AIMS Due to their contribution to modulation of intra-abdominal pressure (IAP) and stiffness of the sacroiliac joints, the pelvic floor muscles (PFM) have been argued to provide a contribution to control of the lumbar spine and pelvis. Furthermore, as IAP is modulated during respiration this is likely to be accompanied by changes in PFM activity. METHODS In order to evaluate the postural and ...

Piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM) is a powerful scanning-probe technique used to characterize important aspects of the microstructure in ferroelectrics. It has been widely applied to understand domain patterns, domain nucleation and the structure of domain walls. In this paper, we apply a real-space phasefield model to consistently simulate various PFM configurations. We model the PFM tip as...

This study was an attempt to examine the phenotypic, genetic, and environmental correlations between percent fat mass (PFM) and bone parameters, especially hip geometry, among 786 males and 618 females aged 13 to 21 years from a Chinese twin cohort. PFM, bone area (BA), bone mineral content (BMC), cross-sectional area (CSA), and section modulus (SM) were obtained by dual-energy X-ray absorptiom...

Where and why do Public Financial Management (PFM) reforms succeed? Where and how does donor support to PFM reform contribute most effectively to results? This report summarises the findings and conclusions of an evaluation based on studies of the PFM reforms in Burkina Faso, Ghana and Malawi. The evaluation also draws on a global quantitative review. It is found that results tend to be good wh...

The interpretation of ferroelectric domain images obtained with a piezoresponse force microscope (PFM) is discussed. The influence of an inherent experimental background on the domain contrast in PFM images (enhancement, nulling, inversion) as well as on the shape and the location of the domain boundaries are described. We present experimental results to evidence our analysis of the influence o...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to compare pelvic floor muscle (PFM) strength using transvaginal digital palpation in healthy continent women in different age groups, and to compare the inter- and intra-rater reliability of examiners performing anterior and posterior vaginal assessments. METHODS We prospectively studied 150 healthy multiparous women. They were distributed into four diffe...

Orally administered probiotic micro-organisms are able to regulate the exacerbated immune response during the antigenic sensitisation process. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the potential efficacy of probiotic fermented milk (PFM) in preventing or treating allergy in an experimental model, and to investigate its underlying mechanisms. Ovoalbumin (OVA)-sensitised BALB/c mice were f...

The increased contrast to noise ratio available at Ultrahigh (7T) Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) allows mapping in space and time the brain’s response to single trial events with functional MRI (fMRI) based on the Blood Oxygenation Level Dependent (BOLD) contrast. This thesis primarily concerns with the development of techniques to detect and characterize single trial event-related BOLD respo...

OBJECTIVES The main objective was to determine how the depth of probe placement affects functional and resting bioelectrical activity of the PFM and whether the recorded signal might be dependent on the direction in which the probe is rotated. PARTICIPANTS The study comprised of healthy, nulliparous women between the ages of 21 and 25. OUTCOME MEASURES Bioelectric activity of the PFM was re...

Protein–energy malnutrition (PEM) causes a significant impairment of the immune system, the thymus being one of the most affected organs. It has been demonstrated that the administration of probiotic fermented milk (PFM) recovered the intestinal barrier, histological alterations and mucosal and systemic immune functions in a non-severe malnutrition model using BALB/c mice. The aim of the presen...