The Stepping Threshold Test for assessing reactive balance discriminates between older adult fallers and non-fallers.

Introduction: The ability to respond effectively to external perturbations is crucial for avoiding falls. The Stepping Threshold Test (STT) has been developed to assess this reactive balance, but its ability to discriminate between fallers and non-fallers is still unsubstantiated. This study aimed to evaluate the discriminant validity of the STT in distinguishing fallers and non-fallers and its convergent validity.

Genetic Algorithms for Feature Selection in the Classification of COVID-19 Patients.

Background: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome CoronaVirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection can cause feared consequences, such as affecting microcirculatory activity. The combined use of HRV analysis, genetic algorithms, and machine learning classifiers can be helpful in better understanding the characteristics of microcirculation that are mainly affected by COVID-19 infection.

Methods: This study aimed to verify the presence of microcirculation alterations in patients with COVID-19 infection, performing Heart Rate Variability (HRV) parameters analysis extracted from PhotoPlethysmoGraphy (PPG) signals.

Electrohydraulic musculoskeletal robotic leg for agile, adaptive, yet energy-efficient locomotion.

Robotic locomotion in unstructured terrain demands an agile, adaptive, and energy-efficient architecture. To traverse such terrains, legged robots use rigid electromagnetic motors and sensorized drivetrains to adapt to the environment actively. These systems struggle to compete with animals that excel through their agile and effortless motion in natural environments.

The impact of controlled breathing on autonomic nervous system modulation: analysis using phase-rectified signal averaging, entropy and heart rate variability.

The present study investigated how breathing stimuli affect both non-linear and linear metrics of the autonomic nervous system (ANS).The analysed dataset consisted of 70 young, healthy volunteers, in whom arterial blood pressure (ABP) was measured noninvasively during 5 min sessions of controlled breathing at three different frequencies: 6, 10 and 15 breaths min. COconcentration and respiratory rate were continuously monitored throughout the controlled breathing sessions.

Unsupervised Learning of Eye State Prototypes for Semantically Rich Blinking Detection.

Blinking contributes to the health and protection of the eye and also holds potential in the context of muscle or nerve disorder diagnosis. Traditional methods of classifying eye blinking as open or closed are insufficient, as they do not capture medical-relevant aspects like closure speed, duration, or percentage. The issue could be solved by reliably detecting blinking intervals in high-temporal recordings.

Synchronous recording of magnetocardiographic and electrocardiographic signals.

We present a system for simultaneous recording of the electrocardiogram and the magnetocardiogram. The measurement system contained of printed carbon electrodes and SERF magnetometer. The use of this system confirms that the position of the end of the magnetic T wave extends further than the electric T wave, which is an important indicator for the diagnosis of cardiological patients and for drug arrhythmogenicity.

[Therapy of physical frailty].

As an overarching geriatric syndrome, frailty describes a potentially reversible transitional stage between functional autonomy and irreversible disability. Thus, frailty addresses a "window of opportunity" in which functional limitations can be successfully treated. This article provides an overview of the therapeutic approaches and their scientific evidence.

Vision-controlled jetting for composite systems and robots.

Recreating complex structures and functions of natural organisms in a synthetic form is a long-standing goal for humanity. The aim is to create actuated systems with high spatial resolutions and complex material arrangements that range from elastic to rigid. Traditional manufacturing processes struggle to fabricate such complex systems.

Clinical teaching in applied health science: effects of a student-led journal club on aging and physical activity.

Background: This project aims to investigate the effects of a student-led journal club on students' critical thinking and clinical application skills in the academic field of aging and physical activity.

Methods: A pre-post design analysis with data collected in four successive cohorts of the program M.Sc.

Finite velocity of ECG signal propagation: preliminary theory, results of a pilot experiment and consequences for medical diagnosis.

A satisfactory model of the biopotentials propagating through the human body is essential for medical diagnostics, particularly for cardiovascular diseases. In our study, we develop the theory, that the propagation of biopotential of cardiac origin (ECG signal) may be treated as the propagation of low-frequency endogenous electromagnetic wave through the human body. We show that within this approach, the velocity of the ECG signal can be theoretically estimated, like for any other wave and physical medium, from the refraction index of the tissue in an appropriate frequency range.

Heart rate variability comparison between young males after 4-6 weeks from the end of SARS-CoV-2 infection and controls.

Due to the prolonged inflammatory process induced by infection of the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), indices of autonomic nervous system dysfunction may persist long after viral shedding. Previous studies showed significant changes in HRV parameters in severe (including fatal) infection of SARS-CoV-2. However, few studies have comprehensively examined HRV in individuals who previously presented as asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic cases of COVID-19.

Automatic Objective Severity Grading of Peripheral Facial Palsy Using 3D Radial Curves Extracted from Point Clouds.

Peripheral facial palsy is an illness in which a one-sided ipsilateral paralysis of the facial muscles occurs due to nerve damage. Medical experts utilize visual severity grading methods to estimate this damage. Our algorithm-based method provides an objective grading using 3D point clouds.

Microfluidic Tissue Engineering and Bio-Actuation.

Bio-hybrid technologies aim to replicate the unique capabilities of biological systems that could surpass advanced artificial technologies. Soft bio-hybrid robots consist of synthetic and living materials and have the potential to self-assemble, regenerate, work autonomously, and interact safely with other species and the environment. Cells require a sufficient exchange of nutrients and gases, which is guaranteed by convection and diffusive transport through liquid media.

Influence of Nuclear Localization Sequences on the Intracellular Fate of Gold Nanoparticles.

Directing nanoparticles to the nucleus by attachment of nuclear localization sequences (NLS) is an aim in many applications. Gold nanoparticles modified with two different NLS were studied while crossing barriers of intact cells, including uptake, endosomal escape, and nuclear translocation. By imaging of the nanoparticles and by characterization of their molecular interactions with surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), it is shown that nuclear translocation strongly depends on the particular incubation conditions.

Asymmetric multiscale multifractal analysis (AMMA) of heart rate variability.

The physiological activity of the heart is controlled and modulated mostly by the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems. Heart rate variability (HRV) analysis is therefore used to observe fluctuations that reflect changes in the activity in these two branches. Knowing that acceleration and deceleration patterns in heart rate fluctuations are asymmetrically distributed, the ability to analyze HRV asymmetry was introduced into MMA.

Scaling Up Soft Robotics: A Meter-Scale, Modular, and Reconfigurable Soft Robotic System.

Today's use of large-scale industrial robots is enabling extraordinary achievement on the assembly line, but these robots remain isolated from the humans on the factory floor because they are very powerful, and thus dangerous to be around. In contrast, the soft robotics research community has proposed soft robots that are safe for human environments. The current state of the art enables the creation of small-scale soft robotic devices.

Sub-cycle atomic-scale forces coherently control a single-molecule switch.

Scanning probe techniques can leverage atomically precise forces to sculpt matter at surfaces, atom by atom. These forces have been applied quasi-statically to create surface structures and influence chemical processes, but exploiting local dynamics to realize coherent control on the atomic scale remains an intriguing prospect. Chemical reactions, conformational changes and desorption have been followed on ultrafast timescales, but directly exerting femtosecond forces on individual atoms to selectively induce molecular motion has yet to be realized.

X-ray tomography shows the varying three-dimensional morphology of gold nanoaggregates in the cellular ultrastructure.

The processing of nanoparticles inside eukaryotic cells is a key step in many wanted and unwanted nano-bio-interactions. In order to understand the effects and functions of the intracellular aggregates that are formed, their properties and their interaction with the biological matrix must be characterized. High quality synchrotron soft X-ray tomography (SXT) data were obtained from cells containing gold nanoparticles that are commonly applied as tools for optical probing or drug delivery.

A quantitative model of relation between respiratory-related blood pressure fluctuations and the respiratory sinus arrhythmia.

In order to propose an interpretation of recent experimental findings concerning short-term variability of arterial blood pressure (ABP), heart rate variability (HRV), and their dependence on body posture, we develop a qualitative dynamical model of the short-term cardiovascular variability at respiratory frequency (HF). It shows the respiratory-related blood pressure fluctuations in relation to the respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA). Results of the model-based analysis show that the observed phenomena may be interpreted as buffering of the respiratory-related ABP fluctuations by heart rate (HR) fluctuations, i.

A consensus statement on how to conduct inclusive health research.

Background: The active involvement of people with intellectual disabilities in research, or inclusive research, is relatively common. However, inclusive health research is less common, even though it is expected to lead to appropriate healthcare and increased quality of life. Inclusive health research can build upon lessons learned from inclusive research.

Correction: Patients with Acute Myeloid Leukemia Admitted to Intensive Care Units: Outcome Analysis and Risk Prediction.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.

Frontline therapy of acute promyelocytic leukemia: Randomized comparison of ATRA and intensified chemotherapy versus ATRA and anthracyclines.

Objectives: Randomized comparison of two treatment strategies in frontline therapy of acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL): all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA) and double induction intensified by high-dose cytosine arabinoside (HD ara-C) (German AMLCG) and therapy with ATRA and anthracyclines (Spanish PETHEMA, LPA99).

Patients And Results: Eighty of 87 adult patients with genetically confirmed APL of all risk groups were eligible. The outcome of both arms was similar: AMLCG vs PETHEMA: hematological complete remission 87% vs 83%, early death 13% vs 17% (P = .

Cardiorespiratory coupling in young healthy subjects.

Objective: To quantify the presence of cardiorespiratory interaction in a group of 41 healthy subjects performing a subset of the Ewing test battery.

Approach: We measure the empirical distribution of the cardiorespiratory coupling time (RI), defined as the time from inspiration onset to R peaks in the ECG. The study protocol is a subset of the Ewing test battery.