BIOMECHANICAL ANALYSIS OF HIGH-LOW IMPACT AEROBIC DANCE AND STEP AEROBICS

The purpose of this study was to compare the kinematics and kinetics both in high-Iow impact aerobic dance and step aerobics. Six female subjects performed front knee lift movements under high-Iow impact aerobics and two-step heights (10, 20 cm) in step aerobics. One Peak high-speed camera (120 Hz) and one Kistler force plate (600 Hz) were synchronized to collect the data. An ANOVA for repeated measures was used to identify differences for each dependent variable. The result indicated that it is important to flex at the knee and ankle joints in order to absorb and reduce the shock in the landing phase. When compared to the low impact front knee lift, high impact front knee lift and two-step heights of step aerobics had significant shorter time to first peak impact force and higher values for first peak impact force, passive impact impulse, and total work

Rough-set-based ADR signaling from spontaneous reporting data with missing values

AbstractSpontaneous reporting systems of adverse drug events have been widely established in many countries to collect as could as possible all adverse drug events to facilitate the detection of suspected ADR signals via some statistical or data mining methods. Unfortunately, due to privacy concern or other reasons, the reporters sometimes may omit consciously some attributes, causing many missing values existing in the reporting database. Most of research work on ADR detection or methods applied in practice simply adopted listwise deletion to eliminate all data with missing values. Very little work has noticed the possibility and examined the effect of including the missing data in the process of ADR detection.This paper represents our endeavor towards the exploration of this question. We aim at inspecting the feasibility of applying rough set theory to the ADR detection problem. Based on the concept of utilizing characteristic set based approximation to measure the strength of ADR signals, we propose twelve different rough set based measuring methods and show only six of them are feasible for the purpose. Experimental results conducted on the FARES database show that our rough-set-based approach exhibits similar capability in timeline warning of suspicious ADR signals as traditional method with missing deletion, and sometimes can yield noteworthy measures earlier than the traditional method

BIOMECHANICAL ANALYSIS DURING COUNTERMOVEMENT JUMP IN CHILDREN AND ADULTS

This study was to examine the biomechanical characteristics of children and adults during countermovement jump. Seven children and seven adult males were recruited to the study. A Peak high-speed camera (120Hz) synchronized with a force plate (600Hz) were used to record vertical jumping action. The kinetic parameters were calculated by using inverse dynamic method. Results showed that the children had both immature joint function prior to propulsion and inadequate knee and ankle joints function during propulsion. It is concluded that a lack of form in jumping strategy was performed during vertical jumpings in the children's group in terms of the kinetic methods was performed. This information may be used in following studies about countermovement jump, avoiding some important information needed only by kinematic analysis, it will be more complete to apply kinetic analysis for children movement researches

THE PREDICTION OF FATIGUE-RELATED MUSCLE ADAPTATION IN DIFFERENT WORKLOAD DURING CYCLING ROWING EXERCISE

The purpose of this study was to identify the fatigue-related muscles during the different percentage of the maximal workload. Seven subjects were recruited and, firstly, performed the maximal workload test for 3 minutes. After 24 hours, the different workload tests (60%, 70% and 80% of the maximal workload) were used to reveal the fatigue-related muscle. The result showed that the biceps and triceps had the extreme contribution at the minor and greater workload. However, the neuromuscular fatigue threshold (NFT) is to predict the possibly fatigue muscle condition during the entire exercise. And the most contribution of the EMG expression didn’t stand for the greater value of the EMG number

dbPTM: an information repository of protein post-translational modification

dbPTM is a database that compiles information on protein post-translational modifications (PTMs), such as the catalytic sites, solvent accessibility of amino acid residues, protein secondary and tertiary structures, protein domains and protein variations. The database includes all of the experimentally validated PTM sites from Swiss-Prot, PhosphoELM and O-GLYCBASE. Only a small fraction of Swiss-Prot proteins are annotated with experimentally verified PTM. Although the Swiss-Prot provides rich information about the PTM, other structural properties and functional information of proteins are also essential for elucidating protein mechanisms. The dbPTM systematically identifies three major types of protein PTM (phosphorylation, glycosylation and sulfation) sites against Swiss-Prot proteins by refining our previously developed prediction tool, KinasePhos (). Solvent accessibility and secondary structure of residues are also computationally predicted and are mapped to the PTM sites. The resource is now freely available at

Effects of natto extract on endothelial injury in a rat model

Vascular endothelial damage has been found to be associated with thrombus formation, which is considered to be a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. A diet of natto leads to a low prevalence of cardiovascular disease. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of natto extract on vascular endothelia damage with exposure to laser irradiation. Endothelial damage both in vitro and in vivo was induced by irradiation of rose bengal using a DPSS green laser. Cell viability was determined by MTS assay, and the intimal thickening was verified by a histological approach. The antioxidant content of natto extract was determined for the free radical scavenging activity. Endothelial cells were injured in the presence of rose bengal irradiated in a dose-dependent manner. Natto extract exhibits high levels of antioxidant activity compared with purified natto kinase. Apoptosis of laser-injured endothelial cells was significantly reduced in the presence of natto extract. Both the natto extract and natto kinase suppressed intimal thickening in rats with endothelial injury. The present findings suggest that natto extract suppresses vessel thickening as a synergic effect attributed to its antioxidant and anti-apoptosis properties

Radiosurgery for Vestibular Schwannomas

BackgroundRadiosurgery has been established as an important alternative to microsurgery. We report our experience with radiosurgery for tumor control and the complications of unilateral vestibular schwannomas.MethodsWe reviewed our early experience regarding clinical presentation, management and outcomes in 45 patients with acoustic schwannomas who underwent gamma knife stereotactic radiosurgery. The median follow-up period was 25 months (range, 6-48 months). Thirteen patients had undergone 1 or more previous resections before radiosurgery; 32 underwent radiosurgery as the first procedure. Median tumor volume was 4.5 mL (range, 0.5-30.0), and median radiotherapy dose was 11.5 Gy (range, 10.5-14.0 Gy).ResultsTumor control was achieved in 43 patients (95.6%). Loss of central contrast enhancement was a characteristic change and was noted in 29 patients (64.4%). Reduction in tumor size was shown in 15 patients (33.3%). Thirteen patients (28.9%) had good or serviceable hearing preoperatively, and in all of these, the preoperative status was retained immediately after radiosurgery. At follow-up, however, 10 patients (76.9%) had preserved hearing and 3 (23.1%) had reduced hearing on the treated side. Hearing in 1 patient that was not serviceable preoperatively later improved to a serviceable level. No patients had delayed facial palsy or lower cranial nerve dysfunction, but one had delayed trigeminal sensory loss.ConclusionRadiosurgery achieved a high tumor control rate and a relatively low post-radiosurgical complication rate for acoustic neuromas