PURPOSE Individuals with cardiac problems avoid physical activity and exercise because they expect to feel shortness of breath, dizziness, or chest pain. Assessing kinesiophobia related to heart problems is important in terms of cardiac rehabilitation. The Tampa Scale of Kinesiophobia Swedish Version for the Heart (TSK-SV Heart) is reliable and has been validated for cardiac diseases in the Swe...

OBJECTIVES To create reference values for the general Finnish population using the Tampa Scale of Kinesiophobia (TSK-FIN), to study gender differences in the TSK-FIN, to assess the internal consistency of the TSK-FIN, to estimate the prevalence of high levels of kinesiophobia in Finnish men and women, and to examine the association between kinesiophobia and leisure-time physical activity and th...

The tight-skin (TSK/+) mouse, a genetic model for human systemic sclerosis (SSc), develops cutaneous fibrosis and autoantibodies against SSc-specific target autoantigens. Although molecular mechanisms explaining the development of fibrosis and autoimmunity in SSc patients or TSK/+ mice remain unknown, we recently demonstrated that SSc patients overexpress CD19, an important regulatory molecule ...

The tight-skin (TSK/+) mouse, a genetic model of systemic sclerosis (SSc), develops cutaneous fibrosis and defects in pulmonary architecture. Because hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) is an important mitogen and morphogen that contributes to the repair process after tissue injury, we investigated the role of HGF in cutaneous fibrosis and pulmonary architecture defects in SSc using TSK/+ mice. TSK/...

This paper introduces a higher-order Takagi-SugenoKang (TSK) neuro-fuzzy inference system and its applications in medical decision support systems. Different from most TSK fuzzy systems that utilize first-order TSK type fuzzy rules, the proposed system is composed of higherorder TKS fuzzy rules that have functions in their consequent parts of the following type: y = b0 x1 b1 x2 ...xp . The type...

Cheuvront SN, Kenefick RW, Montain SJ, Sawka MN. Mechanisms of aerobic performance impairment with heat stress and dehydration. J Appl Physiol 109: 1989–1995, 2010. First published August 5, 2010; doi:10.1152/japplphysiol.00367.2010.—Environmental heat stress can challenge the limits of human cardiovascular and temperature regulation, body fluid balance, and thus aerobic performance. This minir...

Mice carrying the Tight skin (Tsk) mutation have thickened skin and visceral fibrosis resulting from an accumulation of extracellular matrix molecules. These and other connective tissue abnormalities have made Tskl + mice models for scleroderma, hereditary emphysema, and myocardial hypertrophy. Previously we localized Tsk to mouse chromosome 2 in a region syntenic with human chromosome 15. The ...

In regression problems, the use of TSK fuzzy systems is widely extended due to the precision of the obtained models. Moreover, the use of simple linear TSK models is a good choice in many real problems due to the easy understanding of the relationship between the output and input variables. In this paper we present FRULER, a new genetic fuzzy system for automatically learning accurate and simpl...

The Tight Skin mouse is a genetically induced animal model of tissue fibrosis caused by a large in-frame mutation in the gene encoding fibrillin-1 (Fbn-1). We examined the influence of gender on the collagen content of tissues in C57BL/6J wild type (+/+) and mutant Tight Skin (Tsk/+) mice employing hydroxyproline assays. Tissue sections were stained with Masson's trichrome to identify collagen ...

Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is an autoimmune connective tissue disorder characterized by oxidative stress, impaired vascular function, and attenuated angiogenesis. The tight-skin (Tsk(-/+)) mouse is a model of SSc that displays many of the cellular features of the clinical disease. We tested the hypotheses that abnormal fibrillin-1 expression and chronic phospholipid oxidation occur in Tsk(-/+) mi...