Immediate and short-term effects of short- and long-duration isometric contractions in patellar tendinopathy

Objectives: Isometric muscle contractions are used in the management of patellar tendinopathy to manage pain and improve function. Little is known about whether long- or short-duration contractions are optimal to improve pain. This study examined the immediate and short-term (4 weeks) effects of long- and short-duration isometric contraction on patellar tendon pain, and tendon adaptation. Design: Repeated measures within groups. Setting: Clinical primary care. Patients: Participants (n = 16, males) with patellar tendinopathy. Intervention: Short-duration (24 sets of 10 seconds) or long-duration (6 sets of 40 seconds) isometric knee extension loading (85% maximal voluntary contraction), for 4 weeks. Main Outcome Measure: Immediate change in pain with single-leg decline squat (SLDS) and hop, as well as change in pain and tendon adaptation [within-session anterior–posterior (AP) strain] were assessed over 4 weeks. Results: Pain was significantly reduced after isometric loading on both SLDS (P < 0.01) and hop tests (P < 0.01). Pain and quadriceps function improved over the 4 weeks (P < 0.05). There was significant AP strain at each measurement occasion (P < 0.01). Although transverse strain increased across the training period from ∼14% to 22%, this was not significant (P = 0.08). Conclusions: This is the first study to show that short-duration isometric contractions are as effective as longer duration contractions for relieving patellar tendon pain when total time under tension is equalized. This finding provides clinicians with greater options in prescription of isometric loading and may be particularly useful among patients who do not tolerate longer duration contractions. The trend for tendon adaptation over the short 4-week study period warrants further investigation

фольклорно-етнографічні матеріали на сторінках журналу «Основа»

In the article folk and ethnographical materials of the «Osnova» magazine are analyzed. The role of this edition in development of the ethnography is defined

Current applications of 3d printing in neurosurgery

Medical implications of 3-dimensional (3D) printing technology have progressed with increasingly used especially in surgical fields. 3D printing techniques are practical and anatomically accurate methods of producing patient specific models for medical education, surgical planning, training and simulation, and implants production for the assessment and treatment of neurosurgical diseases. This article presents the main directions of 3D printing models application in neurosurgery

Evaluation Model of the Entrepreneurial Character in EU Countries.

Abstract The evidence of entrepreneurship development as a factor of sustainable growth at national and regional level frequently calls for the interest of theorists and practitioners on identifying and outlining the best conditions and economic essential prerequisites for supporting the entrepreneurial initiatives on the long term. In this context, the objective of the present research is to analyse and measure the entrepreneurial character of the European Union member countries in an integrated manner, by developing an innovative model for proposing specific action lines and objectively evaluating the entrepreneurship development in the investigated states. Our model is based on a synthesis variable of the entrepreneurial national character, which was developed by sequential application of principal component analysis, while the initial variables are from secondary sources with good conceptual representativeness. Depending on the objective relevance of the three model components (cultural, economic and administrative, and entrepreneurial education components), the achieved results confirm the importance of a favourable cultural and economic and administrative background for entrepreneurship development and they reiterate the inefficiency of isolated entrepreneurial education unless supported by good entrepreneurial culture or adequate economic and administrative infrastructure. The case of Romania, in relation with the European Union member countries, is presented in detail

The potential of historical spy-satellite imagery to support research in ecology and conservation

Remote sensing data are important for assessing ecological change, but their value is often restricted by their limited temporal coverage. Major historical events that affected the environment, such as those associated with colonial history, World War II, or the Green Revolution are not captured by modern remote sensing. In the present article, we highlight the potential of globally available black-and-white satellite photographs to expand ecological and conservation assessments back to the 1960s and to illuminate ecological concepts such as shifting baselines, time-lag responses, and legacy effects. This historical satellite photography can be used to monitor ecosystem extent and structure, species’ populations and habitats, and human pressures on the environment. Even though the data were declassified decades ago, their use in ecology and conservation remains limited. But recent advances in image processing and analysis can now unlock this research resource. We encourage the use of this opportunity to address important ecological and conservation questions

Ti-Zr-Si-Nb nanocrystalline alloys and metallic glasses: Assessment on the structure, thermal stability, corrosion and mechanical properties

The development of novel Ti-based amorphous or \u3b2-phase nanostructured metallic materials could have significant benefits for implant applications, due to improved corrosion and mechanical characteristics (lower Young's modulus, better wear performance, improved fracture toughness) in comparison to the standardized \u3b1+\u3b2 titanium alloys. Moreover, the devitrification phenomenon, occurring during heating, could contribute to lower input power during additive manufacturing technologies. Ti-based alloy ribbons were obtained by melt-spinning, considering the ultra-fast cooling rates this method can provide. The titanium alloys contain in various proportions Zr, Nb, and Si (Ti60Zr10Si15Nb15, Ti64Zr10Si15Nb11, Ti56Zr10Si15Nb19) in various proportions. These elements were chosen due to their reported biological safety, as in the case of Zr and Nb, and the metallic glass-forming ability and biocompatibility of Si. The morphology and chemical composition were analyzed by scanning electron microscopy and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, while the structural features (crystallinity, phase attribution after devitrification (after heat treatment)) were assessed by X-ray diffraction. Some of the mechanical properties (hardness, Young's modulus) were assessed by instrumented indentation. The thermal stability and crystallization temperatures were measured by differential thermal analysis. High-intensity exothermal peaks were observed during heating of melt-spun ribbons. The corrosion behavior was assessed by electrocorrosion tests. The results show the potential of these alloys to be used as materials for biomedical applications

Electrochromic and electrofluorochromic properties of a new boron dipyrromethene–ferrocene conjugate

A new boron dipyrromethene–ferrocene (BODIPY–Fc) conjugate with pentafluorophenyl as the meso substituent and two Fc termini was synthesized and its spectroscopic and electrochemical features were analyzed. An intramolecular charge transfer from the donor Fc to the acceptor BODIPY has been predicted by theory and confirmed experimentally, leading to efficient fluorescence quenching when the dyad is in the neutral state. Fluorescence can be triggered by oxidizing both ferrocenyl units either chemically or electrochemically. Eventually, a fully reversible fluorescence switch is evidenced by coupling TIRF microscopy with electrolysis in an electrochemical cell

Zero-shot language transfer for cross-lingual sentence retrieval using bidirectional attention model

We present a neural architecture for cross-lingual mate sentence retrieval which encodes sentences in a joint multilingual space and learns to distinguish true translation pairs from semantically related sentences across languages. The proposed model combines a recurrent sequence encoder with a bidirectional attention layer and an intra-sentence attention mechanism. This way the final fixed-size sentence representations in each training sentence pair depend on the selection of contextualized token representations from the other sentence. The representations of both sentences are then combined using the bilinear product function to predict the relevance score. We show that, coupled with a shared multilingual word embedding space, the proposed model strongly outperforms unsupervised cross-lingual ranking functions, and that further boosts can be achieved by combining the two approaches. Most importantly, we demonstrate the model's effectiveness in zero-shot language transfer settings: our multilingual framework boosts cross-lingual sentence retrieval performance for unseen language pairs without any training examples. This enables robust cross-lingual sentence retrieval also for pairs of resource-lean languages, without any parallel data

Energy spectra of fractional quantum Hall systems in the presence of a valence hole

The energy spectrum of a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) in the fractional quantum Hall regime interacting with an optically injected valence band hole is studied as a function of the filling factor $\nu$ and the separation $d$ between the electron and hole layers. The response of the 2DEG to the hole changes abruptly at $d$ of the order of the magnetic length $\lambda$. At $d<\lambda$, the hole binds electrons to form neutral ($X$) or charged ($X^-$) excitons, and the photoluminescence (PL) spectrum probes the lifetimes and binding energies of these states rather than the original correlations of the 2DEG. The ``dressed exciton'' picture (in which the interaction between an exciton and the 2DEG was proposed to merely enhance the exciton mass) is questioned. Instead, the low energy states are explained in terms of Laughlin correlations between the constituent fermions (electrons and $X^-$'s) and the formation of two-component incompressible fluid states in the electron--hole plasma. At $d>2\lambda$, the hole binds up to two Laughlin quasielectrons (QE) of the 2DEG to form fractionally charged excitons $h$QE$_n$. The previously found ``anyon exciton'' $h$QE$_3$ is shown to be unstable at any value of $d$. The critical dependence of the stability of different $h$QE$_n$ complexes on the presence of QE's in the 2DEG leads to the observed discontinuity of the PL spectrum at $\nu={1\over3}$ or ${2\over3}$.Comment: 16 pages, 14 figures, submitted to PR

Long-term land-cover/use change in a traditional farming landscape in Romania inferred from pollen data, historical maps and satellite images

Traditional farming landscapes in the temperate zone that have persisted for millennia can be exceptionally species-rich and are therefore key conservation targets. In contrast to Europe’s West, Eastern Europe harbours widespread traditional farming landscapes, but drastic socio-economic and political changes in the twentieth century are likely to have impacted these landscapes profoundly. We reconstructed long-term land-use/cover and biodiversity changes over the last 150 years in a traditional farming landscape of outstanding species diversity in Transylvania. We used the Regional Estimates of Vegetation Abundance from Large Sites model applied to a pollen record from the Transylvanian Plain and a suite of historical and satellite-based maps. We documented widespread changes in the extent and location of grassland and cropland, a loss of wood pastures as well as a gradual increase in forest extent. Land management in the socialist period (1947–1989) led to grassland expansion, but grassland diversity decreased due to intensive production. Land-use intensity has declined since the collapse of socialism in 1989, resulting in widespread cropland abandonment and conversion to grassland. However, these trends may be temporary due to both ongoing woody encroachment as well as grassland management intensification in productive areas. Remarkably, only 8% of all grasslands existed throughout the entire time period (1860–2010), highlighting the importance of land-use history when identifying target areas for conservation, given that old-growth grasslands are most valuable in terms of biodiversity. Combining datasets from different disciplines can yield important additional insights into dynamic landscape and biodiversity changes, informing conservation actions to maintain these species-rich landscapes in the longer term