Can a Portable Balance System Predict Fall Risk in Community-Dwelling Older Women?

Purpose: Increased fall risk has been linked to age, being female, and age-related changes in the postural control system. The purpose of this study was to determine if a portable balance system could predict fall risk by determining the relationship among the modified Clinical Test for Sensory Interaction on Balance (mCTSIB) scores, age, the Activities-specific Balance Confidence Scale (ABC) score, and the Berg Balance Scale (BBS) score in community-dwelling older women. Insight into these relationships may facilitate early intervention and decrease fall risk in older women.

Does Hands-on Guarding Influence Performance on the Functional Gait Assessment?

Background And Purpose: An accurate fall risk assessment is an important component of fall prevention, though a fall could occur during testing. To minimize this risk, different guarding methods are used, though there is disagreement regarding the optimal method. The purpose of this study was to compare the effect of 2 guarding methods, contact guarding (CG) and standby guarding (SG), on performance during the Functional Gait Assessment (FGA).

Precursor ion independent algorithm for top-down shotgun proteomics.

We present a precursor ion independent top-down algorithm (PIITA) for use in automated assignment of protein identifications from tandem mass spectra of whole proteins. To acquire the data, we utilize data-dependent acquisition to select protein precursor ions eluting from a C4-based HPLC column for collision induced dissociation in the linear ion trap of an LTQ-Orbitrap mass spectrometer. Gas-phase fractionation is used to increase the number of acquired tandem mass spectra, all of which are recorded in the Orbitrap mass analyzer.

MASIC: a software program for fast quantitation and flexible visualization of chromatographic profiles from detected LC-MS(/MS) features.

Quantitative analysis of liquid chromatography (LC)-mass spectrometry (MS) and tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) data is essential to many proteomics studies. We have developed MASIC(2) to accurately measure peptide abundances and LC elution times in LC-MS/MS analyses. This software program uses an efficient processing algorithm to quickly generate mass specific selected ion chromatograms from a dataset and provides an interactive browser that allows users to examine individual chromatograms with a variety of options.

VIPER: an advanced software package to support high-throughput LC-MS peptide identification.

Summary: The accurate mass and time (AMT) tag approach is used for analysis of large scale experiments by combining information generated over multiple datasets and instrument types. The VIPER software package is one of the key components of the data processing pipeline and implements automated algorithms to discover LC-MS features, align and match these LC-MS features to a database of peptides previously identified in LC-MS/MS analyses, and identify and quantify pairs of isotopically labeled peptides.

Availability: VIPER may be downloaded free of charge at http://ncrr.