BIOMECHANICS ANALYSIS OF WATER POLO THROWING

The purpose of this study is to investigate the parameters of displacement. velocity, and acceleration of water polo over arm throwing. Six water polo athletes participated in this study. Kwon 3D was utilized to analyze arm movement of water polo shooting, including the displacement, velocity, and acceleration of wrist, elbow, shoulder, and ball. The results indicated, first, the displacement of arm movement was quadratic polynomial at a frequency of 0.6 second with maximum distance of 130.97 cm for ball, 117.17 cm for wrist, 107.04 cm for elbow, and 94.22 cm for shoulder. Second, the velocity of arm movement was a cubic curve with maximum speed of 25.368 m/s for ball, 20.092 m/s for wrist, 19.732 rn/s for elbow, and 23.846 m/s for shoulder. Moreover, the change of maximum velocity of ball and wrist occurred after 1.5 seconds, while the velocity of elbow and shoulder both decreased for 0.5 seconds. Third, the acceleration of arm movement showed a 6th order polynomial at a frequency of 0.2 second with maximum acceleration of 505.082 m/s2 for ball, 545.526 m/s2 for wrist, 401.82 m/s2 for elbow, and 568.26 m/s2 for shoulder

THE STUDY OF KNEE JOINT FORCE AND TORQUE DURING STEPPING EXERCISE ON THE GROUND AND UNDERWATER

Step aerobic is a popular exercise in a fitness center. Unfortunately, stepping activities will bring lower-extremity stress and pain especially for stepping dancer in aerobic exercise (Hains et al., 1997). This study characterized the lower-extremity joint biomechanics associated with stepping activities in different environment. The impact forces on knee joint are important for walking, running and stepping in the lower-extremity, because it may cause knee joint injuries such as OA. Loading is also believed to play a role in the onset of OA (William et al., 2004). He found that the forces at the knee are considerably larger during stair climbing than during walking: the average resultant peak force during stair climbing is 5.4 times body weight (BW). Because of the decrease of the BW loading, former researchers agree that exercises underwater are better than those on the ground. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to identify the knee joint loading difference between ground and underwater stepping exercise. My hypotheses are 1) the knee force underwater is larger than on the ground during the up stepping position; 2) the knee force underwater is smaller than on the ground during the down stepping position

THE ANALYSES OF KNEE INTERNAL FORCE DURING PASSIVE REPETITIVE ISOKINETIC PLYOMETRIC TRAINING

Passive Repetitive Isokinetic (PRI) training was a novel method for improving sport performance (Chiang Liu et al, 2005). As you know it can comprehensively advance muscular power characteristic of an athlete (Hsiang-Hsin Wang et al, 2005). But did you ever think that PRP training program might cause sport injury. It is not clear how much training effect would cause injury. Especially knee joint would sustain the most internal force for lower extremity. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of plymeric training on overuse injuries of the knee. The hypothesis is that the torque of knee joint variables will be greatly affected by injury

THE EFFECT OF PLYOMETRIC TRAINING FOR LOWER EXTREMITIES STRENGTH AND POWER IN HIGH-SCHOOL FEMALE BASKETBALL PLAYERS

Plyometric training is one of very prevailing training methods. It has its unique effect compared to other training methods. Having targeted 16 girl basketball players in senior high school, a set of box horse curriculum was designed with polymetric training for the study. The players were randomly divided into experimental groups (respectively with 30, 40, and 50 cm of box horse) and control group, four players for each group. Except for the control group, the other three groups had to receive 12 weeks of box horse training in addition to general basketball course training. The results of the study showed: Based on the plyometric training designed and applied to senior high school girl basketball players, this study shows that either CMJ or CJ has its effect

Adaptor protein Shc acts as an immune-regulator for the LPS-stimulated maturation of bone marrow-derived dendritic cells

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The Shc isoforms is known to mediate immune responses and has been indicated as a negative regulator of autoimmunity and lymphocyte activation. We aimed to evaluate the immune-regulatory role of Shc in rat bone marrow-derived DCs in the maturation process triggered by LPS.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We found that, in response to LPS, expression of Shc proteins was induced and that neutralization of Shc inhibited the LPS-induced transient phosphorylation of p52Shc on pTyr239/240 in DCs of Lewis (LEW; RT1^l) rats. Moreover, the significantly enhanced expression of IL-10 and the surface level of costimulatory molecule CD80, as well as suppressed expression of IL-6 and IL-12 in the Shc-silenced DCs were also observed. Similar IκB phosphorylation occurred in Shc-silenced DCs primed by LPS, indicating Shc is not associated with NF-κB pathway. We further demonstrate that Shc blockade on LPS-treated DCs results in significant increase of the overall STAT3 phosphorylation and the relative levels of phospho-STAT3 in the nuclear fraction. STAT3 activation by LPS with or without Shc blockade was totally abolished by SU6656, a selective Src family kinases inhibitor, underscoring the critical role of Src-mediated activation.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We conclude that Shc blockade in LPS-primed DC leads to the development of tolerogenic DC via Src-dependent STAT3 activation and that adaptor protein Shc might play a pivotal role in mediating immunogenic and tolerogenic properties of DCs.</p

An Online Rail Track Fastener Classification System Based on YOLO Models

In order to save manpower on rail track inspection, computer vision-based methodologies are developed. We propose utilizing the YOLOv4-Tiny neural network to identify track defects in real time. There are ten defects covering fasteners, rail surfaces, and sleepers from the upward and six defects about the rail waist from the sideward. The proposed real-time inspection system includes a high-performance notebook, two sports cameras, and three parallel processes. The hardware is mounted on a flat cart running at 30 km/h. The inspection results about the abnormal track components could be queried by defective type, time, and the rail hectometer stake. In the experiments, data augmentation by a Cycle Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) is used to increase the dataset. The number of images is 3800 on the upward and 967 on the sideward. Five object detection neural network models—YOLOv4, YOLOv4-Tiny, YOLOX-Tiny, SSD512, and SSD300—were tested. The YOLOv4-Tiny model with 150 FPS is selected as the recognition kernel, as it achieved 91.7%, 92%, and 91% for the mAP, precision, and recall of the defective track components from the upward, respectively. The mAP, precision, and recall of the defective track components from the sideward are 99.16%, 96%, and 94%, respectively

Immune vulnerability of ovarian cancer stem-like cells due to low CD47 expression is protected by surrounding bulk tumor cells

Recurrence of advanced epithelial ovarian cancer is common despite optimal surgical debulking and initial favorable responses to chemotherapy. Evidences suggest that cancer stem cells (CSCs) have inherent resistance to conventional therapies such as chemotherapy and play a decisive role in cancer recurrence. Cancer stem cells are also believed to be able to evade immunological attack. However, this study showed a different scenario in which cancer stem-like cells are more vulnerable to immunosurveillance. Our study demonstrated that isolated murine cancer stem-like cells, stem cell antigen (SCA)-1+ ID8 and CD133+ HM-1 cells, were susceptible to phagocytosis by macrophages and consequent CD8+ T cell immunity. The increased phagocytosis of these stem cell-like cells is attributed to low CD47 protein expression. SCA-1+ ID8 cells were able to grow in syngeneic mice but were soon rejected. Restoring CD47 expression delayed this immune-mediated rejection. SCA-1+ ID8 cells showed rapid growth by mixing with bulk ID8 cells. These results suggest that stem-like cells could be protected by surrounding non-stem cancer cells from immune attack. Similarly, both isolated human CD24−/low SKOV3 stem-like cells and spheroid OVCAR3 cells expressed lower CD47 levels. Our study provided novel insights into the immune characteristics of CSCs within a tumor microenvironment. The results might lead to the design of more effective treatment strategies for ovarian cancer

Inhibition of MZF1/c-MYC Axis by Cantharidin Impairs Cell Proliferation in Glioblastoma

Myeloid zinc finger 1 (MZF1), also known as zinc finger protein 42, is a zinc finger transcription factor, belonging to the Krüppel-like family that has been implicated in several types of malignancies, including glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). MZF1 is reportedly an oncogenic gene that promotes tumor progression. Moreover, higher expression of MZF1 has been associated with a worse overall survival rate among patients with GBM. Thus, MZF1 may be a promising target for therapeutic interventions. Cantharidin (CTD) has been traditionally used in Chinese medicine to induce apoptosis and inhibit cancer cell proliferation; however, the mechanism by which CTD inhibits cell proliferation remains unclear. In this study, we found that the expression of MZF1 was higher in GBM tissues than in adjacent normal tissues and low-grade gliomas. Additionally, the patient-derived GBM cells and GBM cell lines presented higher levels of MZF1 than normal human astrocytes. We demonstrated that CTD had greater anti-proliferative effects on GBM than a derivative of CTD, norcantharidin (NCTD). MZF1 expression was strongly suppressed by CTD treatment. Furthermore, MZF1 enhanced the proliferation of GBM cells and upregulated the expression of c-MYC, whereas these effects were reversed by CTD treatment. The results of our study suggest that CTD may be a promising therapeutic agent for patients with GBM and suggest a promising direction for further investigation

Deep Learning Approach in Image Diagnosis of <i>Pseudomonas</i> Keratitis

This investigation aimed to explore deep learning (DL) models’ potential for diagnosing Pseudomonas keratitis using external eye images. In the retrospective research, the images of bacterial keratitis (BK, n = 929), classified as Pseudomonas (n = 618) and non-Pseudomonas (n = 311) keratitis, were collected. Eight DL algorithms, including ResNet50, DenseNet121, ResNeXt50, SE-ResNet50, and EfficientNets B0 to B3, were adopted as backbone models to train and obtain the best ensemble 2-, 3-, 4-, and 5-DL models. Five-fold cross-validation was used to determine the ability of single and ensemble models to diagnose Pseudomonas keratitis. The EfficientNet B2 model had the highest accuracy (71.2%) of the eight single-DL models, while the best ensemble 4-DL model showed the highest accuracy (72.1%) among the ensemble models. However, no statistical difference was shown in the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve and diagnostic accuracy among these single-DL models and among the four best ensemble models. As a proof of concept, the DL approach, via external eye photos, could assist in identifying Pseudomonas keratitis from BK patients. All the best ensemble models can enhance the performance of constituent DL models in diagnosing Pseudomonas keratitis, but the enhancement effect appears to be limited