An important factor in industrial progress during the past five decades has been the increasing sophistication of factory automation which has improved productivity manyfold. Manufacturing lines typically involve a variety of variable speed motor drives which serve to power conveyor belts, robot arms, overhead cranes, steel process lines, paper mills, and plastic and fiber processing lines to n...

In the metropolitan area of São Paulo, Brazil, ozone and particulate matter (PM) are the air pollutants that pose the greatest threat to air quality, since the PM and the ozone precursors (nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds) are the main source of air pollution from vehicular emissions. Vehicular emissions can be measured inside road tunnels, and those measurements can provide infor...

Hand grip strength (HGS) is important not only in its own right, but as an indicator of overall body strength and future outcomes as well. As we have found no studies on the HGS predictive models including Brazilian adults younger than 50 years of age, we aimed to develop a novel predictive equation using demographic and anthropometric attributes for subjects aged between 18 and 71 years. This ...

AIMS The first choice treatment in urinary incontinence (UI) is rehabilitation of the pelvic floor in order to improve muscle strength. However, no entirely reliable instruments for quantifying pelvic floor muscle (PFM) strength are currently available. Our aim was to test the intra-rater reliability and diagnostic accuracy of a new vaginal dynamometer for measuring PFM strength. METHODS Test...

Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is used in postmenopausal women to relieve symptoms of menopause and prevent osteoporosis. We sought to evaluate changes in mRNA expression of key myogenic factors in postmenopausal women taking and not taking HRT following a high-intensity eccentric resistance exercise. Fourteen postmenopausal women were studied and included 6 control women not using HRT (59 +...

OBJECTIVE Persons with diabetes have accelerated muscle loss. The association of fasting and postchallenge glucose levels per se to grip strength, a clinical marker of poor physical function, and potential sex differences in this relationship has not been previously described. DESIGN Longitudinal cohort. SETTING USA. PARTICIPANTS Participants were community-dwelling older adults (mean age...

Handgrip strength is a simple measure of upper limb muscle function that is associated with mortality in the general population and in patients with COPD. 2 Recently, normative values for handgrip strength have been proposed based on centile scores in >224 000 healthy adults between 39 and 73 years of age, adjusted for age, sex, height and measurement side. As an illustration, in a typical 65-y...

In order to clamp down on the illegal use of fishing boat fuel A (FBFA) and to reduce exhaust emissions in Taiwan, the residue from a desulfurization unit (RDS) and pyrolysis fuel oil (PFO) were added into FBFA with the ratio of 0.5% to form two new blended fuels (RDS0.5 and PFO0.5). The appearances of fuels from dark to light are RDS0.5, PFO0.5, and FBFA. The two new fuels have higher viscosit...

Methods The study design was a 2-arm non-blinded randomized controlled trial. Group 1 received dextrose prolotherapy and Group 2 was a waitlist control. Nineteen adults seen with at least 3 months of symptomatic CLE in 22 elbows refractory to prior care received ultrasound-guided injections of 20% dextrose-morrhuate sodium (Group 1) solution at baseline, 4, and 8 weeks. Waitlist subjects (Group...