Usability Test of Exercise Games Designed for Rehabilitation of Elderly Patients After Hip Replacement Surgery: Pilot Study

BACKGROUND: Patients who receive rehabilitation after hip replacement surgery are shown to have increased muscle strength and better functional performance. However, traditional physiotherapy is often tedious and leads to poor adherence. Exercise games, provide ways for increasing the engagement of elderly patients and increase the uptake o

Nanoparticle-induced inflammation and fibrosis in ex vivo murine precision-cut liver slices and effects of nanoparticle exposure conditions

Chronic exposure and accumulation of persistent nanomaterials by cells have led to safety concerns on potential long-term effects induced by nanoparticles, including chronic inflammation and fibrosis. With this in mind, we used murine precision-cut liver tissue slices to test potential induction of inflammation and onset of fibrosis upon 72 h exposure to different nanomaterials (0-200 µg/ml). Tissue slices were chosen as an advanced ex vivo 3D model to better resemble the complexity of the in vivo tissue environment, with a focus on the liver where most nanomaterials accumulate. Effects on the onset of fibrosis and inflammation were investigated, with particular care in optimizing nanoparticle exposure conditions to tissue. Thus, we compared the effects induced on slices exposed to nanoparticles in the presence of excess free proteins (in situ), or after corona isolation. Slices exposed to daily-refreshed nanoparticle dispersions were used to test additional effects due to ageing of the dispersions. Exposure to amino-modified polystyrene nanoparticles in serum-free conditions led to strong inflammation, with stronger effects with daily-refreshed dispersions. Instead, no inflammation was observed when slices were exposed to the same nanoparticles in medium supplemented with serum to allow corona formation. Similarly, no clear signs of inflammation nor of onset of fibrosis were detected after exposure to silica, titania or carboxylated polystyrene in all conditions tested. Overall, these results show that liver slices can be used to test nanoparticle-induced inflammation in real tissue, and that the exposure conditions and ageing of the dispersions can strongly affect tissue responses to nanoparticles

Generation of Marker- and Backbone-Free Transgenic Potatoes by Site-Specific Recombination and a Bi-Functional Marker Gene in a Non-Regular One-Border Agrobacterium Transformation Vector

A binary vector, designated PROGMO, was constructed to assess the potential of the Zygosaccharomyces rouxii R/Rs recombination system for generating marker- and backbone-free transgenic potato (Solanum tuberosum) plants with high transgene expression and low copy number insertion. The PROGMO vector utilises a constitutively expressed plant-adapted R recombinase and a codA-nptII bi-functional, positive/negative selectable marker gene. It carries only the right border (RB) of T-DNA and consequently the whole plasmid will be inserted as one long T-DNA into the plant genome. The recognition sites (Rs) are located at such positions that recombinase enzyme activity will recombine and delete both the bi-functional marker genes as well as the backbone of the binary vector, leaving only the gene of interest flanked by a copy of Rs¿and RB. Efficiency of PROGMO transformation was tested by introduction of the GUS reporter gene into potato. It was shown that after 21 days of positive selection and using 300 mgl¿1 5-fluorocytosine for negative selection, 29% of regenerated shoots carried only the GUS gene flanked by a copy of Rs and RB. The PROGMO vector approach is simple and might be widely applicable for the production of marker- and backbone-free transgenic plants of many crop species

The NuMI Neutrino Beam and Potential for an Off-Axis Experiment

The Neutrinos at the Main Injector (NuMI) facility at Fermilab is under construction and due to begin operations in late 2004. NuMI will deliver an intense $\nu_{\mu}$ beam of variable energy 2-20 GeV directed into the Earth at 58 mrad. Several aspects of the design are reviewed, and potential limitations to the ultimate neutrino flux are described. In addition, potential measurements of neutrino mixing properties are described.Comment: talk given at NuFact '02, Imperial College London, proceedings to appear in J. Phys. G, revised to add a referenc

Fast detector of the ellipticity of infrared and terahertz radiation based on HgTe quantum well structures

We report a fast, room temperature detection scheme for the polarization ellipticity of laser radiation, with a bandwidth that stretches from the infrared to the terahertz range. The device consists of two elements, one in front of the other, that detect the polarization ellipticity and the azimuthal angle of the ellipse. The elements respectively utilise the circular photogalvanic effect in a narrow gap semiconductor and the linear photogalvanic effect in a bulk piezoelectric semiconductor. For the former we characterized both a HgTe quantum well and bulk Te, and for the latter, bulk GaAs. In contrast with optical methods our device is an easy to handle all-electric approach, which we demonstrated by applying a large number of different lasers from low power, continuous wave systems to high power, pulsed sources.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure

Ketorolac and pethidine in post-operative pain relief

The study was designed to compare the analgesic efficacy and safety of ketorolac and pethidine in pain relief after major surgeries. A prospective, interventional study was conducted on 71 patients under-going major surgical intervention. Thirty six patients received ketorolac (15 mg, intramuscularly 6 hourly) and the rest 35 patients received pethidine (100 mg, intramuscularly 6 hourly) for 48 hours post-operatively. Analgesic efficacy and safety of ketorolac were compared with that of pethidine after 1, 6, 12, 24, 32 and 48 hours of drug administration. Analgesic efficacy was measured using Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) and Verbal Rating Scale (VRS). Safety of the drugs was assessed by using sedation score and also recording adverse drug events. Ketorolac showed equianalgesic effect as pethidine estimated by VAS score at 12th and 48th hour and by VRS score at 1st and 48th hour of post-operative period. In other periods of observation, pethidine exhibited better analgesic effects than ketorolac. Ketorolac was better tolerated than pethidine and had less adverse effects compared to pethidine. This study showed that post-operative pain during the first 48 hours can be relieved by either ketorolac or pethidine. Ketorolac appeared safer than pethidine while pethidine appeared more effective analgesic than ketorolac in the management of post-operative pain. Further studies including double-blind randomized trial have been suggested to confirm the present study

Measurement of the Generalized Forward Spin Polarizabilities of the Neutron

The generalized forward spin polarizabilities $\gamma_0$ and $\delta_{LT}$ of the neutron have been extracted for the first time in a $Q^2$ range from 0.1 to 0.9 GeV$^2$. Since $\gamma_0$ is sensitive to nucleon resonances and $\delta_{LT}$ is insensitive to the $\Delta$ resonance, it is expected that the pair of forward spin polarizabilities should provide benchmark tests of the current understanding of the chiral dynamics of QCD. The new results on $\delta_{LT}$ show significant disagreement with Chiral Perturbation Theory calculations, while the data for $\gamma_0$ at low $Q^2$ are in good agreement with a next-to-lead order Relativistic Baryon Chiral Perturbation theory calculation. The data show good agreement with the phenomenological MAID model.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, corrected typo in author name, published in PR