It was hypothesized that the muscle power input created by both legs would far exceed the ergometers' constant-torque- based nominal value. It was supposed that this effect depended on the cadence and positive or negative acceleration of the eddy current brake wheel. If so, it is important to estimate the magnitude of this effect in order to protect patients who are at risk of overload. Four normally-trained subjects performed a series of tests involving ergometer pedaling with either ascending power loads in the range of 25 - 250 Watts, or a variation in cadence at intervals of 100 and 150 Watts. The ergometer's nominal power was compared to the power calculated with the measured time series recordings of the pedal force sensors and the power calculation thereof. Highly significant discrepancies were found between the nominal power load of the ergometer and the power transferred through the pedal sensors. The pedal power was up to 88% higher than the nominal loads, and there were inter-individual differences. The measured power far exceeded the nominal value by 80-166% at a low cadence of 40, and was only approximately congruent at a cadence of 55 to 65 per minute. Confirming the hypothesis, the results suggested that the excess power requirement was mainly due to acceleration power and depended on individual muscular performance. It is important to be aware of this when patients at risk undergo ergometer testing. Power estimation using a direct pedal force measurement may provide new insight into sport-specific stationary cycling science and energy metabolism.
This paper proposes a novel mathematical model to demonstrate the change in neural signal conduction in diabetic condition with and without hypertension.It assesses the risk factors of neuropathy and associated cardiac diseases like myocardial ischemia/infarction.Background: Patients with prolonged diabetes are more likely to develop diabetic neuropathy.Neuropathy is the slow deterioration of the functioning of the nerves.Proximal neuropathy causes lack of sensation in peripheral nerves.Initially, no clinical symptoms are visible.The slow and progressive deterioration may lead to gangrene and foot amputation.To stop this irreversible process, early diagnosis at the preclinical stage is critical.The mathematical model developed in this paper demonstrates the reduced signal conduction under diabetic conditions.Reduction of signal conduction is a preclinical marker to peripheral neuropathy. Methodology: Signal conduction changes can be verified by changes in power spectral density of the electrocardiogram ECG signal by heart rate variability (HRV) analysis. The Effects of these changes on the performance of the heart can be evaluated by the Left Ventricular Ejection Fraction (LVEF). Extraction of inter-beat R-R intervals (R wave to R interval) from 3-5 minutes longECG signal is used to generate the information about the neural signal conduction.Total power is then obtained from conducting an HRV analysis of the R-R interval samples.This analysis is performed using Kubios HRV simulator.The performance index of the heart is acquired from the echocardiograms of the samples.Data samples of different cohorts mentioned in the Table 1 are acquired. Details of data samples:The sample size of each cohort and the average age group is as stated in Table 1.All the cases are recorded at Fortis-S.L. Raheja hospital, Mahim (W).Randomness in age, class, sex and other parameters was ensured on the basis of the data collection as per the registration of the subjects.TABLE 1 DETAILS OF THE DATA Type of cohort Normal Diabetic Diabetic with IHD and INHD Diabetic and hypertensive Hypertensive Sample size 27 20 20 27 23 Average age group 47 58 61 62 68Experimental Results: In this paper, a mathematical model is proposed in the paper for calculating the strength of neural signal conduction.The average neural signal conduction of diabetic cohort is found to be reduced compared to the non-diabetic cohort.The diabetic cohort with myocardial ischemia/infarction is found to have with least average neural signal conduction followed by the diabetic and hypertensive cohort.In case of hypertensive cohorts, the average neural signal conduction is found to be equal to that of the normal cohort.The effect of the neural conduction can be observed on the total power spectral density from the frequency domain AR analysis of R-R intervals.The average Left Ventricular Ejection Fraction (LVEF) index retrieved from the echocardiogram in all the cohorts is found to be consistent with the reduced neural signal conduction. The above mentioned indices can be preclinical indicators of assessment of neuropathy and cardiac health.Conclusion: preclinical diagnosis of autonomic neuropathy and cardiac health assessment is possible in diabetic subjects.
Haemophilia is a bleeding condition that prevents blood clot during injuries.Previous studies suggest that some persons with the condition often do not report the problem and in some cases, there is the need to take certain critical actions when injuries occur.This has created the need to investigate best approaches that can encourage people with the condition to seek medical help or in the case where the injury is minor, users can assess the injury themselves by following some guidelines.To this effect, our ongoing project seeks to explore the issue through the adoption of mobile computing technology.Thus, an App is developed called, Haemophilia Injury Recognition Tool (HIRT?), which provides the users (especially young men) with a set of instructions on how to assess minor injuries.In cases where the injury is severe, the user is asked to go to the emergency room or contact the nearest Haemophilia Treatment Center which is provided in the App.The paper discusses the architectural flow of the App as well as the user feedback.Overall, the initial group of people who tested the App found it very useful in terms of its content, reminders, and clarity of steps.
Aim of the study: Immunohistochemical evaluation of WT1, E-cadherin, beta-catenin, EGFR and p53 on Tissue MicroArray (TMA) of 43 Moroccan benign, borderline and invasive epithelial ovarian tumours. Materials and methods: All 43 cases were collected from the pathology department of the Institut National d'Oncologie in Rabat, Morocco, and comprised 34 carcinomas, 4 borderline serous and mucinous tumours and 5 benign tumours. Patients were between 20 and 74 years old with a mean age of 50 years. TMAs and the IHC study were supported by a grant from the IAAE (International Agency of Atomic Energy) and prepared in the pathology department of Columbia University in New York. 3 cores were selected from each case, and the peroxydase-anti peroxydase technique was used for the study of the different markers (DAKO Cytovision, Carpinteria CA). Results: 23.25% of the cases (10/43) were WT1 positive and were serous tumours (including one poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma). 72% of the cases (31/43) showed reduced (19/43) or no (12/43) membranous expression of E-cadherin, and all the tumours showed reduced membranous expression with cytoplasmic expression (5/43) or no expression (38/43) of beta-catenin. p53 overexpression (13/43) was exclusively observed in 58% (11/19) of the serous carcinomas and 2/3 poorly to moderately differentiated adenocarcinomas, of which 9/13 were EGFR + and 6/13 were E-cadherin +. 70% of the cases (30/43) showed EGFR membrane staining, and 2 cases were not interpretable. Conclusion: TMA is a feasible tool to study a large number of cases allowing comparative analysis of the expression of different biomarkers. To our knowledge, this is the first study of 5 biomarkers to be done on TMAs from 43 moroccan benign, borderline and invasive epithelial ovarian tumour samples. This would allow for larger studies with the aim of analyzing the significance of these biological markers and their impact in clinical trials.
Medicine imaging plays a more and more important role in illness detection and treatment.Various imaging skills, including CT imaging, MR imaging, ultrasound imaging and so on are in application and under research nowadays, and those images could be got from medicine databases in hospitals, clinical cases or volunteers.Since the biomedical researches are attracting more and more attention in China, our group investigated papers on biomedical published in the last 3 years in China and referenced 35 papers here.From different views, we investigated methods applied in image resources, image preprocessing, image registration, image segmentation, and their application fields.By reviewing those papers, we aim at getting a brief view of the current biomedical research trend in China.
This research was aimed at examining how transaction performance regarding medical equipment maintenance affected overall healthcare service quality, understood as healthcare input and/or process quality.A cross-sectional, retrospective, exploratory study was thus designed for examining 719 maintenance transactions.Such sample size guaranteed 0.8 statistical power, having 0.2 effect size at =0.05.Secondary source data were taken from databases kept at two hospitals in Bogotá, Colombia.A multivariate linear regression model was used for analysing the effect of turnaround time (TAT, the independent variable) in terms of hours on healthcare institution service quality (decreased overall quality, the dependent variable), controlling for the type of service provider carrying out the maintenance transaction (i.e.in-house or outsourcing) and the maintenance type concerned (i.e.preventive or corrective) in healthcare service quality.The results provided sufficient statistically significant support (p<0.001), good CI precision (+ 1.156, + 1.432) and low standard error (standard error=0.070),as healthcare service quality became negatively affected as TAT value increased due to low maintenance service provider quality or performance (i.e. TAT =+1.473).
The use of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, as well as other Information and Communications Technology (ICT) tools, to facilitate healthcare delivery in the medical landscape, known as mHealth, has risen phenomenally.In most mHealth systems, mobile devices are employed as services and health information client consumers.Meaning, physicians use these devices to access the Electronic Health Record (EHR) which resides on back-end platforms.However, in a research collaboration with the Geriatrics Ward of the City Hospital in Saskatoon, Canada, we have identified a huge potential for facilitating the mobile device as a medical data hosting node.Our approach is beneficial for collecting the EHR remotely and pushing it to the Health Information System (HIS).For instance, Geriatrics' patients who are home can be attended to outside of the health facility since their medical data is being retrieved from or pushed to the HIS remotely.However, mobile devices communicate over wireless mediums, which can experience intermittent loss of connectivity.It is also possible to visit the patient's home, and there not be any connectivity.These situations can cause an inconsistency between the data that is on the physician's mobile device and the data on the HIS.Our work therefore proposes a cloud-powered middleware architecture that facilitates the synchronization of the data between the mobile devices and the HIS in soft real-time.The middleware employs the propagation of deltas and timestamp to determine which of the data is the newest update in any direction and ensures that all the operations are in sync.The evaluation of our proposed system shows minimal latency.
This paper investigated whether a simple, non-invasive blood vessel visualization technique using near-infrared light is suitable for determining serum cholesterol levels. Six-week-old male Wistar rats were divided into 6 groups (n = 10/group) and were fed either control diet alone or control diet with 0.5%, 1.0%, 1.25%, 1.5%, or 2.0% cholesterol for 8 weeks. A cuff was subsequently placed on the proximal part of the tail (cuff pressure, 80 mmHg), the tail distal to the compression site was exposed to near-infrared light (wavelength, 850 nm), and transmitted light was photographed. Near-infrared transmission images were acquired before and after cuff inflation, and hemoglobin and haematocrit levels in veins distal to the compression site were determined. Increased dietary cholesterol levels resulted in increased total serum cholesterol levels. Before cuff inflation, rats that were fed the 2.0% cholesterol diet had significantly lower hemoglobin levels than those that fed the control diet (P 150 mg/dL (r = 0.449, P 150 mg/dL, increased cholesterol levels affected erythrocyte membranes and probably reduced their deformability, resulting in decreased hemoglobin levels (anemia) with erythrocyte destruction in the spleen as the rate-determining factor. This decrease was detected as changes in near-infrared light transmission.
The mechanical behavior of the optic nerve head (ONH) and the surrounding sclera play important roles in the development of optic neuropathy.We assessed the indentation behavior of the ONH and the surrounding sclera in unfixed human autopsy eyes from individuals between 27 and 87 years of age.Our testing device utilized a round-tipped 250 µm diameter stainless steel probe to measure the force applied in discrete 50 µm steps from the surface of the tissues to a depth of 400 µm.Thirteen eyes from eight individuals were indented in various locations within and around the ONH and the posterior sclera.Tissue thickness, force and depth were recorded at each position tested.Data was analyzed by evaluating the recorded force as a function of the depth of indentation.The data showed that, for both the sclera and the ONH, the force rose exponentially with increased depth of indentation.Apparent stiffness values were estimated using 2 different equations that assess soft biologic tissues.Results showed that significantly higher levels of force were required with aging to indent the posterior sclera, with a corresponding increase in stiffness values.However, no significant increase in indentation force as a function of age was noted for the ONH.Interestingly, the data suggests that some individuals have relatively large differences in the stiffness between the ONH and the posterior sclera, while others show less difference regardless of age.This data supports the notion that some individuals have relatively softer ONH tissue, and as the sclera becomes stiffer with age, this difference is magnified.This difference may be important in understanding the biomechanical contribution to the individually different susceptibility to glaucoma.
The water flow characteristics in the implantable artificial lung (IAL) were evaluated by in vitro experiments. The 50-fiber modules were of different lengths but contained well-spaced fibers; and the 300-fiber module had a volume fraction of 0.9. A lower number of tired hollow fibers produce a higher water-side film coefficient of oxygen transfer at a constant velocity of water-side flow. The area of the water flow decreases with increasing hollow fiber packing density, thus if water is induced to flow uniformly in the IAL module, the oxygen transfer rate should monotonously increase with the packing density. The water flow in the IAL is not uniform and depends on the hollow fiber packing density. The stagnation of the water flow occurs in the bundle of the hollow fibers at the water inlet. Intravascular oxygenation represents an attractive, alternative support modality for patients with ARDS. The concept of intravascular oxygenation as an alternative ARDS therapy originated with Mortensen (7), who developed an intravenous oxygenator (IVOX) consisting of a bundle of crimped hollow fiber positioned in the vena cava. In phase I clinical trials, the IVOX provided an average of 28% of basal gas exchange requirements for patients with severe ARDS (8-14). The clinical study, however, concluded that more gas exchange was needed for intravascular oxygenation to be clinically effective in ARDS treatment. We are developing an intravenous membrane oxygenator (IMO) with a design goal of 50% of basal oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange requirements for end-stage ARDS patients. Like the IVOX, the IMO consists of a bundle of manifolded hollow fiber, and is intended for intravenous placement within the superior and inferior vena cava. The target level of gas exchange in the IVOX, and consequently, the IMO, incorporates a polyurethane balloon concentric with the fiber bundle, which rhythmically inflates and deflates to provide active blood mixing, and thus enhances gas exchange. Our current efforts focus on device improvements intended to provide the target levels of gas exchange, given the constraints imposed by intravenous placement on fiber bundle size and hence fiber area for gas exchange. Although critical care techniques have been improved, the high mortality of severe ARDS has not significantly changed (10-15). In an implantable artificial lung (IAL), the greater part of the oxygen transfer resistance is located in the blood-side laminar film (16), and various methods have been attempted to make the laminar film thin and improve the oxygen transfer rate (17, 18). In the present study, the water flow characteristics in the IAL were evaluated by in vitro experiments. The effect of hollow fiber packing fraction on water flow condition was evaluated to produce effective constant of water with the hollow fibers. Oxygen transfer rates were evaluated, and the optimum hollow fiber packing fraction was determined at an outside diameter of hollow fibers of 380 μm. II. THEORYT The Reynolds number (NRe =Lv/υ) characterizes the flow regime and is the ratio of inertial force to viscous force. The Schmidt number (NSc=υ/D), analogous to the Prandtl number in heat transfer, characterizes the fluid properties and is the ratio of momentum transport to diffusive transport. The Peclet number (NPe=Lv/D), which is the product of NRe, characterizes the relative importance of convective and diffusive processes and is the ratio of bulk mass transport to diffusive mass transport. The Sherwood number (NSh=KL/D), also known as the mass transfer Nusselt number, likewise characterizes the relative importance of convective and diffusive transport; it is the ratio of total transport to diffusive transport. The mass transfer Stanton number (NSt=K/v) is proportional to the ratio of the actual mass flux to the mass flux capacity of the flow, i.e. the amount of mass potentially transferable per unit time and cross-sectional area.
This paper focuses on the design and development of a fine microwire feeder for laser applications. The use of metallic wires as a medium of deposition has been popular in aerospace and car manufacturing industries. These micro sized wires are also gaining importance in medical and semi-conductor industries. The use of wire-feeders in laser welding and electrical discharge machining applications has been prominent. There are devices used in laser applications which can handle wires from 0.25mm to 10.0 mm in diameter. The handling of microsized wire in laser application is often considered difficult due to its low buckling strength exposure to harsh environment. The primary function of the microwire feeder described in this paper was to feed wires of varying microdiameters to a desired location with high accuracy and precision to be used in a laser aided manufacturing processes. This can be designed by dividing the microwire feeder into four basic sub-mechanisms: (1) feeding mechanism (2) transfer mechanism (3) precision guidance mechanism (4) adjustment mechanism. These sub-mechanisms are integrated to account for compactness, flexibility and precision. This microwire feeder is capable of handling wires as low as 0.05 mm in diameter. The precision and accuracy of the device was experimentally tested prior to its practical application. A case study on laser deposition was presented; where; a 316 stainless steel microwire of 0.125 mm diameter was fed into a melt pool of 0.2 mm. The wire feed and the traverse speed of the table were varied to achieve a uniformly distributed clad. The effect of wire feed and traverse speed were studied and a deposition process window was developed for future experimentation.
The U.S. healthcare and higher education systems face long-standing challenges concerning effectiveness and costeffectiveness that could be addressed by modeling and simulation. This will require the modeling and simulation industry to adapt through diversification, experimentation and the engagement of the leaders of these systems in effecting solutions. KeywordsU.S. Healthcare System; U.S. Higher Education System; Modeling and Simulation; Business Competitiveness
This paper presents the design flow of a detector for tracking charged particles together with the characterization techniques developed to extract the main design specifications. The goals for the final detector are to achieve real-time imaging, a large detection area and a high spatial resolution particularly suitable for medical imaging applications. The main concepts have been patented by the INFN. This paper describes the prototype tracker, which has a 20x20 cm2 sensitive area consisting of two crossed ribbons of 500 µm square scintillating fibers. The track position information is real-time extracted in an innovative way, using a reduced number of read-out channels to obtain a very large detection area but with moderate costs and complexity. The performance of the tracker has been investigated using s sources, cosmic rays, and a 62 MeV proton beam.
In an experiment it is shown on rats, that biocompatible standardized nanoparticles of ICNB can be effectively used at MRI.It is well-proven that nanoparticles of ICNB for certain (р<0.001)strengthen a contrasting effect at MRI. Methodology of safe intravenous application of ICNB is excluding the use of magnetite of nanoparticles in the variant of independent contrasting means at MRI.It is set that in 24 hours after intravenous inject of ICNB the magnetite of nanoparticles for certain (p<0.001)selectively accumulate in tissue of malignant tumour and rise brightness of image.On 4th days investigation the dynamics of reduction of brightness of image in tumour and muscles was establishment for certain (р<0.001).This fact is caused by process eliminating of nanoparticles from organism of rat.On the mechanism of action the nanoparticles of ICNB cause the convertible changes which is reason for the temporal increase of mobility of protons of hydrogen in near cell liquid.It inevitably modifies the metabolic process in malignant cells that in perspective has hope in elaborating new ways of the target therapy of malignant neoplasm.
Background: Renal injury may develop in uncontrolled diabetic manifestations, mostly attributed to increased oxidative stress and release of pro-inflammatory mediators and finally leading to diabetic complications. Methods: Curcumenoids which have anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory properties were tested in alloxan-induced hyperglycemia in rats on oxidative stress, gene expression of tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) and transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1), in relation to microalbuminuria and renal function. Results: We found that the onset of microalbuminuria preceded the increase in serum glucose after alloxan administration. Gene expression of TNF-α and TGF-β1 showed a gradual increase after one and two weeks of alloxan administration as compared to the normal group. Curcumenoids administration decreased gene expression of TNF-α and TGF-β1 in kidneys, serum-glucose, fructosamine, urea, creatinine, C-reactive protein, malondialdehyde, urinary microalbumin and total protein. Histological examination of kidney tissues showed significant improvement in Curcumenoids-treated rats as compared to untreated diabetic rats. Conclusions: Curcumenoids modulated renal injury of alloxan-induced diabetic rats as revealed by observed biochemical data. This may refer to it as therapeutic candidate for treatment of diabetic renal injury and clinical trials are mostly requested.
We have developed a Quantitative Light Absorption Analysis (QLAA) method to rapidly estimate human lymphocyte concentrations isolated from small volumes of whole blood. Measurements of the light absorption analysis were calibrated for lymphocyte concentration levels using a hemocytometer. To validate the QLAA system, blood samples were collected from 17 healthy donors and lymphocyte absorption measurements were directly compared with the manual microscope counting. The results showed that lymphocyte measurements obtained using the QLAA system were comparable with the manually scored lymphocyte counts but with measurements taken in seconds.
The stretched exponential function has many applications in modeling numerous types of experimental relaxation data. However, problems arise when using standard algorithms to fit this function: we have observed that different initializations result in distinct fitted parameters. To avoid this problem, we developed a novel algorithm for fitting the stretched exponential model to relaxation data. This method is advantageous both because it requires only a single adjustable parameter and because it does not require initialization in the solution space. We tested this method on simulated data and experimental stress-relaxation data from bone and cartilage and found favorable results compared to a commonly-used Quasi-Newton method. For the simulated data, strong correlations were found between the simulated and fitted parameters suggesting that this method can accurately determine stretched exponential parameters. When this method was tested on experimental data, high quality fits were observed for both bone and cartilage stress-relaxation data that were significantly better than those determined with the Quasi-Newton algorithm.
Myofascial force transmission was explained in different studies via extra, inter, and intramuscular pathways. In this work the role of fascia tissue around patellar tendon in force transmission was studied. In standard quasi static tension tests external loads were applied to stifle joint samples. Two types of experiments were performed, in which at the first one intact patellar tendon with tissue milieu was used as tissue sample, and at the second one its fascia tissue carefully removed. With applying a 5 mm axial displacement in both steps, results for force-displacement diagrams are collected. Compared results determined the linear distribution of transmitted force during the process. More than 15-20% decrement in total force transmission was observed by carefully removing the fascia tissue around the patellar tendon.
Today, there have been many protein databases available on the Internet, and different databases possess different missions and functions. To submit or search easily desired protein-related data, two most commonly employed protein databases were introduced in detail, including wwPDB (the Worldwide Protein Data Bank) and UniProt (the Universal Protein Resource). Additionally, several other protein databases were also mentioned simply. This paper is beneficial for these researchers working on protein-related studies. KeywordsProtein; Database; wwPDB; UniProt
