4,385 research outputs found

    Treatment of medial-sided injuries in patients with early bicruciate ligament reconstruction for knee dislocation

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    Purpose In knee dislocation with bicruciate ligament and medial side injury (KDIIIM), treatment method of medial side injuries is controversial. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the outcomes of non-operative treatment of proximal and midsubstance and operative treatment of distal avulsion medial collateral ligament (MCL) ruptures in patients with early bicruciate reconstruction. Methods One-hundred and forty-seven patients with a knee dislocation and bicruciate ligament injury (KDII-KDV) were identified. Sixty-two patients had KDIIIM injury. Of these, 24 patients were excluded and 13 were lost to follow-up. With a minimum of 2 years of follow-up, IKDC2000 (subjective and objective), Lysholm and Tegner scores and stress radiographs were recorded. Results Twenty-five patients were available for follow-up: 18 had a proximal or midsubstance grade-III MCL rupture (proximal MCL group) and 7 had a distal MCL avulsion (distal MCL group). In the proximal MCL and distal MCL groups, respectively, median IKDC2000 subjective scores were 80 (range 57-99) and 62 (range 39-87), and median Lysholm scores were 88 (range 57-99) and 75 (range 40-100). The median medial opening (side-to-side difference) was 2.4 mm (range 0.1-9.2) in the proximal MCL group and 2.5 mm (range 0.2-4.8) in the distal MCL group. Conclusion We found acceptable recorded outcomes in patients who underwent non-operative treatment of proximal and midsubstance grade-III MCL rupture and operative treatment of distal MCL avulsion with early bicruciate ligament reconstruction.Peer reviewe

    Genetic steps to organ laterality in zebrafish.

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    All internal organs are asymmetric along the left-right axis. Here we report a genetic screen to discover mutations which perturb organ laterality. Our particular focus is upon whether, and how, organs are linked to each other as they achieve their laterally asymmetric positions. We generated mutations by ENU mutagenesis and examined F3 progeny using a cocktail of probes that reveal early primordia of heart, gut, liver and pancreas. From the 750 genomes examined, we isolated seven recessive mutations which affect the earliest left-right positioning of one or all of the organs. None of these mutations caused discernable defects elsewhere in the embryo at the stages examined. This is in contrast to those mutations we reported previously (Chen et al., 1997) which, along with left-right abnormalities, cause marked perturbation in gastrulation, body form or midline structures. We find that the mutations can be classified on the basis of whether they perturb relationships among organ laterality. In Class 1 mutations, none of the organs manifest any left-right asymmetry. The heart does not jog to the left and normally leftpredominant BMP4 in the early heart tube remains symmetric. The gut tends to remain midline. There frequently is a remarkable bilateral duplication of liver and pancreas. Embryos with Class 2 mutations have organotypic asymmetry but, in any given embryo, organ positions can be normal, reversed or randomized. Class 3 reveals a hitherto unsuspected gene that selectively affects laterality of heart. We find that visceral organ positions are predicted by the direction of the preceding cardiac jog. We interpret this as suggesting that normally there is linkage between cardiac and visceral organ laterality. Class 1 mutations, we suggest, effectively remove the global laterality signals, with the consequence that organ positions are effectively symmetrical. Embryos with Class 2 mutations do manifest linkage among organs, but it may be reversed, suggesting that the global signals may be present but incorrectly orientated in some of the embryos. That laterality decisions of organs may be independently perturbed, as in the Class 3 mutation, indicates that there are distinctive pathways for reception and organotypic interpretation of the global signals

    A fully integrated microfluidic device for point of care monitoring of antithrombotics

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    © 2016 The Royal Society of Chemistry. The simplicity and efficiency of point of care diagnostics have revolutionised patient care. Current methods for measuring hypercoagulability often require trained technicians, large blood volumes, and result in long turnaround times. Standard testing for hypercoagulable disorders is performed in the central laboratory using automated coagulation analysers. However the trend is moving towards the development and implementation of point of care testing, as a result of the ever increasing number of patients on antithrombotic therapy. We present a novel microfluidic device and assay for monitoring the effect of two anticoagulants, unfractionated heparin (UFH) and low molecular weight heparin (LMWH). The assay is based on the anti-Xa assay principle but uses fluorescence detection. Our device is a disposable laminate microfluidic strip, fabricated from the cyclic polyolefin (COP), Zeonor®, which is extremely suitable for application to fluorescent device platforms. We present data on the execution of the anti-Xa assay in this microfluidic format, demonstrating that the assay can be used to measure both UFH and LMWH in human plasma samples from 0 to 1 U mL-1, with a rapid result obtained within 30-60 seconds

    Mixed quantum-classical dynamics of an amide-I vibrational excitation in a protein a-helix

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    Adenosine triphosphate sATPd is known to be the main energy currency of the living cell, and is used as a coenzyme to generate energy for many cellular processes through hydrolysis to adenosine diphosphate sADPd,although the mechanism of energy transfer is not well understood. It has been proposed that following hydrolysis of the ATP cofactor bound to a protein, up to two quanta of amide-I vibrational energy are excited and utilized to bring about important structural changes in the protein. To study whether, and how, amide-I vibrational excitations are capable of leading to protein structural changes, we have added components arising from quantum-mechanical amide-I vibrational excitations to the total energy and force terms within a moleculardynamics simulation. This model is applied to helical deca-alanine as a test case to investigate how its dynamics differs in the presence or absence of an amide-I excitation. We find that the presence of an amide-I excitation can bias the structure toward a more helical state

    Nonintrusive Load Monitoring of Variable Speed Drive Cooling Systems

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    To improve the energy efficiencies of building cooling systems, manufacturers are increasingly utilizing variable speed drive (VSD) motors in system components, e.g. compressors and condensers. While these technologies can provide significant energy savings, these benefits are only realized if these components operate as intended and under proper control. Undetected faults can foil efficiency gains. As such, it's imperative to monitor cooling system performance to both identify faulty conditions and to properly inform building or multi-building models used for predictive control and energy management. This paper presents nonintrusive load monitoring (NILM) based 'mapping' techniques for tracking the performance of a building's central air conditioning from smart electrical meter or energy monitor data. Using a multivariate linear model, a first mapping disaggregates the air conditioner's power draw from that of the total building by exploiting the correlations between the building's line-current harmonics and the power consumption of the air conditioner's VSD motors. A second mapping then estimates the air conditioner's heat rejection performance using as inputs the estimated power draw of the first mapping, the building's zonal temperature, and the outside environmental temperature. The usefulness of these mapping techniques are demonstrated using data collected from a research facility building on the Masdar City Campus of Khalifa University. The mapping techniques combine to provide accurate estimates of the building's air conditioning performance when operating under normal conditions. These estimates could thus be used as feedback in building energy management controllers and can provide a performance baseline for detection of air conditioner underperformance

    Trans-phonon effects in ultrafast nano-devices

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    We report a novel phenomenon in carbon nanotube (CNT) based devices, the transphonon effects, which resemble the transonic effects in aerodynamics. It is caused by dissipative resonance of nanotube phonons similar to the radial breathing mode, and subsequent drastic surge of the dragging force on the sliding tube, and multiple phonon barriers are encountered as the intertube sliding velocity reaches critical values. It is found that the transphonon effects can be tuned by applying geometric constraints or varying chirality combinations of the nanotubes

    Long Distance Correlations in Molecular Orientations of Liquid Water and Shape Dependant Hydrophobic Force

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    Liquid water, at ambient conditions, has short-range density correlations which are well known in literature. Surprisingly, large scale molecular dynamics simulations reveal an unusually long-distance correlation in `longitudinal' part of dipole-dipole orientational correlations. It is non-vanishing even at 75 \AA{} and falls-off exponentially with a correlation length of about 24 \AA{} beyond solvation region. Numerical evidence suggests that the long range nature of dipole-dipole correlation is due to underlying fluctuating network of hydrogen-bonds in the liquid phase. This correlation is shown to give a shape dependant attraction between two hydrophobic surfaces at large distances of separation and the range of this attractive force is in agreement with experiments. In addition it is seen that quadrupolar fluctuations vanish within the first solvation peak (3 \AA{})Comment: 11 pages, 3 figure

    On hyperbolic fixed points in ultrametric dynamics

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    Let K be a complete ultrametric field. We give lower and upper bounds for the size of linearization discs for power series over K near hyperbolic fixed points. These estimates are maximal in the sense that there exist examples where these estimates give the exact size of the corresponding linearization disc. In particular, at repelling fixed points, the linearization disc is equal to the maximal disc on which the power series is injective.Comment: http://www.springerlink.com/content/?k=doi%3a%2810.1134%2fS2070046610030052%2
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