This research communication evaluates experts’ opinions on the importance and weights of six gait aspects. In 2016, a Qualtrics (Qualtrics LLC., Provo, Utah) survey was distributed to lameness experts. Six gait aspects – general symmetry, tracking, spine curvature, head bobbing, speed and abduction as well as adduction were included. Respondents were asked to rank the gait aspects from 1 (most important) to 6 (least important), and to indicate which weight each gait aspect should receive when assessing lameness. For each gait aspect, frequency (percentage %) was used to describe the distribution of rank, and medians as well as 25th and 75th percentiles were used to summarize assigned weights. Thirty-nine percent of respondents ranked general symmetry first, followed by 32% for tracking, and 19% ranked spine curvature third. Head bobbing ranked fourth with 10% whereas, speed, abduction and adduction were not ranked. The median, 25th and 75th percentiles weight for each gait aspect were: general symmetry (25, 15, and 30), tracking (20, 10, and 30), spine curvature (20, 10, and 21), head bobbing (15, 10, and 20), speed (10, 5, and 20), and abduction and adduction (10, 5, and 10). General symmetry and tracking were deemed the most important gait aspects. A composite gait score can be calculated based on weighted importance of different gait aspects to indicate possible lameness.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of 8-week green tea extract (GTE) supplementation on promoting postexercise muscle glycogen resynthesis and systemic energy substrate utilisation in young college students. A total of eight healthy male participants (age: 22·0 (se 1·0) years, BMI: 24·2 (se 0·7) kg/m2, VO2max: 43·2 (se 2·4) ml/kg per min) participated in this study. GTE (500 mg/d for 8 weeks) was compared with placebo in participants in a double-blind/placebo-controlled and crossover study design with an 8-week washout period. Thereafter, all participants performed a 60-min cycling exercise (75 % VO2max) and consumed a carbohydrate-enriched meal immediately after exercise. Vastus lateralis muscle samples were collected immediately (0 h) and 3 h after exercise, and blood and gaseous samples were collected during the 3-h postexercise recovery period. An 8-week oral GTE supplementation had no effects on further promoting muscle glycogen resynthesis in exercised human skeletal muscle, but the exercise-induced muscle GLUT type 4 (GLUT4) protein content was greater in the GTE supplementation trial (P<0·05). We observed that, during the postexercise recovery period, GTE supplementation elicited an increase in energy reliance on fat oxidation compared with the placebo trial (P<0·05), although there were no differences in blood glucose and insulin responses between the two trials. In summary, 8-week oral GTE supplementation increases postexercise systemic fat oxidation and exercise-induced muscle GLUT4 protein content in response to an acute bout of endurance exercise. However, GTE supplementation has no further benefit on promoting muscle glycogen resynthesis during the postexercise period.

The dust acoustic wave (DAW), associated with longitudinal dust oscillations in dusty plasmas, can be self-excited from the free energy of ion streaming. It is not only a fundamental plasma wave but also a paradigm to understand the generic dynamical behaviors of self-excited nonlinear longitudinal density waves through optically monitoring particle motion and dust density evolutions over a large area. In this paper, the dynamical behaviors of the wave-particle interaction and wave breaking in ordered self-excited DAW with straight wave fronts, and the defect-mediated wave turbulence with fluctuating defects and chaotic low amplitude hole filaments along defect trajectories in the 2+1D space-time space, are briefly reviewed. The first experimental observation of acoustic vortices with helical waveforms in self-excited acoustic-type defect-mediated wave turbulence, and the dynamics of spontaneous pair generation, propagation, and pair annihilation of acoustic vortices, is demonstrated and discussed.

For a bi-linear SDOF system subjected to a specific wave form of the ground acceleration, the unique yielding pseudo spectral acceleration and spectral displacement (Say, Sdy) together with various inelastic responses (Sai, Sdi) can be obtained via nonlinear time history analyses, respectively, by tuning the different levels of peak ground acceleration as various input ground motions. Meanwhile, the corresponding elastic responses (Sae, Sde) of a linear SDOF system with the identical mass, viscous damping and elastic stiffness as those of the bi-linear one can also be determined through linear time history analyses under the same excitations. The proposed NSAD format shown on the diagram of the elastic force ratio, Ω=Sae/Say I Say, versus the ductility ratio, (μ= (Sdi/Sdy), is a dimensionless plot of the seismic demands suitable to the engineers who are familiar with the conventional force-based design using linear structural analysis. In this paper, more than two hundred ground motions recorded in the Chi-Chi earthquake, Taiwan (1999) were chosen as the seismic inputs for the establishment of the NSAD format. The characteristics and applications of the NSAD format on the performance-based seismic design of the bridge structures were discussed, and realistic procedures for the methodology were proposed.

The results obtained shows that the NSAD format can help the engineers evaluate the multiple-level seismic demands not only with a well precision but also with a great convenience.

Between March and July 2003, 671 cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) were diagnosed in Taiwan with a total of 84 fatalities. After the epidemic, a serological survey was conducted involving the asymptomatic household contacts. Household contacts of 13 index patients were enrolled in the study. Contact history and clinical symptoms of the household contacts were recorded by standardized questionnaires. Blood samples of patients and household contacts were collected at least 28 days after symptom onset in the index patients or household exposure in the contacts for SARS-associated coronavirus (SARS-CoV) IgG testing. On the basis of this investigation, 29 persons (25 adults and 4 children) were identified as having had unprotected exposure to the index cases before infection-control practices were implemented. Laboratory evaluation of clinical specimens showed no evidence of transmission of SARS-CoV infection to any contacts. This investigation demonstrated that subclinical transmission among household contacts was low in the described setting.

The properties of ZnO thin film are currently of great commercial and scientific interest due to its particular properties such as highly conductive, transparent as well as chemical stability and nontoxic. The Ti doping ZnO thin films were deposited by simultaneously magnetron co-sputtering from both Zn and Ti targets in a mixture of oxygen and argon gases onto heated Corning 7059 glass substrates in this study. The experimental results show that deposition rate of ZnO films are strongly dependent on DC power of Ti target. The growth rate initially increases and changes to decrease when the DC power of Ti target further rises. The content of Ti in the ZnO films increases with the applied DC power of Ti target. The lattice constant of ZnO (002) increases with DC power of Ti target due to incorporated Ti into the lattice of ZnO. The crystalline size becomes smaller when the DC power of Ti target was raised. The visible transmittance is a little lowered when slight Ti incorporated but still average maintains above 80%. The lowest resistivity of undoped ZnO film obtained in this study is 4.14×10-3 ohm-cm and further decreased to 1.02×10-3 ohm-cm after being doped a trace of Ti.

In this paper, based on a variational formalism which originally proposed by Mei [1] for infinite elastic medium and extended by Yeh, et al. [2,3] for elastic half-plane, a hybrid method which combines the finite element and series expansion method is implemented to solve the diffraction of plane waves by a cavity buried in an elastic half-plane. The finite domain which encloses all inhomogeneities including the cavity can be easily formulated by finite element methods. The unknown boundary data obtained by subtracting the known free fields from the total fields which include the boundary nodal displacements and tractions at the interface between the finite domain and the surrounding elastic half-plane are not independent of each other and can be correlated through a series representation. Due to the continuity condition at the interface, the same series representation is still valid for the exterior elastic half-plane to represents the scattered wave. The unknown coefficients of this series are treated as generalized coordinates and can be easily formulated by the same variational principle. The expansion function of the series is composed of basis function. Each basis function is constructed from the basis function for an infinite plane by superimposing an additional homogeneous reflective term to satisfy both traction free conditions at ground surface and radiation conditions at infinity. The numerical results are made against those obtained by boundary element methods, and good agreements are found.