A data set with kinematic and ground reaction forces of human balance.

This article describes a public data set containing the three-dimensional kinematics of the whole human body and the ground reaction forces (with a dual force platform setup) of subjects who were standing still for 60 s in different conditions, in which the subjects' vision and the standing surface were manipulated. Twenty-seven young subjects and 22 old subjects were evaluated. The data set comprises a file with metadata plus 1,813 files with the ground reaction force (GRF) and kinematics data for the 49 subjects (three files for each of the 12 trials plus one file for each subject). The file with metadata has information about each subject's sociocultural, demographic, and health characteristics. The files with the GRF have the data from each force platform and from the resultant GRF (including the center of pressure data). The files with the kinematics contain the three-dimensional positions of 42 markers that were placed on each subject's body and 73 calculated joint angles. In this text, we illustrate how to access, analyze, and visualize the data set. All the data is available at Figshare (DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.4525082), and a companion Jupyter Notebook presents programming code to access the data set, generate analyses and other examples. The availability of a public data set on the Internet that contains these measurements and information about how to access and process this data can potentially boost the research on human postural control, increase the reproducibility of studies, and be used for training and education, among other applications.

Effects of limonoid cedrelone on MDA-MB-231 breast tumor cells in vitro.

Cancer is the second leading cause of death, preceded only by cardiovascular diseases, and there is epidemiological evidence that demonstrate this tendency is emerging worldwide. Brazil has an extensive vegetal biodiversity with more than 55,000 species listed. Such biodiversity collaborates with the finding of compounds which could be the basis for the design of new anti-tumor drugs, with fewer side effects than the conventional chemotherapy used currently. Cedrelone is a limonoid isolated from Trichilia catigua (Meliaceae) which is a native Brazilian plant. This study demonstrates that cedrelone inhibits proliferation, adhesion, migration and invasion of breast tumor cells from the line MDA-MB-231. The effects of cell migration and invasion on MDA-MB-231 cell may be explained, at least in part, by the ability of cedrelone to inhibit MMP activity. We also demonstrate that cedrelone is able to induce apoptosis in MDA-MB-231 cells. There are only a few works investigating the effect of limonoids in cellular processes closely related to tumor progression such as adhesion, migration and invasion. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work describing the effects of a limonoid on tumor and non-tumor cell adhesion process.