Reference Data for the Ruff Figural Fluency Test Stratified by Age and Educational Level

The Ruff Figural Fluency Test (RFFT) was developed to avoid the difficulties that were encountered in earlier tests of figural fluency. Although the test characteristics of the RFFT seem to be good and it is a valuable addition to neuropsychological assessments, reference data are still scarce. To this aim, we required 2,404 community dwelling persons in Groningen, the Netherlands to perform the RFFT. All 1,651 persons with a complete RFFT and known educational level formed the reference sample. Their age ranged from 35 to 82 years and their educational level from primary school to university grade. Ninety-six percent of the persons were of Western European descent. All tests were analyzed by two independent examiners and subsequently three measures were calculated: number of unique designs, number of perseverative errors and error ratio. The main finding was that performance on the RFFT was dependent on age and educational level. This was not only observed in older persons but also in young and middle-aged persons. Reference data for the three RFFT measures are presented in groups of five years of age ranging from 35–39 years to 75 years or older

STED Super-Resolution Microscopy of Clinical Paraffin-Embedded Human Rectal Cancer Tissue.

Formalin fixed and paraffin-embedded human tissue resected during cancer surgery is indispensable for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes and represents a vast and largely unexploited resource for research. Optical microscopy of such specimen is curtailed by the diffraction-limited resolution of conventional optical microscopy. To overcome this limitation, we used STED super-resolution microscopy enabling optical resolution well below the diffraction barrier. We visualized nanoscale protein distributions in sections of well-annotated paraffin-embedded human rectal cancer tissue stored in a clinical repository. Using antisera against several mitochondrial proteins, STED microscopy revealed distinct sub-mitochondrial protein distributions, suggesting a high level of structural preservation. Analysis of human tissues stored for up to 17 years demonstrated that these samples were still amenable for super-resolution microscopy. STED microscopy of sections of HER2 positive rectal adenocarcinoma revealed details in the surface and intracellular HER2 distribution that were blurred in the corresponding conventional images, demonstrating the potential of super-resolution microscopy to explore the thus far largely untapped nanoscale regime in tissues stored in biorepositories.Open-Access-Publikationsfonds 2014peerReviewe

Case-study of a user-driven prosthetic arm design: bionic hand versus customized body-powered technology in a highly demanding work environment

BACKGROUND: Prosthetic arm research predominantly focuses on "bionic" but not body-powered arms. However, any research orientation along user needs requires sufficiently precise workplace specifications and sufficiently hard testing. Forensic medicine is a demanding environment, also physically, also for non-disabled people, on several dimensions (e.g., distances, weights, size, temperature, time). METHODS: As unilateral below elbow amputee user, the first author is in a unique position to provide direct comparison of a "bionic" myoelectric iLimb Revolution (Touch Bionics) and a customized body-powered arm which contains a number of new developments initiated or developed by the user: (1) quick lock steel wrist unit; (2) cable mount modification; (3) cast shape modeled shoulder anchor; (4) suspension with a soft double layer liner (Ohio Willowwood) and tube gauze (Molnlycke) combination. The iLimb is mounted on an epoxy socket; a lanyard fixed liner (Ohio Willowwood) contains magnetic electrodes (Liberating Technologies). An on the job usage of five years was supplemented with dedicated and focused intensive two-week use tests at work for both systems. RESULTS: The side-by-side comparison showed that the customized body-powered arm provides reliable, comfortable, effective, powerful as well as subtle service with minimal maintenance; most notably, grip reliability, grip force regulation, grip performance, center of balance, component wear down, sweat/temperature independence and skin state are good whereas the iLimb system exhibited a number of relevant serious constraints. CONCLUSIONS: Research and development of functional prostheses may want to focus on body-powered technology as it already performs on manually demanding and heavy jobs whereas eliminating myoelectric technology's constraints seems out of reach. Relevant testing could be developed to help expediting this. This is relevant as Swiss disability insurance specifically supports prostheses that enable actual work integration. Myoelectric and cosmetic arm improvement may benefit from a less forgiving focus on perfecting anthropomorphic appearance

Alopecia areata.

Alopecia areata is an autoimmune disorder characterized by transient, non-scarring hair loss and preservation of the hair follicle. Hair loss can take many forms ranging from loss in well-defined patches to diffuse or total hair loss, which can affect all hair-bearing sites. Patchy alopecia areata affecting the scalp is the most common type. Alopecia areata affects nearly 2% of the general population at some point during their lifetime. Skin biopsies of affected skin show a lymphocytic infiltrate in and around the bulb or the lower part of the hair follicle in the anagen (hair growth) phase. A breakdown of immune privilege of the hair follicle is thought to be an important driver of alopecia areata. Genetic studies in patients and mouse models have shown that alopecia areata is a complex, polygenic disease. Several genetic susceptibility loci were identified to be associated with signalling pathways that are important to hair follicle cycling and development. Alopecia areata is usually diagnosed based on clinical manifestations, but dermoscopy and histopathology can be helpful. Alopecia areata is difficult to manage medically, but recent advances in understanding the molecular mechanisms have revealed new treatments and the possibility of remission in the near future. Nat Rev Dis Primers 2017 Mar 16; 3:1701