Altered joint kinetic strategies of healthy older adults and individuals with Parkinson’s disease to walk at faster speeds

Individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD) exhibit poorer walking performance compared to healthy, age-matched adults. Lower extremity joint kinetics may provide insight into this performance deficit but are currently lacking in the PD literature, especially across multiple speeds. The primary purpose of this study was to compare joint kinetics between individuals with PD and healthy older adults at both comfortable and maximal walking speeds. Secondarily, we quantified relationships between joint kinetics and walking speeds within each group. Biomechanical gait analyses were conducted for 13 individuals with PD and 12 age-matched controls during comfortable (CWS) and maximal (MWS) speed walking. Relative contributions to total positive work from the hip, knee, and ankle were compared across groups and speeds. Within each group, relationships between relative joint work and CWS and MWS were also quantified. Significant group by speed interactions indicated that healthy older adults increased hip and decreased ankle relative work at MWS compared to CWS whereas relative work at all joints in PD group remained stable across speeds. In the older group, positive relationships were observed between relative hip work and MWS. In the PD group, negative relationships were observed between relative hip work and CWS and MWS. Healthy older adults disproportionately increased mechanical contributions from the hip at MWS compared to CWS. Individuals with PD did not exhibit similar disproportionate scaling of joint kinetics across speed conditions. Inability to appropriately scale joint kinetics in PD may represent an inflexible neuromuscular system in PD, which may limit walking performance in this population.     

医学生科研创新能力培养“3+X”模式的探索与实践

针对长期以来培养医学生的科研创新能力主要依靠零散的课外科研活动、受众面窄、没有系统性课程教学及其相关制度保障、致使对医学生科研创新能力培养明显乏力低效这一共性瓶颈教学问题,自2002年起,汕头大学医学院生物化学与分子生物学教学团队,在“科教相辅相佐”、“以学生为中心”、“以问题为导向”等先进教育理念指导下,倚重汕头大学医学院“医者之心”系列课程与书院育人文化之特色,发挥汕头大学的生物学、基础医学和临床医学一级学科均拥有本/硕/博/博后完整人才培养体系之优势,联合其他相关专业教学团队,在建立充分体现医学生科研创新能力培养内涵,覆盖医学本科5年全过程的核心课程体系的基础之上,历经20载的不懈努力,补充修善,成功构建了“3+X”模式,着力培养医学生的科研创新能力。所谓“3”意指对医学生的“全人培养”、“全程培养”和“全方位培养”。所谓“X”意指针对“3+X”模式运行效能的若干个验证性维度,主要包括组织医学生参加各种形式的全国大学生创新实验研究大赛、国际大学生学术研讨会,由医学本科生作为第一作者撰写发表学术论文等。培养医学生科研创新能力的成效十分显著,为有效解决上述共性瓶颈教学问题提供了一个有重要借鉴价值的范例。     

The source of a movement: making the case for social media as an informational source using Black Lives Matter

Social media is growing as a technological and social phenomenon, with billions of people using it every day around the world. Given its increasing ubiquity, researchers continue to seek to understand social media and its implications for the social world. Part of the growing body of scholarship on social media includes uncovering the most effective methodologies for exploration that appropriately consider differences between the technology of social media and the ways in which people use them. New directions for social media research include the use of big data and analysing the socio-technical nature of social media. Using data from an ongoing study on college Millennials that includes questions about their thoughts on the Black Lives Matter movement, the author suggests another direction for future research: studying the implications of social media as an informational source.     

Psychoactive substance use among medical students in a Nigerian university

The study was aimed at determining the prevalence, pattern and factors associated with psychoactive substance use among medical students in the University of Ilorin, Nigeria. All consenting medical students were requested to compile a 22-item modified, pilot-tested semi- structured self-report questionnaire based on the World Health Organization''s guidelines for student substance use survey. It was found that the most currently used substances were mild stimulants (33.3%), alcohol (13.6%), sedatives (7.3%) and tobacco (3.2%). Except for tobacco, the use of these substances seemed to be only instrumental. Substance use was directly associated with male gender, living alone, self-reported study difficulty, being a clinical student, and being aged 25 years or more. There was an inverse relationship of substance use with religiosity and good mental health.