Mechanical Characterization of Non-degraded Porcine Annulus Fibrosus Material Properties.

Purpose: Porcine cervical spines are commonly used as a surrogate for human lumbar spines due to their similar anatomic and mechanical characteristics. Despite their use in spinal biomechanics research, porcine annulus fibrosus (AF) yield and ultimate properties have not been fully evaluated. This study sought to provide a novel dataset of elastic, yield, and ultimate properties of the porcine AF loaded in the circumferential direction.

Anxious/depressed individuals exhibit disrupted frontotemporal synchrony during cognitive conflict encoding.

Anxiety and depressive disorders are associated with cognitive control deficits, yet their underlying neural mechanisms remain poorly understood. Here, we used high-resolution stereotactic EEG (sEEG) to determine how anxiety and/or depression modulates neural and behavioral responses when cognitive control is engaged in individuals with medically refractory epilepsy undergoing sEEG monitoring for surgical evaluation. We analyzed sEEG data recorded from frontotemporal regions of 29 participants (age range: 19-55, mean age: 35.

Lumbar Spine Orientation Affects Compressive Fracture Outcome.

Purpose: Understanding how spinal orientation affects injury outcome is essential to understand lumbar injury biomechanics associated with high-rate vertical loading.

Methods: Whole-column human lumbar spines (T12-L5) were dynamically loaded using a drop tower to simulate peak axial forces associated with high-speed aircraft ejections and helicopter crashes. Spines were allowed to maintain natural lordotic curvature for loading, resulting in a range of orientations.

Adaptive stacked species distribution modelling: Novel approaches to large scale quantification of blue carbon to support marine management.

This study introduces a novel concept of 'Adaptively Stacked' Species Distribution Models (AS-SDMs) to predict blue carbon habitat distribution, abundance, carbon stocks, and carbon sequestration potential in Orkney. AS-SDMs are built from Weighted Boosted Regression Trees (WBRTs) that adaptively stack blue carbon sediment thickness, sediment carbon content, and sequestration potential to predicted abundance. A novel method to describe substrate types by relative inputs of mud, sand, and gravel is detailed that better characterises the determining factors of seagrass, maerl, and horse mussel abundance.