Evaluation of Multilevel Surgeries in Children With Spastic Cerebral Palsy Based on Surface Electromyography.

The root mean square (RMS) of the surface electromyography (sEMG) signal can respond to neuromuscular function, which displays a positive correlation with muscle force and muscle tension under positive and passive conditions, respectively. The purpose of this study was to investigate the changes in muscle force and tension after multilevel surgical treatments, functional selective posterior rhizotomy (FSPR) and tibial anterior muscle transfer surgery, and evaluate their clinical effect in children with spastic cerebral palsy (SCP) during walking. Children with diplegia (n = 13) and hemiplegia (n = 3) with ages from 4 to 18 years participated in this study. They were requested to walk barefoot at a self-selected speed on a 15-m-long lane. The patient's joints' range of motion (ROM) and sEMG signal of six major muscles were assessed before and after the multilevel surgeries. The gait cycle was divided into seven phases, and muscle activation state can be divided into positive and passive conditions during gait cycle. For each phase, the RMS of the sEMG signal amplitude was calculated and also normalized by a linear envelope (10-ms running RMS window). The muscle tension of the gastrocnemius decreased significantly during the loading response, initial swing, and terminal swing (p < 0.05), which helped the knee joint to get the maximum extension when the heel is on the ground and made the heel land smoothly. The muscle force of the gastrocnemius increased significantly (p < 0.05) during the mid-stance, terminal stance, and pre-swing, which could generate the driving force for the human body to move forward. The muscle tension of the biceps femoris and semitendinosus decreased significantly (p < 0.05) during the terminal stance, pre-swing, and initial swing. The decreased muscle tension could relieve the burden of the knee flexion when the knee joint was passively flexed. At the terminal swing, the muscle force of the tibial anterior increased significantly (p < 0.05), which could improve the ankle dorsiflexion ability and prevent foot drop and push forward. Thus, the neuromuscular function of cerebral palsy during walking can be evaluated by the muscle activation state and the RMS of the sEMG signal, which showed that multilevel surgical treatments are feasible and effective to treat SCP.

Optimization design of an ultralight large-aperture space mirror.

The ultralight space mirror has long been a hot topic in the research field of space telescopes. In this paper, an ultralight mirror is designed by obtaining the structure and parameters of a mirror with an aperture of 2 m through experimental design and multiobjective integrated optimization. Specifically, the materials near the neutral surface were replaced with elliptical holes. The back of the mirror was supported at three points. Finite-element analysis shows that the mirror had a surface figure error of 10.4 nm under 1 g in the x direction (gravity direction), which is sufficiently high to be applied to visible light optical systems. Further, the eigenfrequencies of mirror components were obtained through finite-element analysis: 70 Hz in the x direction, 70 Hz in the y direction, and 90 Hz in the z direction. The results demonstrate the excellent dynamics performance of the designed mirror. Compared with test results, the relative error of eigenfrequencies was within 4%. Hence, our ultralight design outputs reliable optimization results and applies to the development of large-aperture ultralight space mirrors. Finally, the ultralight mirror was prepared from reaction-bonded silicon carbide. The mass and surface density of the prepared mirror were 105 kg and 34kg/m2, respectively. The mirror mass was 50% lighter than that of the mirrors designed by traditional lightweight methods.

The phase diagram of high-pressure superionic ice.

Superionic ice is a special group of ice phases at high temperature and pressure, which may exist in ice-rich planets and exoplanets. In superionic ice liquid hydrogen coexists with a crystalline oxygen sublattice. At high pressures, the properties of superionic ice are largely unknown. Here we report evidence that from 280 GPa to 1.3 TPa, there are several competing phases within the close-packed oxygen sublattice. At even higher pressure, the close-packed structure of the oxygen sublattice becomes unstable to a new unusual superionic phase in which the oxygen sublattice takes the P2(1)/c symmetry. We also discover that higher pressure phases have lower transition temperatures. The diffusive hydrogen in the P2(1)/c superionic phase shows strong anisotropic behaviour and forms a quasi-two-dimensional liquid. The ionic conductivity changes abruptly in the solid to close-packed superionic phase transition, but continuously in the solid to P2(1)/c superionic phase transition.

X-ray tomography of a crumpled plastoelastic thin sheet.

Three-dimensional x-ray tomography is performed to investigate the internal structure and its evolution of a crumpled aluminum foil ball. The upper and lower bounds of the internal geometric fractal dimension are determined, which increase with the compression. Contrary to the simulation results, we find that the mass distribution changes from being inhomogeneous to uniform. Corroborated with the evidence from previous experiments, these findings support the physical picture that the elastic property precedes the plastic one at dominating the deformation and mechanical response for all crumpled structures. We show that the interior of a crumpled ball at the plastic regime can be mapped to the compact packing of a granular system.

Spontaneous emergence of ordered phases in crumpled sheets.

X-ray tomography is performed to acquire 3D images of crumpled aluminum foils. We develop an algorithm to trace out the labyrinthian paths in the three perpendicular cross sections of the data matrices. The tangent-tangent correlation function along each path is found to decay exponentially with an effective persistence length that shortens as the crumpled ball becomes more compact. In the meantime, we observed ordered domains near the crust, similar to the lamellae phase mixed by the amorphous portion in lyotropic liquid crystals. The size and density of these domains grow with further compaction, and their orientation favors either perpendicular or parallel to the radial direction. Ordering is also identified near the core with an arbitrary orientation, exemplary of the spontaneous symmetry breaking.