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Recovery Strategies after Matches: From Science to Practice
No full textEvery day, coaches, and athletes are challenged with the task of precisely timing and planning training periodisation to ensure optimal physiological adaptations and peak sporting performance align at the right moment (Mujika et al., 2018). Whilst some athletes may benefit from long preparation periods and short competition windows, team sports such as football experience quite the opposite; with a need to maintain frequent consistency in performance across a competition season spanning several months
Red is angry, ice cream is happy - Capturing in the moment screen time emotions from children
No full textChildren’s screen use draws much attention from the media with the general narrative being that something needs to be done. In the IDC community, and beyond, many interventions and innovations are proposed and studies are carried out and report positive effects in many cases. One omission is in studies that report the first hand experience of children, another is in designing for children to take more control over their own screen use by managing their feelings and emotions and self regulating. In this work in progress paper we describe a small study that explored children’s emotions as they exited from a game. The contribution here is the method that we present as being easy to manage, fun to operate and reliable in its outcomes. We describe the work and suggest some further uses and extensions
China's International Communications
No full textInternational communication is a dynamic cycle that is inherently relational, interactive, and interdependent that both ends of the communication play significant roles in producing, projecting and processing message flows. It is not about informing the other but to engage with the other, and understand the other better to make oneself better understood. China’s international communication has shown a shifting focus in reflecting its changing visions of its own identity and position in the world, evolving from showcasing a New China in Mao’s era, to an Open China in Deng’s era and a Strong China in Xi’s era. While its approach also evolves from being reactive to proactive, what remains unchanged is its government-centredness. Though increasingly diversified from state-driven activities to more diffuse actors especially in the internet age, its vehicles and actors are still dominated by state media, state-backed spokesperson system and state-sponsored activities such as the Confucius Institutes. Non-state actors are participating through social media and We media in generating more complexity and fluidity to the news flow, whilst new remits and strategies are also developed to engage external forces, such as borrowing “boats, lips and pens”. With amply supply of investment and technology, China managed to have its media outreach around the world and around the clock, but still struggles to produce the expected influence or achieve its ambition of redrawing the global information order. Structural constraint remains to be the key challenge as explicit censorship, self-censorship and laudatory style, infiltrated through the blurred boundary between state and party control into both internal and external communications are the biggest barriers to establishing credibility and improving the effects of China’s international communication. Influence and impact cannot be achieved with investment and infrastructure in the media industry, but need to be earned with both content and communication style. Remits such as “explaining the China model” and “telling China’s stories” show a departure from me to you, while more effective communication needs to move from one-way dissemination to two-way interaction to nurture better mutual understanding and a more constructive media environment for China
Medical and dental involvement in the Nazi party
No full textHow did medical professionals become complicit in one of history’s darkest chapters
Legitimising International Orders: The Symbolic Dimension of Surrender
No full textThis article argues that the role of surrender in shaping international legitimacy has been largely overlooked – particularly its symbolic dimension. Challenging dominant views that reduce victory and defeat to moments of rupture, it adopts a long-term, relational perspective, reframing surrender as embedded in ongoing processes that shape and reshape legitimacy over time. It explores how symbols that become central during surrender – including foreign and domestic leaders – can mediate tensions between coercion–consent, pride–stigma, autonomy–dependence, while fostering social cohesion across domestic and international societies. Drawing on case studies, process sociology, complexity theory, the English School, and Thucydides, it demonstrates how the symbolic management of surrender can lead to path dependencies that influence state-formation, a defeated state’s identity, and regional integration. Emphasising the fluidity and political weight of symbolic meanings, it advances a relational understanding of hegemonic legitimacy. In doing so, it links the origins of legitimacy to its continuous development and critiques both simplistic victor’s peace narratives and process-reductive histories. Ultimately, it illuminates not only the challenges but also the symbolic opportunities for constructing legitimacy in an interdependent world – underscoring that power endures through its symbolic anchoring in meaning and, with it, the hope for reconciliation despite defeat
Heart rate variability in female soccer players, before, during, and after a COVID-19 positive test
Get PDFThe purpose of this study is to examine the impact of COVID-19 infection on heart rate variability (HRV) in female soccer players, with a focus on identifying changes in autonomic regulation before, during, and after a COVID-19 positive test. Seven elite female soccer players (age: 20.14 ± 6.41 years, height: 162.43 ± 4.32 cm, weight: 51.73 ± 5.65 kg) were included in the analysis after consistently recording their HRV during the specified period. Morning HRV measures were completed using photoplethysmography via the HRV4 training smartphone application, a validated tool for field-based monitoring, along with self-reported data. The players were tracked for at least 30 consecutive days before testing positive for COVID-19 using a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test. They were also requested to record their HRV while they had COVID-19 until a negative PCR result was obtained. The study presents data on RMSSD, LnRMSSD and HR for the 30 days prior to COVID-19, as well as for the 3 days (day − 3), 2 days (day − 2), and 1 day (day − 1) leading up to COVID-19. Also, data for the first 5 days following a positive COVID-19 test are included. The results of this study indicated that LnRMSSD measurements were significantly lower 2 days (day − 2) and 1 day (day − 1) before the onset of COVID-19, as well as during the first four days following a positive COVID-19 test, compared to baseline. In addition, RMSSD measurements were significantly lower during the first 4 days after a positive COVID-19 test, while resting heart rate was significantly higher during the first and second days following a positive COVID-19 test, compared to baseline. Our findings suggest that reductions in LnRMSSD, reflecting decreased parasympathetic activity, may serve as early indicators of COVID-19 infection in elite female soccer players, potentially allowing for pre-symptomatic detection through daily HRV monitoring
Multi-scale attention-edge interactive refinement network for salient object detection
No full textTo improve salient object detection (SOD) based on fully convolutional neural networks (FCNs), attention and edge awareness have been used separately as a supporting mechanism for multi-level feature refinement. However, the performance advantages have not been found to be consistent across datasets, because each mechanism has its own limitations, meaning that the absence of attention or edge awareness during feature refinement leads to inaccurate predictions or blurred boundaries. This phenomenon has inspired the development of a new model to enable close interaction between attention and edges, resulting in the Multi-scale Attention-Edge Interactive Refinement Network (MAIRN) proposed in this paper. The proposed model consists of two interacting subnets to achieve not only SOD but also salient edge detection (SED), and each subnet consists of multiple interactive refinement modules cascaded in series with the Multi-scale Attention Refinement (MSAR) module proposed for the SOD subnet to provide edge-enhanced attention and the Edge Refinement (ER) module proposed for the SED subnet to provide attention-enhanced edges. Also proposed is a novel structure for Progressive Feature Concentration (PFC) to reduce information loss in feature fusion. From extensive quantitative and qualitative comparison against 24 state-of-the-art SOD models with and without incorporation of attention and edge awareness, the proposed model is shown to have the most accurate and robust SOD performance on 5 benchmark datasets. Furthermore, it stands out as one of the most computationally efficient networks in terms of the number of parameters and floating-point operations. The code and results of our method are available at https://github.com/LiangBoCheng/MAIRN
Tribological assessment of lubricants used in hydrogen assisted diesel engines
Get PDFThis study investigates the tribological performance of lubricants used in hydrogen-assisted diesel engines with specific focus on their rheology, additives and the formation of tribo-films. While there are concerns about reduced lubricant viscosity and increased wear due to hydrogen combustion, the impact of hydrogen on lubricant quality and tribology in Internal Combustion Engines (ICEs) is a less-explored topic. As an initial step, this study provides an in-depth analysis of lubricant performance in diesel engines, both with and without hydrogen assistance. The study includes chemical evaluations, and controlled tribometric performance analysis of lubricants from refuse trucks after an operation interval equivalent to 2000 km. The results show marginal changes in the lubricant rheology with the use of hydrogen, but there are differences in frictional behaviour under mixed and boundary lubrication regimes. In addition, X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) analysis shows variations in anti-wear additive adsorption on surfaces, with a noticeable difference between fresh and used oil samples, aligning with the lubricant analysis data. Despite a noticeable difference in measured friction in mixed and boundary regimes of lubrication, the chemical analysis and XPS results show only marginal differences in the anti-wear additive content and the associated tribofilms. The study demonstrates that changes in the chemical and rheological states of the lubricant affect frictional performance and interaction of additives with surfaces in mixed and boundary regimes of lubrication. Understanding these changes is crucial for the future development of suitable formulations for use in dual-fuel hydrogen-assisted ICEs
Investigating Touch DNA Success Rates in Vehicle Sites for Hit-and-Run Casework
Get PDFThis study evaluated the effectiveness of Touch DNA recovery from four key vehicle contact points—steering wheel (SW), gear shift (GS), interior door handle (IDH), and exterior door handle (EDH)—in the context of hit-and-run forensic casework. 1769 samples were collected from 359 vehicles processed between 2020 and 2023. Statistically significant differences were observed in the quantity and quality of DNA recovered across these sites (p < 0.05). The steering wheel yielded the highest DNA success rates, followed by the gear shift, whereas the exterior and interior door handles demonstrated substantially lower recovery efficiency. These findings underscore the critical role of strategic sampling site selection in maximizing evidentiary outcomes. The results support prioritizing the steering wheel and gear shift as primary targets for DNA collection in vehicle-based investigations. The study highlights the practical utility of Touch DNA in linking individuals to vehicular crimes and calls for further research into alternative sampling techniques and contamination control measures to optimize forensic DNA recovery protocols in real-world hit-and-run scenarios
Impact of industrial agglomeration on total factor productivity in the context of embedded global value chains
No full textThis study examines how industrial agglomeration interacts with global value chains (GVCs) integration to affect total factor productivity (TFP) in China. Using panel data from 30 provinces between 2011 and 2020, we find that agglomeration alone is associated with lower TFP, likely due to congestion and resource misallocation. However, when embedded in GVCs, agglomeration exerts a positive and significant impact on productivity. Mechanism analysis reveals that innovation capacity and industrial competitiveness enhance this effect, especially in regions with high GVC value-added. Heterogeneity analysis further shows that GVC participation amplifies agglomeration’s productivity benefits in high-agglomeration regions, but not in low-agglomeration ones. These findings highlight the need for region-specific policies that promote GVC upgrading, foster innovation and strengthen industrial linkages to support high-quality development