BACKGROUND Clinical features of Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease type 1A (CMT1A) include slowly progressive distal muscle weakness, atrophy and sensory loss. Upper-limb involvement results in reduced manual dexterity interfering with the execution of daily activities. OBJECTIVE To identify which hand function impairments are determinants of manual dexterity in CMT1A. METHODS In a cross-sectional...

BACKGROUND Uptake of family planning services in Pakistan has remained slow over the past decade despite a rapid increase in availability and awareness, indicating that social barriers may be preventing uptake. Social barriers such as opposition by family members have largely been studied qualitatively; there is a lack of quantitative evidence about the effect of different family members' oppos...

The Diola-Fogny of S6n6gal, West Africa, socially intuit with the meta-linguistic terms 'big' and 'thin' the tense/lax vowel contrast that is basic to their phonology. The two terms are primarily used to identify speech variation among individuals and groups. Examination revealed that speakers who made relatively greater use of vowel harmony were characterized as 'big' in contrast to others who...

Mounting evidence that even aggressive reductions in net emissions of greenhouse gases will be insufficient to limit global climate risks is increasing calls for atmospheric experiments to better understand the risks and implications of also deploying solar geoengineering technologies to reflect sunlight and rapidly lower surface temperatures. But solar geoengineering research itself poses sign...

A graph is an opposition graph, respectively, a coalition graph, if it admits an acyclic orientation which puts the two end-edges of every chordless 4-vertex path in opposition, respectively, in the same direction. Opposition and coalition graphs have been introduced and investigated in connection to perfect graphs. Recognizing and characterizing opposition and coalition graphs still remain lon...

INTRODUCTION In classic mechanics, degrees of freedom (DOF) are defined as the minimum number of independent coordinates needed to describe a system’s position. The human musculoskeletal system has many mechanical DOF through which countless movements are accomplished. However, natural movements are characterized by the coordination of the DOF such that few vary independently. The concept of fu...