The effect of dry needling on gastrocnemius muscle stiffness and strength in participants with latent trigger points

Abnormal muscle stiffness is a potential complication after injury and identifying interventions that modify muscle stiffness may be useful to promote recovery. The purpose of this study was to identify the short-term effects of dry needling (DN) on resting and contracted gastrocnemius muscle stiffness and strength of the triceps surae in individuals with latent myofascial trigger points (MTrPs). In this randomized controlled trial, 52 individuals received two DN treatment sessions to latent MTrPs and 50 individuals received two sham needling sessions. Resting and contracted muscle stiffness were assessed both at the treatment site and a standardized central site in the medial gastrocnemius head immediately post-treatment and one week after the last session. There were significant group by time interactions for resting muscle stiffness at the site of the MTrP (p = .03), but not at the central site (p = .29). Post-needling between group comparison indicated that the DN group had significantly lower resting muscle stiffness at the site of the MTrP than the sham group after adjusting for baseline differences. There were no significant between group differences in contracted muscle stiffness or muscle strength. Identifying strategies that can reduce aberrant muscle stiffness may help to guide management of individuals with neuromuscular pain-related conditions. Level of evidence: Therapy, level 2

VC-dimension of short Presburger formulas

We study VC-dimension of short formulas in Presburger Arithmetic, defined to have a bounded number of variables, quantifiers and atoms. We give both lower and upper bounds, which are tight up to a polynomial factor in the bit length of the formula

Combined Attention-Based Fusion of Multiscale MRI Medical Images for Improving Early Brain Tumor Detection

The effective diagnosis of early-stage brain tumors relies heavily on the analysis of multimodal medical images. To address this need, we propose a novel multimodal medical image fusion approach that utilizes convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for enhanced feature extraction and representation. Unlike conventional CNN-based fusion methods that employ straightforward weighted averaging, our method incorporates a "Multiscale Attention Fusion Module" and a "Visual Relevance Fusion Strategy" to refine the fusion process. Our methodology aims to effectively combine multiple MRI modalities while emphasizing the most crucial diagnostic information, thereby mitigating the issue of non-essential information that often degrades the quality of fused images. By integrating these innovative components, our research contributes to improved early brain tumor detection, ultimately enhancing the quality and efficiency of medical diagnoses

Functional outcome of patients undergoing open rotator cuff repair

Background: Rotator cuff tears are a common source of shoulder pain. The incidence of rotator cuff damage increases with age and is most frequently due to degeneration of the tendon rather than injury from sports or trauma. Rotator cuff tear can be treated arthroscopically, arthroscopically assisted (mini-open) or by an open procedure. Because of the technical demands of arthroscopic repair many surgeons consider open repair for the treatment of rotator cuff tears. This study was done to evaluate the functional outcome of shoulder after open rotator cuff repair.Methods: 26 patients with partial and complete rotator cuff tears underwent open rotator cuff repair and acromioplasty. Cases were followed up at 3 months and 6 months intervals and shoulder function was assessed using Constant-Murley scoring system and compared with the preoperative scores and analyzed using SPSS software.Results: Mean preoperative constant score was 33.95±7.545 while the mean constant score at 6 months post-surgery was 79.83±8.51 which was highly significant according to paired t test. The difference between preoperative, 3 months and 6 months constant scores of complete and partial tear patients was found to be statistically significant.Conclusions: There was highly significant increase in Constant-Murley score after 6 months in patients treated by open rotator cuff repair. Open repair still stands as an effective treatment for rotator cuff tears and doing acromioplasty during the procedure adds to better outcome after surgery

The Apparent Madness of Crowds: Irrational collective behavior emerging from interactions among rational agents

Standard economic theory assumes that agents in markets behave rationally. However, the observation of extremely large fluctuations in the price of financial assets that are not correlated to changes in their fundamental value, as well as the extreme instance of financial bubbles and crashes, imply that markets (at least occasionally) do display irrational behavior. In this paper, we briefly outline our recent work demonstrating that a market with interacting agents having bounded rationality can display price fluctuations that are {\em quantitatively} similar to those seen in real markets.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, to appear in Proceedings of International Workshop on "Econophysics of Stock Markets and Minority Games" (Econophys-Kolkata II), Feb 14-17, 200

Effect of Hysteresis on Measurements of Thin-Film Cell Performance

Transient or hysteresis effects in polycrystalline thin film CdS/CdTe cells are a function of pre-measurement voltage bias and whether Cu is introduced as an intentional dopant during back contact fabrication. When Cu is added, the current-density (J) vs. voltage (V) measurements performed in a reverse-to-forward voltage direction will yield higher open-circuit voltage (Voc), up to 10 mV, and smaller short-circuit current density (Jsc), by up to 2 mA/cm2, relative to scanning voltage in a forward-to-reverse direction. The variation at the maximum power point, Pmax, is however small. The resulting variation in FF can be as large as 3%. When Cu is not added, hysteresis in both Voc and Jsc is negligible however Pmax hysteresis is considerably greater. This behavior corroborates observed changes in depletion width, Wd, derived from capacitance (C) vs. voltage (V) scans. Measured values of Wd are always smaller in reverse-to-forward voltage scans, and conversely, larger in the forward-to-reverse voltage direction. Transient ion drift (TID) measurements performed on Cu-containing cells do not show ionic behavior suggesting that capacitance transients are more likely due to electronic capture-emission processes. J-V curve simulation using Pspice shows that increased transient capacitance during light-soak stress at 100 ºC correlates with increased space-charge recombination. Voltage-dependent collection however was not observed to increase with stress in these cells

Liquid Filled Microstructured Optical Fiber for X-Ray Detection

A liquid filled microstructured optical fiber (MOF) is used to detect x-rays. Numerical analysis and experimental observation leads to geometric fiber optics theory for MOF photon transmission. A model using this theory relates the quantity and energy of absorbed x-ray photons to transmitted MOF generated photons. Experimental measurements of MOF photon quantities compared with calculated values show good qualitative agreement. The difference between the calculated and measured values is discussed. 2010 Optical Society of Americ

Correlations of Capacitance-Voltage Hysteresis With Thin-Film CdTe Solar Cell Performance During Accelerated Lifetime Testing

In this paper we present the correlation of CdTe solar cell performance with capacitance-voltage hysteresis, defined presently as the difference in capacitance measured at zero-volt bias when collecting such data with different pre-measurement bias conditions. These correlations were obtained on CdTe cells stressed under conditions of 1-sun illumination, open-circuit bias, and an acceleration temperature of approximately 100 ºC

Comparative Analysis of Bragg Fibers

In this paper, we compare three analysis methods for Bragg fibers, viz. the transfer matrix method, the asymptotic method and the Galerkin method. We also show that with minor modifications, the transfer matrix method is able to calculate exactly the leakage loss of Bragg fibers due to a finite number of H/L layers. This approach is more straightforward than the commonly used Chew’s method. It is shown that the asymptotic approximation condition should be satisfied in order to get accurate results. The TE and TM modes, and the band gap structures are analyzed using Galerkin method