A COMPARISON OF ACCURACY AND STROKE CHARACTERISTICS BETWEEN TWO PUTTING GRIP TECHNIQUES

Nowadays PGA golfers are experimenting with various golf putting grips. The purpose of this study was to investigate the traits of using two putting grips; reverse overlapping grip and finger bone grip at three different putting distances. 20 subjects with no previous golf experience participated in this study. The kinematic data of the subject and the putter’s shaft and head was recorded by 8 Qualisys cameras at 100Hz. There was no significant difference between the success rate of getting the ball in the hole at all distances. The finger bone grip produced statistically smaller radial error values than the reverse overlapping grip at the distances for 7 and 11 metres. The finger bone grip provided straighter putter head trajectories and less change in the movement of the COG, which implies more stability of the player and that the ball will travel in the desired path. In conclusion, the finger bone putting technique gave radial errors less than the reverse overlapping grip technique which seems to be due to the added stability and straighter putter head trajectories

THE EFFECT OF STRENGTH TRAINING ON THE TORQUE OF THE ANKLE JOINT FOR A DOWN SYNDROME

INTRODUCTION: People suffering Down syndrome have many problems that are associated with atrophy of their muscles. Because of this atrophy they tend to walk flat footed and over abduct during the initial part of the swing phase, also they tend to over-flex both at the hip and knee joint. The aim of this study is to examine the effects of strength training on the torque of the ankle joint for a Down syndrome

Impact of cyclooxygenase inhibitors in the Women's Health Initiative hormone trials: secondary analysis of a randomized trial.

OBJECTIVES: We evaluated the hypothesis that cyclooxygenase (COX) inhibitor use might have counteracted a beneficial effect of postmenopausal hormone therapy, and account for the absence of cardioprotection in the Women's Health Initiative hormone trials. Estrogen increases COX expression, and inhibitors of COX such as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory agents appear to increase coronary risk, raising the possibility of a clinically important interaction in the trials. DESIGN: The hormone trials were randomized, double-blind, and placebo-controlled. Use of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs was assessed at baseline and at years 1, 3, and 6. SETTING: The Women's Health Initiative hormone trials were conducted at 40 clinical sites in the United States. PARTICIPANTS: The trials enrolled 27,347 postmenopausal women, aged 50-79 y. INTERVENTIONS: We randomized 16,608 women with intact uterus to conjugated estrogens 0.625 mg with medroxyprogesterone acetate 2.5 mg daily or to placebo, and 10,739 women with prior hysterectomy to conjugated estrogens 0.625 mg daily or placebo. OUTCOME MEASURES: Myocardial infarction, coronary death, and coronary revascularization were ascertained during 5.6 y of follow-up in the estrogen plus progestin trial and 6.8 y of follow-up in the estrogen alone trial. RESULTS: Hazard ratios with 95% confidence intervals were calculated from Cox proportional hazard models stratified by COX inhibitor use. The hazard ratio for myocardial infarction/coronary death with estrogen plus progestin was 1.13 (95% confidence interval 0.68-1.89) among non-users of COX inhibitors, and 1.35 (95% confidence interval 0.86-2.10) among continuous users. The hazard ratio with estrogen alone was 0.92 (95% confidence interval 0.57-1.48) among non-users of COX inhibitors, and 1.08 (95% confidence interval 0.69-1.70) among continuous users. In a second analytic approach, hazard ratios were calculated from Cox models that included hormone trial assignment as well as a time-dependent covariate for medication use, and an interaction term. No significant interaction was identified. CONCLUSIONS: Use of COX inhibitors did not significantly affect the Women's Health Initiative hormone trial results

Widespread dysregulation of MiRNAs by MYCN amplification and chromosomal imbalances in neuroblastoma: association of miRNA expression with survival

MiRNAs regulate gene expression at a post-transcriptional level and their dysregulation can play major roles in the pathogenesis of many different forms of cancer, including neuroblastoma, an often fatal paediatric cancer originating from precursor cells of the sympathetic nervous system. We have analyzed a set of neuroblastoma (n = 145) that is broadly representative of the genetic subtypes of this disease for miRNA expression (430 loci by stem-loop RT qPCR) and for DNA copy number alterations (array CGH) to assess miRNA involvement in disease pathogenesis. The tumors were stratified and then randomly split into a training set (n = 96) and a validation set (n = 49) for data analysis. Thirty-seven miRNAs were significantly over-or under-expressed in MYCN amplified tumors relative to MYCN single copy tumors, indicating a potential role for the MYCN transcription factor in either the direct or indirect dysregulation of these loci. In addition, we also determined that there was a highly significant correlation between miRNA expression levels and DNA copy number, indicating a role for large-scale genomic imbalances in the dysregulation of miRNA expression. In order to directly assess whether miRNA expression was predictive of clinical outcome, we used the Random Forest classifier to identify miRNAs that were most significantly associated with poor overall patient survival and developed a 15 miRNA signature that was predictive of overall survival with 72.7% sensitivity and 86.5% specificity in the validation set of tumors. We conclude that there is widespread dysregulation of miRNA expression in neuroblastoma tumors caused by both over-expression of the MYCN transcription factor and by large-scale chromosomal imbalances. MiRNA expression patterns are also predicative of clinical outcome, highlighting the potential for miRNA mediated diagnostics and therapeutics

Use of smear bacteria and yeasts to modify flavour and appearance of Cheddar cheese

The strains Staphylococcus saprophyticus DPC5671 and Corynebacterium casei DPC5298 were applied in combination with Debaryomyces hansenii DPC6258 to the surface of young Cheddar cheese curd to obtain two different smear-ripened cheeses. A surface microbiota developed over the incubation period, comprising of both yeast and bacteria; pulsed field gel electrophoresis confirmed that the inoculated strains of S. saprophyticus DPC5671 or C. casei DPC5298 were the dominant bacterial strains on the surface of the cheese at the end of the ripening period. The smear cultures changed the appearance and aroma, which were significantly different from the control cheese. The approach presented in this study represents a method for the development of new cheese varieties with novel aromas within a short ripening time

UTA versus line emission for EUVL: Studies on xenon emission at the NIST EBIT

Spectra from xenon ions have been recorded at the NIST EBIT and the emission into a 2% bandwidth at 13.5 nm arising from 4d-5p transitions compared with that from 4d-4f and 4p-4d transitions in Xe XI and also with that obtained from the unresolved transition array (UTA) observed to peak just below 11 nm. It was found that an improvement of a factor of five could be gained in photon yield using the UTA rather than the 4d-5p emission. The results are compared with atomic structure calculations and imply that a significant gain in efficiency should be obtained using tin, in which the emission at 13.5 nm comes from a similar UTA, rather than xenon as an EUVL source material