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Force production and electromyographic activity during different flywheel deadlift exercises
Get PDFThis study aimed to characterize and compare force production and muscle activity during four flywheel deadlift exercises (bilateral [Bi] vs. unilateral [Uni]) with different loading conditions (vertical [Ver] vs. horizontal [Hor]). Twenty-three team-sport athletes underwent assessments for exercise kinetics (hand-grip force), along with surface electromyography (sEMG) of the proximal (BFProx) and medial biceps femoris (BFMed), semitendinosus (ST), and gluteus medius (GM). Mean and peak force were highest (p < 0.001) in Bi + Ver compared with Bi + Hor, Uni + Ver, and Uni + Hor. Although no significant differences were observed between Bi + Hor and Uni + Ver, both variants showed higher (p < 0.001) average force and peak eccentric force when compared with Uni + Hor. The presence of eccentric overload was only observed in the vertically loaded variants. Bi + Ver and Uni + Ver showed higher (p < 0.05) sEMG levels in BFProx and BFMed compared with the Uni + Hor variant. In addition, Uni + Ver registered the largest GM and ST sEMG values. In conclusion, the vertical variants of the flywheel deadlift exercise led to higher muscle force production and sEMG compared with their horizontal counterparts. Both Bi + Ver and Uni + Ver may be effective in promoting an increase in hamstring muscles activity and muscle force at long muscle length, while the Uni + Ver variant may be more effective in promoting GM and ST involvement
Editorial: Supporting the development of practice-based learning: the role of a National Educators Association
Get PDFWe write this editorial as recently appointed co-chairs of the National Association of Educators in/for Practice (NAEP) in the United Kingdom (UK)
Utilizing mechatronic agilent gas chromatography to validate therapeutic efficacy of combretum paniculatum against oxidative stress and inflammation
Get PDFThe quest for novel antioxidant and anti-inflammatory medications from medicinal plants is crucial since the plants contain bioactive compounds with a better efficacy and safety profile than orthodox therapy. This study harnesses the capabilities of mechatronics-driven Agilent Gas Chromatography, deploying in vitro, in vivo, and in silico models to unravel the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory attributes within Combretum paniculatum ethanol extract (CPEE). Employing gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy (GC-MS), our analysis efficiently segregates and evaluates volatile compound mixtures, a technique renowned for identifying organic compounds, as exemplified by its success in detecting fatty acids in food and resin acids in water. Using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and GC-FID analyses, this paper ascertains the comprehensive phytochemical composition of CPEE. Also, Molecular interactions of identified compounds with cyclooxygenase (COX-2) implicated in inflammatory urpsurge is verified. GC-MS and GC-FID analyses unveil 41 phytoconstituents within CPEE. Based on the in vitro research, CPEE demonstrated potential in inhibiting thiobarbituric acid-reactive substances, nitric oxide, and phospholipase lipase A2 with inhibition rates of 2.284, 6.547, and 66.8 μg/mL respectively. In vivo experiments confirm CPEE's efficacy in inhibiting granuloma tissue formation, lipid peroxidation, and neutrophil counts compared to untreated rats. Moreover, CPEE elicited a significant (P < 0.05) increase in the activities of SOD, CAT, and GSH concentrations while decreasing C-reactive protein, signifying promising therapeutic potential. Highlighting interactions between top-scoring phytoligands (epicatechin, catechin, and kaempferol) and COX-2, the findings underscore their drug-like characteristics, favorable pharmacokinetics, and enhanced safety toxicity profiles. Results from in vitro, in vivo, and in silico studies, highlights CPEE remarkable antioxidant and anti-inflammatory potentials
Nocturnal pulse oximetry for the detection and prediction of acute mountain sickness: An observational study
Get PDFAcute mountain sickness (AMS) is a well‐studied illness defined by clinical features (e.g., headache and nausea), as assessed by the Lake Louise score (LLS). Although obvious in its severe form, early stages of AMS are poorly defined and easily confused with common travel‐related conditions. Measurement of hypoxaemia, the cause of AMS, should be helpful, yet to date its utility for identifying AMS susceptibility remains unclear. This study quantified altitude‐induced hypoxaemia in individuals during an ascent to 4800 m to determine the utility of nocturnal pulse oximetry measurements for prediction of AMS. Eighteen individuals (36 ± 16 years of age) ascended to 4800 m over 12 days. Symptomology of AMS was assessed each morning via LLS criteria, with participants categorized as either AMS‐positive (LLS ≥ 3 with headache) or AMS‐negative. Overnight peripheral oxygen saturations (ov‐ S p O 2 ) were recorded continuously (1 Hz) using portable oximeters. Derivatives of these recordings were compared between AMS‐positive and ‐negative subjects (Mann–Whitney U‐test). Exploratory analyses (Pearson's) were conducted to investigate relationships between overnight parameters and AMS severity. Overnight derivatives, including ov‐ S p O 2 , heart rate/ov‐ S p O 2 , variance, oxygen desaturation index, hypoxic burden and total sleep time at <80% S p O 2 , all differed significantly between AMS‐positive and ‐negative subjects (all P < 0.01), with cumulative/relative frequency plots highlighting these differences visually. Exploratory analysis revealed that ov‐ S p O 2 from 3850 m was correlated with peak LLS at 4800 m (r = 0.58–0.61). The findings highlight the potential for overnight oximetry to predict AMS susceptibility during ascent to high altitude. Further investigation is required to develop, evaluate and optimize predictive models to improve AMS management and prevention
Writing and research methodology – how this book was written
No full textWriting in its various forms and formats is an essential feature of academic labour and of creating and recording impact. Yet finding and making best use of precious time to write emerges as a major challenge for many academics, especially for those in the earlier stages of their careers. For that reason, we have chosen in this chapter to explicate ways in which we conceived, approached and carried out this writing project.
What we hoped for did not quite turn out to be the case. In this chapter we discuss both those hopes and unanticipated realities, and the connections between the two as the book progressed. Research projects never quite go to plan, and this was certainly so here. The turbulence that we faced during this publication project is not unique in higher education today, particularly in smaller institutions, where the freedom to take on projects that are regarded as tangential to the ‘day job’ becomes seemingly harder to justify or assert. It is for these reasons that this chapter reads more like a story set deep in the subjective work of getting this book published, rather than about the objective neatness that one often finds in discussions of methodology and methods.
As co-editors, our general invitation to contributors was to write about ‘what you know’, or in phenomenological terms to explore their lifeworld (Bernet et al., 1993). That said, we were sceptical of the idea of ‘bracketing out’ (Gearing, 2004), or suspending our preconceptions, that is often associated with phenomenology in order for people to explore experience. Rather, we assumed that we all act, learn, react and carry on as individuals, and that ‘bracketing out’ would downplay the social and ethical nature of our endeavour. We are drawn to the notion of the individual and social being part of the same process of human interdependence in ways that are explored by Ralph Stacey and colleagues (Stacey & Griffin, 2005), who draw on the work of the pragmatist philosophers George Herbert Mead (Mead, 1934) and John Dewey (Dewey, 1934). In this way, we treated inquiry and writing as social processes that can enhance noticing and exploration of what we find obvious in our everyday practices, accentuated through the interest, encouragement and curiosity of others.
Many of the methods we have chosen to illuminate here aim to show how various strands and relationships come together to create impact within the business school, locally and beyond. We made a conscious decision to encourage contributors to focus beyond what is currently seen to have official value, for example, the number of publications in star-rated journals, or students who are in graduate employment a few months after leaving university, or prominent positions in the various league tables. Throughout, we have encouraged contributors to adopt a rigorous, critically reflective and reflexive perspective, in keeping with the spirit of ‘writing differently’ (Gilmore et al., 2019). Reflecting trends in ‘the digital turn’ (Kergel & Heidkamp, 2017)1 we aimed to give voice to multiple perspectives from people (not only from ‘academic staff’) who are sharing their own lived experiences of being associated with their local business school in a variety of ways.
This chapter does not include a discussion of the specific methods used by other chapter authors, which are addressed appropriately in their respective chapters
The fragility of goodness, what good do we do as management educators?
No full textIn this chapter I want to give voice to the ephemeral nature of goodness, and to glimpse how business schools sustain that relational human quality. I am going to explore two perspectives.
First, I will draw on my experience of teaching on an MBA programme. I will focus on a conversation I had with a recent participant of the programme. Here I aim to explore how I worked with the participant and the nature of goodness and value to her.
Second, I will report a conversation with someone who has first-hand recent experiences of what it is like when a programme or a particular pedagogical approach ends. We explore the topic of legacy. The conversation relates to the teaching staff, the participants and also to wider impact and ripples that were felt.
These interviews will be used as reflexive prompts to explore my own engagement and sensemaking in the context of my work in the business school. Reflexivity is a discipline of self-awareness (Cunliffe, 2002, 2009; Hibbert, 2009; Hibbert & Cunliffe, 2015) or questioning as to what one has said or done; it is a practice of thinking critically of one’s practice, which in turn affects one’s possible practices to come (Warwick & Board, 2013, p. 208). In other words, it is a self-examining process. I will not leave it there, I will amply use the words of my conversationalists, words of others and my own sensemaking and invite you to consider your subjective experience and practice.
The University of Chichester Business School began life in 2002 and in the summer of 2022, 20 years later, the Head of the Business School announced in a team meeting that he was leaving. Weeks later we became part of a larger entity called the Institute of Psychology, Business and Human Sciences. This chapter was not born from this incident, but it is shaped by it. For all sorts of intrinsic and extrinsic reasons people come and go, courses begin and end, and departments are launched, merge or close. In this chapter I am intrigued by the fragile nature of how we nurture learning in a small business school.
Once in a while the conditions are right to attract scholars and students to a particular institution, like attracting birds into one’s garden with handfuls of nuts and seeds. And then for various reasons, people move on, departments and/or programmes close or radically change, and the ‘essence’ is gone. This is particularly the case when that essence emerges through that relational and developmental process between ‘being and doing’ that sometimes occurs, and which is so difficult to articulate.
The questions that intrigue me include: what matters? and what good do we do? Depending on whether you are a student, lecturer or policymaker, your answers may be different. By policymaker, I mean a person who works in education and whose role includes influencing the allocation of resources and the formation of standards, but who is not involved in the day-to-day working with students on their education. It may include senior people in universities, government, regulation or think-tanks.
During my doctoral studies, I found inspiration from Martha Nussbaum, the American philosopher, particularly her book: The Fragility of Goodness—Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Nussbaum, 2001). I found her work useful in understanding people and the goings-on in organisational life. Nussbaum reminds us that how we go about our lives is as much to do with external factors and luck, for good or ill, as with any innate virtues that we have as individuals. In her own words it is important to pay attention to ‘the gap between being a good person and managing to live a flourishing human life’ (ibid., p. XIV). For me, it is the lived interaction between ‘being and doing’, not only when it comes to ourselves, but about how we influence others, and how others influence us. Take the following quote for example: here the focus is on love—not often talked about in organisational life, and perhaps it should be, but here I am drawn to the importance of image and story and the invitation to share experience:
There are some truths about love that can be learned only through experience of a particular passion of one’s own. If one is asked to teach those truths, one’s only recourse is to recreate that experience for the hearer; to tell a story, to appeal to his or her imagination and feelings by the use of vivid narrative. Images are valuable in this attempt to make the audience share experience, to feel, from the inside what it is like.
1 (Ibid., p. 185)
It is worth contrasting this with much that is written in leadership and business discourse, with its focus on straightforward frameworks, matrices and analysis that is detached from the lived, confusing context that we all muddle through and that forms the basis of our own unique story. It is stories, their context and their interpretation that I will focus on here
Ladies-in-Waiting
No full textThis publication reveals the extraordinary lives, and afterlives, of Katherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard and Katherine Parr. The book begins with an examination of the women as cultural phenomena, looking at the ways in which their lives have inspired storytellers, from Shakespeare’s Henry VIII to the musical Six, and the role that portraiture has played in the performance of the queens’ stories.
An overview essay examines the queens’ self-presentation through portraiture before individual chapters consider each of their relationships with the king, their social and familial networks and their patronage. Each chapter is accompanied by a thematic piece written by an expert scholar, taking a closer look at an element of court culture, ranging from music and jewellery, to court pageantry and heraldry
Memory-efficient spike-time-dependent plasticity for future driverless car park infrastructure
No full textIn addition to localization and mapping, current challenges faced by driverless (autonomous) car parks encompass computational complexity, resulting in elevated CPU utilisation and substantial memory consumption. This paper presents a memory-efficient Spike-Time-Dependent Plasticity (STDP) approach for future driverless car park infrastructure (DCPI). The proposed method utilizes self-organized mapping (SOM) classification and memory optimization techniques to analyze traffic occupancy trends. Results from geospatial data mining show optimised memory usage for vacant slots and trajectory mining clusters. Additionally, the impact of lateral suppression on STDP is demonstrated, highlighting the usefulness of STDP in managing complex memory scenarios in DCPI. Results show that STDP provides a robust neuromorphic scheme for lightweight memory utilisation particularly for tasks requiring precise timing and coordination