A field comparison of neck and shoulder postures in symptomatic and asymptomatic office workers

Poor neck and shoulder postures have been suggested to be a cause of neck and shoulder pain in computer workers. The present study aimed to evaluate and compare the head, neck and shoulder postures of office workers with and without symptoms in these regions, in their actual work environments. The two all female subject groups reported significantly different discomfort scores across five trials repeated in a single working day. The results of repeated video capture and two-dimensional motion analysis showed that there were trends for increased head tilt and neck flexion postures in the symptomatic subjects (n = 8), compared to the asymptomatic subjects (n = 8). Symptomatic subjects also tended to have more protracted acromions compared with asymptomatic subjects and showed greater movement excursions in the head segment and the acromion. All subjects demonstrated an approximately 10% increase in forward head posture from their relaxed sitting postures when working with the computer display, but there were no significant changes in posture as a result of time-at-work.     

Theragnostic Efficacy of K18 Response in Alcohol Use Disorder with Clinically Significant Fibrosis Using Gut-Liver Axis

(1) Background: Fibrosis in early-stage alcohol-associated liver disease (ALD) is commonly under-diagnosed in routine clinical practice. This study characterized the liver-injury and cell death response in alcohol use disorder (AUD) patients with ALD who also exhibited fibrosis and assessed the efficacy of standard of care (SOC) treatment in the improvement in liver injury. (2) Methods: Forty-eight heavy-drinking AUD patients aged 21–65 yrs. without clinical manifestations of liver injury were grouped by Fibrosis-4 (FIB-4) score, as negative (Gr.1 < 1.45, n = 21) or positive (Gr.2 ≥ 1.45, n = 27). Patients received 2-weeks (2 w) inpatient SOC. Data on demographics, drinking patterns, liver-injury, immune markers, and liver cell death (K18s) markers were analyzed at baseline (BL) and after 2 w SOC. (3) Results: Lifetime drinking (LTDH, yrs.) and acute heavy drinking (Heavy Drinking Days Past 90 Days [HDD90]) markers were significantly higher in Gr.2 vs. Gr.1. BL ALT, AST, AST:ALT and K18M65 were considerably higher in Gr.2. Dysregulated gut dysfunction and elevated immune activity were evident in Gr.2 characterized by TNF-α, IL-8 and LPS levels. After SOC, Gr.2 showed improvement in AST, ALT, AST/ALT ratio; and in the K18M65, K18M30 and K18M65/M30 ratio vs. Gr.1. The true positivity of BL IL-8 response to predict the improvement in K18M65 to normal levels among Gr.2 patients against those who did not have improvement after 2 w SOC was very high (AUROC = 0.830, p = 0.042). (4) Conclusions: Gut dysfunction, elevated cytokine response and necrotic liver cell death were elevated in AUD patients with early-stage ALD. K18 showed promise as a predictive theragnostic factor to differentiate among the AUD patients with early-stage ALD and baseline fibrosis who had improvement in liver injury against those who did not, by the levels of baseline IL-8.     

A multi-institutional, multinational study of programming concepts using card sort data

Abstract: This paper presents a case study of the use of a repeated single‐criterion card sort with an unusually large, diverse participant group. The study, whose goal was to elicit novice programmers' knowledge of programming concepts, involved over 20 researchers from four continents and 276 participants drawn from 20 different institutions. In this paper we present the design of the study and the unexpected result that there were few discernible systematic differences in the population. The study was one of the activities of the National Science Foundation funded Bootstrapping Research in Computer Science Education project (2003).     

Determination of Intra- and Extracellular Metabolic Adaptations of 3D Cell Cultures upon Challenges in Real-Time by NMR

NMR flow devices provide longitudinal real-time quantitative metabolome characterisation of living cells. However, discrimination of intra- and extracellular contributions to the spectra represents a major challenge in metabolomic NMR studies. The present NMR study demonstrates the possibility to quantitatively measure both metabolic intracellular fingerprints and extracellular footprints on human control fibroblasts by using a commercially available flow tube system with a standard 5 mm NMR probe. We performed a comprehensive 3D cell culture system characterisation. Diffusion NMR was employed for intra- and extracellular metabolites separation. In addition, complementary extracellular footprints were determined. The implemented perfused NMR bioreactor system allowed the determination of 35 metabolites and intra- and extracellular separation of 19 metabolites based on diffusion rate differences. We show the reliability and sensitivity of NMR diffusion measurements to detect metabolite concentration changes in both intra- and extracellular compartments during perfusion with different selective culture media, and upon complex I inhibition with rotenone. We also demonstrate the sensitivity of extracellular footprints to determine metabolic variations at different flow rates. The current method is of potential use for the metabolomic characterisation of defect fibroblasts and for improving physiological comprehension.     

Function of IRAG2 Is Modulated by NO/cGMP in Murine Platelets

Inositol 1,4,5-triphosphate receptor-associated 2 (IRAG2) is a type II membrane protein located at the endoplasmic reticulum. It is a homologue of inositol 1,4,5-triphosphate receptor-associated cGMP kinase substrate 1 (IRAG1), a substrate protein of cGMP-dependent protein kinase I (PKGI), and is among others expressed in platelets. Here, we studied if IRAG2 is also located in platelets and might be a substrate protein of PKGI. IRAG2 was detected in platelets of IRAG2-WT animals but not in those of IRAG2-KO animals. Next, we validated by co-immunoprecipitation studies that IRAG2 is associated with IP₃R1-3. No direct stable interaction with PKGIβ or with IRAG1 was observed. Phosphorylation of IRAG2 in murine platelets using a Ser/Thr-specific phospho-antibody was found in vitro and ex vivo upon cGMP stimulation. To gain insight into the function of IRAG2, platelet aggregation studies were performed using thrombin and collagen as agonists for treatment of isolated IRAG2-WT or IRAG2-KO platelets. Interestingly, platelet aggregation was reduced in the absence of IRAG2. Pretreatment of wild type or IRAG2-KO platelets with sodium nitroprusside (SNP) or 8-pCPT-cGMP revealed a further reduction in platelet aggregation in the absence of IRAG2. These results show that IRAG2 is a substrate of PKGI in murine platelets. Furthermore, our results indicate that IRAG2 is involved in the induction of thrombin- or collagen-induced platelet aggregation and that this effect is enhanced by cGMP-dependent phosphorylation of IRAG2. As IRAG1 was previously shown to inhibit platelet aggregation in a cGMP-dependent manner, it can be speculated that IRAG2 exerts an opposing function and might be an IRAG1 counterpart in murine platelets.     

Recent Experiences with Listeria monocytogenes in New Zealand and development of a food control risk-based strategy

A risk-based strategy for Listeria monocytogenes has been developed by New Zealand Food Safety Authority. Incidents of L. monocytogenes in ready-to-eat foods reported to the regulatory authority were analysed to identify common factors that contributed to the contamination. In addition, the current regulatory framework and available food industry guidance were reviewed to prepare a strategy that will provide a consistent and informed approach to managing the risk of L. monocytogenes. Also recognised is the future impact of an aging population and an increase in the availability and range of chilled ready-to-eat foods that should be integrated into the strategy if an objective of ‘no increase in the reported incidence of foodborne listeriosis after five years’ is to be achieved.     

Intact and impaired mechanisms of action understanding in autism.

Typically developing children understand and predict others' behavior by extracting and processing relevant information such as the logic of their actions within the situational constraints and the intentions conveyed by their gaze direction and emotional expressions. Children with autism have difficulties understanding and predicting others' actions. With the use of eye tracking and behavioral measures, we investigated action understanding mechanisms used by 18 children with autism and a well-matched group of 18 typically developing children. Results showed that children with autism (a) consider situational constraints in order to understand the logic of an agent's action and (b) show typical usage of the agent's emotional expressions to infer his or her intentions. We found (c) subtle atypicalities in the way children with autism respond to an agent's direct gaze and (d) marked impairments in their ability to attend to and interpret referential cues such as a head turn for understanding an agent's intentions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of handedness and reachability on perceived distance.

Previous research has suggested that perceived distances are scaled by the action capabilities of the body. The present studies showed that when “reachability” is constrained due to a difficult grasp required to pick up an object, perceived distance to the object increases. Participants estimated the distances to tools with handle orientations that made them either easy or difficult to grasp with their dominant and nondominant hands. Right-handed participants perceived tools that were more difficult to grasp to be farther away than tools that were easier to grasp. However, perceived distance did not differ in left-handed participants. These studies suggest that, when reaching toward a target, the distance to that target is scaled in terms of how far one can effectively reach, given the type of reaching posture that is executed. Furthermore, this effect is modulated by handedness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Automatic Summarization of Changes in Biological Image Sequences Using Algorithmic Information Theory

An algorithmic information-theoretic method is presented for object-level summarization of meaningful changes in image sequences. Object extraction and tracking data are represented as an attributed tracking graph (ATG). Time courses of object states are compared using an adaptive information distance measure, aided by a closed-form multidimensional quantization. The notion of meaningful summarization is captured by using the gap statistic to estimate the randomness deficiency from algorithmic statistics. The summary is the clustering result and feature subset that maximize the gap statistic. This approach was validated on four bioimaging applications: 1) It was applied to a synthetic data set containing two populations of cells differing in the rate of growth, for which it correctly identified the two populations and the single feature out of 23 that separated them; 2) it was applied to 59 movies of three types of neuroprosthetic devices being inserted in the brain tissue at three speeds each, for which it correctly identified insertion speed as the primary factor affecting tissue strain; 3) when applied to movies of cultured neural progenitor cells, it correctly distinguished neurons from progenitors without requiring the use of a fixative stain; and 4) when analyzing intracellular molecular transport in cultured neurons undergoing axon specification, it automatically confirmed the role of kinesins in axon specification.