Voluntary postural sway control and mobility in adults with low back pain

IntroductionLow back pain (LBP) is associated with altered somatosensory perception, which is involved in both involuntary and voluntary control of posture. Currently, there is a lack of methods and tools for assessing somatosensory acuity in patients with LBP. The purpose of this study was (1) to assess the reliability of the sway discrimination apparatus (SwayDA) (2) to evaluate the differences in somatosensory acuity between patients with LBP and pain-free individuals, and (3) to examine relationships between somatosensory acuity, severity of LBP, and mobility in patients with LBP.MethodsTwenty participants (10 patients with LBP and 10 matched asymptomatic controls) were recruited in a test–retest reliability test. Another 56 participants were recruited for this study with 28 individuals presenting with LBP and a further twenty-eight being asymptomatic. The SwayDA was custom-built to measure somatosensory perception during voluntary anterior–posterior (SwayDA-AP), medial-lateral to the dominant side (SwayDA-ML-D), and non-dominant side (SwayDA-ML-ND) postural sway control. Participants also completed mobility tests, including 10 times and 1-min sit-to-stand tests (10-STS, 1 m-STS). The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) was calculated to quantify somatosensory acuity in discriminating different voluntary postural sway extents.ResultsThe ICC (2.1) for the SwayDA-AP, SwayDA-ML-D, and SwayDA-ML-ND were 0.741, 0.717, and 0.805 with MDC95 0.071, 0.043, and 0.050. Patients with LBP demonstrated significantly lower SwayDA scores (tSwayDA-AP = −2.142, p = 0.037; tSwayDA-ML-D = -2.266, p = 0.027) than asymptomatic controls. The AUC values of the SwayDA-AP test were significantly correlated with ODI (rSwayDA-AP-ODI = −0.391, p = 0.039). Performances on the 1 m-STS and the 10-STS were significantly correlated with the AUC scores from all the SwayDA tests (−0.513 ≤ r ≤ 0.441, all p < 0.05).DiscussionThe SwayDA tests evaluated showed acceptable reliability in assessing somatosensory acuity during voluntary postural sway. Somatosensory acuity was diminished in patients with LBP compared to asymptomatic controls. In patients with LBP, lower somatosensory acuity was associated with increased LBP-related disability. Future research could focus on investigating the factors contributing to the decreased somatosensory perception and mobility in individuals with LBP

Genetic transformation of lettuce (Lactuca sativa): A review

Lettuce (Lactuca sativa L.) is a globally important leafy vegetable that can be grown worldwide. Due to the rapid growth of population and the human desire to progress, there have been a lot of studies made by researchers, especially in genetic engineering. Improvements in regeneration system and transformation methodology have helped to increase the transformation efficiency and stable expression of transgenes in lettuce. Lettuce transgenic research carried out so far has mainly focused on using lettuce bioreactor to produce pharmaceutical protein and vaccines, improving nutritional and physiological value of lettuce. There are no comprehensive and detailed reviews available combining research developments with major regeneration system and basic genetic transformation in lettuce. This is an attempt to overview the progress in regeneration system, genetic transformation and biotechnological applications in the last decades as well as future implications.Keywords: Lettuce, regeneration system, genetic transformation, bioreactorAfrican Journal of Biotechnology, Vol 13(16), 1686-169

Downlink Cooperative Broadcast Transmission Based on Superposition Coding in a Relaying System for Future Wireless Sensor Networks

This study investigates the superiority of cooperative broadcast transmission over traditional orthogonal schemes when applied in a downlink relaying broadcast channel (RBC). Two proposed cooperative broadcast transmission protocols, one with an amplify-and-forward (AF) relay, and the other with a repetition-based decode-and-forward (DF) relay, are investigated. By utilizing superposition coding (SupC), the source and the relay transmit the private user messages simultaneously instead of sequentially as in traditional orthogonal schemes, which means the channel resources are reused and an increased channel degree of freedom is available to each user, hence the half-duplex penalty of relaying is alleviated. To facilitate a performance evaluation, theoretical outage probability expressions of the two broadcast transmission schemes are developed, based on which, we investigate the minimum total power consumption of each scheme for a given traffic requirement by numerical simulation. The results provide details on the overall system performance and fruitful insights on the essential characteristics of cooperative broadcast transmission in RBCs. It is observed that better overall outage performances and considerable power gains can be obtained by utilizing cooperative broadcast transmissions compared to traditional orthogonal schemes

Design and Construction Method of High-low Span Cross Support System for Frame Structures

Taking a high-rise frame-shear wall structure project in Jilin Province as an example, combined with current specifications, standards, and regulations, this paper proposes the design and construction method of the scaffold support system for the high-low span and high formwork between the basement and the main structure；In the construction, the side formwork of the high-low span beam adopts the method of suspending formwork, and the combination of fixing support and drawing bolts on both sides. The floor slab is poured first, followed by the high-low span, and the pouring is carried out in layers and sections, ensuring the quality of the project and shortening the construction period. After construction verification, the various acceptance values are better than the current engineering acceptance evaluation standard values, and it is safe and reliable. This provides a reference for the design and construction of similar high-low span and high-formwork projects in frame structures

Coupling LSTM and CNN Neural Networks for Accurate Carbon Emission Prediction in 30 Chinese Provinces

Global warming is a major environmental issue facing humanity, and the resulting climate change has severely affected the environment and daily lives of people. China attaches great importance to and actively responds to climate change issues. In order to achieve the “dual carbon” goal, it is necessary to clearly define the emission reduction path and scientifically predict future carbon emissions, which is the basis for setting emission reduction targets. To ensure the accuracy of data, this study applies the emission coefficient method to calculate the carbon emissions from the energy consumption in 30 provinces, regions, and cities in China from 1997 to 2021. Considering the spatial correlation between different regions in China, we propose a new machine learning prediction model that incorporates spatial weighting, namely, an LSTM-CNN combination model with spatial weighting. The spatial weighting explains the spatial correlation and the combined model is used to analyze the carbon emissions in the 30 provinces, regions, and cities of China from 2022 to 2035 under different scenarios. The results show that the LSTM-CNN combination model with four convolutional layers performs the best. Compared with other models, this model has the best predictive performance, with an MAE of 8.0169, an RMSE of 11.1505, and an R2 of 0.9661 on the test set. Based on different scenario predictions, it is found that most cities can achieve carbon peaking before 2030. Some cities need to adjust their development rates based on their specific circumstances in order to achieve carbon peaking as early as possible. This study provides a research direction for deep learning time series forecasting and proposes a new predictive method for carbon emission forecasting

MAPK Cascades and Transcriptional Factors: Regulation of Heavy Metal Tolerance in Plants

In nature, heavy metal (HM) stress is one of the most destructive abiotic stresses for plants. Heavy metals produce toxicity by targeting key molecules and important processes in plant cells. The mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) cascade transfers the signals perceived by cell membrane surface receptors to cells through phosphorylation and dephosphorylation and targets various effector proteins or transcriptional factors so as to result in the stress response. Signal molecules such as plant hormones, reactive oxygen species (ROS), and nitric oxide (NO) can activate the MAPK cascade through differentially expressed genes, the activation of the antioxidant system and synergistic crosstalk between different signal molecules in order to regulate plant responses to HMs. Transcriptional factors, located downstream of MAPK, are key factors in regulating plant responses to heavy metals and improving plant heavy metal tolerance and accumulation. Thus, understanding how HMs activate the expression of the genes related to the MAPK cascade pathway and then phosphorylate those transcriptional factors may allow us to develop a regulation network to increase our knowledge of HMs tolerance and accumulation. This review highlighted MAPK pathway activation and responses under HMs and mainly focused on the specificity of MAPK activation mediated by ROS, NO and plant hormones. Here, we also described the signaling pathways and their interactions under heavy metal stresses. Moreover, the process of MAPK phosphorylation and the response of downstream transcriptional factors exhibited the importance of regulating targets. It was conducive to analyzing the molecular mechanisms underlying heavy metal accumulation and tolerance

MAPK Cascades and Transcriptional Factors: Regulation of Heavy Metal Tolerance in Plants

In nature, heavy metal (HM) stress is one of the most destructive abiotic stresses for plants. Heavy metals produce toxicity by targeting key molecules and important processes in plant cells. The mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) cascade transfers the signals perceived by cell membrane surface receptors to cells through phosphorylation and dephosphorylation and targets various effector proteins or transcriptional factors so as to result in the stress response. Signal molecules such as plant hormones, reactive oxygen species (ROS), and nitric oxide (NO) can activate the MAPK cascade through differentially expressed genes, the activation of the antioxidant system and synergistic crosstalk between different signal molecules in order to regulate plant responses to HMs. Transcriptional factors, located downstream of MAPK, are key factors in regulating plant responses to heavy metals and improving plant heavy metal tolerance and accumulation. Thus, understanding how HMs activate the expression of the genes related to the MAPK cascade pathway and then phosphorylate those transcriptional factors may allow us to develop a regulation network to increase our knowledge of HMs tolerance and accumulation. This review highlighted MAPK pathway activation and responses under HMs and mainly focused on the specificity of MAPK activation mediated by ROS, NO and plant hormones. Here, we also described the signaling pathways and their interactions under heavy metal stresses. Moreover, the process of MAPK phosphorylation and the response of downstream transcriptional factors exhibited the importance of regulating targets. It was conducive to analyzing the molecular mechanisms underlying heavy metal accumulation and tolerance