Practices of Intellectual Labor in the Republic of Letters: Leibniz and Edward Bernard on Language and European Origins.

For a project on the origins and migrations of the European nations, Leibniz wanted to see a comparative lexicon purporting to derive the Germanic languages from Asiatic sources. Friends in nearby Gotha were known to have the book; its author had corresponded with Leibniz a few years earlier. But actually getting the book was more difficult than one might expect.

Polynesia and polygenism: the scientific use of travel literature in the early 19th century.

Christoph Meiners (1747-1810) was one of 18th-century Europe's most important readers of global travel literature, and he has been credited as a founder of the disciplines of ethnology and anthropology. This article examines a part of his final work, "Untersuchungen über die Verschiedenheiten der Menschennaturen" [Inquiries on the differences of human natures], published posthumously in the 1810s. Here Meiners developed an elaborate argument, based on empirical evidence, that the different races of men emerged indigenously at different times and in different places in natural history.

Incidence of thoracic and lumbar spine injuries for restrained occupants in frontal collisions.

The increased utilization of three-point restraint systems has greatly reduced the incidence of spinal injuries in motor vehicle accidents. Nevertheless, several studies which rely upon the National Automotive Sampling System (NASS) have documented lower thoracic and upper lumbar fractures in restrained occupants involved in frontal collisions of moderate severities. Although it has been postulated that the injury mechanism may be related to the occupant being out-of-position or sitting in an unusual posture, conclusions with regard to the precise mechanism of injury are difficult due to the lack of information contained in the NASS database.

Modulation effects of epidural spinal cord stimulation on muscle activities during walking.

Epidural spinal cord stimulation (ESCS) combined with partial weight bearing therapy (PWBT) has been reported to facilitate recovery of functional walking for individuals after chronic incomplete spinal cord injury (ISCI). Muscle activities were analyzed in this report to examine the modulation effect of ESCS on muscle recruitment during gait training. Two ISCI individuals participated in the study and both are classified as ASIA C with low motor scores in the lower limbs.

Epidural spinal-cord stimulation facilitates recovery of functional walking following incomplete spinal-cord injury.

We investigated a novel treatment paradigm for developing functional ambulation in wheelchair-dependent individuals with chronic, incomplete spinal-cord injury. By coordinating epidural stimulation of the dorsal structures of the spinal cord with partial weight bearing treadmill therapy, we observed improvement in treadmill and over-ground ambulation in an individual with chronic incomplete tetraplegia. The application of partial weight-bearing therapy alone was not sufficient to achieve functional ambulation over ground, though treadmill ambulation improved significantly.