30 research outputs found
Linewidth and viscosity of isobutyric acid—deuterium oxide mixtures of critical composition above and below the phase separation temperature
Linewidth and visocity measurement covering the single phase and two phase region were made. Comparison of the data with the mode–mode coupling results of Kawasaki show good agreement with no adjustable parameters. In the one phase region measurements of autocorrelation functions indicate small deviations from a single exponential when ‖T −Tc‖?0.05 °C. The shear viscosity exponent ϕ was found to be 0.077±0.002, somewhat larger than the theoretical estimates.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/70414/2/JCPSA6-74-10-5842-1.pd
Inter-assessor reliability of practice based biomechanical assessment of the foot and ankle
Background
There is no consensus on which protocols should be used to assess foot and lower limb
biomechanics in clinical practice. The reliability of many assessments has been questioned by
previous research. The aim of this investigation was to (i) identify (through consensus) what
biomechanical examinations are used in clinical practice and (ii) evaluate the inter-assessor
reliability of some of these examinations.
Methods
Part1: Using a modified Delphi technique 12 podiatrists derived consensus on the
biomechanical examinations used in clinical practice. Part 2: Eleven podiatrists assessed 6
participants using a subset of the assessment protocol derived in Part 1. Examinations were
compared between assessors.
Results
Clinicians choose to estimate rather than quantitatively measure foot position and motion.
Poor inter-assessor reliability was recorded for all examinations. Intra-class correlation
coefficient values (ICC) for relaxed calcaneal stance position were less than 0.23 and were
less than 0.14 for neutral calcaneal stance position. For the examination of ankle joint
dorsiflexion, ICC values suggest moderate reliability (less than 0.61). The results of a random
effects ANOVA highlight that participant (up to 5.7°), assessor (up to 5.8°) and random (upto 5.7°) error all contribute to the total error (up to 9.5° for relaxed calcaneal stance position,
up to 10.7° for the examination of ankle joint dorsiflexion). Kappa Fleiss values for
categorisation of first ray position and mobility were less than 0.05 and for limb length
assessment less than 0.02, indicating slight agreement.
Conclusion
Static biomechanical assessment of the foot, leg and lower limb is an important protocol in
clinical practice, but the key examinations used to make inferences about dynamic foot
function and to determine orthotic prescription are unreliable
Prenatal nicotine exposure enhances the trigeminocardiac reflex via serotonin receptor facilitation in brainstem pathways
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Aβ and tau prion-like activities decline with longevity in the Alzheimer's disease human brain.
The hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease (AD) are the accumulation of Aβ plaques and neurofibrillary tangles composed of hyperphosphorylated tau. We developed sensitive cellular assays using human embryonic kidney-293T cells to quantify intracellular self-propagating conformers of Aβ in brain samples from patients with AD or other neurodegenerative diseases. Postmortem brain tissue from patients with AD had measurable amounts of pathological Aβ conformers. Individuals over 80 years of age had the lowest amounts of prion-like Aβ and phosphorylated tau. Unexpectedly, the longevity-dependent decrease in self-propagating tau conformers occurred in spite of increasing amounts of total insoluble tau. When corrected for the abundance of insoluble tau, the ability of postmortem AD brain homogenates to induce misfolded tau in the cellular assays showed an exponential decrease with longevity, with a half-life of about one decade over the age range of 37 to 99 years. Thus, our findings demonstrate an inverse correlation between longevity in patients with AD and the abundance of pathological tau conformers. Our cellular assays can be applied to patient selection for clinical studies and the development of new drugs and diagnostics for AD