“Almost Unknown to the General Reader”: Biographical and Conceptual Contexts of Melville’s Marginalia in Thomas Warton’s \u3cem\u3eThe History of English Poetry\u3c/em\u3e

Herman Melville’s copy of Thomas Warton’s The History of English Poetry (1871) both epitomises the fate of Melville’s dispersed library and illustrates the challenges and importance of his reading and marginalia to research on his life and writings. This 1032-page volume left Melville’s library following his death in 1891; it was discovered in the 1930s, subsequently lost, and rediscovered in 1999. Twice rebound and missing its original endpapers, the extremely brittle volume has now been digitised at Melville’s Marginalia Online. Melville’s markings and annotations reveal his preoccupation with Warton’s attention to subjects “almost unknown to the general reader”: lost works, the dispersals of libraries, works rescued from oblivion, languages and writings concealed by ecclesiastical dictates, banned writings, and esoteric modes of literary expression—all topics with deep aesthetic and biographical connections to Melville’s own writings and to his failed career as a popular author. The book contains marginalia on writers Melville had studied in still-surviving volumes, on now-forgotten writers, excerpted by Warton, and on writers by whom no Melville copies are known to survive. Dating from the period of Melville’s reputational decline, his marginalia offers an unparalleled look into an obscure but artistically fertile period of his life and thought

Testosterone and growth hormone normalization: a retrospective study of health outcomes

Enrique Ginzburg1, Alvin Lin2, Michael Sigler1, Denise Olsen2, Nancy Klimas1, Alan Mintz21University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, Florida, USA; 2Cenegenics® Medical Institute, Las Vegas, Nevada, USABackground: Age-related declines in testosterone and growth hormone (GH) are associated with increased adiposity and decreases in lean mass and bone mineral density (BMD). A long-term retrospective study examined the effects of testosterone and/or GH supplementation on body composition and quality of life (QoL).Methods: A database survey assessed the records of 91 men and 97 women (ages 25–82) in treatment groups based on their hormonal status: dehydroepiandrosterone but no hormonal supplementation (control); testosterone only (Tes); GH only (GH); and testosterone plus GH (Tes+GH). Pre- and post-treatment assessments recorded changes in fat and lean mass, BMD, and QoL.Results: After an average of 3 years of treatment, weight decreased in women in the control and Tes+GH groups but remained stable in men in all groups. Tes and Tes+GH produced statistically significant increases in lean mass, reductions in fat mass, and improvements in BMD in both sexes; GH produced similar changes in women. QoL and mood improved in all groups. Treatments were generally safe and well tolerated.Conclusions: In this retrospective survey, treatment with testosterone and/or GH was associated with favorable effects in men and women across a wide age range.Keywords: testosterone, growth hormone, body composition, quality of lif

Impact of age and race on outcomes of a program to prevent excess weight gain and disordered eating in adolescent girls

Interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT) prevents weight gain and reduces loss-of-control (LOC)-eating in adults. However, IPT was not superior to health-education (HE) for preventing excess weight gain and reducing LOC-eating over 1-year in adolescent girls at risk for excess weight gain and eating disorders. Limited data suggest that older and non-White youth may be especially responsive to IPT. In secondary analyses, we examined if age or race moderated weight and LOC-eating outcomes. The 113 participants (12–17 years; 56.6% White) from the original trial were re-contacted 3 years later for assessment. At baseline and follow-up visits through 3 years, we assessed BMI, adiposity by dual energy X-ray absorptiometry, and LOC-eating presence. In linear mixed models, baseline age moderated 3-year BMI outcome; older girls in IPT had the lowest 3-year BMI gain compared to younger girls in IPT and all girls in HE, p = 0.04. A similar pattern was observed for adiposity. Race moderated 3-year LOC-eating; non-White girls in IPT were most likely to abstain from LOC-eating at 3 years compared to all other girls, p = 0.04. This hypothesis-generating analysis suggests future studies should determine if IPT is especially efficacious at reducing LOC-eating in older, non-White adolescents

The validity of smartphone-based spatiotemporal gait measurements during walking with and without head turns:Comparison with the GAITRite® system

Smartphone accelerometry has potential to provide clinicians with specialized gait analysis not available in most clinical settings. The Gait&amp;Balance Application (G&amp;B App) uses smartphone accelerometry to assess spatiotemporal gait parameters under two conditions: walking looking straight ahead and walking with horizontal head turns. This study investigated the validity of G&amp;B App gait parameters compared with the GAITRite® pressure-sensitive walkway. Healthy young and older adults (age range 21-85 years) attended a single session where a smartphone was secured over the lumbosacral junction. Data were collected concurrently with the app and GAITRite® systems as participants completed the two walking conditions. Spatiotemporal gait parameters for 54 participants were determined from both systems and agreement evaluated with partial Pearson's correlation coefficients and limits of agreement. The results demonstrated moderate to excellent validity for G&amp;B App measures of step time (rp 0.97, 95 % CI [0.96, 0.98]), walking speed (rp 0.83 [0.78, 0.87]), and step length (rp 0.74, [0.66, 0.80]) when walking looking straight ahead, and results were comparable with head turns. The validity of walking speed and step length measures was influenced by sex and height. G&amp;B App measures of step length variability, step time variability, step length asymmetry, and step time asymmetry had poor validity. The G&amp;B App has potential to provide valid measures of unilateral and bilateral step time, unilateral and bilateral step length, and walking speed, under two walking conditions in healthy young and older adults. Further research should validate this tool in clinical conditions and optimise the algorithm for demographic characteristics.</p

The Early Dissemination Defect Attributed to Disruption of Decorin-Binding Proteins is Abolished in Chronic Murine Lyme Borreliosis

The laboratory mouse model of Lyme disease has revealed that Borrelia burgdorferi differentially expresses numerous outer surface proteins that influence different stages of infection (tick-borne transmission, tissue colonization, dissemination, persistence, and tick acquisition). Deletion of two such outer surface proteins, decorin-binding proteins A and B (DbpA/B), has been documented to decrease infectivity, impede early dissemination, and, possibly, prevent persistence. In this study, DbpA/B-deficient spirochetes were confirmed to exhibit an early dissemination defect in immunocompetent, but not immunodeficient, mice, and the defect was found to resolve with chronicity. Development of disease (arthritis and carditis) was attenuated only in the early stage of infection with DbpA/B-deficient spirochetes in both types of mice. Persistence of the DbpA/B-deficient spirochetes occurred in both immunocompetent and immunodeficient mice in a manner indistinguishable from that of wild-type spirochetes. Dissemination through the lymphatic system was evaluated as an underlying mechanism for the early dissemination defect. At 12 h, 3 days, 7 days, and 14 days postinoculation, DbpA/B-deficient spirochetes were significantly less prevalent and in lower numbers in lymph nodes than wild-type spirochetes. However, in immunodeficient mice, deficiency of DbpA/B did not significantly decrease the prevalence or spirochete numbers in lymph nodes. Complementation of DbpA/B restored a wild-type phenotype. Thus, the results indicated that deficiency of DbpA/B allows the acquired immune response to restrict early dissemination of spirochetes, which appears to be at least partially mediated through the lymphatic system

Reliability of Tibialis Anterior Muscle Voluntary Activation Using the Interpolated Twitch Technique and the Central Activation Ratio in People with Stroke

Voluntary activation (VA) is measured by applying supramaximal electrical stimulation to a muscle during a maximal voluntary contraction (MVC). The amplitude of the evoked muscle twitch is used to determine any VA deficit, and indicates incomplete central neural drive to the motor units. People with stroke experience VA deficits and greater levels of central fatigue, which is the decrease in VA that occurs following exercise. This study investigated the between-session reliability of VA and central fatigue of the tibialis anterior muscle (TA) in people with chronic stroke (n = 12), using the interpolated twitch technique (ITT), adjusted-ITT, and central activation ratio (CAR) methods. On two separate sessions, supramaximal electrical stimulation was applied to the TA when it was at rest and maximally activated, at the start and end of a 30-s isometric dorsiflexor MVC. The most reliable measures of VA were obtained using the CAR calculation on transformed data, which produced an ICC of 0.92, and a lower bound confidence interval in the good range (95% CI 0.77 to 0.98). Reliability was lower for the CAR calculation on non-transformed data (ICC 0.82, 95% CI 0.63 to 0.91) and the ITT and adjusted-ITT calculations on transformed data (ICCs 0.82, 95% CIs 0.51 to 0.94), which had lower bound confidence intervals in the moderate range. The two ITT calculations on non-transformed data demonstrated the poorest reliability (ICCs 0.62, 95% CI 0.25 to 0.74). Central fatigue measures demonstrated very poor reliability. Thus, the reliability for VA in people with chronic stroke ranged from good to poor, depending on the calculation method and statistical analysis method, whereas the reliability for central fatigue was very poor

Characteristics of the Contingent Negative Variation during Lower Limb Functional Movement with an Audio-Visual Cue

Background: The contingent negative variation (CNV) is a negative shift in electroencephalography (EEG) related to the planning and execution of an externally cued movement task. The CNV has the potential to be applied within stroke rehabilitation; however, there is insufficient knowledge about the CNV characteristics under movement conditions relevant to rehabilitation. This study explores the CNV characteristics during a functional movement task (versus a simple movement task) and when using an audio-visual cue that has been previously evaluated for its usability in stroke rehabilitation (versus a simple visual cue). Methods: Thirty healthy participants performed five randomized movement tasks: simple ankle dorsiflexion with a visual cue (1), audio-visual cue (2), and auditory-only cue (3), and sit-to-stand with a visual (4) and audio-visual cue (5). Fifty repetitions of each movement were performed while continuous EEG was recorded. The band-passed and Laplacian-filtered (Cz) EEG was averaged for each condition and the peak negativity (PN) latency and amplitude were identified. Results: PN latency was significantly later during sit-to-stand with the audio-visual cue versus the visual cue (p = 0.027). PN amplitude was significantly larger during sit-to-stand versus ankle dorsiflexion, with both visual and audio-visual cues (p < 0.0001). Conclusion: The CNV changes under more complex movement conditions. Assumptions about the MRCP from simple laboratory recordings should not be generalized to the rehabilitation setting