Rehabilitation interventions for foot drop in neuromuscular disease

"Foot drop" or "Floppy foot drop" is the term commonly used to describe weakness or contracture of the muscles around the ankle joint. It may arise from many neuromuscular diseases

London dispersion forces without density distortion: a path to first principles inclusion in density functional theory

We analyse a path to construct density functionals for the dispersion interaction energy from an expression in terms of the ground state densities and exchange-correlation holes of the isolated fragments. The expression is based on a constrained search formalism for a supramolecular wavefunction that is forced to leave the diagonal of the many-body density matrix of each fragment unchanged, and is exact for the interaction between one-electron densities. We discuss several aspects: the needed features a density functional approximation for the exchange-correlation holes of the monomers should have, the optimal choice of the one-electron basis needed (named "dispersals"), and the functional derivative with respect to monomer density variations.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure

Influence of random roughness on cantilever curvature sensitivity

In this work we explore the influence of random surface roughness on the cantilever sensitivity to respond to curvature changes induced by changes in surface stress. The roughness is characterized by the out-of-plane roughness amplitude w, the lateral correlation length x, and the roughness or Hurst exponent H (0<H<1). The cantilever sensitivity is found to decrease with increasing roughness (decreasing H and/or increasing ratio w/x) or equivalently increasing local surface slope. Finally, analytic expressions of the cantilever sensitivity as a function of the parameters w, x, and H are derived in order to allow direct implementation in sensing systems.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure

Competitive segregation of gallium and indium at heterophase Cu–MnO interfaces studied with transmission electron microscopy

This paper concentrates on the possible segregation of indium and gallium and competitive segregation of gallium and indium at atomically flat parallel {111}-oriented Cu–MnO interfaces. The segregation of gallium at Cu–MnO interfaces after introduction of gallium in the copper matrix of internally oxidized Cu–1 at.%Mn could be hardly detected with energy-dispersive spectrometry in a field emission gun transmission electron microscope. After a heat treatment to dissolve indium in the copper matrix, gallium has a weak tendency to segregate, that is 2.5 at.% Ga per monolayer at the interface compared with 2 at.% in the copper matrix. The striking result is that this gallium segregation is observable because it does not occur at the metal side of the interface but in the first two monolayers at the oxide side. Using the same heat treatment as for introducing indium in the sample, but without indium present, gallium segregates strongly at the oxide side of the Cu–MnO interface with a concentration of about 14.3 at.% in each monolayer of the two. In contrast, the presence of gallium has no influence on the segregation of indium towards Cu–MnO interfaces, because the outermost monolayer at the metal side of the interface contains 17.6 at.% In, that is similar to previously found results. This leads to the intriguing conclusions, firstly, that, in contrast with antimony and indium, gallium segregates at the oxide side of the interface and, secondly, that the presence of indium strongly hampers gallium segregation. The results from analytical transmission electron microscopy on gallium segregation are supported by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy observations.

The story of Oh: the aesthetics and rhetoric of a common vowel sound

Studies in Musical Theatre is the only peer-reviewed journal dedicated to musical theatre. It was launched in 2007 and is now in its seventh volume. It has an extensive international readership and is edited by Dominic Symonds and George Burrows. This article investigates the use of the ‘word’ ‘Oh’ in a variety of different performance idioms. Despite its lack of ‘meaning’, the sound is used in both conversation and poetic discourse, and I discuss how it operates communicatively and expressively through contextual resonances, aesthetic manipulation and rhetorical signification. The article first considers the aesthetically modernist work of Cathy Berberian in Bussotti’s La Passion Selon Sade; then it considers the rhetorically inflected use of ‘Oh’ to construct social resonance in popular song;finally, it discusses two important uses of the sound ‘Oh’ which bookend the Broadway musical Oklahoma!, serving to consolidate the allegorical and musico-dramatic narrative of the show

Restoration of missing lines in grip patterns for biometrics authentication on a smart gun

The Secure Grip project1 aims to develop a grip-pattern recognition system, as part of a smart gun. Its target users are the police officers. The current authentication algorithm is based on a likelihood-ratio classifier. The grip pattern is acquired by sensors on the grip of the gun. Since in practice various factors can result in missing lines in a grip pattern, restoration of these missing lines will be useful and practical. We present a restoration algorithm based on null-space error minimization. The simulation results of the restoration and authentication experiments show that this restoration algorithm effectively restores grip patterns, and is, therefore, capable of improving the system’s authentication performance when missing lines are present

Some aspects of nanocrystalline nickel and zinc ferrites processed using microemulsion technique

Nanocrystalline nickel and zinc ferrites synthesised using a microemulsion technique were characterised by high resolution transmission electron microscopy and vibrating sample magnetometry. A narrow and uniform distribution of crystals of size range 5 – 8 nm, distinguished by a clear lack of saturation magnetisation at 9 kOe, were obtained. Also, no coercivity or remanence was observed.