The immediate effects of two pilates exercises with and without a foam roller on abdominal muscle activity.

Pilates can be defined as exercises which are floor-based or use specialized equipment to provide resistance. The use of foam rollers (FR) have been purported to improve the recruitment of core muscles by creating an unstable surface, providing improvements to balance, posture and functional recovery in daily activities. However, there is a paucity of studies exploring the use of FR as an unstable surface.

Enhancing soccer goalkeepers penalty dive kinematics with instructional video and laterality insights in field conditions.

This study aimed to analyze the effect of laterality and instructional video on the soccer goalkeepers' dive kinematics in penalty. Eight goalkeepers from youth categories (U15, U17, U20) were randomly divided into control (CG) and video instruction groups (VG). The latter performed 20 penalty defense trials on the field with balls launched by a machine, ten before and after watching a video instruction to improve the diving kinematics.

A new analog of dihydroxybenzoic acid from sp. KR21-0001.

Actinomycetes are well-known as the main producers of bioactive compounds such as antibiotics, anticancers, and immunosuppressants. Screening of natural products from actinomycetes has been an essential part of several drug discovery programs. Finding such novel biologically active metabolites is immensely important because of their beneficial health effects.

Effects of Two Electron-Donating and/or -Withdrawing Substituents on Two-Photon Absorption for Diphenylacetylene Derivatives.

Two-photon absorption for diphenylacetylene (DPA) derivatives with two substituents (-OMe and/or -NO) at the 4,4'-position was investigated experimentally and theoretically. The two-photon absorption spectra and the two-photon absorption cross-sections σ for DPA derivatives were obtained by optical-probing photoacoustic spectroscopy (OPPAS). The simulated two-photon absorption spectra of the DPA derivatives, obtained with the time-dependent density functional theory within the Tamm-Dancoff approximation, agreed well with the experimental ones.

Diversity of Halogenated Secondary Metabolites in Okinawan Aplysia argus Including 12-Hydroxypinnaterpene C and Their Feeding Targets.

A new irieane-type diterpene, 12-hydroxypinnaterpene C (1), and 21 known compounds, angasiol acetate (2), angasiol (3), 11-deacetylpinnaterpene C (4), palisadin A (5), 12-acetoxypalisadin B (6), 12-hydroxypalisadin B (7), aplysistatin (8), luzodiol (9), 5-acetoxy-2-bromo-3-chloro-chamigra-7(14),9-dien-8-one (10), neoirietriol (11), neoirietetraol (12), (3Z)-laurenyne (13), cupalaurenol (14), cupalaurenol acetate (15), (3Z)-venustinene (16), 10-hydroxykahukuene B (17), aplysiol B (18), (3Z)-13-epipinnatifidenyne (19), 3Z,6R,7R,12S,13S-obtusenyne (20), (3Z,9Z)-7-chloro-6-hydroxy-12-oxo-pentadeca-3,9-dien-1-yne (21), and cholest-7-en-3,5,7-triol (22) were isolated from the digestive diverticula of Aplysia argus from the Ikei Island in Okinawa, Japan. The structures of these compounds were determined using spectroscopic methods such as NMR and HR-ESI-MS. These compounds were tested for their antibacterial activity against the phytopathogen Ralstonia solanacearum.

Effects of olmesartan and amlodipine on blood pressure, endothelial function, and vascular inflammation.

Background: Anti-hypertensive drugs can improve vascular endothelial function. However, the mechanism remains to be elucidated.

Objectives: This study sought to investigate mechanisms of anti-hypertensive drugs on improvement of vascular endothelial function in patients with essential hypertension.

An investigation of the contribution of different turn speeds during standing turns in individuals with and without Parkinson's disease.

Issues around turning can impair daily tasks and trigger episodes of freezing of gait in individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD). Slow speeds associated with aging produce a more en-bloc movement strategy which have been linked with falls while turning. However, the influence of speed of turning on the complex whole-body coordination considering eye movements, turning kinematics, and stepping characteristics during turning has not been examined.

The comparison of electroencephalography power and event related potential in success and failure during multitask game.

The first game-based treatment for children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) was approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2020. This game was developed for use at home as part of everyday training and can be used along with one's usual training plan. In this game, two tasks are performed in parallel: (1) a perceptual discrimination targeting task (response and not response and avoiding responding to sudden pop-up targets) and (2) a sensory-motor navigation task (players continuously adjust their location to interact with or avoid positional targets).

A new isomaneonene derivative from the red alga cf. .

Determining the structures of new natural products from marine species not only enriches our understanding of the diverse chemistry of these species, but can also lead to the discovery of compounds with novel and/or important biological activities. Herein, we describe the isolation of isomaneonene C (), a new halogenated C acetogenin, and three known compounds, -snyderol (), -maneonene D (), and isomaneonene B (), from the organic extract obtained from the red alga cf. collected from Iheya Island, Okinawa, Japan.

Using Mean Pupil Diameter Change to Analyze Behavioral Performance in Multitasking Training Game.

To explore the actual behavioral performance of subjects in multitasking training games, we designed a VR game including a Target-tracking task (TTT) of continuously moving "Player" to track "Targets" and a randomly appearing Color-discrimination task (CDT) requiring discriminating whether "Player" and "Monster" have the same color, and recorded subjects' pupillary changes to reflect mental effort. By analyzing the mean pupil diameter change (MPDC) of different groups, we found that the high group presented pupil dilation during the post-event stage, reflecting that they engaged in psychological processing of CDT during the event, whereas the low group had no pupil dilation during part of the post-event stage, reflecting the possibility of ignoring the appearance of CDT, and such behaviors hardly raise good expectations for training effect. Our study suggests that MPDC mirrors not only the actual behavior of the different groups treating the multitasking paradigm, but also the influence of game design.

Increased Urinary Levels of Pentosidine Measured by a Newly Developed Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay Are Independently Correlated with Fracture After Fall.

Although we have found that increased serum levels of glyceraldehyde-derived advanced glycation end products (AGEs) are associated with numerous aging-related disorders, it remains unclear which structurally distinct AGEs could be a reliable biomarker of the healthy life-threatening disorders. Since pentosidine is produced by glyceraldehyde, we measured here urinary pentosidine levels with a newly developed enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kit, which requires no pretreatment with acid hydrolysis and heat, and examined their correlations with geriatric syndrome, such as musculoskeletal disease, frailty, and cognitive impairment, in a general population. Multiple regression analysis revealed that female, age, history of fracture after fall, and taking medication for diabetes were independent correlates of log urine pentosidine-to-creatinine ratio ( = 0.

Vascular/perivascular inflammation in IgG4-related disease.

Background: Immunoglobulin G4-related disease (IgG4-RD) is characterized by the infiltration of IgG4-positive plasma cells and fibrosclerotic inflammation in multiple organs. Although vascular complications are present in some patients with IgG4-RD, vascular and/or perivascular inflammatory activity compared to control subjects remains unknown. This study sought to investigate vascular/perivascular inflammation in IgG4-RD patients compared to control subjects using 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography combined with computed tomography (FDG-PET/CT).

SGLT2 inhibitor ipragliflozin exerts antihyperglycemic effects via the blood glucose-dependent increase in urinary glucose excretion in type 2 diabetic mice.

This study investigated the antihyperglycemic effects of the sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitor ipragliflozin via the blood glucose-dependent increase in urinary glucose excretion in KK/A type 2 diabetic mice. In oral glucose tolerance tests (glucose load: 1, 2, or 4 g/kg) in 24-h-fasted mice, blood glucose levels increased in a glucose-loading dose-dependent manner. Oral administration of ipragliflozin (1 mg/kg) significantly inhibited the increase in blood glucose concomitant with urinary glucose excretion.

Encapsulation of iron nanoparticles with magnesium hydroxide shell for remarkable removal of ciprofloxacin from contaminated water.

The rapid evolution of antimicrobial resistant genes (AMRs) in water resources is well correlated to the persistent occurrence of ciprofloxacin in water. For the first time, encapsulated nanoscale zerovalent iron (nZVI) with a shell of magnesium hydroxide (Mg/Fe) was used to adsorb ciprofloxacin from water. Optimization of the removal conditions exhibited that 5% was the optimum mass ratio between magnesium hydroxide and nZVI [Mg(OH)/nZVI)] as more than 96% of 100 mg L of ciprofloxacin was removed.