Musculoskeletal Stress Markers (MSM)

This research applies the new Coimbra method for therecording of enthesal changes (EC) on a Dutch urban population. The sample consists of 66 individuals buried between 1450 and 1573, at the Franciscan monastery in Alkmaar, the Netherlands. The people buried here were part of the “common” people of Alkmaar.This sample consists of individuals of which the age and sex were estimated, and with no observable pathologies which could affect the enthesal sites. In addition to activity, age and sex could influence EC. It was tried to limit this influence by comparing the individuals in groups of sex and age in some of the tests, therefore limiting the influence of other factors on EC rather than activity. Ten fibrocartilaginous entheseal sites were scored on both upper limbs. After scoring the EC of all individuals, the data was statistically analysed using the program IBM SPSS (Version 23). As expected males, in general, scored higher than females and older individuals generally scored higher than younger individuals. At the subscapularis and the brachioradialis, females scored higher than the males, which could indicate women strained these muscles more than males. The males had a significantly higher EC score at three muscle attachment sites. In addition, there were differences between the sexes in ranks of mean EC scores, and the correlation of certain muscles. These factors do point to a general division of labour between the sexes. When focusing on differences between the age groups, EC in males showed more correlation with age than EC with age in the female population. Six of eight outliers, when looking at the mean EC scores, showed signs of osteoarthrosis, which is seen as an activity related pathology. This, together with the increased EC score indicates that these individuals most likely showed increased activity in comparison with the rest of the population. Lastly, the data presented here was compared with other research. This proved to be difficult, regarding the use of samples from different geographical areas, and time periods, different scoring methods and differences in scored entheseal sites. This shows the necessity for using a standardized scoring method for EC research. This could provide the opportunity to compare more data, generating more knowledge on EC research. This could make EC research into a viable method for osteological research, and providing archaeologist with a tool to reconstruct past activities.

Buku ENBORA: Teknik Penilaian Risiko Ergonomik di Tempat Kerja (Penerbit UTHM) Tahun 2019

Teknik ENBORA adalah alat atau kaedah penilaian risiko ergonomik yang mudah dan praktikal digunakan di tempat kerja serta memberi penanda aras tahap risiko dan tindakan yang perlu diambil berkaitan dengan aktiviti atau tugasan di tempat kerja

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The biomechanics of bone trauma is the application of mechanical laws to describe and interpret damage that occurs to bone. It involves the examination of both the intrinsic and extrinsic  factors resulting in bone injury. Knowledge of the biomechanics of bone trauma allows forensic scientists to use bone fractures to deduce the type and direction of loading that caused the bone to fail. The strength of bone is its ability to withstand loads without failing, and is dependent on its material composition, organization, and overall geometry. Loads can be applied in tension, compression, bending, torsion, shear, or a combination of these basic components. These loads cause internal tensile, compressive, and shear stresses on the bone. However, bone is a dynamic composite tissue that exhibits anisotropic and viscoelastic characteristics and will react differently to loads depending on its orientation and the rate at which the force is applied. When more energy is transferred to a bone than it can absorb, the bone will fracture. The type of fracture produced in bone depends on the magnitude, direction, rate, and area of force applied and the structural and material properties of the bone at and near the location of the force.

Forensic taphonomy was identified by as a key development in the field of forensic anthropology in the last 15 years. In this section of the book, the history of the field and its significant impact on forensic anthropology is explored further. Here some of the basic concepts of the field are outlined. Beary and Lyman in Chapter 25 provide an excellent, in-depth discussion of the development and unique role of taphonomy in forensic contexts, as well as general principles of forensic taphonomy and recent developments in forensic taphonomic research and methods.

El objetivo de este trabajo es estudiar las variaciones en la frecuencia de cambios entesiales a través del tiempo en Portugal para evaluar el efecto del aumento de la urbanización y la especialización laboral, aplicando un método de registro biológicamente apropiado, el llamado nuevo método Coimbra (Henderson et al. 2016a). La muestra analizada está compuesta por 138 individuos adultos provenientes de ocho sitios arqueológicos del actual territorio de Portugal, y con cronologías medievales y modernas. Se realizaron cálculos de prevalencias y de odds ratios, así como un test exacto de Fisher para los cambios registrados en once entesis de miembros superiores e inferiores. Los resultados sugieren que la actividad es un factor explicativo de los cambios entesiales registrados, pero que asimismo se deben considerar otros factores, ya que los diferentes perfiles de sexo y edad también contribuyen a las distintas tendencias. Además, el tamaño variable de las muestras de cada subgrupo también aporta a las altas frecuencias de algunos cambios. Sin embargo, este enfoque es fundamental para entender las tendencias temporales de los cambios entesiales.

Changes in subsistence strategy have caused some of the profoundest changes to the structure and health of humans. This study aims to test whether these changes have reduced work-load as assessed by entheseal changes. Entheseal changes, formerly called musculoskeletal stress markers, are thought to reflect muscle usage throughout life, although it is widely agreed that they have a multifactorial origin. This paper uses a meta-analysis of comparable published data to plot trends in time by muscle, enthesis type and sex. The results show that agriculturalists have the lowest scores for entheseal changes, with hunte–gatherers next highest and those working in industry the highest. These findings are the same for males and females, for most muscles and muscle groups. However, entheseal changes are highly correlated with increased age and the age distributions of the samples analysed could not be compared. It is, therefore, possible that differences in age distribution of the samples are one of the reasons for this finding. Recommendations are provided to reduce this and other limitations for future meta-analyses.

Fibrous entheses are widely used to study behaviour in past populations.Pathological conditions may also cause similar entheseal changes (EC).The literature review highlighted that calcific tendinitis can cause EC.Further palaeopathological research is required to test this hypothesis.Fibrous entheses have been widely used to study activity-related stress to infer behavioural patterns in past populations. Unlike their fibrocartilaginous counterparts, the effect of disease processes has been less widely discussed in the osteoarchaeological literature. This study uses a literature review to ascertain whether specific pathological changes should be taken into account when recording fibrous entheses. Due to the anatomical structure of fibrous entheses it was hypothesised that diseases which affect the structure of bone or the periosteum might be a factor in causing entheseal changes. A search of over one hundred terms was performed in PubMed with no year range stipulated, but no papers were found which related to entheseal changes caused by any of the expected pathological processes. The paucity of literature might be due to lack of symptoms in living individuals, it is therefore suggested that a systematic study of skeletal remains is performed using recently developed recording methods to determine if pathological conditions need to be taken into account when recording entheseal changes to study activity-related stress. The search did highlight a link between calcific tendinitis and cortical erosion at fibrous entheses, and it is recommended that this is taken into account when interpreting entheseal changes in past populations.

It has been shown that age is an important factor in entheseal change (EC) presence, but this is for each independent feature. A random forest model has previously found a weak correlation between predicted and real age. The aim of this study was to use a multidimensional scaling model to determine the effect of occupation while controlling for age.

Entheses were recorded using the new Coimbra method in all males from the identified skeletal collection in Coimbra. Entheses chosen were the: supra- and infraspinatus insertion, subscapularis insertion, common extensor and flexor origins, biceps brachii and triceps brachii insertion. Occupations were categorised into heavy manual, manual, nonmanual and soldiers based on previous studies. The R package “randomForest” was used to partition the data into subsets of individuals in the same occupation category based on their overall EC expression, thus using all features. Several approaches were taken, but when clusters, based on these models were created, age was an important factor. Residuals from a regression model and later fitted values from the model were used to remove the effect of age. Age remained an important factor, but most importantly occupational categories did not cluster together well.

Despite previous studies showing that each feature of EC expression was not strongly affected by age, this study shows that age remains a more important than occupation as defined by these categories (but also when using the professions as documented in the collection). Other effects may be at play, particularly the difficulty of classifying occupations by biomechanical loading and non-occupational biomechanical loading, e.g. gardening or changes in occupation over life course.

Sex determination of human skeletal and dental remains is a very important step in palaeodemographic reconstructions. This information can be easily obtained if skeletons are complete and well preserved, but problems arise when the sample contains fragmented and/or commingled remains. In these cases alternative methodological procedures must be achieved, taking into account the population-specific variability in sexual dimorphism and the degree of robustness of the skeletal sample. In this chapter an unconventional methodology applied to a sample of removed human remains from the Chenque I site (Lihué Calel National Park, La Pampa province, Western Pampean Region, Argentina) is described and analyzed. This site is a prehistoric cemetery used by hunter-gatherer societies during the Final Late Holocene, throughout 700 years. It has two clearly defined units with very different characteristics. The Superior Unit (0-30 cm depth) contains thousands of bony and dental remains with different degrees of fragmentation, comminglement, arrangement and anatomic association. In the Inferior Unit (below 30 cm) 42 burials were detected, many of them associated with subsuperficial stone structures. To this moment a preliminary MNI of 216 was estimated.

The emergence of horse riding in Mongolia has recently gained attention in archaeological research (e.g. Houle 2016; Makarewicz et al 2018; Taylor and Tuvshinjargel 2018). Most of this research consists of zooarchaeological studies examining evidence of riding through osteological analyses of horse skeletal remains. This thesis represents an exploratory study on entheseal changes in human skeletal remains from the Bronze and Iron Age of Mongolia (c. 2500 BCE – c. 200 CE) to investigate patterns of repetitive physical activity that may be suggestive of horse riding. Entheseal changes refer to morphological alterations to bone caused by repetitive physical activity that are identifiable through bioarchaeological analysis (e.g. Hawkey and Merbs 1995; Villotte et al 2010). The study sample consists of 52 individuals from the National University of Mongolia and Züünkhangai, Mongolia. The “New Coimbra” method serves as the scoring procedure of entheseal changes in this study (Henderson et al 2016). Statistical analyses indicate patterns of entheseal changes that may be suggestive of repetitive and long-term horse riding are observed in individuals from the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age (LBA/EIA). These patterns are supported by recent ethnoarchaeological research on contemporary Mongolian riding techniques as well as zooarchaeological observations of osteological remodeling on prehistoric horse crania (Taylor and Tuvshinjargel 2018). Therefore, this study offers evidence for horse riding emerging in the LBA/EIA, which may have influenced the economic and sociopolitical transitions that occur during the Bronze and Iron Age.

The Battle of Resaca de la Palma, the second battle of the Mexican-American War, was fought on May 9, 1846 near the Rio Grande River in southern Texas. The battle was won decisively by United States troops and resulted in the death of hundreds of Mexican soldiers who were subsequently buried in mass graves. One of the mass graves (41CF3) contained the skeletal remains of 27 to 36 adult male soldiers, including those from the Seventh and Tenth Infantry companies. The skeletal remains were examined for battle-related injuries. The anatomical location of each wound was documented and each lesion was inspected to determine the timing, type of wound, and the direction of the force. More than half of the individuals exhibited osteological evidence of battle-related trauma. The wound distribution pattern and type of wounds present demonstrates that traditional battle tactics, as well as hand-to-hand combat, occurred at Resaca de la Palma.

The introduction of stable isotopes in archaeological research beginning in the 1970s produced a revolution in the ways that several key anthropological issues were studied, including early hominin subsistence, hunter-gatherer spatial organization, origins and history of farming and pastoralist societies, migrations, and intra- and inter-group social differentiation. As a tool suited for the quantitative reconstruction of paleodiets, bone chemistry provided a new and independent line of evidence that was readily integrated into ongoing discussions based on archaeofaunal and paleobotanical data (see van der Merwe, 1982; Ambrose, 1993). The impact that isotopic research has had in the field of archaeology is reflected in the ever-growing number of publications making use of isotopic analyses, and in the also growing number of volumes directed towards the integration of available results and perspectives of analysis (Sillen & Armelagos, 1991; Sandford, 1993; Bocherens et al., 1999; Ambrose & Katzenberg, 2000; Ambrose & Krigbaum, 2003; Koch & Burton, 2003; Staller et al., 2007).
The archaeology of South America was part of this process, presenting some early and excellent examples of isotopic research focused on the resolution of archaeological problems (e.g. Hastorf & De Niro, 1985; Burger & van der Merwe, 1990; Ubelaker, et al., 1995). However, most of the abundant research conducted during the last two decades below 20° S of latitude is not well represented in the international archaeological literature (although see Fernández et al., 1999; Gil, 2003; Yesner et al., 2003; Falabella et al., 2008). In this context, one of the main goals of this volume is to provide an updated review of the isotopic research conducted in southern South America, including cases from the Bolivian and Argentinean Puna or “Altiplano”, northwestern Argentina, the central-western Andean region of Argentina, the Pampas, Patagonia, and the Atlantic and Pacific marine coastlines. This set of papers is the product of a Workshop named “Arqueología e Isótopos Estables en el Sur de Sudamérica: Discusión e Integración de Resultados” that was held in the city of Malargüe (Mendoza province, Argentina) in 2005. This workshop was organized in the memory of Susana Valencio, a geochemistry researcher who had a substantial role in the introduction of stable isotopes in Argentinean archaeology, and who died unexpectedly in 2004, leaving a great void among her many friends and colleagues.

Current lines of research
Food availability, preparation, and consumption are basic parts of ancient societies. This volume is focused on the southern cone of South America, where both agriculturalists and hunter-gatherers existed into modern times, and where stable isotope analysis has been widely used in recent times. Foremost is work related with the development of stronger approaches to regional isotopic ecology (Llano; Yacobaccio et al.), methodological aspects regarding the application of stable isotopes to the reconstruction of subsistence and migrations (Tykot et al.; Knudson), introduction and impact of agriculture on Andean societies (Calo & Cortés; Gil et al.; Laguens et al.), adoption of pastoralist economies (Izeta et al.), spatial organization and territoriality of hunter-gatherer groups from the Pampas and Patagonia (Berón et al.; Borrero et al.; Martínez et al.; Tessone et al.), and integration of isotopic and bioarchaeological data (Suby & Guichón). Overall, the systematic use of stable isotopes in archaeological research in South America has fostered a reevaluation of some widely held views regarding, among other important subjects, the importance of maize in Andean societies and the amplitude of hunter-gatherer home ranges.
Research conducted from South America usually has to cope with strong budget restrictions that may impose limits in the size of the available isotopic sample. This has been variously tackled by developing long-term projects that allow gradual increases in the amount of information produced, or by integrating international research teams that provide external funding sources. Both strategies are represented in this volume. We believe that an exploratory framework of research provides the most productive strategy – in this or any other academic context – where specific questions are pursued even when we know that the factual basis is far from ideal. The key aspect is to be sensitive to the paths that need to be followed in order to identify stronger patterns and suggest more accurate explanations. We are confident that the set of fourteen papers that make up this volume is successful in presenting original strategies to cope with old problems, as well as in raising questions not foreseen.
A main concern shared by these papers is the integration of isotopic data with other lines of evidence, including archaeofaunal studies, health conditions and paleopathology as inferred from human remains, lithic distributions, paleobotany, and mortuary practices. This is an important virtue that generates the need to evaluate several theoretical and methodological levels in order to integrate data differing in terms of units of analysis, resolution, and formation history. This task broadens the spectrum of the discussions developed, making them valuable beyond the limits of stable isotopic research and transcending the geographical scope of South America.

Introduction: Exam stress is a set of responses that includes excessive worry, depression, nervousness and irrelevant thinking to a class of stimuli from an individual's experience of assessment and outcome. The rationale of this study is to assess the examination related stress among the first year MBBS students by measuring BMI (body mass index) and VAS (Visual analogue scale) as to determine the factors contributing to exam stress among first year medical students. Methods: The study was conducted over four weeks with 130 students in the month of March 2011. Questionnaire consisted of VAS to measure exam stress and 16 questions consisted of matters related to Academic factors, psychological problems, details of food intake and lack of physical activities. Body weight was measured before, during and after the exams to assess any weight loss due to exam stress. Results: There is a significant moderate level of stress marked on VAS during the examination. Among different factors contributing to exam stress, academic factors (63%), lack of physical exercise (89%), Details of food intake (59%) and psychological problems (50%) were most important factors reported by the students. There was no significant change in BMI during the various phases of examination. Conclusion: This study indicates that there is a significant moderate level of exam stress among the first year MBBS students based on VAS and it also highlights the various factors which can contribute to examination stress process.

In ancient populations studies, investigation on activity-induced pathology performed by means of an integrated and epidemiological approach can provide useful evidence about physical activities, age of occupancy, sexual differentiation, social stratification and working tasks diVision of past human groups. The analysis of occupational stress of the skeletal sample coming
from the poor necropolis of Lucus Feroniae, a rural town of the Roman Imperial Age, was carried out on: degenerative disease of joints and vertebral bodies, traumas, hypertrophic changes at sites of muscles and ligament insertion, presence of anatomical variants caused by postural habits or body movements.
The results as a whole seem to indicate that the population, likely representative of a low social group (potentially slaves), was precociously and actively employed in heavy manual work activities. These may have included farming tasks demanding lifting, heavy loads transportation and long-distance walking on rough grounds.

ABSTRACT: Analysis of stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes from soft or mineralized tissues is a direct and widely used
technique for modeling diets. In addition to its continued role in paleodiet analysis, stable isotope analysis is now
contributing to studies of physiology, disease, and nutrition in archaeological and living human populations. In humans
and other animals, dietary uptake and distribution of carbon and nitrogen among mineralized and soft tissue is carried
out with varying efficiency due to factors of internal biology. Human pathophysiologies may lead to pathology-influenced
isotopic fractionation that can be exploited to understand not just skeletal health and diet, but physiological
health and nutrition. This study reviews examples from human biology, non-human animal ecology, biomedicine, and
bioarchaeology demonstrating how stable isotope analyses are usefully applied to the study of physiological adaptation
and adaptability. Suggestions are made for future directions in applying stable isotope analysis to the study of nutritional
stress, disease, and growth and development in living and past human populations.

Entheseal changes take place at the interface between a muscle, tendon or ligament and a bone. By scoring the development of these changes this study measured the labour intensity of five skeletal collections from Ireland. The methodology employed was the Mariotti et al. (2007) entheseal scoring method, used to examine twenty-three postcranial enthesis sites on seventy-two male skeletons. Standard methods were utilised for skeletal sex determination and age estimation. One of the collections studied was excavated from a convict graveyard of the Victorian prison on Spike Island and facilitated an assessment of the biological effect of unfree labour patterns in comparison to free communities. The results found that while many prisoners had very high entheseal development, the entheseal evidence does not indicate a higher intensity of labour than the general population. A number of reasons for this were explored, including an unavoidable sample bias and a discussion of the complex concepts of free and unfree. The four other collections examined provided varied samples so that comparisons could be made between early medieval and post-medieval, urban and rural, Catholic and Anglican, young adults and older individuals. The two controlling factors of age and body size (estimated by humeral measurements) were examined; age was found to correlate with greater entheseal development but body size was found to have no
correlation, which may be due to the nature of a single-sex study. The results of this study have salient implications for the bioarchaeological study of the unfree, such as prisoners and slaves, as well as for the burgeoning field of enthesis studies.

In recent years the bioarchaeology of Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands has seen enormous progress. This new and exciting research is synthesised, contextualised and expanded upon in The Routledge Handbook of Bioarchaeology in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands.

The present bioarchaeological study examines the external diaphyseal geometric properties of humeri, radii, femora and tibiae of the Classic period skeletal population of Xcambó , Yucatan, Mexico. The diaphysial proportions are evaluated using a biomechanical approach together with data from the material context and other osteological information. Our intent is to provide new answers to questions concerning lifestyle, domestic labour division and subsistence strategies of this coastal Maya settlement that was inhabited from the Late and Terminal Preclassic (300 BC-350 AD) to the Postclassic Period (900-1500 AD).

Muscle attachments have only recently been used systematically as markers of ancient activity, in part because of methodological and interpretive difficulties involved in associating muscle markings with specific activities. An alternative analytical approach focuses on the organization of activity rather than the identification of specific activities. This paper presents data from 18 muscle insertion sites in 56 adult skeletons from the Italian Iron Age cemetery of Pontecagnano. These data indicate that: (1) skeletal development of muscle sites is related to an individual's age;

Entheseal changes (EC) are changes to areas where connective tissue (tendon or ligament) attaches to bone. Previous studies have suggested that heavy physical activity has an effect on EC development, among other factors such as age, body size, and (male) sex. In this study, EC in the upper limbs was examined in a Hellenistic-Roman rural population from Boğazköy, Turkey to assess gender differences in activity patterns. EC was positively correlated with age at death, and therefore, old adults were excluded when comparing the EC scores of males and females. Significant differences in EC between the sexes were tentatively considered as an indicator of gender-specific activities. Females exhibited significantly higher EC scores at the common extensor muscles' origin site (lateral epicondyle of the humerus), with a right-sided dominance. Common extensor muscles are related to movements of the wrist. It is assumed that the repetitive labor of weaving, spinning , and grinding may have caused these changes. Significantly higher EC scores in males than females were found only in the insertion site of the supraspinatus and infraspinatus muscles (greater tubercle of the humerus). EC scores in this shoulder-related enthesis also showed a right-sided dominance. It is assumed that some activities performed by males, such as woodcutting, shoveling, and building-related activities may have caused EC in this enthesis.

Hydroxyapatite (HA) has been used clinically for many years. It has good biocompatibility in bone contact as its chemical composition is similar to that of bone material. Porous HA ceramics have found enormous use in biomedical applications including bone tissue regeneration, cell proliferation, and drug delivery. In bone tissue engineering it has been applied as filling material for bone defects and augmentation, artificial bone graft material, and prosthesis revision surgery. Its high surface area leads to excellent osteoconductivity and resorbability providing fast bone ingrowth. Porous HA can be produced by a number of methods including conversion of natural bones, ceramic foaming technique, polymeric sponge method, gel casting of foams, starch consolidation, microwave processing, slip casting, and electrophoretic deposition technique. Some of these methods have been combined to fabricate porous HA with improved properties. These combination methods have yielded some promising results. This paper discusses briefly fundamental aspects of porous HA for artificial bone applications as well as various techniques used to prepare porous HA. Some of our recent results on development of porous HA will be presented as well.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1468699606002348

BACKGROUND/AIM: Backpack effect posture, walking and physiological costs but there is dearth of literature on effects of backpack strap (1 versus 2 straps) on gait and perceived exertion among young adults. We determined the influence of type of backpack shoulder strap on gait parameters and perceived exertion of young adults in a free-living normal walking speed. METHODS: Twenty-five young adults with a mean age of 22 years underwent a self-selected normal speed walking for six minutes each under 3 testing conditions: without a backpack; with 1 strap; and with 2 straps. Selected gait parameters and perceived exertion were assessed. RESULTS: There were no significant difference in stride length, stride time, step length, step time, gait speed, and cadence among the three walking conditions. However, perceived exertions were significantly higher when the backpack was carried with 15% irrespective of 1 strap or 2 straps. CONCLUSION: Momentary carriage of a backpack either on 1 strap or 2 straps does not appear to influence gait phases. However, this short bout of normal walking appear to increase perceived exertion in young adults irrespective of whether the backpack is wore on single or double shoulder strap.

The purpose of this article is to study the osteological remains of some individuals discovered in the "Neolithic" site from Cârcea ("La Viaduct" and "La Hanuri" settlements). For this, we studied the human skeletal representation, and the taphonomic history of the assemblage. This analysis highlighted that the skulls and long bones (in different degrees of fragmentation, "cut" and some showing evidence for contact with fire) are the only represented skeletal elements. In the case of 10 individuals the results highlighted that the bones undergone certain processing stages, due to probably perimortem human action. The evaluation of the archaeological sample was made in the light of forensic and taphonomic analysis conducted on modern cadavers,and by comparison with similar archaeological discoveries. Unfortunately, it is not easy to determine what happened to the initial bodies of these individuals so that in the end only certain (fragmentary) body-parts were found, and finally "deposited" in a ditch and in pits. The proposed explanation is that the bones were processed in a desired manner for specific reasons, one of them being that of cannibalism.