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The Task Force on Global Guidelines for Falls in Older Adults has put forward a fall risk stratification tool for community-dwelling older adults. This tool takes the form of a flowchart and is based on expert opinion and evidence. It divides the population into three risk categories and recommends specific preventive interventions or treatments for each category. In this commentary, we share our insights on the design, validation, usability and potential impact of this fall risk stratification tool with the aim of guiding future research., (© The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Geriatrics Society. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Objective: Neurotechnology can contribute to the usability assessment of products by providing objective measures of neural workload and can uncover usability impediments that are not consciously perceived by test persons. In this study, the neural processing effort imposed on the viewer of 3D television by shutter glasses was quantified as a function of shutter frequency. In particular, we sought to determine the critical shutter frequency at which the 'neural flicker' vanishes, such that visual fatigue due to this additional neural effort can be prevented by increasing the frequency of the system., Approach: Twenty-three participants viewed an image through 3D shutter glasses, while multichannel electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded. In total ten shutter frequencies were employed, selected individually for each participant to cover the range below, at and above the threshold of flicker perception. The source of the neural flicker correlate was extracted using independent component analysis and the flicker impact on the visual cortex was quantified by decoding the state of the shutter from the EEG., Main Result: Effects of the shutter glasses were traced in the EEG up to around 67 Hz-about 20 Hz over the flicker perception threshold-and vanished at the subsequent frequency level of 77 Hz., Significance: The impact of the shutter glasses on the visual cortex can be detected by neurotechnology even when a flicker is not reported by the participants. Potential impact. Increasing the shutter frequency from the usual 50 Hz or 60 Hz to 77 Hz reduces the risk of visual fatigue and thus improves shutter-glass-based 3D usability.

Background: Noninvasive positive-pressure ventilation (NPPV) unloads respiratory muscles. Spontaneous-breathing ventilation modes require patient effort to trigger the ventilator, whereas controlled modes potentially economize on patient triggering effort and thus achieve more complete respiratory muscle rest. Data on controlled NPPV have not been published to date. We hypothesize that controlled ventilation is feasible in patients with hypercapnic chronic obstructive pulmonary disease., Methods: We measured blood gas values, respiratory muscle strength, spontaneous breathing pattern, and lung function before and after a 3-month period of NPPV in 305 patients (213 male, mean +/- SD age 61.3 +/- 8.6 y). The subjects used a controlled NPPV mode when they could tolerate it., Results: Ninety-one percent of the patients were able to adapt to a controlled NPPV mode. In those patients, daytime P(CO(2)) decreased from 56.7 +/- 7.5 mm Hg to 47.5 +/- 6.6 mm Hg (p < 0.001) and P(O(2)) increased from 49.2 +/- 8.8 mm Hg to 56.2 +/- 8.5 mm Hg (p < 0.001). Their mean maximum inspiratory pressure increased from 42.3 +/- 16.9 cm H(2)O to 48.4 +/- 18.0 cm H(2)O (p < 0.001). Their mean vital capacity increased from 1.89 +/- 0.62 L to 1.99 +/- 0.67 L (p = 0.004). And their spontaneous breathing pattern became less rapid and shallow., Conclusions: Controlled NPPV is feasible in patients with hypercapnic chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. We observed improved blood gas values, lung function, and inspiratory muscle strength.

Binding of integrins to proteins of the extracellular matrix (ECM) provides structural and signaling information for biological processes such as cell proliferation, migration, neurite outgrowth, and differentiation. Integrins represent a family of heterodimeric transmembrane cell surface receptors. Besides connecting the ECM with the cytoskeleton, integrins also induce various signaling pathways in response to ligand binding. Integrin ligation leads to cytoplasmic protein-protein interactions requiring both integrin cytoplasmic tails. These sequences are initiation points for focal adhesion formation and subsequent signal transduction cascades. In this study, we addressed the question of whether the short cytoplasmic tail of the alpha(3) integrin subunit of alpha(3)beta(1) integrin is required for alpha(3)beta(1) integrin-dependent processes. For this purpose, cDNA representing the extracellular and transmembrane domain of the interleukin 2 receptor (IL2R) alpha subunit and the cytoplasmic sequence of the alpha(3) integrin subunit was transfected into PC12 cells. Autonomous expression of the cytoplasmic alpha(3) tail does not affect attachment but leads to inhibition of neuronal differentiation on laminin 5. This indicates that the cytoplasmic alpha(3) sequence is not required for cell attachment but is necessary for long-term adhesion and for the reorganization of the cytoskeleton that precedes neuronal differentiation. Inhibition of neurite outgrowth by chimeric IL2R-alpha(3) can be rescued by treatment of transfected cells with the pharmacological inhibitor Y27632, which inhibits the RhoA downstream effector Rho kinase alpha.