Trunk control and gross motor outcomes after body weight supported treadmill training in young children with severe cerebral palsy: a non-experimental case series

OBJECTIVE: To explore the impact of a body weight supported treadmill training (BWSTT) intervention on postural control and gross motor function in three young children with cerebral palsy (CP) classified as Gross Motor Function Classification System (GMFCS) levels IV or V. METHOD: Children (N = 3) between the ages of 2-3 years who were diagnosed with CP classified as GMFCS levels IV and V participated in BWSTT three times per week. The Segmental Assessment of Trunk Control (SATCo) and the gross motor function measure (GMFM-66) were assessed before and after the 6-week intervention. RESULTS: Final testing revealed that all participants improved on the SATCo and GMFM. CONCLUSION: BWSTT is a viable intervention that may improve trunk control and gross motor outcomes in young children with severe CP. Further research is needed to explore the impact of BWSTT for young children classified as GMFCS levels IV and V

Obesity influence on perceived physical overload during vertical handling loads - A preliminary study

Obesity prevalence is increasing among the Portuguese workforce, similarly to other industrial countries. Obesity seems to negatively affect the individuals’ work capacity. Tasks with vertical handling loads, including lifting and lowering, are very common in occupational contexts. With the aim of studying the possible effect of obesity on workers’ physical overload during vertical handling loads, psychophysical data were collected from a total of 14 participants with different obesity levels (non-obese, high level of obesity and very high level). The participants were asked to go through 6 lifting trials with different occupational conditions and, for each task tested, they reported physical loading by using the Borg’ “Category Ratio-10” (CR-10) scale. The obtained results in this preliminary study are not conclusive about the obesity influence on perceived physical overload during vertical handling loads. Accordingly, this study should be continued, by considering a statistically valid sample and other psychophysical techniques that can complement the CR10 scale results

Morfologia externa dos adultos de Phthia picta (Drury, 1770) (Hemiptera: coreidae).

O objetivo deste trabalho foi descrever a morfologia externa do macho e da fêmea de Phthia picta (Drry, 1770), uma praga importante do tomateiro no Brasil

Omniscient foliations and the geometry of cosmological spacetimes

We identify certain general geometric conditions on a foliation of a spacetime (M,g) by timelike curves that will impede the existence of null geodesic lines, especially if (M,g) possesses a compact Cauchy hypersurface. The absence of such lines, in turn, yields well-known restrictions on the geometry of cosmological spacetimes, in the context of Bartnik's splitting conjecture. Since the (non)existence of null lines is actually a conformally invariant property, such conditions only need to apply for some suitable conformal rescaling of g.Comment: 19 pages, no figure

A novel notion of null infinity for c-boundaries and generalized black holes

We give new definitions of null infinity and black hole in terms of causal boundaries, applicable to any strongly causal spacetime $(M,g)$. These are meant to extend the standard ones given in terms of conformal boundaries, and use the new definitions to prove a classic result in black hole theory for this more general context: if the null infinity is regular (i.e. well behaved in a suitable sense) and $(M,g)$ obeys the null convergence condition, then any closed trapped surface in $(M,g)$ has to be inside the black hole region. As an illustration of this general construction, we apply it to the class of generalized plane waves, where the conformal null infinity is not always well-defined. In particular, it is shown that (generalized) black hole regions do not exist in a large family of these spacetimes.Comment: 32 pages, 4 figures. Included new referenc