Search

Objective Balance problems are common in patients with stroke, and the Mini-Balance Evaluation Systems Test (Mini-BESTest) is a reliable and valid assessment tool for measuring balance function. Determining the minimal clinically important difference (MCID) is crucial for assessing treatment effectiveness. This study aimed to determine the MCID of the Mini-BESTest in patients with early subacute stroke. Methods In this prospective multicenter study, 53 patients with early subacute stroke undergoing rehabilitation in inpatient units were included. The mean age of the patients was 72.6 (SD = 12.2) years. The Mini-BESTest, which consists of 14 items assessing various aspects of balance function, including anticipatory postural adjustments, postural responses, sensory orientation, and dynamic gait, was used as the assessment tool. The global rating of change (GRC) scales completed by the participants and physical therapists were used as external anchors to calculate the MCID. The GRC scale measured subjective improvement in balance function, ranging from −3 (very significantly worse) to +3 (very significantly better), with a GRC score of ≥+2 considered as meaningful improvement. Four methods were used to calculate the MCID: mean of participants with GRC of 2, receiver operating characteristic–based method, predictive modeling method, and adjustment of the predictive modeling method based on the rate of improvement. From the MCID values obtained using these methods, a single pooled MCID value was calculated. Results The MCID values for the Mini-BESTest obtained through the 4 methods ranged from 3.2 to 4.5 points when using the physical therapist's GRC score as the anchor but could not be calculated using the participant's GRC score. The pooled MCID value for the Mini-BESTest was 3.8 (95% CI = 2.9–5.0). Conclusions The Mini-BESTest MCID obtained in this study is valuable for identifying improvements in balance function among patients with early subacute stroke. Impact Determination of the MCID is valuable for evaluating treatment effectiveness. The study findings provide clinicians with practical values that can assist in interpreting Mini-BESTest results and assessing treatment effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) estimates a reward function for an agent to behave along with expert data, e.g., as human operation data. However, expert data usually have redundant parts, which decrease the agent's performance. This study extends the IRL to sub-optimal action data, including lack and detour. The proposed method searches for new actions to determine optimal expert action data. This study adopted maze problems with sub-optimal expert action data to investigate the performance of the proposed method. The experimental results show that the proposed method finds optimal expert data better than the conventional method, and the proposed search mechanisms perform better than random search. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data are limited on the incidence of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) reinfection in children. This population-based cohort study in Niigata, Japan from January to November 2022 demonstrated the incidence of reinfection was 1337/48 099 (2.8%), and the hazard ratio for reinfection in vaccinated children was 0.29 (95% confidence interval, 0.20–0.40). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aquaporins (AQPs) are a family of water-transporting proteins that are selectively expressed in epithelial, endothelial, and many other cell types of various tissues, where they play important physiological functions. However, the accurate distribution of AQP gene expression has not yet been examined in various tissues of the mouse. We first evaluated the tissue distribution of AQP gene expression using tongue, nasal epithelium, bronchus, trachea, lung, esophagus, stomach, ileum, transverse colon, liver, pancreas, whole blood, thigh muscle, spinal cord, brain, thoracic aorta, heart, kidney, thymus, spleen, skin, eye, and testis of the mouse. Furthermore, for a quantitative analysis, we selected appropriate reference genes for normalized qRT-PCR data in various tissues. The stability of the reference genes was assessed using NormFinder. The stably expressed genes identified in the present study were 18s rRNA. When 18s rRNA was used, as the best reference gene in the present study, the genes for AQPs 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,11, and 12 were notably expressed in the eye, lung, testis, eye, spinal cord, trachea, kidney, testis, testis, testis, testis, and pancreas. These results, regarding the distribution of AQPs, suggest that AQPs may be involved in various physiological and pathophysiological processes. Key words: tissue distribution of aquaporin, reference genes, Normfinder. Les aquaporines (AQP) consistent en une famille de proteines transporteuses d'eau qui sont exprimees de maniere selective dans les cellules epitheliales et endotheliales, de meme que dans differents autres types de cellules de divers tissus, ou elles exercent des fonctions physiologiques importantes. Cependant, la distribution precise de l'expression genique des AQP n'a pas encore ete examinee dans divers tissus chez la souris. Les auteurs ont d'abord evalue la distribution tissulaire de l'expression genique des AQP dans la langue, l'epithelium nasal, les bronches, la trachee, les poumons, l'resophage, l'estomac, l'ileon, le colon transverse, le pancreas, le sang total, le muscle de la cuisse, la moelle epiniere, le cerveau, l'aorte thoracique, le creur, les reins, le thymus, la rate, la peau, l'reil et les testicules de souris. De plus, pour les fins de l'analyse quantitative, les auteurs ont selectionne des genes de reference appropries afin de normaliser les donnees en qRT-PCR dans les divers tissus. La stabilite des genes de reference a ete evaluee par NormFinder. Le gene ARNr 18S etait celui qui etait exprime de fa^on stable dans la presente etude. Lorsque ARNr 18S etait utilise, etant le meilleur gene de reference, les genes AQP 0,1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,11 et 12 etaient particulierement exprimes dans l'reil, le poumon, le testicule, l'reil, la moelle epiniere, la trachee, le rein, le testicule, le testicule, le testicule, le testicule et le pancreas, respectivement. Ces resultats en ce qui concerne la distribution des AQP suggerent que les AQP peuvent etre impliquees dans differents processus physiologiques et patho-physiologiques. [Traduit par la Redaction] Mots-cles: distribution tissulaire des aquaporines, genes de reference, NormFinder., Introduction Aquaporins (AQPs) are a family of water-transporting proteins. Thirteen members have been cloned in humans (AQP 0-12) (Ishibashi et al. 2009). AQPs are subdivided into three subfamilies. This classification [...]

Background and purpose: This study aimed to investigate to what extent upper limb (UL) motor impairment, trunk compensation, and activity performance are related to self‐perception of UL activity performance in subacute stroke. Methods: This was a prospective observational study. Twenty‐four adults with subacute stroke (age: 65.4 ± 10.8 years) underwent clinical and kinematic assessments at baseline (33.9 ± 5.2 days after stroke onset) and 4 weeks after the baseline. The clinical assessment included the UL Fugl‐Meyer motor assessment (FMA), Simple Test for Evaluating hand Function (STEF), and the performance and satisfaction scores of the Canadian Occupational Performance Measure (COPM). The kinematic measurement was performed using a motion capture system during a standardized reach‐to‐grasp task. Endpoint performance variables and trunk displacement were calculated as kinematic outcomes. An inpatient rehabilitation program of 3 h/day was provided every day for 4 weeks between the two measurement points. The relationships between COPM scores and clinical/kinematic outcomes were examined by multiple regression analysis. Significance levels of p < 0.05 were used. Results: The results of the multiple regression analysis showed that the changes in STEF (β = 0.520, p = 0.005) and trunk compensation (β = −0.398, p = 0.024) were moderately related to the change in the COPM satisfaction (R2adj = 0.426, p = 0.001), while the change in UL FMA was not. Discussion: The changes in activity performance and trunk compensation were related to improved self‐perception of UL activity performance. Therapeutic management for activity performance and trunk compensation may be important for improving self‐perception of UL activity performance after stroke. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Holographic femtosecond laser processing performs high-speed parallel processing using a computergenerated hologram (CGH) displayed on a liquid crystal spatial light modulator. A critical issue is to precisely control the intensities of the diffraction peaks of the CGH. We propose a method of compensating for the spatial frequency response in the design of CGH using the optimal-rotation-angle method. By applying the proposed method, the uniformity of the diffraction peaks was improved. We demonstrate holographic femtosecond laser processing with two-dimensional and three-dimensional parallelism. OCIS codes: 090.1760, 090.2890, 140.7090, 230.6120, 220.4000.

Synchronous rotating cavitation is known as one type of cavitation instability, which causes synchronous shaft vibration or head loss. On the other hand, cavitation in cryogenic fluids has a thermodynamic effect on cavitating inducers because of thermal imbalance around the cavity. It improves cavitation performances due to delay of cavity growth. However, relationships between the thermodynamic effect and cavitation instabilities are still unknown. To investigate the influence of the thermodynamic effect on synchronous rotating cavitation, we conducted experiments in which liquid nitrogen was set at different temperatures (74 K, 78 K, and 83 K). We clarified the thermodynamic effect on synchronous rotating cavitation in terms of cavity length, fluid force, and liquid temperature. Synchronous rotating cavitation occurs at the critical cavity length of Lc/h [congruent to] 0.8, and the onset cavitation number shifts to a lower level due to the lag of cavity growth by the thermodynamic effect, which appears significantly with rising liquid temperature. Furthermore, we confirmed that the fluid force acting on the inducer notably increases under conditions of synchronous rotating cavitation.

For experimental investigations of the thermodynamic effect on a cavitating inducer, it is nesessary to observe the cavitation. However, visualizations of the cavitation are not so easy in cryogenic flow. For this reason, we estimated the cavity region in liquid nitrogen based on measurements of the pressure fluctuation near the blade tip. In the present study, we focused on the length of the tip cavitation as a cavitation indicator. Comparison of the tip cavity length in liquid nitrogen (80 K) with that in cold water (296 K) allowed us to estimate the strength of the thermodynamic effect. The degree of thermodynamic effect was found to increase with an increase of the cavity length. The temperature depression was estimated from the difference of the cavitation number of corresponding cavity condition (i.e., cavity length) between in liquid nitrogen and in cold water. The estimated temperature depression caused by vaporization increased rapidly when the cavity length extended over the throat. In addition, the estimated temperature inside the bubble nearly reached the temperature of the triple point when the pump performance deteriorated. [DOI: 10.1115/1.2427076]

We demonstrated holographic vector-wave femtosecond laser processing system based on a holographic manipulation of the light including amplitude, phase and polarization. The system performs a high-throughput and flexible fabrication of orientation-controlled nanostructures applied to material surface modification for control of a tribology, wettability, light reflectance and retardance. In this experiment, a polarization characteristic of the laser processing system was experimentally verified. In addition, parallel fabrication of orientation-controlled nanostructures using multifocal vector beams was performed.