Previous colonic resection is a risk factor for surgical relapse in Crohn’s disease

Digestive and Liver Diseases

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Incidence and risk factors for dysphagia following non-traumatic subarachnoid hemorrhage: A retrospective cohort study

Dysphagia

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The Oldowan industry from Swartkrans cave, South Africa, and its relevance for the African Oldowan

Publication date: Available online 7 August 2018

Source: Journal of Human Evolution

Author(s): Kathleen Kuman, Morris B. Sutton, Travis Rayne Pickering, Jason L. Heaton

Abstract

The oldest recognized artifacts at the Swartkrans cave hominid-bearing site in South Africa have long been known to occur in the Lower Bank of Member 1, now dated with the cosmogenic nuclide burial method to ca. 1.8–2.19 Ma. However, the affinities of this industry have been debated due to small sample size. In this paper we present newly excavated material from the Lower Bank retrieved since 2005 in the Swartkrans Paleoanthropological Research Project. The sample is now large enough to confirm its affinity with the Oldowan industrial complex. The assemblage is highly expedient and core reduction strategies are largely casual. Although freehand flaking is present, the bipolar technique is most significant, even in non-quartz raw materials. The Swartkrans assemblage shows some significant contrasts with the Sterkfontein Oldowan, ca. 2.18 Ma, which can be explained by its closer proximity to raw material sources, its somewhat different geographic context, and its more expedient nature. The Swartkrans Oldowan now provides us with the first good indication of Oldowan variability in southern Africa, where only two sizeable assemblages have thus far been discovered. Comparisons are made with other sites across Africa that help to place this variability within our overall understanding of the Oldowan industrial complex.

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Presence of 236U and 239,240Pu in soils from Southern Hemisphere

Publication date: December 2018

Source: Journal of Environmental Radioactivity, Volume 192

Author(s): S. Salmani-Ghabeshi, E. Chamizo, M. Christl, C. Miró, E. Pinilla-Gil, F. Cereceda-Balic

Abstract

²³⁶U, ²³⁹Pu and ²⁴⁰Pu are present in soils mainly as a result of the local- and global-fallout from the atmospheric nuclear weapons tests carried out mainly in the 1950's and 1960's. In this work we provide new data on the presence of ²³⁶U and ^239,240Pu in surface soils (i.e. up to 5 cm depth) from Chile and Africa. The results were obtained by low-energy Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS). In the case of the Chilean samples, ²³⁶U/²³⁹Pu atom ratios show a high variability and are in general higher than the reported value for the global fallout in the Northern Hemisphere, ranging from 0.2 to 1.5. The ²³⁶U atomic concentrations range from 3.5 × 10⁶ to 9.1 × 10⁶ atoms/g, and are at least two orders of magnitude lower than the reported values in the Northern Hemisphere. The measured ²⁴⁰Pu/²³⁹Pu atom ratio in soils from South-Africa and Mozambique are of about 0.17, in agreement with the expected one for global-fallout at those coordinates. To best knowledge of the authors the present work is the first publication on ²³⁶U concentrations and ²³⁶U/²³⁹Pu atom ratios in soils from South-America and Africa.

Graphical abstract

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The baseline speed of 10-m gait predicts ambulatory discharge for hospitalized frail elderly after DOPPO rehabilitation

The discharge of elderly patients from hospital on the basis of their independent gait program (DOPPO) is a new rehabilitation strategy for physically frail hospitalized elderly that aims to recover independent gait and to achieve ambulatory discharge. We retrospectively investigated baseline determinants of physical measures associated closely with the 6-min walking distance (6MWD) after DOPPO. Participants were 137 consecutive elderly inpatients, irrespective of the causative disease (mean age: 82±7 years; 76 women), who had a Short Physical Performance Battery (SPPB) score of less than 12 and low independent walking capacity. The rehabilitation comprised muscle stretching, muscle strengthening, balance training, and endurance exercise, including walking. The exercises were gradually increased until the goal of ambulatory discharge was attained. The SPPB, isometric knee-extension muscle strength (IKEMS), functional reach test (FRT), one-leg stance time (OLST), and the 10-m gait speed (TMGS) were measured, before and after the DOPPO intervention, and their association with the 6MWD was evaluated. All participants achieved ambulatory discharge, requiring on average 35±19 hospital days and 32±18 h of rehabilitation. The SPPB, IKEMS, FRT, OLST, and TMGS improved. The SPPB scores increased from 7.1 at baseline to 9.2 at discharge. Eighty-eight patients completed the 6MWD. The SPPB, IKEMS, FRT, OLST, and TMGS were strongly associated with the 6MWD. Only the baseline TMGS and SPPB predicted the 6MWD, with a cut-off TMGS value of 0.84 m/s providing the best prediction of achieving a distance of more than 300 m on the 6MWD. Thus, the baseline TMGS is the best prediction of the ambulatory outcome after the present DOPPO rehabilitation. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives License 4.0 (CCBY-NC-ND), where it is permissible to download and share the work provided it is properly cited. The work cannot be changed in any way or used commercially without permission from the journal. https://ift.tt/1hexVwJ Correspondence to Hiroaki Obata, Division of Rehabilitation and Medicine, Niigata-minami Hospital, 1-7-1, Meike-Shinmei, Chuo-ku, Niigata 950-8601, Japan Tel: +81 252 842 511; fax: +81 252 842 080; e-mail: obata00@gmail.com Received April 5, 2018 Accepted July 13, 2018 Copyright © 2018 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.

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A comparison of the usability of a standard and an age-friendly smartphone launcher: experimental evidence from usability testing with older adults

Age-friendly smartphone launchers are tools designed to enhance smartphone handling among older adults with cognitive and functional limitations. Although evidence exists about the positive effects of age-friendly smartphone launchers on older adults' usability performance in general, little is known about how the design and interface complexity of these launchers affect their interface usability effectiveness and efficiency compared with standard Android smartphone interfaces. Thus, in this study, a randomized crossover experiment involving 50 older smartphone users, aged 60 years and above, was guided by the principles of summative usability testing to assess whether an age-friendly launcher performs better than a standard Android launcher performs and to investigate the relationship between the user interface complexity and usability performance of launchers. The results of usability tests in which each participant solved 10 tasks on both launchers indicate that the two tested launchers had comparable effectiveness (i.e. completeness with which participants achieved the test tasks' goals), whereas the age-friendly launcher marginally outperformed its standard Android counterpart in terms of efficiency (i.e. the amount of time used by participants to solve the test tasks). The results also demonstrate that lower user interface complexity is associated with higher effectiveness and efficiency, suggesting that age-friendly smartphone launchers might lead to higher adoption rates of smartphones among older adults if interface designers could reduce their cognitive complexity by limiting the number of steps and alternative paths for task completion. Correspondence to Andraž Petrovčič, PhD, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Kardeljeva ploščad 5, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia Tel: +386 15 805 200; fax: +386 15 805 101; e-mail: andraz.petrovcic@fdv.uni-lj.si Received May 25, 2018 Accepted July 13, 2018 Copyright © 2018 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Therapeutic electrical stimulation and immune status in healthy men

In physical and rehabilitation medicine, there are few reports on the effects of therapeutic low-frequency electrical stimulation on the immune response of the organism, even though electrical stimulation is used widely in clinical practice and sports medicine. The aim of our study was to examine the possible immunological consequences of moderate transcutaneous neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) for quadriceps muscle strengthening in healthy individuals. The study included twelve healthy male adult volunteers (mean age 42 years) without contraindications for electrical stimulation. At the beginning and immediately after a 20-min session of NMES of quadriceps muscles, peripheral blood was collected to analyse the biochemical blood components (creatinine, creatine kinase, estimated glomerular filtration rate, cortisol), differential white blood cell count and immunological parameters. The intensity of NMES was set at maximum tolerance, eliciting on average about one-sixth of the maximum voluntary isometric contraction of the same leg. No statistically significant differences in the average group level were found in any of the measured biochemical blood components, white blood cell count or immunological parameters after the NMES session. On an individual level, the changes in creatine kinase, estimated glomerular filtration rate, basophils and some immunological parameters correlated with changes in the cortisol level. We can conclude that moderate transcutaneous low-frequency electrical stimulation for quadriceps muscle strengthening used in our study did not induce essential changes in immune status in healthy men. Correspondence to Primož Novak, MD, PhD, University Rehabilitation Institute, Linhartova 51, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia Tel: +386 1475 8207; fax: +386 1437 2070; e-mail: primoz.novak@ir-rs.si Received July 6, 2018 Accepted July 18, 2018 Copyright © 2018 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.

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