Development of an Unpowered Energy Recycling Exoskeleton for Walking Assist

Abstract Background A reduction of energy used during walking could present a significant advantage for both healthy individuals and those with reduced mobility. Current unpowered exoskeletons have shown a net reduction in energy consumption for walking, but commonly with a clutch and assist on the heel. This paper presents the development of a lightweight energy recycling exoskeleton without a clutch and assists on the forefoot. Methods Eight healthy participants were tested during walking at 1.25 m/s on a treadmill wearing exoskeletons of four kinds of conditions. Electromyography (EMG) of the soleus muscle and gastrocnemius muscle were collected. Results Our results showed that the novel exoskeleton could make the peak and average EMG-values of soleus muscles drop about 13% and 8% respectively, and that of gastrocnemius muscles drop about 12% and 13% respectively. Conclusions The results of the present work demonstrate for the first time that the novel energy recycling exoskeleton can improve the walking economy, and this device could be feasibly worn for a broad range of individuals.

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Nutrition and muscle potassium: differential effect in rat slow and fast muscles

Canadian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology ◽

10.1139/y87-345 ◽

1987 ◽

Vol 65 (11) ◽

pp. 2188-2190 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

C. N. Fong ◽

H. L. Atwood ◽

K. N. Jeejeebhoy ◽

M. P. Charlton

Keyword(s):

Membrane Potential ◽

Soleus Muscle ◽

Activity Pattern ◽

Gastrocnemius Muscle ◽

Hypocaloric Diet ◽

Gastrocnemius Muscles ◽

Fast Muscles ◽

Slow And Fast Muscles

The effects of malnutrition on intracellular K+ activity, (aK)i, and membrane potential, Em, were measured by means of double-barrelled K+ -selective microlectrodes in the soleus and gastrocnemius muscles of the rat. (aK)i and Em were measured in vivo in normal anaesthetized animals and in rats subjected to one of two diet restrictions: a 2-day fast or a long-term hypocaloric diet. In the soleus muscle, (aK)i fell by similar amounts in both 2-day fasted and long-term hypocalorically fed rats, while Em depolarized significantly only in hypocalorically fed rats. In the gastrocnemius muscle, neither the 2-day fast nor the hypocaloric diet affected (aK)i or Em. It is suggested that the selective loss of K+ from the soleus muscle may be related to its activity pattern.

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PO-242 Effects of tail suspension on the expression of FNDC5/Irisin protein in rat skeletal muscle

Exercise Biochemistry Review ◽

10.14428/ebr.v1i5.10903 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 1 (5) ◽

Author(s):

Junzhi Sun ◽

Qiang Jiang

Keyword(s):

Skeletal Muscle ◽

Protein Expression ◽

Muscle Atrophy ◽

Muscle Fiber ◽

Soleus Muscle ◽

Gastrocnemius Muscle ◽

Skeletal Muscle Atrophy ◽

Type I ◽

Tail Suspension ◽

Gastrocnemius Muscles

Objective Irisin is a myokine secreted by skeletal muscle,and it is a type I membrane protein factor encoded by the protein 5(FNDC5) gene after cleavage and modification of the type III fibronectin component.Dependence of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma coactivator (PGC-1α).In this study, the potential association between skeletal muscle atrophy and irisin was explored by detecting changes in rat soleus and gastrocnemius irisin-related proteins during unloading. Methods Twenty male 8-week rats were randomly divided into control group C (n=10) and suspension group T (n=10). The tail suspension system (TSS) was used to perform a 2-week tail suspension experiment on the T group. Two weeks after the tail suspension test, the weights of the rats and the wet weights of soleus and gastrocnemius muscles were measured. HE staining was performed under light microscope to observe the changes of muscle fiber area of skeletal muscle in each group. Western-blot was used to detect the protein expression of MURF1, PGC-1α and FNDC5 in soleus muscle and gastrocnemius muscle of each group. Results (1) The soleus muscle and gastrocnemius muscle mass in T group decreased by 28.6% (P<0.05) and 25.8% (P<0.01), respectively. (2) The cross-sectional area of soleus muscle and gastrocnemius muscle fiber in T group decreased by 20.5% (P<0.01) and 25.2% (P<0.05), respectively. (3) The MURF1 protein expression in the gastrocnemius muscle and soleus muscle in the T group was significantly higher than that in the C group (P<0.01). (4) The expression of PGC-1α protein in gastrocnemius muscle and soleus muscle of T group was significantly lower than that in group C (P<0.05). (5) The expression of FNDC5 protein in gastrocnemius muscle and soleus muscle in T group was significantly lower than that in group C (P<0.05). Conclusions After sole tail suspension for two weeks, the soleus and gastrocnemius muscles of the rats were obviously atrophied, and soleus muscle atrophy was more obvious. Skeletal muscle atrophy may be related to increased expression of MURF1. The decrease of FNDC5/Irisin content may be related to the occurrence of skeletal muscle atrophy, and PGC-1α also may be involved in this process.

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Buried Narratives: Exhuming the Mother's Story in Oliver Twist

Victoriographies ◽

10.3366/vic.2018.0317 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 8 (3) ◽

pp. 247-266

Author(s):

Michelle L. Wilson

Keyword(s):

Social Change ◽

Maternal Inheritance ◽

The Novel ◽

Poor Law ◽

The Family ◽

The Law ◽

First Time ◽

Critical Consideration

Initially, Oliver Twist (1839) might seem representative of the archetypal male social plot, following an orphan and finding him a place by discovering the father and settling the boy within his inheritance. But Agnes Fleming haunts this narrative, undoing its neat, linear transmission. This reconsideration of maternal inheritance and plot in the novel occurs against the backdrop of legal and social change. I extend the critical consideration of the novel's relationship to the New Poor Law by thinking about its reflection on the bastardy clauses. And here, of course, is where the mother enters. Under the bastardy clauses, the responsibility for economic maintenance of bastard children was, for the first time, legally assigned to the mother, relieving the father of any and all obligation. Oliver Twist manages to critique the bastardy clauses for their release of the father, while simultaneously embracing the placement of the mother at the head of the family line. Both Oliver and the novel thus suggest that it is the mother's story that matters, her name through which we find our own. And by containing both plots – that of the father and the mother – Oliver Twist reveals the violence implicit in traditional modes of inheritance in the novel and under the law.

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Application of Novel Low Current OBIRCH Amplifier and Nanoprobing to Identify Subtle Leakages in Advanced Node Technologies

10.31399/asm.cp.istfa2018p0303 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Satish Kodali ◽

Liangshan Chen ◽

Yuting Wei ◽

Tanya Schaeffer ◽

Chong Khiam Oh

Keyword(s):

Signal To Noise Ratio ◽

Semiconductor Industry ◽

Fault Isolation ◽

Ring Oscillator ◽

High Signal ◽

The Novel ◽

Resistance Change ◽

Three Samples ◽

Relative Threshold ◽

First Time

Abstract Optical beam induced resistance change (OBIRCH) is a very well-adapted technique for static fault isolation in the semiconductor industry. Novel low current OBIRCH amplifier is used to facilitate safe test condition requirements for advanced nodes. This paper shows the differences between the earlier and novel generation OBIRCH amplifiers. Ring oscillator high standby leakage samples are analyzed using the novel generation amplifier. High signal to noise ratio at applied low bias and current levels on device under test are shown on various samples. Further, a metric to demonstrate the SNR to device performance is also discussed. OBIRCH analysis is performed on all the three samples for nanoprobing of, and physical characterization on, the leakage. The resulting spots were calibrated and classified. It is noted that the calibration metric can be successfully used for the first time to estimate the relative threshold voltage of individual transistors in advanced process nodes.

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Rhythmic Prose in Imperial Greek Literature

10.1093/oso/9780198821717.003.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

G. O. Hutchinson

Keyword(s):

The Novel ◽

Greek Literature ◽

System A ◽

First Time

The chapter looks at the division between poetry and prose in ancient and other literatures, and shows the importance of rhythmic patterning in ancient prose. The development of rhythmic prose in Greek and Latin is sketched, the system explained and illustrated (from Latin). It is firmly established, for the first time, which of the main Greek non-Christian authors 31 BC–AD 300 write rhythmically. The method takes a substantial sample of random sentence-endings (usually 400) from each of a large number of Imperial authors; it compares that sample with one sample of the same size (400) drawn randomly from a range of authors earlier than the invention of this rhythmic system. A particular sort of X2-test is applied. Many Imperial authors, it emerges, write rhythmically; many do not. The genres most likely to offer rhythmic writing are, unexpectedly, narrative: historiography and the novel.

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Kidnapped

10.1093/owc/9780199674213.001.0001 ◽

2014 ◽

Author(s):

Robert Louis Stevenson ◽

Ian Duncan

Keyword(s):

West Coast ◽

Historical Novel ◽

The Novel ◽

The West ◽

Scottish Highlands ◽

Cross Country ◽

First Time ◽

Adventure Stories

Your bed shall be the moorcock’s, and your life shall be like the hunted deer’s, and ye shall sleep with your hand upon your weapons.’ Tricked out of his inheritance, shanghaied, shipwrecked off the west coast of Scotland, David Balfour finds himself fleeing for his life in the dangerous company of Jacobite outlaw and suspected assassin Alan Breck Stewart. Their unlikely friendship is put to the test as they dodge government troops across the Scottish Highlands. Set in the aftermath of the 1745 rebellion, Kidnapped transforms the Romantic historical novel into the modern thriller. Its heart-stopping scenes of cross-country pursuit, distilled to a pure intensity in Stevenson’s prose, have become a staple of adventure stories from John Buchan to Alfred Hitchcock and Ian Fleming. Kidnapped remains as exhilarating today as when it was first published in 1886. This new edition is based on the 1895 text, incorporating Stevenson’s last thoughts about the novel before his death. It includes Stevenson’s ‘Note to Kidnapped’, reprinted for the first time since 1922.

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Perceptual insensitivity to the modulation of interoceptive signals in depression, anxiety, and substance use disorders

Scientific Reports ◽

10.1038/s41598-021-81307-3 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Ryan Smith ◽

◽

Justin S. Feinstein ◽

Rayus Kuplicki ◽

Katherine L. Forthman ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Machine Learning ◽

Substance Use ◽

Individual Differences ◽

Substance Use Disorders ◽

Breath Hold ◽

Healthy Individuals ◽

Performance Improvements ◽

Heartbeat Perception ◽

Minimal Improvement ◽

Healthy Participants

AbstractThis study employed a series of heartbeat perception tasks to assess the hypothesis that cardiac interoceptive processing in individuals with depression/anxiety (N = 221), and substance use disorders (N = 136) is less flexible than that of healthy individuals (N = 53) in the context of physiological perturbation. Cardiac interoception was assessed via heartbeat tapping when: (1) guessing was allowed; (2) guessing was not allowed; and (3) experiencing an interoceptive perturbation (inspiratory breath hold) expected to amplify cardiac sensation. Healthy participants showed performance improvements across the three conditions, whereas those with depression/anxiety and/or substance use disorder showed minimal improvement. Machine learning analyses suggested that individual differences in these improvements were negatively related to anxiety sensitivity, but explained relatively little variance in performance. These results reveal a perceptual insensitivity to the modulation of interoceptive signals that was evident across several common psychiatric disorders, suggesting that interoceptive deficits in the realm of psychopathology manifest most prominently during states of homeostatic perturbation.

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Methylphenidate reduces orienting bias in healthy individuals

Journal of Psychopharmacology ◽

10.1177/0269881121996884 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 026988112199688

Author(s):

Leehe Peled-Avron ◽

Hagar Gelbard Goren ◽

Noa Brande-Eilat ◽

Shirel Dorman-Ilan ◽

Aviv Segev ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Healthy Subjects ◽

Asymmetric Effect ◽

Healthy Individuals ◽

Double Blind ◽

Spatial Orienting ◽

Individual Trait ◽

Neurological Patients ◽

Dopamine Signaling ◽

First Time ◽

Neural Effect

Background: Healthy individuals show subtle orienting bias, a phenomenon known as pseudoneglect, reflected in a tendency to direct greater attention toward one hemispace. Accumulating evidence indicates that this bias is an individual trait, and attention is preferentially directed contralaterally to the hemisphere with higher dopamine signaling. Administration of methylphenidate (MPH), a dopamine transporter inhibitor, was shown to normalize aberrant spatial attention bias in psychiatric and neurological patients, suggesting that the reduced orienting bias following administration of MPH reflects an asymmetric effect of the drug, increasing extracellular dopamine in the hemisphere with lower dopamine signaling. Aim: We predicted that, similarly to its effect on patients with brain pathology, MPH will reduce the orienting bias in healthy subjects. Methods: To test this hypothesis, we examined the behavioral effects of a single dose (20 mg) of MPH on orienting bias in 36 healthy subjects (18 females) in a randomized, double-blind placebo-controlled, within-subject design, using the greyscales task, which has been shown to detect subtle attentional biases in both patients and healthy individuals. Results/outcomes: Results demonstrate that healthy individuals vary in both direction and magnitude of spatial orienting bias and show reduced magnitude of orienting bias following MPH administration, regardless of the initial direction of asymmetry. Conclusions/interpretations: Our findings reveal, for the first time in healthy subjects, that MPH decreases spatial orienting bias in an asymmetric manner. Given the well-documented association between orienting bias and asymmetric dopamine signaling, these findings also suggest that MPH might exert a possible asymmetric neural effect in the healthy brain.

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European Biological Variation Study (EuBIVAS): within- and between-subject biological variation estimates for serum thyroid biomarkers based on weekly samplings from 91 healthy participants

Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (CCLM) ◽

10.1515/cclm-2020-1885 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 0 (0) ◽

Author(s):

Michela Bottani ◽

Aasne K. Aarsand ◽

Giuseppe Banfi ◽

Massimo Locatelli ◽

Abdurrahman Coşkun ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Large Scale ◽

Thyroid Stimulating Hormone ◽

Biological Variation ◽

Healthy Individuals ◽

Serum Samples ◽

Free Triiodothyronine ◽

Performance Specifications ◽

Study Population ◽

Variance Homogeneity ◽

Healthy Participants

Abstract Objectives Thyroid biomarkers are fundamental for the diagnosis of thyroid disorders and for the monitoring and treatment of patients with these diseases. The knowledge of biological variation (BV) is important to define analytical performance specifications (APS) and reference change values (RCV). The aim of this study was to deliver BV estimates for thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH), free thyroxine (FT4), free triiodothyronine (FT3), thyroglobulin (TG), and calcitonin (CT). Methods Analyses were performed on serum samples obtained from the European Biological Variation Study population (91 healthy individuals from six European laboratories; 21–69 years) on the Roche Cobas e801 at the San Raffaele Hospital (Milan, Italy). All samples from each individual were evaluated in duplicate within a single run. The BV estimates with 95% CIs were obtained by CV-ANOVA, after analysis of variance homogeneity and outliers. Results The within-subject (CV I ) BV estimates were for TSH 17.7%, FT3 5.0%, FT4 4.8%, TG 10.3, and CT 13.0%, all significantly lower than those reported in the literature. No significant differences were observed for BV estimates between men and women. Conclusions The availability of updated, in the case of CT not previously published, BV estimates for thyroid markers based on the large scale EuBIVAS study allows for refined APS and associated RCV applicable in the diagnosis and management of thyroid and related diseases.

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New terpenoid metabolites from the skin extracts, an egg mass, and dietary sponges of the Northeastern Pacific dorid nudibranch Cadlinaluteomarginata

Canadian Journal of Chemistry ◽

10.1139/v97-094 ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 75 (6) ◽

pp. 773-789 ◽

Cited By ~ 34

Author(s):

Eric J. Dumdei ◽

Julia Kubanek ◽

John E. Coleman ◽

Jana Pika ◽

Raymond J. Andersen ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Structure Elucidation ◽

Egg Mass ◽

The Novel ◽

Egg Masses ◽

Northeastern Pacific ◽

First Time

Chemical investigations of Cadlinaluteomarginata skin extracts, egg masses, and dietary sponges have led to the identification of the novel terpenoids cadlinaldehyde (30), spongian 32, seco-spongian 35, 20-acetoxy-12-marginatone (38), and lutenolide (39) from the nudibranch skin extracts, the new drimane sesquiterpenoid 1α,2α-diacetoxyalbicanyl acetate (40) from the nudibranch's egg mass, and the new sesquiterpenoids O-methyl-9-oxofurodysininlactone (47), 2-oxomicro-cionin-2-lactone (48), and O-methyl-2-oxomicrocionin-2-lactone (49), from the dietary sponge Pleraplysilla sp. The known terpenoids furodysinin (1), furodysin (16), marginatafuran (21), and 9,11-dihydrogracillin A (37), which have been frequently isolated from C. luteomarginata skin extracts, were found for the first time in extracts of the dietary sponges Pleraplysilla sp. and Aplysilla sp. One of the new terpenoids, cadlinaldehyde (30), has an unprecedented degraded sesterterpenoid skeleton. Keywords: nudibranch, sponge, terpenoids, structure elucidation.

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