Task-Contingent Persistence is Related to Better Performance-Based Measures in Patients with Chronic Musculoskeletal Pain

Purpose. Pacing, avoidance, and overdoing are considered the three main behavioral strategies, also labeled activity patterns. Their relationship with functioning of patients with chronic pain is debated. The purpose of this study was to measure the influence of activity patterns on lifting tasks commonly used in daily life. Method. We performed a monocentric observational study and included patients performing Functional Capacity Evaluation (FCE). Avoidance, pacing, and persistence were assessed with using the Patterns of Activity Measures–Pain (POAM-P). Maximal safe performance was measured for floor-to-waist, waist-to-overhead, horizontal lift, and carrying with dominant-hand tests according to the FCE guidelines. Descriptive statistics, associations of POAM-P subscales with various sociodemographic variables, and correlations are presented. Standard multiple linear regression models were applied to measure the associations between FCE tests and POAM-P subscales, adjusting for the following potential confounders: age, gender, body mass index (BMI), pain severity, trauma severity, localization of injury, and education. Results. Persistence was significantly positively associated with performance on the 4 FCE tests: floor-to-waist (coefficient = 0.20; p=0.001), waist-to-overhead (coefficient = 0.13; p=0.004), horizontal lift (coefficient = 0.31; p≤0.001), and dominant-handed lifting (coefficient = 0.19; p=0.001). Pacing was found to have a negative influence on the carrying dominant-hand test (coefficient = –0.14; p=0.034), and avoidance was not found to have an influence on the 4 FCE tests. Conclusion. This study shows that task-persistence pattern is positively associated with physical performance in FCE, whereas pacing can have a negative influence on some tests.

The Design of PLC Control of Multi Degree of Freedom Landscape Showcase

In order to make the different angles of the viewers get the best visual effects, the paper proposed a lift tilt rotary landscape showcase which can show all kinds with multi-degree of freedom. Showcase uses the electric motor to drive and PLC applications in the system which can be programmed to control various types of mechanical components, to achieve the function of lifting and descending of 4 position, 8 position, and 12 position, horizontal lift and rotating in 360-degree. The test and operation results demonstrate that the showcase meets the specific functional demand of design.

Horizontal Lifts of some Geometric Objects to the Bundle of Pairs of Volume Forms

In this paper we present a bundle of pairs of volume forms V2. We describe horizontal lift of a tensor of type (1; 1) and we show that horizontal lift of an almost complex structure on a manifold M is an almost complex structure on the bundle V2. Next we give conditions under which the almost complex structure on V 2 is integrable. In the second part we find horizontal lift of vector fields, tensorfields of type (0; 2) and (2; 0), Riemannian metrics and we determine a family of a t-connections on the bundle of pairs of volume forms. At the end, we consider some properties of the horizontally lifted vector fields and certain infinitesimal transformations.