Calf massager: Intervention for body muscle discomfort during prolonged standing

Many occupations require workers to stand for long periods of time without proper interventions, which causes discomfort in the back and lower limbs. Therefore, this study aims to assess the effectiveness in alleviating body muscle discomfort during prolonged standing through the use of a calf massager. This study was conducted among male workers at a manufacturer with production line workers and the list was obtained from the HR Department and simple random sampling was done by number categorization. A total of 100 respondents (50 respondents for both the control and the experimental groups) participated in this study. The experiment took place in a room with a similar setup for the production line. Each respondent was requested to perform the simulated task for 2 hr. For the experimental group, the calf massager was turned on every 15 min. At every 15‐min interval after turning on the calf massager, respondents from both groups were required to evaluate their discomfort level on a Borg's scale CR‐10 questionnaire. The results showed that the level of body discomfort among respondents in the experimental group reduced (20–30%) compared with that of the control group. Multivariate analysis results revealed that the discomfort rating for the lower back, knees, thighs, calves, and feet was significantly lower (p < .05) among the experimental group compared with the control group. For lower body parts, the lower back region was statistically significant (p < .05) at the 90th, 105th, and 120th min; the thigh region was statistically significant (p < .05) at the 120th min; the knee region was statistically significant (p < .05) at the 105th and 120th min; the calf region was statistically significant (p < .05) at all minute intervals except the 15th and 45th min, while the feet region, was statistically significant at the 105th and 120th min. Therefore, this study indicates that calf massage treatment is capable of reducing body muscle discomfort during prolonged standing and highlights the significance of calf massage.     

ACTNET: End-to-End Learning of Feature Activations and Multi-stream Aggregation for Effective Instance Image Retrieval

International Journal of Computer Vision - We propose a novel CNN architecture called ACTNET for robust instance image retrieval from large-scale datasets. Our key innovation is a learnable...     

Revised cutoff values of serum aminotransferase in detecting viral hepatitis among CAPD patients: experience from Taiwan, an endemic area for hepatitis B

BACKGROUND: To determine the best cutoff values of aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and alanine amino-transferase (ALT) in detecting viral hepatitis C infection among patients of continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD). METHODS: 90 (44 male and 46 female) CAPD patients and 526 adult controls (266 male, 260 female) were enrolled. Serum AST and ALT were measured by an auto-analyser monthly. Serum HBsAg was examined using a RIA method and anti-HCV by an second-generation EIA method. The best cutoff values of AST and ALT for detecting viral hepatitis were obtained from the ROC (receiver-operating characteristic) curve. RESULTS: The prevalence of anti-HCV(+) was significantly higher in CAPD patients (16.7%) than in normal controls (4.9%), while that of HBsAg(+) was similar in both groups. CAPD patients had significantly lower levels of serum aminotransferases compared to normal controls. Mean AST were 23.8 IU/l in normal control and 18.8 IU/l in the CAPD patients (P < 0.001). Mean ALT were 21.9 IU/l in normal controls and 15.3 IU/l in the CAPD patients (P < 0.001). CAPD patients with HCV infection had higher serum AST and ALT levels than those without. However, HBV infection did not cause significant serum aminotransferase elevation in patients. The conventional cutoff values of AST (40 IU/l) and ALT (40 IU/l) for detecting viral hepatitis yielded only a sensitivity of 27.3 and 18.2% respectively; on the contrary, our revised cutoff values of AST (24 IU/l) and ALT (17 IU/l) had better sensitivities (AST, 72.7%; ALT, 63.6%). For serial aminotransferase values, the sensitivity of AST and ALT for detecting HCV were 36.4 and 27.3% by conventional criteria, and were both 81.8%, by our newly revised criteria. CONCLUSIONS: Serum aminotransferase cutoff values should be modified for screening viral hepatitis in a CAPD population. Our new cutoff criteria had important clinical implications in providing benefits of earlier detection and possible prevention from chronic hepatic deteriorations.     

Dedicated defense team strengthens liability protection

Primary psoas abscess is a relatively rare disease with highest incidence in children and adolescents. It usually presents with fever, abdominal pain and limp. Limping tends to incriminate musculoskeletal problems below the pelvis, but movement of the hip involves the psoas muscle which is mostly retroperitoneal and intimately related to pelvic and intraperitoneal organs. Although the current tendency is to use abdominal sonography, rectal examination is still a valuable step in clinical examination, and may help to assess a pelvic mass or abscess. The following case report describes the elusive nature of psoas abscess and a rare occurrence of abscess rupture and peritonitis, immediately after rectal examination.     

A concise process technology for 3-D suspended radio frequency micro-inductors on silicon substrate

In this letter, a concise process technology is proposed for the first time to enable the fabrication of good quality three-dimensional (3-D) suspended radio frequency (RF) micro-inductors on bulk silicon, without utilizing the lithography process on sidewall and trench-bottom patterning. Samples were fabricated to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed process technology.     

Factors affecting cloud point analysis of palm oleins

Some of the factors affecting cloud point determination of palm oleins are described. These are the type of container used, method of stirring, rate of stirring and bath temperature. The repeatability and reproducibility standard deviations of the method are determined from collaborative trials. Recommendations for the test are made to reduce the large variations among laboratories.     

Effect of rotor profiles on the torque of a switched-reluctancemotor

The authors examine effects on the torque that simple variations of the standard rotor pole face profile could have, basically from an elementary viewpoint of how the modified profiles affect the distribution and magnitude of the radial and tangential components of the flux density. It is observed that the average torque is mostly affected by changes that alter the dominant radial component, such as changes in the effective air gap length. The other observation that an increase in the average torque can also be obtained by a favorable shift in the torque versus angle characteristics by relatively simple changes of the rotor pole profile is not so well known. Such a shift that reduces the slope of the torque angle characteristic, skewing the curve towards the unaligned position, has two advantages: one is that the phase inductance is at its maximum positive slop and, hence, the maximum torque, when the phase is energized; second, the flatter inductance profile near the aligned position when the phase current is to be commutated would allow a faster drop off of the commutated current and, thus, a smaller negative torque     

Coding region of NKX3.1, a prostate-specific homeobox gene on 8p21, is not mutated in human prostate cancers

Loss of heterozygosity at chromosome 8p21-22 is common in human prostate cancer, suggesting the presence of one or more tumor suppressor genes at this locus. A homeobox gene that is expressed specifically in adult human prostate, NKX3.1, the expression of which is regulated by androgen, maps to chromosome 8p21. Fine structure in situ mapping showed that NKX3.1 is proximal to MSR32 (macrophage scavenger receptor type II) and LPL (human lipoprotein lipase) and very close to NEFL (human neurofilament light chain) on 8p21. Single-strand conformational polymorphism analysis of 48 radical prostatectomy cancer specimens and 3 metastases for the entire coding region of NKX3.1 showed no tumor-specific sequence alterations in 50 specimens and total absence of the gene in 1 specimen known to have a biallelic deletion of 8p21. NKX3.1 was found to have a polymorphism at nucleotide 154 in codon 52 that resulted in a CGC-->TGC sequence change and an Arg-->Cys amino acid alteration (R52C). This polymorphism was present in 20% of DNA samples. If NKX3.1 is a target of the 8p21 LOH, it is not via disruption of the coding region of the gene.     

Simulation of frequency nonselective mobile channel with LOScomponent: a deterministic approach

A deterministic digital simulation model with finite sum of properly weighted sinusoids is used to simulate a frequency nonselective mobile channel with LOS component. Measurement data are used to optimise the parameters. Which are then used in the deterministic simulation model. The probability distribution and level cross rate (LCR) obtained from the measured data agree well with the analytical and simulation results