Anterior Cruciate Ligament Elasticity and Force for Knee Flexion during the Menstrual Cycle in Women

Numerous studies have been conducted on changes of knee ligament laxity during the menstrual cycle (MC) since there are more injuries in certain phases. Some researchers believe that since estrogen receptor β exists in ligaments and tendons in the knee, estrogen may modulate towards a state of laxity. However, increased tissue temperature also observed during the MC can predispose ligament and tendon laxness. The number of women using oral contraceptive pills (OCP) has constantly increased in the United States. This exogenous source of synthetic forms of steroid hormones prevents ovulation by maintaining more consistent daily hormone levels than occurs. Since the estrogen receptor β exists on human connective tissue, OCP might have an impact on tendon and ligament synthesis, structure, and biomechanical properties. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to assess in women the relationship between Estradiol (E2) serum concentrations and tissue temperature during the MC and their combined effect on ACL elasticity, force to flex the knee (FFK), and knee flexion-extension hysteresis (KFEH) in OCP users and non-OCP users. Nineteen non-athletic young healthy females were divided into two groups; OCP users and non-OCP users. E2 serum concentrations, ACL elasticity, FFK, and KFEH were assessed both at ambient temperature (22 °C) and after 38 °C warming of the leg to stabilize the normal temperature during the MC. The result of this investigation showed that ACL elasticity was significantly lower and FFK and KFEH were significantly higher during ovulation compared to menstruation (p\u3c0.05) but after 38 °C warming of the leg, there were no differences in KKF and KFEH in non-OCP users. Also, ACL elasticity was significantly lower and FFK and KFEH were significantly higher OCP users than non-OCP users (p\u3c0.05) at ambient temperature. But, no significant difference in FFK and FFEH between the two groups was found after warming to 38 °C. In conclusion, OCP users have more knee stiffness and effect of heat on FFK and KFEH when their legs were heated compared to non-OCP users. In addition, ACL elasticity, FFK, and KFEH were affected not only by estrogen but tissue temperature during the menstrual cycle

Gender-specific differences of normative values of pelvic floor muscle function in healthy adults population: an observational analytical study

The quantitative evaluation of pelvic floor muscle (PFM) function is of great value for the diagnosis and treatment of female pelvic floor dysfunction (FPFD; Gachon et al. 2019). The demographics and the prevalence of pelvic floor dysfunction are well understood but there are no data on the normative values of PFM function and the preventive measures needed to serve this population (Jundt, Peschers, and Kentenich 2015). A total of 200 healthy adults, including 71 males and 129 females participated in this observational analytical study. Subjects were included in the study if they were healthy females or males aged 20–45. Bladder base displacement was measured using a sagittal curved linear array 2–5 MHz transducer over the suprapubic region. This observational analytical study is the first to reveal gender-specific differences of the PFM function in the healthy adult population. It also provides a stratification model for the PFM function in a normal distribution of a large sample of a healthy population. The study findings allow a reference baseline data to have an objective method for a clinical measure and establish an appropriate plan of care. This stratification model will help to identify patients who are at risk for developing PFD

The Effect of ThermaCare Heat Wraps on Balance and Mobility in Seniors with Impaired Gait - A Cross Over Study

To examine if the use of heat at home can result in better quality and safer mobility in the elderly with gait and balance impairments. Setting: Randomized longitudinal cross over study design in a clinical setting. Methods: 20 people with impaired mobility (assessed as a score of more than 4 on the Stepping On questionnaire) were tested with a multi-camera gait analysis system, a treadmill with pressure sensors, a balance platform and the timed up and go and walking speed tests before and after using ThermaCare continuous heat wraps on their legs and knees for 6 days at 4 hours per day. The loss in mobility could not be due to pain killers or other drugs that reduced mobility. Results: Muscle tremor was reduced, mobility of the joints was improved, balance was significantly improved, and gait was improved after 6 sessions of heat application on the legs. As per the literature, this should reduce the chance of falls in this population. Conclusion: Using continuous heat wraps may be an important adjunct for improving gait in the elderly with gait impairments

The Effect of an 8-Minute Yoga Breathing Program on Fitness, Weight Loss and Breathing Capacity

This was a single blinded randomized study with an intervention group and a control group to examine a modification in lifestyle and an 8-minute exercise session each day to lose weight. Fifty-seven female subjects participated. Subjects underwent girth measurements at the umbilicus, hips, thigh and upper arm; weight, height (for BMI), body fat, heart rate, blood pressure, abdominal strength, leg strength, arm strength, sedentary O2 saturation, treadmill challenged O2 saturation, resting metabolism (which includes fat metabolism), and lung capacity. Measures were repeated at baseline and the end of the 6-week period. During the 6-week period, they followed a healthy recommended diet with high volumes of vegetables and fruit and 8 minutes of exercise each day. In the investigational group, the average weight loss was 4.85 KG over the 6-week period, BMI was reduced 1.79 at the end of the 6 weeks, a significant loss (p\u3c0.01). Body fat in this group was reduced by 5.87 percent, the average girth at the showed an average loss in circumference of 5.9 cm over the 6-week period. For the hip, the average loss in circumference was 6.28 cm, for the thigh the average loss in circumference in the investigational group was 5.0 cm, and for the upper arm reduced girth by 2.61 cm. For strength for the investigational group, for the abdominals the increase was 11.3 Kg, for the leg it was 6.0 kg and for the arm it was 4.8 kg. All of these increases were significant (p\u3c0.01). The basal metabolic rate, in the investigational group after the 6 weeks increased to 31.1 cc/kg lean body mass. The fat burning doubled in the investigational group. In conclusion, subjects slept better, had high oxygen saturation and better strength and excellent weight and fat loss with this program

Rethinking Annotation: Can Language Learners Contribute?

Researchers have traditionally recruited native speakers to provide annotations for widely used benchmark datasets. However, there are languages for which recruiting native speakers can be difficult, and it would help to find learners of those languages to annotate the data. In this paper, we investigate whether language learners can contribute annotations to benchmark datasets. In a carefully controlled annotation experiment, we recruit 36 language learners, provide two types of additional resources (dictionaries and machine-translated sentences), and perform mini-tests to measure their language proficiency. We target three languages, English, Korean, and Indonesian, and the four NLP tasks of sentiment analysis, natural language inference, named entity recognition, and machine reading comprehension. We find that language learners, especially those with intermediate or advanced levels of language proficiency, are able to provide fairly accurate labels with the help of additional resources. Moreover, we show that data annotation improves learners' language proficiency in terms of vocabulary and grammar. One implication of our findings is that broadening the annotation task to include language learners can open up the opportunity to build benchmark datasets for languages for which it is difficult to recruit native speakers.Comment: ACL 202

The cyanobacterial circadian clock follows midday in vivo and in vitro

Circadian rhythms are biological oscillations that schedule daily changes in physiology. Outside the laboratory, circadian clocks do not generally free-run but are driven by daily cues whose timing varies with the seasons. The principles that determine how circadian clocks align to these external cycles are not well understood. Here, we report experimental platforms for driving the cyanobacterial circadian clock both in vivo and in vitro. We find that the phase of the circadian rhythm follows a simple scaling law in light-dark cycles, tracking midday across conditions with variable day length. The core biochemical oscillator comprised of the Kai proteins behaves similarly when driven by metabolic pulses in vitro, indicating that such dynamics are intrinsic to these proteins. We develop a general mathematical framework based on instantaneous transformation of the clock cycle by external cues, which successfully predicts clock behavior under many cycling environments

Effect of Heat, Cold, and Pressure on the Transverse Carpal Ligament and Median Nerve: A Pilot Study

Background: This study quantified the effects of heat, cold, and pressure on the median nerve and transverse carpal ligament in subjects without carpal tunnel syndrome. Material/Methods: Subjects were individuals ages 20–50 who had no symptoms of carpal tunnel disease. Imaging ultrasound was used to measure the clearance around the median nerve, transverse ligament elasticity, nerve conduction velocity, thickness of the carpal ligament, and area of the median nerve. Pressure was applied to the carpal ligament to assess the effects of increasing pressure on these structures. On 3 separate days, 10 subjects had ThermaCare heat or cold packs applied, for either 60 or 120 minutes for heat or 20 minutes for cold, to the palmer surface of the hand. Results: Tissue changes were recorded as a response to pressure applied at 0, 5, 10, and 20 N. The size of the nerve and ligaments were not significantly altered by pressure with the hand at room temperature and after cold exposure. After heat, the nerve, ligaments, and tendons showed significantly more elasticity. Conclusions: Application of cold to the hand may reduce compression of the carpal ligament and nerve

ChEDDAR: Student-ChatGPT Dialogue in EFL Writing Education

The integration of generative AI in education is expanding, yet empirical analyses of large-scale, real-world interactions between students and AI systems still remain limited. In this study, we present ChEDDAR, ChatGPT & EFL Learner's Dialogue Dataset As Revising an essay, which is collected from a semester-long longitudinal experiment involving 212 college students enrolled in English as Foreign Langauge (EFL) writing courses. The students were asked to revise their essays through dialogues with ChatGPT. ChEDDAR includes a conversation log, utterance-level essay edit history, self-rated satisfaction, and students' intent, in addition to session-level pre-and-post surveys documenting their objectives and overall experiences. We analyze students' usage patterns and perceptions regarding generative AI with respect to their intent and satisfaction. As a foundational step, we establish baseline results for two pivotal tasks in task-oriented dialogue systems within educational contexts: intent detection and satisfaction estimation. We finally suggest further research to refine the integration of generative AI into education settings, outlining potential scenarios utilizing ChEDDAR. ChEDDAR is publicly available at https://github.com/zeunie/ChEDDAR