Effect of Pelvic Floor Muscle Training Using Pressure Biofeedback on Pelvic Floor Muscle Contraction and Trunk Muscle Activity in Sitting in Healthy Women.

Pelvic floor muscle training (PFMT) has been recommended as the first choice as one of the effective methods for preventing and improving urinary incontinence (UI). We aimed to determine whether pressure biofeedback unit training (PBUT) improves short term and retention performance of pelvic floor muscle contraction. The muscle activities of the external oblique (EO), transversus/internal oblique (TrA/IO), multifidus (MF) and the bladder base displacement were measured in the verbal feedback group (n = 10) and PBU group (n = 10) three times (baseline, post-training, and at the 1-week follow-up). Surface electromyographic activity was recorded from the EO, TrA/IO, and MF muscles. The bladder base displacement was measured using ultrasound. The results were analyzed using two way mixed ANOVA. The bladder base displacement may have elevated more in the PBU group than in the verbal feedback group due to decreased TrA/IO activity. These findings indicate that PBUT is a better method than verbal feedback training.

Heterogeneous catalytic oxidation of As(III) on nonferrous metal oxides in the presence of H2O2.

The oxidation of As(III) (arsenite) to As(V) (arsenate), a critical pretreatment process for total arsenic removal, is easily achieved using chemical oxidation methods. Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is widely used as an environmentally benign oxidant but its practical use for the arsenite oxidation is limited by the strong pH dependence and slow oxidation kinetics. This study demonstrated that H2O2-induced oxidation of As(III) can be markedly enhanced in the presence of nonferrous metal oxides (e.g., WO3, TiO2, ZrO2) as a heterogeneous catalyst working over a wide pH range in ambient reaction conditions. In particular, TiO2 is an ideal catalyst because it is not only active and stable but also easily available and inexpensive. Although the photocatalytic oxidation of As(III) on TiO2 was intensively studied, the thermal catalytic activities of TiO2 and other nonferrous metal oxides for the arsenic oxidation have been little investigated. The heterogeneous oxidation rate increased with increasing the TiO2 surface area and [H2O2] and weakly depended on pH whereas the homogeneous oxidation by H2O2 alone was favored only at alkaline condition. The oxidation rate in the TiO2/H2O2 system was not reduced at all in the absence of dioxygen. It was not retarded at all by OH radical scavengers but markedly inhibited by hydroperoxyl radical scavengers. It is proposed that the surface complexation of H2O2 on TiO2 induces the generation of the surface hydroperoxyl radical through an inner-sphere electron transfer, which subsequently reacts with As(III). The catalytic activity of TiO2 was maintained without showing any sign of deactivation. The heterogeneous catalytic oxidation is proposed as a viable method for the preoxidation treatment of As(III)-contaminated water under ambient conditions.