to a real-time efflux assay with the novel near-infrared lipophilic membrane probe 1,2′-dinaphthylamine (1,2′-DNA). All mutations, with the exception of F617A, led to considerable retardation of efflux. F610A was the point mutation with the most pronounced impact, followed by F628A, F615A, F136A, and F178A. This is the first study to demonstrate the importance of single phenylalanine residues within the AcrB binding pocket for real-time substrate transport

Crystalline Bi4Ge3O12 fibers fabricated by micro-pulling down technique for optical high voltage sensing

AbstractCommonly optical high voltage sensors employ the Pockels effect in a bulk electro-optic crystal such as Bi4Ge3O12 (BGO). Typically, the maximum crystal length is 100-200mm and determined by the limits of the conventional growth technique (Czochralski). In this paper we report on the growth by a micro-pulling down technique of long single crystalline BGO fibers as an alternative to bulk crystals and their characterization for voltage sensing. The fiber thickness may range from a few 100μm to a few mm. The parameters needed for stable growth over the entire length of the crystal were analyzed and optimized. Thin rods with a length of up to 850mm were grown. Samples were characterized with respect to homogeneity of growth, residual birefringence (BGO is free of natural birefringence), crystal orientation, and performance under voltage

Formin-based control of the actin cytoskeleton during cytokinesis

Cytokinesis, the terminal event in the canonical cell cycle, physically separates daughter cells following mitosis. For cleavage to occur in many eukaryotes, a cytokinetic ring must assemble and constrict between divided genomes. Although dozens of different molecules localize to and participate within the cytokinetic ring, the core machinery comprises linear actin filaments. Accordingly, formins, which nucleate and elongate F-actin (filamentous actin) for the cytokinetic ring, are required for cytokinesis in diverse species. In the present article, we discuss specific modes of formin-based actin regulation during cell division and highlight emerging mechanisms and questions on this topic. © 2013 Biochemical Society

Transcript quantification with RNA-Seq data

Motivation Novel high-throughput sequencing technologies open exciting new approaches to transcriptome profiling. Sequencing transcript populations of interest, e.g. from different tissues or variable stress conditions, with RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) [1] generates millions of short reads. Accurately aligned to a reference genome, they provide digital counts and thus facilitate transcript quantification. As the observed read counts only provide the summation of all expressed sequences at one locus, the inference of the underlying transcript abundances is crucial for further quantitative analyses. Methods To approach this problem, we have developed a new technique, called rQuant, based on quadratic programming. Given a gene annotation and position-wise exon/intron read coverage from read alignments, we determine the abundances for each annotated transcript by minimising a suitable loss function. It penalises the deviation of the observed from the expected read coverage given the transcript weights. The observed read coverage is typically non-uniformly distributed over the transcript due to several biases in the generation of the sequencing libraries and the sequencing. This leads to distortions of the transcript abundances, if not corrected properly. We therefore extended our approach to jointly optimise transcript profiles, modeling the coverage deviations depending on the position in the transcript. Our method can be applied without knowledge of the underlying transcript abundances and equally benefits from loci with and without alternative transcripts. Results To quantitatively evaluate the quality of our abundance predictions, we used a set of simulated reads from transcripts with known expression as a benchmark set. It was generated using the Flux Simulator [2] modeling biases in RNA-Seq as well as preparation experiments. Table 1 shows preliminary results with segment- and position-based loss as well as with and without the transcript profiles. Our results indicate that the position-based modeling together with transcript profiles allows us to accurately infer the underlying expression of single transcripts as well as of multiple isoforms of one gene locus