Diabetes mellitus type 2 (DMT2) promotes Achilles tendon (AS) degeneration and exercise could modulate features of DMT2. Hence, this study investigated whether tenocytes of non DMT2 and DMT2 rats respond differently to normo- (NG) and hyperglycemic (HG) conditions in the presence of tumor necrosis factor (TNF)α or cyclic stretch. AS tenocytes, isolated from DMT2 (fa/fa) or non DMT2 (lean, fa/+) adult Zucker Diabetic Fatty (ZDF) rats, were treated with 10 ng/mL TNFα either under NG or HG conditions (1 g/L vs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChanges in gene expression in carps' brains over time following acute stressors has not been studied in detail so far. Consequently, a stress trial with juvenile common carp was conducted to investigate transcriptomic differences in four brain parts in response to acute negative stressors and feed reward, focusing on appetite-related genes, serotonergic and dopaminergic pathways, and other involved systems, at 30, 60, and 90 min after treatments. The treatments showed pronounced effects on the gene expression patterns across brain parts compared to control fish.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: During practice, learners use available feedback from one trial to develop and implement motor commands for the next trial. Unsuccessful trials (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe propose a lesion-aware graph neural network (LEGNet) to predict language ability from resting-state fMRI (rs-fMRI) connectivity in patients with post-stroke aphasia. Our model integrates three components: an edge-based learning module that encodes functional connectivity between brain regions, a lesion encoding module, and a subgraph learning module that leverages functional similarities for prediction. We use synthetic data derived from the Human Connectome Project (HCP) for hyperparameter tuning and model pretraining.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProc Natl Acad Sci U S A
September 2024
Understanding the structure in the nanoscopic region of water that is in direct contact with solid surfaces, so-called contact layer, is key to quantifying macroscopic properties that are of interest to e.g. catalysis, ice nucleation, nanofluidics, gas adsorption, and sensing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWearable sensors can measure movement in daily life, an outcome that is salient to patients, and have been critical to accelerating progress in rehabilitation research and practice. However, collecting and processing sensor data is burdensome, leaving many scientists with limited access to such data. To address these challenges, we present a harmonized, wearable sensor dataset that combines 2,885 recording days of sensor data from the upper and lower limbs from eight studies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: An essential component of childhood development is increasing motor competence. Poor motor learning is often thought to underlie impaired motor competence, but this link is unclear in previous studies.
Aims: Our aim was to test the relationship between motor competence and motor learning in the acquisition phase.
Ann Clin Transl Neurol
September 2024
Objective: The hippocampus plays a critical role in cognitive networks. The anterior hippocampus is vulnerable to early-life stress and socioeconomic status (SES) with alterations persisting beyond childhood. How SES modifies the relationship between early hippocampal development and cognition remains poorly understood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFConcussion, caused by a rotational acceleration/deceleration injury mild enough to avoid structural brain damage, is insufficiently captured in recent preclinical models, hampering the relation of pathophysiological findings on the cellular level to functional and behavioral deficits. We here describe a novel model of unrestrained, single vs. repetitive concussive brain injury (CBI) in male C56Bl/6j mice.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe changing expressions of certain genes as a consequence of exposure to stressors has not been studied in detail in the fish brain. Therefore, a stress trial with zebrafish was conducted, aiming at identifying relevant gene regulation pathways in different regions of the brain. As acute stressors within this trial, feed rewarding, feed restriction, and air exposure have been used.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Aim: Dogs with idiopathic epilepsy (IE) experience a shortened lifespan, neurobehavioral changes, and an increased risk of comorbidities during the interictal period. There have been several reports of sudden death in humans with epilepsy, suggesting changes in cardiac rhythm secondary to seizures. In veterinary medicine, there are still no such conclusive studies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNeospora caninum is an obligate intracellular parasite that causes abortion in ruminants. Different strains produce differences in the severity of disease outcomes. These differences may cause physiological or pathological changes in cells, modifying the intercellular interactions and intracellular transport pathways that could be evidenced by identifying the terminal sugars.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAim: The rise of wearable sensing technology shows promise for addressing the challenges of measuring motor behavior in pediatric populations. The current pediatric wearable sensing literature is highly variable with respect to the number of sensors used, sensor placement, wearing time, and how data extracted from the sensors are analyzed. Many studies derive conceptually similar variables via different calculation methods, making it hard to compare across studies and clinical populations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE) is a chronic, inflammatory, antigen-driven disease of the esophagus. Tissue EoE pathology has previously been extensively characterized by novel transcriptomics and proteomic platforms, however the majority of surface marker determination and screening has been performed in blood due to mucosal tissue size limitations. While eosinophils, CD4 T cells, mast cells and natural killer (NK) T cells were previously investigated in the context of EoE, an accurate picture of the composition of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) and their activation is missing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe outline a coarse-grained model of epoxy resins (bisphenol-F-diglycidyl-ether/3,5-diethyltoluene-2,4-diamine) to describe elastic and plastic deformation, cavitation, and fracture at the μm scale. For this, molecular scale simulation data collected from quantum and molecular mechanics studies are coarsened into an effective interaction potential featuring a single type of beads that mimic 100 nm scale building blocks of the material. Our model allows bridging the time-length scale problem toward experimental tensile testing, thus effectively reproducing the deformation and fracture characteristics observed for strain rates of 10-1 to 10-5 s-1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMotor coordination is an important driver of development and improved coordination assessments could facilitate better screening, diagnosis, and intervention for children at risk of developmental disorders. Wearable sensors could provide data that enhance the characterization of coordination and the clinical utility of that data may vary depending on how sensor variables from different recording contexts relate to coordination. We used wearable sensors at the wrists to capture upper-limb movement in 85 children aged 6-12.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: The purpose of this project was to implement a process for learner-driven, formative, prospective, ad-hoc, entrustment assessment in Doctor of Physical Therapy clinical education. Our goals were to develop an innovative entrustment assessment tool, and then explore whether the tool detected (1) differences between learners at different stages of development and (2) differences within learners across the course of a clinical education experience. We also investigated whether there was a relationship between the number of assessments and change in performance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFContext: We report on atomic level of detail analyses of polymer composite models featuring epoxy resin interfaces to silica, iron oxide, and cellulose layers. Using "reactive" molecular dynamics simulations to explore epoxy network formation, resin hardening is investigated in an unprejudiced manner. This allows the detailed characterization of salt-bridges and hydrogen bonds at the interfaces.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCell contractility regulates epithelial tissue geometry development and homeostasis. The underlying mechanobiological regulation circuits are poorly understood and experimentally challenging. We developed an elastomeric pillar cage (EPC) array to quantify cell contractility as a mechanoresponse of epithelial microtissues to substrate stiffness and topography.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMethods Mol Biol
January 2023
In their natural environment, most cells and tissues are continuously exposed to cyclic mechanical strain. Sensing these stimuli by mechanosensory proteins and subsequent conversion into a variety of biological responses (referred to as mechanotransduction) are key processes for tissue homeostasis, survival, and differentiation. Perturbations of underlying signaling pathways lead to severe diseases in vivo (Urciuoli E, Peruzzi B, Int J Mol Sci 21(24).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn this study, we unravel the atomic structure of a covalent resin near boundaries such as surfaces and composite constituents. For this, a molecular simulation analysis of epoxy resin hardening under various boundary conditions was performed. On the atomic level of detail, molecular dynamics simulations were employed to study crosslinking reactions and self-organization of the polymer network within nm scale slab models.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFront Cell Dev Biol
August 2022
Epithelial cells of human breast glands are exposed to various mechanical ECM stresses that regulate tissue development and homeostasis. Mechanoadaptation of breast gland tissue to ECM-transmitted shear stress remained poorly investigated due to the lack of valid experimental approaches. Therefore, we created a magnetic shear strain device that enabled, for the first time, to analyze the instant shear strain response of human breast gland cells.
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