Facial paralysis is a devastating condition with a severe emotional impact on patients as it significantly affects appearance and impairs function. Patients complain of not being able to hold food and liquid in their mouth, not being able to speak clearly, and not being able to smile. T h e i n a b i l i t y t o s m i l e i s o f t e n psychologically troubling to patients. This presents a chal...

Human blood platelets contain two proteins very similar in structure and function to the contractile proteins of muscle: actin and myosin. Platelet actin has a similar molecular weight (43 000 daltons) and amino acid composition to muscle actin. It polymerizes into long filaments which can form ‘arrowheads’ with skeletal muscle and platelet myosin subfragment-1 (S-1) as viewed in the electron m...

OBJECTIVE To review our substantial favorable experience with oromandibular free tissue reconstruction in pediatric patients, emphasizing technical pearls, which seem to be associated with favorable long-term aesthetic and functional outcomes. METHODS Retrospective review of a consecutive series of all free tissue transfers performed from 1997 to 2010 by the senior author (Y.D.) in patients y...

Hydrophobic free energy for protein folding is currently measured by liquid-liquid transfer, based on an analogy between the folding process and the transfer of a nonpolar solute from water into a reference solvent. The second part of the analogy (transfer into a nonaqueous solvent) is dubious and has been justified by arguing that transfer out of water probably contributes the major part of th...

OBJECTIVES To investigate muscle fatigue of the knee flexors and extensors in people with cerebral palsy (CP) compared with those without motor disability during performance of a voluntary fatigue protocol and to investigate the relationship with functional mobility. DESIGN A case-control study. SETTING A biomechanics laboratory. PARTICIPANTS Ambulatory subjects with CP (n=18; mean age, 1...

In this thesis we present both theoretical and numerical results, revealing self-organization in graphs of functional connections for a number of recurrent neural network models. The consequence of studied self-organization is the spontaneous emergence of scale-free connectivity. The concept of the scale-free network (whose vertex degree distribution obeys a power law) discussed in detail in th...

Objective(s): Thyroid hormones play an essential role in fetal growth and maternal hypo-thyroidism which leads to cardiovascular deficiency in their offspring.  Considering this, we intended to investigate the impact of gestational hypothyroidism on offspring vascular contractibility and possible underlying mechanisms. Materials and Methods: Hypothyroidism was induced in female rats by administ...

Biomechanical simulations of tendon transfers performed following tetraplegia suggest that surgical tensioning influences clinical outcomes. However, previous studies have focused on the biomechanical properties of only the transferred muscle. We developed simulations of the tetraplegic upper limb following transfer of the brachioradialis (BR) to the flexor pollicis longus (FPL) to examine the ...