Benefits of Echium Oil, Ultrasounds, & Monitoring Speech—New Citations

Echium Oil vs. Fish Oil

Food and Nutrition researchers have recently taken a look at the health benefits of stearidonic acid (SDA), an omega-3 fatty acid. It had been suggested that SDA has comparable effects on human health to those achieved by intake of fish oil. Rats were tested for blood pressure and electrocardiogram changes using a BIOPAC general purpose transducer amplifier and ECG amplifiers, after being fed similar diets supplemented with either Echium oil (a source of SDA) or fish oil. It was found that fish oil offered superior cardioprotection and higher rate of conversion to DHA, a molecule essential for mammalian health. Read the entire paper here.

Ultrasound of a Professional Soccer Player

This study examined the use of ultrasound to monitor changes in the long head of the biceps femoris (BF) architecture of a professional soccer player with acute first-time hamstring strain. Researchers aimed to use this study as an example in which ultrasound-based parameters could be used to link the mechanical adaptations of the injured muscle to specific therapeutic intervention. The study followed the player during their 14 session physiotherapy treatment and for six more occasions (over a one year period) after the regular sessions. A BIOPAC twin-axis goniometer (TSD130B) was used to record knee angular position and data was sent to a computer running AcqKnowledge. Read about the full study and their findings here.

Intentional Monitoring of Emotions

Research has shown that people exert control over their emotions by modulating expressions, reappraising feelings, and redirecting attention. These findings suggest that emotional signals are produced in a goal directed way and monitored for errors like other intentional actions. Researchers thus created a digital audio platform to covertly modify the emotional tone of participants’ voices while they talked in the direction of happiness, sadness, or fear to see what effect the change in intended speech emotion would have on the speaker. A BIOPAC MP150 system continuously monitored participant’s skin conductance through finger electrodes. You can access a PDF of the full study here.