Older adults' communication with an interactive humanoid robot : Expectations and experiences of older adults in verbal and nonverbal communication with a socially interactive humanoid robot: a mixed methods design in Germany.

Background And Objective: One possible approach to counter singularization and loneliness of older adults is the development and implementation of socially interactive robots. Little is known about the expectations and experiences of older adults with socially interactive humanoid robots.

Material And Methods: In a mixed-methods design study, user expectations before interaction and the experience and evaluation of verbal and non-verbal communication after interaction with a robot were assessed.

Fall Risk and Coping of Older Adults After Hospitalization: A Mixed Methods Study.

Coping is defined as cognitive and behavioral effort to manage specific external and/or internal demands, such as managing one's own fall risk. Little is known about the relationship between the risk of falling in older adults and their coping strategies. The purpose of this study is to examine the fall risk after hospitalization, the adequacy of self-perceived fall risk and coping strategies of older adults.

Evaluation and intention to use the interactive robotic kitchen system AuRorA in older adults.

Background: The number of older adults in need of care and living at home is increasing in Europe. At the same time, the number of professional caregivers is decreasing. This development reinforces the need for assistive technology to support care recipients in their own homes and promote their independence.

App-Based Evaluation of Older People's Fall Risk Using the mHealth App Lindera Mobility Analysis: Exploratory Study.

Background: Falls and the risk of falling in older people pose a high risk for losing independence. As the risk of falling progresses over time, it is often not adequately diagnosed due to the long intervals between contacts with health care professionals. This leads to the risk of falling being not properly detected until the first fall.

Categorizing fear of falling using the survey of activities and fear of falling in the elderly questionnaire in a cohort of hospitalized older adults: A cross-sectional design.

Background: Fear of falling is commonly assessed using the Activities-specific Balance Confidence Scale which is an instrument to measure balance confidence, based on the assumption that fear of falling is due to the absence of balance confidence. The "Survey of Activities and Fear of Falling in the Elderly" measures the concept of fear of falling more directly on a scale of 0.0 and 3.

Monte-Carlo Simulation and Automated Test Bench for Developing a Multichannel NIR-Based Vital-Signs Monitor.

Unobtrusive, long-term monitoring of cardiac (and respiratory) rhythms using only non-invasive vibration sensors mounted in beds promises to unlock new applications in home and low acuity monitoring. This paper presents a novel concept for such a system based on an array of near infrared (NIR) sensors placed underneath a regular bed mattress. We focus on modeling and analyzing the underlying technical measurement principle with the help of a 2D model of a polyurethane foam mattress and Monte-Carlo simulations of the opto-mechanical interaction responsible for signal genesis.

Clathrin-mediated endocytosis is required for compensatory regulation of GLR-1 glutamate receptors after activity blockade.

Chronic changes in neural activity trigger a variety of compensatory homeostatic mechanisms by which neurons maintain a normal level of synaptic input. Here we show that chronic activity blockade triggers a compensatory change in the abundance of GLR-1, a Caenorhabditis elegans glutamate receptor. In mutants lacking a voltage-dependent calcium channel (unc-2) or a vesicular glutamate transporter (VGLUT; eat-4), the abundance of GLR-1 in the ventral nerve cord was increased.

Molecular determinants of KCNQ1 channel block by a benzodiazepine.

KCNQ1 channels underlie the slow delayed rectifier K+ current, mediate repolarization of cardiac action potentials, and are a potential therapeutic target for treatment of arrhythmia. (E)-(+)-N-[(3R)-2,3-dihydro-1-methyl-2-oxo-5-phenyl-1H-1,4-benzodiazepin-3-yl]-3-(2,4-dichlorophenyl)-2-propenamide [L-735821 (L-7)] is a potent blocker of KCNQ1 channels. Here we describe the structural determinants of KCNQ1 that are critical for high-affinity block by L-7 using site-directed mutagenesis to alter specific residues and voltage clamp to record channel currents in Xenopus laevis oocytes.

Glutamate receptor subunit 3 is modified by site-specific limited proteolysis including cleavage by gamma-secretase.

Ionotropic glutamate receptor (GluR) expression and function is regulated through multiple pre- and post-translational mechanisms. We find that limited proteolytic cleavage of GluR3 at two distinct sites generates stable GluR3 short forms that are glycosylated and found in association with other full-length GluRs in the mouse brain and cultured primary neurons. A combination of mutagenesis and transfection into HEK293 cells revealed cleavage by a gamma-secretase-like activity within the membrane-localized re-entry loop at or near the leucine-glycine pair (amino acids 585-586, GluR3sbeta) and a second site within a proline-rich PEST-like sequence in the first cytoplasmic loop (Asp570-Pro571, GluR3salpha).

Kainate-binding proteins are rendered functional ion channels upon transplantation of two short pore-flanking domains from a kainate receptor.

Kainate-binding proteins belong to an elusive class of putative ionotropic glutamate receptors that to date have not been shown to form functional ion channels in heterologous expression systems, despite binding glutamatergic agonists with high affinity. To test the hypothesis that inefficient or interrupted signal transduction from the ligand-binding site via linker domains to the ion pore (gating) might be responsible for this apparent lack of function, we transplanted the short homologous linker sequences from the fully functional rat kainate receptor GluR6 into frog kainate-binding protein. We were able to generate chimeric receptors that are functional in the Xenopus oocyte expression system and in human embryonic kidney 293 cells.

Identification of domains and amino acids involved in GLuR7 ion channel function.

The kainate receptors GluR6 and GluR7 differ considerably in their ion channel properties, despite sharing 86% amino acid sequence identity. When expressed in Xenopus oocytes GluR6 conducts large agonist-evoked currents, whereas GluR7 lacks measurable currents. In the present study, we localized the determinants that are responsible for the functional differences between GluR6 and GluR7 to the extracellular loop domain L3.

Mutant cycle analysis of the active and desensitized states of an AMPA receptor induced by willardiines.

The halogenated willardiines are agonists at the alpha-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid (AMPA) subtype of glutamate receptors. Although they differ only by the nature of the halogen substituent, they display marked differences in their efficacy to activate the receptor channel opening and in causing desensitization. We have studied the origin of the different agonist properties of the willardiines and in particular the nature of the structural element within the receptor binding domain that is able to distinguish between willardiines at a subatomic resolution of 0.

A desensitization-inhibiting mutation in the glutamate binding site of rat alpha-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazole propionic acid receptor subunits is dominant in heteromultimeric complexes.

Recently, it has been shown that a single leucine-to-tyrosine mutation in the agonist binding domains of the homomerically expressed alpha-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazole propionic acid (AMPA) receptors GluR3 and GluR1 is sufficient to completely block receptor desensitization. In the present study we tested heteromeric subunit combinations of AMPA receptors to demonstrate that the block of desensitization afforded by this mutation is dominant in heteromeric subunit complexes containing the leucine-to-tyrosine mutation in at least one of the subunits. In addition, by comparing mutated, desensitization-deficient forms of unedited GluR1 and GluR1 edited at the Q/R-site of the ion pore we demonstrate that the desensitization properties of AMPA receptors are not linked to the editing state of the ion pore domain and thus are independent of the permeability properties of the ion channel.

Purification procedure and monoclonal antibodies: two instruments for research on vertebrate porins.

On Western blots of skeletal muscle preparations of different vertebrate classes, four monoclonal anti-human type 1 porin antibodies recognize one single band of either 30.5 or 31 kDa, respectively. To confirm that it is eukaryotic porin which is labeled by the antibodies, we used a purification procedure developed for human type 1 porin for porins from skeletal muscle of shark, frog, and turkey.

Investigation by ion channel domain transplantation of rat glutamate receptor subunits, orphan receptors and a putative NMDA receptor subunit.

Among the 18 ionotropic glutamate receptor subunits identified in the mammalian central nervous system, five (delta1, delta2, GluR7, chi2 and NR3A, formerly called NMDAR-L or chi1) reportedly fail to form functional ion channels in heterologous expression systems. Four of these subunits, delta1, delta2, chi2 and NR3A, have not even been shown to bind glutamatergic ligands, relegating them to the status of 'orphan' receptors. We used a domain transplantation approach to investigate potential functional properties of the putative ion channel domains of four of these subunits.

Thermoterrabacterium ferrireducens gen. nov., sp. nov., a thermophilic anaerobic dissimilatory Fe(III)-reducing bacterium from a continental hot spring.

A strain of a thermophilic, anaerobic, dissimilatory, Fe(III)-reducing bacterium, Thermoterrabacterium ferrireducens gen. nov., sp.