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Introduction: The U.S. Army is updating the physical fitness assessment for soldiers to the six-event Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT). A paucity of data regarding the ACFT maximum deadlift (MDL) event, especially in military populations, has increased concern over the objectivity of the test. The reliability of scoring the MDL has not been established. It is unknown if grader professional experience impacts the reliability of scoring, and if so, what level of experience is required for reliable assessment. Performance and assessment of the MDL could impact military occupational selection, promotion, and retention within the Army. The purposes of this study were to determine the inter- and intra-rater reliabilities of raters with varying degrees of professional experience on scoring the MDL and to determine the relationships between load lifted, overall lift success, sex, and body mass index (BMI)., Methods: The design is a reliability study. Approval was granted by the Naval Medical Center-Portsmouth Institutional Review Board. Fifty-five healthy soldiers and cadets from the U.S. Military Academy were recruited. Participants completed one data collection session, performing one MDL attempt. The attempt was video recorded using three devices: two handheld tablets placed perpendicular to the sagittal and frontal planes recording at 240 Hz and one digital camera positioned at a 45° angle recording at 30 Hz. A reference standard was established through slow-motion analysis of the sagittal and frontal plane recordings. Six raters with varying degrees of professional experience viewed the 45° camera recordings at real-time speed independently, in a random order, on two separate occasions. Lift success was dichotomously assessed as successful or unsuccessful according to the MDL standards. Cohen's kappa was computed to determine inter- and intra-rater reliabilities among raters. Bivariate correlation was used to assess associations among load lifted, BMI, and sex. A chi-squared test of independence assessed the relationship between sex and overall lift success., Results: Inter-rater reliability between the six raters ranged from 0.29 to 0.69. Inter-rater reliability between the raters to the reference standard ranged from 0.28 to 0.61. Intra-rater reliability ranged from 0.51 to 0.84. Inter-rater reliability of raters who had attended a Training and Doctrine Command-approved ACFT certification course ranged from 0.51 to 0.66, while those who had not ranged from 0.34 to 0.46. BMI and sex were associated with load lifted (r = 0.405, P = .002; r = -0.727, P < .001, respectively). Overall lift success was not associated with load lifted (r = -0.047, P = .731). Overall lift success was not related to sex (χ2 = 0.271, P = .602)., Conclusion: Inter-rater reliability of the six raters ranged from poor to substantial, while intra-rater reliability ranged from moderate to excellent. Compared to a reference standard, inter-rater reliability ranged from poor to substantial. The wide range in consistency demonstrated in this study, both between and within raters, brings into question the current subjective methods used to grade the MDL. More research is needed to understand the most feasible, valid, and reliable way to assess performance standards like the MDL that may affect a soldier's career progression., (Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Association of Military Surgeons of the United States 2022. This work is written by (a) US Government employee(s) and is in the public domain in the US.)

Aims: The aim of this study is to investigate whether pulsed ultrasound (US) in combination with gentamicin yields a decreased viability of bacteria in biofilms on bone cements in vivo., Methods and Results: Bacterial survival on bone cement in the presence and absence of ultrasound was compared in a rabbit model. Two bone cement samples with an Escherichia coli ATCC 10798 biofilm were implanted in a total of nine rabbits. In two groups bone cement discs loaded with gentamicin, freshly prepared and aged were used, and in one group unloaded bone cement discs in combination with systemically administered gentamicin. Pulsed ultrasound with a frequency of 28.48 kHz and a maximum acoustic intensity of 500 mW cm(-2) was applied continuously from 24 h till 72 h postsurgery on one of the two implanted discs. After euthanization and removal of the bacteria from the discs, the number of viable bacteria were quantified and skin samples were analysed for histopathological examination. Application of ultrasound, combined with gentamicin, reduced the viability of the biofilms in all three groups varying between 58 and 69% compared with the negative control. Histopathological examinations showed no skin lesions., Conclusions: Ultrasound resulted in a tendency of improved efficacy of gentamicin, either applied locally or systemically. Usage of ultrasound in this model proved to be safe., Significance and Impact of the Study: This study implies that ultrasound could improve the prevention of infection immediately after surgery, especially because the biomaterials, gentamicin and ultrasound used in this model are all in clinical usage, but not yet combined in clinical practice.

Motivation: The efficiency of bioinformatics programmers can be greatly increased through the provision of ready-made software components that can be rapidly combined, with additional bespoke components where necessary, to create finished programs. The new standard for C++ includes an efficient and easy to use library of generic algorithms and data-structures, designed to facilitate low-level component programming. The extension of this library to include functionality that is specifically useful in compute-intensive tasks in bioinformatics and molecular modelling could provide an effective standard for the design of reusable software components within the biocomputing community., Results: A novel application of generic programming techniques in the form of a library of C++ components called the Bioinformatics Template Library (BTL) is presented. This library will facilitate the rapid development of efficient programs by providing efficient code for many algorithms and data-structures that are commonly used in biocomputing, in a generic form that allows them to be flexibly combined with application specific object-oriented class libraries., Availability: The BTL is available free of charge from our web site http://www.cryst.bbk.ac.uk/~classlib/ and the EMBL file server http://www.embl-ebi.ac.uk/FTP/index.html

The effect of erythromycin on planktonic cultures of Psedomonas aeruginosa, with and without application of 70 kHz ultrasound, was studied. Ultrasound was applied at levels that had no inhibitory effect on cultures of Ps. aeruginosa. Ultrasound in combination with erythromycin reduced the viability of Ps. aeruginosa by 1-2 orders of magnitude compared with antibiotic alone, even at concentrations below the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC). Electron-spin resonance studies suggest that ultrasound induces uptake of antibiotic by perturbing or stressing the membrane. This application of ultrasound may be useful for expanding the number of drugs available for treating localized infections by rendering bacteria susceptible to normally ineffective antibiotics.

Previous analysis of the distribution of experimental solvent molecule positions around amino acid side chains showed that distinct clustering occurred close to polar or charged atoms in proteins. We have used those data to predict likely solvent positions around proteins not used in our initial analysis. We envisage that this algorithm, AQUARIUS, will be useful for finding solvent positions in electron density maps generated by protein crystallography and as useful starting positions for solvent molecules in computer simulation studies of macromolecules.