The Prosthetics Needs Of Farmers And Ranchers With Upper-Limb Amputations

Farming and ranching are among the most hazardous occupations in the United States with many non-fatal accidents resulting in amputation. In addition, those who continue to farm using prostheses are at risk of secondary injuries related to the prosthesis, such as falls, entanglement, and overuse injuries to the intact limb. Furthermore, the hazards of the farm environment are not limited to affecting the adult farmer, but also lead to a higher incidence of amputation among children of farmers than is experienced in children of the general population. Many advances have been made in prosthetics technology since the 1970s, especially with regard to lower-limb prostheses and electric-powered upper-limb prostheses. However, in 2008, the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) identified farmers as an underserved population with respect to assistive technology including prosthetics. In response, the Northwestern University Prosthetics-Orthotics Center (NUPOC), as the NIDRR-funded Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center in Prosthetics and Orthotics, partnered with the National AgrAbility Project, a program of the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture that provides support services to farmers and ranchers with disabilities, to improve prosthetics options available to farmers and ranchers. The goals of this collaborative project include identification of activities supported by or hindered by use of a prosthesis, provide prosthetics-related educational materials to farmers and ranchers and to the prosthetists who serve them, and to improve prosthetics technology through analysis of failed components and engineering development projects. The project has completed the first phase of a two-part survey of farmers, ranchers, and prosthetists

Influence of Donor Age and Species Longevity on Replicative Cellular Senescence

The replicative life span of cell strains obtained from multiple explants from the same individual is highly variable, additional variability is added when strains are obtained from different individuals. This variability is probably due to both technical issues and heterogeneity inside the tissues. Notwithstanding these limitations, many scientists searched for an inverse relationship of proliferative potential and donor age. Reviewing this literature, we conclude that this inverse correlation is likely more dependent to developmental stages than to aging per se; i.e. cells taken from a developing organism have higher replicative capacity than cells taken from an adult. Replicative senescence has been studied also across species searching for a positive relationship with longevity. Recently it has been show that when specific culture conditions (mainly low oxygen tension) are applied, strains from several species appear immortals. Moreover, for species that do present cellular senescence, it seems that replicative capacity relates primarily to species adult body mass more than to longevity

Case-study of a user-driven prosthetic arm design: bionic hand versus customized body-powered technology in a highly demanding work environment

BACKGROUND: Prosthetic arm research predominantly focuses on "bionic" but not body-powered arms. However, any research orientation along user needs requires sufficiently precise workplace specifications and sufficiently hard testing. Forensic medicine is a demanding environment, also physically, also for non-disabled people, on several dimensions (e.g., distances, weights, size, temperature, time). METHODS: As unilateral below elbow amputee user, the first author is in a unique position to provide direct comparison of a "bionic" myoelectric iLimb Revolution (Touch Bionics) and a customized body-powered arm which contains a number of new developments initiated or developed by the user: (1) quick lock steel wrist unit; (2) cable mount modification; (3) cast shape modeled shoulder anchor; (4) suspension with a soft double layer liner (Ohio Willowwood) and tube gauze (Molnlycke) combination. The iLimb is mounted on an epoxy socket; a lanyard fixed liner (Ohio Willowwood) contains magnetic electrodes (Liberating Technologies). An on the job usage of five years was supplemented with dedicated and focused intensive two-week use tests at work for both systems. RESULTS: The side-by-side comparison showed that the customized body-powered arm provides reliable, comfortable, effective, powerful as well as subtle service with minimal maintenance; most notably, grip reliability, grip force regulation, grip performance, center of balance, component wear down, sweat/temperature independence and skin state are good whereas the iLimb system exhibited a number of relevant serious constraints. CONCLUSIONS: Research and development of functional prostheses may want to focus on body-powered technology as it already performs on manually demanding and heavy jobs whereas eliminating myoelectric technology's constraints seems out of reach. Relevant testing could be developed to help expediting this. This is relevant as Swiss disability insurance specifically supports prostheses that enable actual work integration. Myoelectric and cosmetic arm improvement may benefit from a less forgiving focus on perfecting anthropomorphic appearance

Proteostasis in cardiac health and disease

The incidence and prevalence of cardiac diseases, which are the main cause of death worldwide, are likely to increase because of population ageing. Prevailing theories about the mechanisms of ageing feature the gradual derailment of cellular protein homeostasis (proteostasis) and loss of protein quality control as central factors. In the heart, loss of protein patency, owing to flaws in genetically-determined design or because of environmentally-induced 'wear and tear', can overwhelm protein quality control, thereby triggering derailment of proteostasis and contributing to cardiac ageing. Failure of protein quality control involves impairment of chaperones, ubiquitin-proteosomal systems, autophagy, and loss of sarcomeric and cytoskeletal proteins, all of which relate to induction of cardiomyocyte senescence. Targeting protein quality control to maintain cardiac proteostasis offers a novel therapeutic strategy to promote cardiac health and combat cardiac disease. Currently marketed drugs are available to explore this concept in the clinical setting